Olham

...and it's engine is still running today! This clip shows the craft today, and then comes the same historical film I showed above.

This COULD be a German trainer sailplane from the 30s - see the images in this website: http://www.klassiker-der-luftfahrt.de/geschichte/flugzeuge/segelflugausbildung-bis-1945/555390#1-555294 But, as you will see, the scholars have been wearing seat belts. No idea what happened in your picture, Hauksbee.

Oh dear - were they over water?

Added today: rtoolooze, Missouri, USA All maps are in post #1 of this thread

Added today: ARUP, Kentucky, USA J5_Lehmann, Texas, USA RedToo - England, UK All maps are in post #1 of this thread

I guess that's true, Hauksbee - I was only teasing you. Hmmm... - I guess you would have made a good lawyer...

Ah, what do you Americans know about real good beer?! But we could agree on the hot summer afternoon...

Uuuh - a nasty low blow ! ... Back to cold war, eyh? Perhaps you find one or another cute Russian lady here...

There you say something! Here it was grey and rainy since two weeks! Bah! (Although, today there was blue sky - at last! Went out for a walk...)

It is a D-9 or D-12, Hauksbee, with more or less the same wings as the A-types. The Focke-Wulf Ta 152 had much longer wings, like a sail plane. It was designed as a high interceptor.

Many, if not most German beer drinkers think the same - they want it ice-cold. I don't like it - can hardly get it down so cold. Which is the main danger aboutEnglish beer: it goes down comfortably smooth!

Thank you for the info, Capitaine! I have meanwhile even found a German page on Clostermann (which I guess you may not be able to read - sorry). Here, they say the German ace might have been Rudolf Wurff (48 victories), JG 301. "...von einer Fw 190 D-9 des JG 301, die vermutlich von Rudolf Wurff, selbst ein As mit 48 Abschüssen, geflogen wurde." http://www.pilotenbunker.de/Jagdflieger/France/Clostermann_Pierre/clostermann_pierre.htm I always found the FW 190 D-9 looked sexy (same goes for the D-12 and D-13, but there were hardly any of those). Here is one captured by the Americans (note the "Thunderbolt" in the background):

Quite understandable - you guys are brewing some fine ales, bitters and stouts. I like it that you don't add that fizzy carbonic acid (what about the German Reinheitsgebot, when they put that in there?!); and that the beer is not getting chilled, but just has the temperature from the cellar. I got drunk from many good pints in England many times.

Thank you for the info, Capitaine! On May 29 of this year, President Hollande and chancellor Merkel will meet at the newly opened Verdun memorial. The memorial now shows the suffering and the losses of both sides, the French as well as the Germans. I think that is a great step forward for a closer European way and understanding. I guess it may not have been easy for many French people, to make this step. So I am even more impressed that they did, and I feel very positive for a friendly future. Vive la France! EDIT: What is that incident in your signature, Capitaine? I knew nothing about any air combat of FW 190 Ds, other than their airfield defense for the Messerschmidt jet planes. Do you have a web-link to the story?

Mmuahahahahaaa!!!

I thought it was true - I have been in England several times and learned to know the Tommies a bit. Great humour, and perfectly crazy, but intriguing ideas!

One can hardly believe that there were still alive people down there. But there were. Here is another "before & after" - Passendaele...

Good one, Hauksbee!

Here is a website about the "Night Witches": http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/7/19/1399740/-The-Night-Witches-Fighting-Women-of-the-Soviet-Air-Force Thank you for the tip about Hugault's WW2 "bande dessinée", Capitaine! Great work!

The Night Witches (Notschnyje Wedmy) also flew fighter aircraft in the 586th fighter regiment! Do you need balls to fight like that? No, you don't - you need the guts, and determination.

Title says it all - enjoy!

How tragic is that...!

Hmmm... - I am very certain that the French people don't regard them your way, Hauksbee. At least not the ones, who have lived in the war years.

In the 80s I met a French in a Paris vegetable market, and he told me he had been a PoW, when he was young. Not even a captured soldier, but a young man, who was caught by the German army and brought to Germany, to work for the industry. After the war, he had nothing to prove it, and so he never received any compensation. What many of the PoWs on all sides must have gone through, is something we can hardly imagine. With 35 kg, you are more dead than alive, I guess - merely skin and bones.

Man, that may have given him some nightmares for the nights to come! When my girlfriend and I drove on to the beach in Normandy in the 80s, an angry French fisherman, who had recognised from our number plate, that we were Germans, shouted at me: "When will you come and take these bunkers away?!" Those concrete pillboxes and bunkers still lay there, a bit obligue, in the sand. And I had always thought, Germany had payed for the clearance of war sites. But who knows, where that money went... Didn't know all this. The victor makes the rules, I guess...