shredward

Might have. It's featured in the Osprey SE5 Aces title. And soon on a screen near you. Sandbagger is working on the SE5 skins now. That particular a/c is B189, a Martinsyde built Hisso SE5a. It was allotted to 40RFC on 20/3/18, and flown by 'Harry' Harrison, 'Tud' Tudhope, and Reed Landis. It will be flown Over Flanders Fields by 'Tud' Tudhope. 'Laddie' Roy will be flying B180, the a/c with which he made all of his claims, and the one he was flying when he was killed on 22/7/18. We also have Hardit Singh Malik. Look for his a/c among the 28 RFC Camels. Another fine Sandbagger skin. Cheers, shredward

from the History Channel: April 17, 1917 Second Battle of Gaza As the major Allied offensive masterminded by Robert Nivelle was failing miserably on the Western Front, British forces in Palestine make their second attempt to capture the city of Gaza from the Ottoman army on this day in 1917. In the wake of the failed British assault on Gaza of March 26, 1917, Sir Archibald Murray, commander of British forces in the region, misrepresented the battle as a clear Allied victory, claiming Turkish losses to be triple what they actually were; in truth, at 2,400 they were significantly lower than the British total of 4,000. This led London’s War Office to believe their troops were on the verge of a significant breakthrough in Palestine and to order Murray to renew the attack immediately. Though the previous assault had caught the Turks by surprise, the second one did not: the German general in charge of the troops at Gaza, Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein, was by now well aware of British intentions. By the time the British launched their second round of attacks on April 17, the Turks had accordingly strengthened their defenses and extended their forces along the road from Gaza to the nearby town of Beersheba. Still, as in the First Battle of Gaza, British soldiers outnumbered Turkish troops by a ratio of two to one. Moreover, the British employed eight heavy Mark-1 tanks and 4,000 gas shells (used for the first time on the Palestine front) to ensure victory. The tanks proved unsuitable for the hot, dry desert conditions, however, and three of them were captured by Turkish forces, which again put up a blisteringly effective defense despite their inferior numbers. After three days and heavy losses—the British casualty figure, of 6,444 men, was three times that of the Turks—Murray’s subordinate commander, Sir Charles Dobell, was forced to call off the British attacks, ending the Second Battle of Gaza with the city still firmly in Turkish control. As a result of this second failure to capture Gaza, the Allies called in reinforcements, including Italian and French troops, which arrived from Europe in time to join the third and final Battle of Gaza that fall. Under the new regional command of Sir Edward Allenby, the Allies finally broke through and gained control of Gaza in November 1917, leaving them free to move ahead toward Palestine’s capital city, Jerusalem, which fell into Allied hands on December 9.

from the History Channel: April 16, 1917 Lenin Returns to Russia On April 16, 1917, Vladimir Lenin, leader of the revolutionary Bolshevik Party, returns to Petrograd after a decade of exile to take the reins of the Russian Revolution. Born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in 1870, Lenin was drawn to the revolutionary cause after his brother was executed in 1887 for plotting to assassinate Czar Alexander II. He studied law and took up practice in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), where he moved in revolutionary Marxist circles. In 1895, he helped organize Marxist groups in the capital into the "Union for the Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class," which attempted to enlist workers to the Marxist cause. In December 1895, Lenin and the other leaders of the Union were arrested. Lenin was jailed for a year and then exiled to Siberia for a term of three years. After his exile ended in 1900, Lenin went to Western Europe, where he continued his revolutionary activity. It was during this time that he adopted the pseudonym Lenin. In 1902, he published a pamphlet entitled What Is to Be Done?, which argued that only a disciplined party of professional revolutionaries could bring socialism to Russia. In 1903, he met with other Russian Marxists in London and established the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party (RSDWP). However, from the start, there was a split between Lenin's Bolsheviks (Majoritarians), who advocated militarism, and the Mensheviks (Minoritarians), who advocated a democratic movement toward socialism. These two groups increasingly opposed each other within the framework of the RSDWP, and Lenin made the split official at a 1912 conference of the Bolshevik Party. After the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of 1905, Lenin returned to Russia. The revolution, which consisted mainly of strikes throughout the Russian empire, came to an end when Nicholas II promised reforms, including the adoption of a Russian constitution and the establishment of an elected legislature. However, once order was restored, the czar nullified most of these reforms, and in 1907 Lenin was again forced into exile. Lenin opposed World War I, which began in 1914, as an imperialistic conflict and called on proletariat soldiers to turn their guns on the capitalist leaders who sent them down into the murderous trenches. For Russia, World War I was an unprecedented disaster: Russian casualties were greater than those sustained by any nation in any previous war. Meanwhile, the economy was hopelessly disrupted by the costly war effort, and in March 1917, riots and strikes broke out in Petrograd over the scarcity of food. Demoralized army troops joined the strikers, and on March 15, 1917, Nicholas II was forced to abdicate, ending centuries of czarist rule. In the aftermath of the February Revolution (known as such because of Russia's use of the Julian calendar), power was shared between the ineffectual provisional government, led by Minister of War Alexander Kerensky, and the soviets, or "councils," of soldiers' and workers' committees. After the outbreak of the February Revolution, German authorities allowed Lenin and his lieutenants to cross Germany en route from Switzerland to Sweden in a sealed railway car. Berlin hoped, correctly, that the return of the anti-war socialists to Russia would undermine the Russian war effort, which was continuing under the provisional government. Lenin called for the overthrow of the provisional government by the soviets; he was subsequently condemned as a "German agent" by the government's leaders. In July, he was forced to flee to Finland, but his call for "peace, land, and bread" met with increasing popular support, and the Bolsheviks won a majority in the Petrograd soviet. In October, Lenin secretly returned to Petrograd, and on November 7, the Bolshevik-led Red Guards deposed the Provisional Government and proclaimed soviet rule. Lenin became the virtual dictator of the world's first Marxist state. His government made peace with Germany, nationalized industry and distributed land but, beginning in 1918, had to fight a devastating civil war against czarist forces. In 1920, the czarists were defeated, and in 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was established. Upon Lenin's death in early 1924, his body was embalmed and placed in a mausoleum near the Moscow Kremlin. Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honor. After a struggle of succession, fellow revolutionary Joseph Stalin succeeded Lenin as leader of the Soviet Union.

from the History Channel: April 15, 1918 Germany recaptures Passchendaele Ridge With the Germans, in the throes of a major spring offensive on the Western Front, hammering their positions in Flanders, France, British forces evacuate Passchendaele Ridge on April 15, 1918 won by the Allies at such a terrible cost just five months earlier. Under the command of Erich von Ludendorff, the German army launched "Operation Georgette," the second phase of their first major offensive on the Western Front for more than a year, on April 9, 1918, near the River Lys in Flanders. In the first days of the attack, the Germans regained the momentum they had lost at the end of March, when the Allies halted the first phase of the attacks at Moreuil Wood and around Amiens, France. Storming ahead against the British and Portuguese divisions at the Lys (one Portuguese division was so overwhelmed it refused to go forward into the trenches after the initial bombardment), German forces advanced quickly as panic swept down the Allied lines of command. On April 15, less than a week after Georgette began, the British were forced to evacuate Passchendaele Ridge, won at such terrible cost the previous fall, during the Third Battle of Ypres. That battle had ended when the Canadian Corps captured Passchendaele on November 6, 1917, saving Field Marshal Haig's career, but only after months of hellish fighting that cost half a million British, Anzac and Canadian casualties, and 350,000 on the German side. In addition to Passchendaele, the Germans gained control of Messines Ridge, the scene of another important Allied victory in June 1917. Ludendorff shut down Operation Georgette on April 29, 1918.

Took 3 weeks to get here - ya just never know. But it will get there. Cheers, shredward

from the History Channel: April 13, 1918 Germans Capture Helsinki As part of Germany’s support of Finland and its newly declared parliamentary government, German troops wrest control of Helsingfors (Helsinki) from the Red Guard, an army of Finnish supporters of the Russian Bolsheviks, on April 13, 1918. Finland, under Russian control since 1809, took the opportunity of the upheaval in Russia in 1917 (including the abdication of Czar Nicholas II in March and the rise to power of Vladimir Lenin and his radical socialist followers, the Bolsheviks, in November) to declare its independence in December of that year. Almost immediately, however, conflict broke out within Finland between radical socialists—supporters of the Bolsheviks in Russia—and anti-socialists within the government. In late January 1918, the radical socialist Red Guard launched a rebellion, terrorizing and killing civilians in their attempt to spark a Bolshevik-style revolution. A bitter struggle ensued as the Whites (as government troops were known) under the command of Baron Karl Gustav Mannerheim sought to drive the Reds out of Finland. On April 3, 1918, German troops sent by Kaiser Wilhelm II landed in Finland to aid Mannerheim’s White army. Ten days later, the Germans captured Helsinki alongside Mannerheim and his force of 16,000 men; they did the same in Viborg by the end of the month. A major victory by the Germans and the White Finns at Lahti on May 7 ended the Finnish civil war. Germany’s close ties with the nascent Finnish government reached a new level in October 1918, when conservative forces in Finland decided to establish monarchal rule in the country, giving the throne to Frederick, a German prince, in the waning weeks of World War I. By the time the Central Powers appealed for an armistice one month later, however, Kaiser Wilhelm himself had abdicated and it seemed certain that the victorious Allies would not look kindly upon a German prince on the Finnish throne. Frederick abdicated on December 14. The Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919, recognized Finland’s hard-won independence; that July, the Finnish parliament adopted a new republican constitution, and Kaarlo J. Stahlberg, a liberal, was elected as the country’s first president.

'Kobes' Cheers, shredward

Sort of a Last Waltz... :yes:

Thanks Rabu, I had forgotten about that one. Thanks for bringing it back. Cheers, shredward

That must have been the SE5 Salamander. Grows a new wing if it loses one :yes: And you thought we were a highly evolved species? shredward

Can we use that line in our advertising campaign? Cheers, shredward

from: Veterans Affairs Canada April 9, 1917 Vimy Ridge At 5.28 a.m., April 9, 1917, Easter Monday, a creeping artillery barrage began to roll steadily toward the German positions on Vimy Ridge. Behind it came 20,000 soldiers; the first wave of four Canadian divisions, a score of battalions in line abreast, leading the assault in a driving north-west wind that swept the mangled countryside with sleet and snow. Guided by paint-marked stakes, the leading infantry companies crossed the devastation of No Man's Land, picking their way through shell-holes and shattered trenches. Each soldier carried at least 32 kilograms of equipment, plus, some say, an equal weight of mud caked on uniforms and gear. This burden made climbing the Ridge, jumping in and out of the trenches and craters, extremely difficult. Vimy Ridge stands about 110 metres at the high point and runs for 8 – 10 kilometres in length. The Allied side of the ridge was a long gradual slope which made its way to the crest where a sharp drop fell into the expansive Douai Plain. Possession of the Ridge gave the Germans a clear and uninterrupted sight line of all enemy advances while the Allies could only use aircraft to see beyond the crest and into enemy held territory. The Germans had developed a series of three highly fortified defensive lines utilizing machine gun, artillery and barbed-wire to produce ground that, in their view, could not be over-taken. To add to the defences above ground, the Germans had constructed a vast network of deep underground tunnels and living quarters safe from artillery shells – equipped with electricity, medical facilities and many of the "comforts of home". Almost 250 heavy guns and about 600 field guns prepared the battlefield. For three weeks, Canadian guns, hammered at German positions. Previously mapped German machine-gun and artillery positions were targeted as the attack began – silencing the guns and not allowing the Germans to move their emplacements. An average of 2,500 tons of shells rained down on the German positions daily. Far back in the German lines, transportation and communications positions were destroyed, stopping food, ammunition and fresh troops from reaching the front lines. Feeding the Canadian guns was a network of rail lines built to bring the huge numbers of shells into position. Special fuses were developed for shells that would cause an almost instantaneous explosion, designed to take out enemy barbed wire. One of the more tragic features of the British barrage at the Somme had been their inability to take out the barbed wire. During the week preceding the attack (the "week of suffering" as the Germans called it) over one million shells were fired at Vimy Ridge. A plan had been developed to attack the German lines using both the infantry and artillery in concert with each other. After almost 3 years of war, the German defenders had been accustomed to waiting for the end of the artillery to move from their protected positions and man their machine-guns with ample time to kill the attackers. The Canadian plan called for artillery to keep an exact pace in front of the Canadian troops moving across "no-man's-land". A well-rehearsed movement of man and shell, moving at a pace of about 100 yards every 3 minutes would attack the enemy trenches. This would provide a dangerous but effective cover for the Canadians. German machine-guns were kept silent as gunners stayed protected within the tunnels and trenches. It also, afforded an element of surprise as many Germans left their positions to face their attackers only to find the Canadians already at their trench. There was some hand-to-hand fighting, but the greatest resistance, and heavy Canadian losses, came from the strongly-emplaced machine-guns in the German intermediate line. Overcoming this resistance, three of the four divisions captured their part of the Ridge by midday, right on schedule. In the final stage, the 2nd Canadian Division was assisted by the British 13th Brigade, which fell under its command for the operation. The 4th Canadian Division's principal objective was Hill 145, the highest and most important feature of the whole Ridge. Once taken, its summit would give the Canadians a commanding view of German rearward defences in the Douai Plain as well as those remaining on the Ridge itself. Because of its importance, the Germans had fortified Hill 145 with well-wired trenches and a series of deep dug-outs beneath its rear slope. The brigades of the 4th Division were hampered by fire from the Pimple, the other prominent height, which inflicted costly losses on the advancing waves of infantry. Renewed attacks were mounted using troops that were originally scheduled to attack the Pimple. Finally, in the afternoon of April 10, a fresh assault by a relieving brigade cleared the summit of Hill 145 and thus placed the whole of Vimy Ridge in Canadian hands. Two days later, units of the 10th Canadian Brigade successfully stormed the Pimple. By that time, the enemy had accepted the loss of Vimy Ridge as permanent and had pulled back more than three kilometres. Vimy Ridge marked the only significant success of the Allied spring offensive of 1917. But though they had won a great tactical victory, the Canadians were unable to exploit their success quickly with a breakthrough, mainly because their artillery had bogged down and was unable to move up with them through the muddy, shell-torn ground. Instead, some Canadian artillerymen took over captured German guns which they had earlier been trained to fire. The Canadian achievement in capturing Vimy Ridge owed its success to sound and meticulous planning and thorough preparation, but it was the splendid fighting spirit of Canadian soldiers on the battlefield that proved decisive. Canadians attacked German machine-guns, the greatest obstacles to their advance, with great courage. They saved many comrades' lives as a result. Four won the Victoria Cross; three were earned on the opening day of the battle. Private William Milne of the 16th Battalion won the VC when he crawled up to a German machine-gun that had been firing on the advancing Canadians, bombed its crew and captured the gun. Later, he stalked a second machine-gun, killing its crew and capturing it, but was himself killed shortly thereafter. The whereabouts of Private Milne's grave is unknown. Lance-Sergeant Ellis Sifton of the 18th Battalion charged a machine-gun post single-handed, leaping into the trench where it was concealed and killing its crew. Soon after, he was met by a small party of Germans who were advancing through the trench. He managed to hold them off until his comrades arrived, but then one of his victims, gasping a last breath of life, fired upon him. During the fight for Hill 145, Captain Thain MacDowell of the 38th Battalion entered an enemy dug-out, where he tricked 77 Prussian Guards into surrendering and captured two machine-guns by pretending he had a large force behind him. His large force consisted of two soldiers. MacDowell had earned the Distinguished Service Order on the Somme. On April 10, Private John Pattison of the 50th Battalion jumped from shell-hole to shell-hole until, 30 metres from an enemy machine-gun, he was in range to bomb its crew. He then rushed forward to bayonet the remaining five gunners. Pattison was killed two months later. Of the four Vimy VCs, only Captain MacDowell survived the War. At Vimy, the Canadian Corps had captured more ground, more prisoners and more guns than any previous British offensive in two-and-a-half years of war. It was one of the most complete and decisive engagements of the Great War and the greatest Allied victory up to that time. The Canadians had demonstrated they were one of the outstanding formations on the Western Front and masters of offensive warfare. Though the victory at Vimy came swiftly, it did not come without cost. There were 10,602 Canadian casualties, including 3,598 dead. Battalions in the first waves of the assault suffered grievously. No level of casualties could ever be called acceptable, but those at Vimy were lower than the terrible norm of many major assaults on the Western Front. They were also far lighter than those of any previous offensive at the Ridge. Earlier French, British and German struggles there had cost at least 200,000 casualties. Care in planning by the Corps Commander, Sir Julian Byng, and Maj. Gen. Arthur Currie, kept Canadian casualties down. The Canadian success at Vimy marked a turning-point for the Allies; a great victory after a series of terrible defeats. Brigadier-General Alexander Ross had commanded the 28th (North-West) Battalion at Vimy. Later, as president of the Canadian Legion, he said of the battle: "It was Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific on parade. I thought then . . . that in those few minutes I witnessed the birth of a nation."

from the History Channel: April 9, 1918 Battle of the Lys - Operation Georgette On this day in 1918, German troops launch "Operation Georgette" the second phase of their final, last-ditch spring offensive, against Allied positions in Armentieres, France, on the River Lys. On March 21, 1918, the Germans under Erich Ludendorff, chief of the general staff, launched their first major offensive on the Western Front in more than a year, attacking the Allies in the Somme River region of France and training their huge guns on Paris. The Allies managed to halt Ludendorff's exhausted armies by the end of March, however, thanks in part to a fresh influx of several thousand American soldiers. By the time Ludendorff shut down attacks on April 5, the Germans had gained nearly 40 miles of territory. Ludendorff's focus now switched to the Flanders region of northern France, aiming to push the British troops back against their ports along the English Channel, forcing them into a corner. Thus on April 9, after a four-and-a-half hour long bombardment of British forces in Armentières, 14 German divisions attacked along a 10-mile front to begin the Battle of the Lys. As at the Somme, the ferocious German advance quickly drove the British back, punching a hole 3.5 miles wide through the British line. They also made quick and bloody work of a Portuguese division taking part in the battle, sending four divisions against the single Portuguese unit and taking some 6,000 prisoners. To make matters worse, the Germans unleashed 2,000 tons of poisonous gas--including mustard and phosgene gas--against the British at the Lys, incapacitating 8,000 (of whom many were blinded) and killing 30. Despite the initial success of Operation Georgette, the British defensive positions in Armentières were better prepared and more tenacious than those at the Somme, and the Germans managed to advance only 12 kilometers by the time Ludendorff closed down the operation on April 29. By this time, morale on both sides of the line was at a low point, due to heavy losses, but neither was ready to give in. The Germans looked to the next stage of their offensive, against the French at the Aisne River, as the Allies readied their defenses, each side believing that the outcome of the First World War hung in the balance.

from the History Channel: April 6, 1918 US Enters War On April 6, 1917, two days after the U.S. Senate votes 82 to 6 to declare war against Germany, the U.S. House of Representatives endorses the decision by a vote of 373 to 50, and the United States formally enters the Great War. When the Great War erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson pledged neutrality for the United States, a position favored by the vast majority of Americans. Britain, however, was one of America's closest trading partners, and tension soon arose between the United States and Germany over the latter's attempted quarantine of the British Isles. Several U.S. ships traveling to Britain were damaged or sunk by German mines, and, in February 1915, Germany announced unrestricted warfare against all ships, neutral or otherwise, that entered the war zone around Britain. One month later, Germany announced that a German cruiser had sunk the William P. Frye, a private American vessel. President Wilson was outraged, but the German government apologized, calling the attack an unfortunate mistake. On May 7, the British-owned ocean liner Lusitania was torpedoed without warning just off the coast of Ireland. Of the nearly 2,000 passengers aboard, 1,201 were killed, including 128 Americans. The German government maintained, correctly, that the Lusitania was carrying munitions, but the U.S. demanded reparations and an end to German attacks on unarmed passenger and merchant ships. In August, Germany pledged to see to the safety of passengers before sinking unarmed vessels, but in November a U-boat sank an Italian liner without warning, killing 272 people, including 27 Americans. With these attacks, public opinion in the United States began to turn irrevocably against Germany. In February 1917, Germany, determined to win its war of attrition against the Allies, resumed its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare in war-zone waters. Three days later, the United States broke diplomatic relations with Germany; the same day, the American liner Housatonic was sunk by a German U-boat. On February 22, Congress passed a $250 million arms-appropriations bill intended to ready the United States for war. In late March, Germany sank four more U.S. merchant ships, and on April 2, President Wilson went before Congress to deliver his famous “war message.” Within four days, both houses of Congress had voted in favor of a declaration of war. Despite measures taken to improve U.S. military preparedness in the previous year, Wilson was unable to offer the Allies much immediate help in the form of troops; indeed, the army was only able to muster about 100,000 men at the time of American entrance into the war. To remedy this, Wilson immediately adopted a policy of conscription. By the time the war ended on November 11, 1918, more than 2 million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and some 50,000 of them had lost their lives. Still, the most important effect of the U.S. entrance into the war was economic—by the beginning of April 1917, Britain alone was spending $75 million per week on U.S. arms and supplies, both for itself and for its allies, and had an overdraft of $358 million. The American entry into the war saved Great Britain, and by extension the rest of the Entente, from bankruptcy. The United States also crucially reinforced the strength of the Allied naval blockade of Germany, in effect from the end of 1914 and aimed at crushing Germany economically. American naval forces reached Britain on April 9, 1917, just three days after the declaration of war. By contrast, General John J. Pershing, the man appointed to command the U.S. Army in Europe, did not arrive until June 14; roughly a week later, the first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops landed in France to begin training for combat. Though the U.S. Army’s contributions began slowly, they would eventually mark a major turning point in the war effort and help the Allies to victory.

I may be wrong, but I think that one is hard-wired, beyond our reach. Cheers, shredward

from the History Channel: April 5, 1918 "Operation Michael" Ends On April 5, 1918, General Erich Ludendorff formally ends "Operation Michael," the first stage of the final major German offensive of World War I. Operation Michael, which marked the first sizeable German offensive against Allied positions on the Western Front in more than a year, began on March 21, 1918, with a five-hour-long bombardment of Allied positions near the Somme River from more than 9,000 pieces of German artillery, in the face of which the poorly prepared British 5th Army was rapidly overwhelmed and forced into retreat. For a week, the Germans pushed toward Paris, shelling the city from a distance of 80 miles with their “Big Bertha” cannons; by March 25, they had crossed the Somme and broken through the Allied lines. Hampered by a lack of supplies and cavalry, as well as hardening Allied defenses, German troops became exhausted, and by the end of March the Allies had halted their advance. On April 2, U.S. General John J. Pershing sent several thousand fresh American troops down into the trenches to fight alongside the British and French. It was the first major deployment of U.S. troops in World War I. By April 5, when Ludendorff shut down the attacks, Operation Michael had produced the biggest gains of territory on the Western Front by either side since 1914. The Germans had advanced almost 40 miles, inflicted some 200,000 casualties and captured 70,000 prisoners and more than 1,000 Allied guns. The costs of battle were high, however: Germans suffered nearly as many casualties as their enemies and lacked the fresh reserves and supplies the Allies enjoyed following the American entrance into the war. Still, Ludendorff would launch four more similar operations that spring of 1918, as the Germans staked everything on a last, desperate offensive on the Western Front.

Took delivery of my new desktop today, fired her up and WOW!!!!!!!!!!! Who knew? This OFF thing is amazing!!! Gotta get back to the Front - better inspect the lines down low.....

You get that message when a particular pilot is going to be on the scene, but the skin has not been created yet. We've done 3200 skins, but we have 1300 and some odd pilots, most flying several a/c through their careers, so, as you can see, we're still only part way there. So yes, you will get the error message, just carry on. The ace will give you a nasty surprise when he shows up in an anonymous, borrowed a/c. Cheers, shredward

from the History Channel: April 4, 1918 Germany Renews Offensive On this day in 1918, German forces in the throes of a major spring offensive on the Western Front launch a renewed attack on Allied positions between the Somme and Avre Rivers. The first stage of the German offensive, dubbed "Operation Michael," began March 21, 1918; by the first days of April it had resulted in a gain of almost 40 miles of territory for the Germans, the largest advance in the west for either side since 1914. After initial panic, the Allies had managed to stabilize and strengthen their defense, stopping the Germans at Moreau Wood on March 30 and continuing their hardy defense of the crucial railroad junction and town of Amiens, France, just south of the Somme. With a bombardment by more than 1,200 guns and a total of 15 divisions sent against only seven of the enemy's, the Germans attacked in force at Villers-Bretonneux on April 4. Again, British and Australian troops reacted with panic in the face of such an onslaught, but soon rallied to drive back their attackers. At the same time, French divisions made their own advances along the front running between the towns of Castel and Cantigny, to the south of Villers-Bretonneux. Also on April 4, German military officials announced that their attacks in the Somme region had claimed a total of 90,000 Allied prisoners since March 21. The following day, Erich Ludendorff, chief of the German general staff, formally closed down the Michael offensive; the second phase of the attacks, "Georgette," would begin four days later in Flanders.

from the History Channel: April 3, 1918 Foch Appointed Commander-in-Chief On April 3, 1918, the Allied Supreme War Council formally confers the post of Commander-in-Chief on the Western Front to General Ferdinand Foch. By March 23, 1918, two days after the start of the German Army’s great spring offensive near the Somme River and the crucial railway junction at Amiens, France, the Allied mood was black. Paris was being shelled, and there were suggestions that the French government abandon the city. On March 26, French President Raymond Poincaré arrived in Doullens to preside over a meeting attended by Douglas Haig and Philippe Pétain, the top commanders of the British and French armies; the French prime minister, Georges Clemenceau; Lord Alfred Milner from the British War Cabinet; and Henry Wilson, Britain’s representative on the newly created Supreme War Council. Unlike Haig, Wilson and Milner both enjoyed the support of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and both had become convinced that a united Anglo-French command should be created to strengthen Allied military strategy going forward, especially in the face of the powerful German offensive on the Western Front. Upon arriving in Doullens, Wilson had met privately with his friend Ferdinand Foch, a decorated French commander who had returned from relative obscurity on the Italian front (where he had been banished after the Allied failure on the Somme in 1916) to become the chief of the French general staff. At the subsequent meetings at Doullens on March 26, Wilson and Foch persuaded their political superiors, Milner and Clemenceau, that Foch was the logical choice to head a joint Allied command. The appointment was consolidated at Beauvais on April 3, as Foch was formally invested with control of “the strategic direction” of all the Allied armies, including that of the United States. Some, like Clemenceau, doubted Foch’s mental acuity and distrusted his strong Jesuit faith, but no one questioned his conviction, or his dedication to the pursuit of an Allied victory in World War I. “I shall fight without ceasing,” the newly appointed supreme Allied commander was reported to have said to a group of officers. “I shall fight in front of Amiens. I shall fight in Amiens. I shall fight behind Amiens. I shall fight all the time.” For his part, David Lloyd George defended the decision to name an Allied generalissimo as a matter of necessity. In a statement issued on April 9, the prime minister held that “I have always felt that we are losing value and efficiency in the Allied Armies through lack of coordination and concentration. We have sustained many disasters already through that, and we shall encounter more unless this defect in our machinery is put right.”

You will have to resort to what the real Pfalz pilots did. Can't remember who it was off the top of my head, I think it was Stark, counselled his pilots to only engage under certain conditions. What it boiled down to was, come in from on high, shoot, and keep on going. Stick around to fight, you're dead. Cheers, shredward

from the History Channel: April 2, 1917 Wilson Asks Congress for Declaration of War “The world must be made safe for democracy,” U.S. President Woodrow Wilson proclaims on this day in 1917, as he appears before Congress to ask for a declaration of war against Germany. Under Wilson, the former Princeton University president and governor of New Jersey who was voted into the White House in 1912, the United States had proclaimed its neutrality from the beginning of World War I in the summer of 1914. Even after the German sinking of the British passenger ship Lusitania in May 1915, which killed 1,201 people, including 128 Americans, caused a public outrage in the U.S. and prompted Wilson to send a strongly worded warning to Germany, the president was re-elected in 1916 on a platform of strict neutrality. Late that same year, Wilson even attempted to broker a peace between the Allies and the Central Powers, which was looked at favorably by Germany but eventually rejected by both France and Great Britain. The first months of 1917, however, brought new offenses by Germany against American interests at sea, namely the resumption of the German navy’s policy of unrestricted submarine warfare on February 1 and the sinking of the American cargo ship Housatonic two days later. An angry Wilson broke off diplomatic relations with Germany that same day. Meanwhile, British intelligence had decoded and informed the U.S. government of a secret message sent by the German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, to the German ambassador to Mexico. The so-called Zimmermann Telegram proposed a Mexican-German alliance in the case of war between the United States and Germany and promised Mexico financial and territorial rewards for its support. Wilson authorized the State Department to publish the text of the telegram; it appeared in America’s newspapers on March 1, provoking a great storm of anti-German sentiment among the U.S. population. With German submarine warfare continuing unabated, the final straw came on April 1, 1917, when the armed U.S. steamer Aztec was torpedoed near Brest and 28 of its crew members drowned. The next day, Wilson stepped before Congress to deliver his historic war message, making clear exactly how high he considered the stakes of the war to be. “It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance.” Despite the risks, Wilson felt the U.S. could not stand by any longer; in the face of continued German aggression, the nation had the moral obligation to step forward and fight for the principles upon which it had been founded. “We shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts,” Wilson famously intoned, “for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.” In this speech, Wilson displayed the idealism and moral fervor that characterized his view of the rightful role of the U.S. in the world—a supremely self-righteous outlook that would earn him acclaim from many and criticism and derision from others during his lifetime and after his death (especially after his pet project at war’s end, the League of Nations, proved a failure). It was also an outlook that would, for better or worse, determine the direction of U.S. foreign policy for decades to come, up to and including the present day. On April 4, the U.S. Senate voted in favor of war by 82 votes to 6; two days later, the House of Representatives delivered their own yes vote by 373 votes to 50, formally announcing the entrance of the United States into the First World War.

Leutnant Hans Jeschonnek Ja40s 22/4/18 > EoW Born 9 April 1899, Hohensalza. Entered military service 10 August 1914, as a Fähnrich in 3. Niederschlesisches Infanterie-Regiment Nr.50. Promoted Leutnant 26 September 1914. WiA 6 October 1915. Commenced pilot training at AFPs on 19 July 1917. Awarded EKI; Knight's Cross with Swords of the Royal Hohenzollern House Order. Ritterkreuz on 27 October 1939. Generaloberst in WWII on 1 March 1942; Luftwaffe Chief of Staff, from 1 Febuary 1939, until he committed suicide 19 August 1943. from Jasta Pilots, Franks, Bailey, Duiven

Great shot Catfish!

Not just early war - armament was a work in progress. I'd have to look it up, but one of the major German aces was put out of action when the ammo in his DVII cooked off. It was a serious hazard with the DVII - happened more than once. One often sees photos of them with their engine covers removed, or highly modified. Cheers, shredward