Olham

Here is the only quote from Peter Kilduff's excellent book "The Red Baron" mentioning Hartney: (14 February 1917) That afternoon, Richthofen and his men attacked a flight of artillery spotters not far from the morning's action. Richthofen went after a B.E.2 and claimed to have sent it down on to a snow covered field southwest of Mazingarbe, within British lines, at 1645 (German time). Despite a lack of corroborative statements and any physical proof of the aircraft's destruction, Richthofen was credited with his 21st victory. One person who claimed to have been Richthofen's victim that day was Harold E. Hartney, an American pilot who served with No.20 Squadron, RFC, before becoming commanding officer of the US Air Service's First Pursuit Group. Hartney and his observer, Lt. W. T. Jourdan, were in F.E.2d A1960, accompanying another 'Fee' over Ypres in the 4. Armee area, when they were attacked by 'seven brilliantly painted Albatrosses'. * The F.E.s were brought down within British lines near Poperinghe. It is more likely that Richthofen's opponents were Capt. G. C. Bailey, DSO, and 2/Lt G. W. B. Hampton, who were in B.E.2c 2543 of No.2 Squadron just north of Loos when they were attacked at1550 (British time). * Hartney "Up and At 'em" (1940) Page 92 Hartney must have believed, he was attacked by the Red Baron himself, because in those days, colourfully painted Albatros were still a very new and irritating sight, and the news may have just spread, that von Richthofen's Jasta had such fighters.

Lou, do you have the basic calendar without the days and numbers? It looks great, and I think I'd like to use it, in my 1917 campaigns.

Some days ago I received my CD with Bob Pearson's "AIRCRAFT COLOURS & MARKINGS OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR". As a hobby skinner, I must say, I'm simply overwhelmed by the amount of profiles, and I hope we will get additional planes with P4, on which I can try to do some of these. There are countless profiles of the following nations on the disc: Austria-Hungary Belgium Commonwealth France Germany Italy Japan Norway Poland Russia Soviet Switzerland Turkey Uruguay USA Yugoslavia I asked Mr. Pearson for his allowance to show some examples here, and he gave it to me. I will not show more of my favourite Albatros here, because we have most of them in OFF already, but there are lots of them, of course. Here is one of Jasta 39, flown on the Italian front, in a "barber pole" type of design. The other is a reconnaissance craft with a camera built in. I have so far only seen the "most important" ones for our Western Front; I'm sure I will spend hours in there happily, like a "pig in the mud". If you are interested in the CD, here is Bob Pearson's website: http://www.cbrnp.com/RNP/CDv2/index.htm

jwrich, there are many SPADs, and many with interesting colour designs. To post a picture, it should best be a Jpeg. If you start a new post, there is your text window; and below it, there is a little frame for "Attachments"; click on "search" and find the picture on your rig; open it. Now you only need to click on "Attach this file", and it will be part of your post. The crazy post-war SPAD XIII from 94th Squadron are on the CD, by the way!

Well, thank you for the tip - I ordered a copy; but to be honest, it's in German. I might find it to disturbing, if I had to look up many words per page, and the translation is said to be very good.

This is only for all, who don't know how to handle "Attachments" yet. I realised, that some who used to post pictures in Reports from the Front You used to be able to upload pictures, but then some day you received the message "This upload failed". You were not able to upload anything since then? This happens when your Attachment Space is all used up. You need to clear part of it. That mans, that you got to delete some of your posted pictures, to make room for new ones. You do that like this: - click on your name bar in the upper right corner of this forum page - there click on My Settings - there you find 7 bars on the left side; click on Manage Attachments Now you will see a list of all attachments you made, it may be several pages long. Above that is a bar, showing how much of the space is used. If it is red and fully filled, your space is used up. You need to make room - here is how. You could click on "Last" to get to the oldest attachments, tick the boxes of the ones you want to delete, and then click on the button at the bottom right: Delete Selected. This way you can always make space for new pictures to attach. If you want to keep some of them, you could download them before you delete them.

Perhaps it's that "Admin-thing" again. Did you install the software as Administrator?

Update September 30, 2010; 17:52 h Berlin summertime (= GMT + 2) Capitaine Vengeur, France, added. All the maps are in post 1 of this thread

Yes, I thought the shortages might have been different those days. And surely such a calendar would add to the immersion (although my friends keep saying, that I was already living back then - even without that calendar). What do they know - Mmuahahahahahahaaaaaaa!!!!!!

If that had been presented by me, Widowmaker would now say: You have too much time on your hands! But it looks nice, Lou. Only one thing: the Germans shorten the days: Mo. Die. Mi. Do. Fr. Sa. So. (at least today). Personally, I use this website for the day research: http://www.genealogi...rvice/w-tag.htm There must also be English ones. This day, the 30. September, in 1917 was a Sunday.

I know you are a great fan of Windows Vista, but now, Windows 7 seems to be on your hate list too?

They actually seemed to be the least allowed to enjoy colour, nbryant. Nice one! Perhaps - can you get the yellow a bit "warmer"? CANOEING IN THE ARGONNE FORREST I think it was ZoomZoom (long time not seen) who told me that Albatros can be used for canoeing. I had to try that, when we clashed with THREE flights of SPAD VII over the Argonne forrest today. Couldn't save one of my wingmen, but I got down two of the "Storcks", before my engine was hit, and I was descending with too little engine power. If you have ever flown over the Argonne forrest, you may know: it's veeeery large. No space for landings, where I was. So I had to take the river. ZoomZoom, canoeing only works with engine shot out of the craft, I suppose - my bird sank within seconds! Good I can swim...

Thank you for clearing that, JFM - yeah, headlines... And I fell for it! Still know very little about WW1, but I have ordered "Lions of July" now, which you recommended, von Paulus. I'll try to learn.

This may be interesting for both of you, Capitaine Vengeur and RAF_Louvert: It shows a different Military Merit Order from the House of Württemberg. While the above Cross had a black-white band, which looks more like a Prussian band to me, this one has the yellow-black band with the Würrtemberg colours. The order came in three classes: Grand Cross (Großkreuz), Commander's Cross (Kommandeurkreuz) and Knight's Cross (Ritterkreuz). Generally, the rank of the recipient determined which grade he would receive. Between 1799 and 1919, there were an estimated 95 awards of the Grand Cross, 214 of the Commander's Cross, and 3,128 of the Knight's Cross, with the bulk of these awards made in World War I; the numbers may only cover native Württembergers. The words say: "Furchtlos und trew", and "trew" seems to be an old form of "treu", so it would read "Fearless and loyal" It may as well be, that this old form means "true", but that is the same meaning. Among its receipients are: Oswald Boelcke and Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen From reading about the Württemberg orders and their receipients, I come to the conclusion, that even very deserving and brave commanders in World War One would not receive any higher orders than these - otherwise Boelcke von Richthofen would have been the first to get them. http://en.wikipedia....%BCrttemberg%29

Widowmaker, don't let him "take the butter from your bred", as we Germans say!

Sorry, no - I am still a newbie to WW1 history, to be honest. But I can try a search in German. Capitaine, if you send me a PM with your hometown, I will add you to our OFF Forum Pilots Maps.

Just tried the 4 different settings for Smoothvision HD in ATI Control Center: Box, Narrow Tent, Wide Tent and Edge Detect But either my 4870 doesn't support that yet, or it doesn't seem to make any difference. What do you guys say?

I bought the 4870 with 1 GB of own memory instead of 512 MB - that may explain a better performance. Thanks again for explaining it all to us, BirdDog - I am very happy with what I get now. Do you think, "Edge detect" is also doing "nicer" clouds? In my flight today, they looked just marvellous!

This Sortie was a Double Event for me, that turned into a non-event though Flying my Jasta 17 Albatros D.II (St.Quentin-le-Petit, 28. April 1917), I had a "double event" today. 1. I met René Fonck for the very first time in OFF - and shot his SPAD VII burning! 2. for the first time I tried to use a cloud as a runaway cover from a following Nieuport 17 - and it worked! The French pilot lost me! The clash and following fight with that Escadrille of aces took part at high altitude, and those guys didn't make the mistakes of diving down to the deck. They used their SPAD as one would do it - climb back to an advantaged position after an attack. So it was very hard for me to get into the fight at all, but then one SPAD came down to attack my wingman, and I saw him coming and brought myself into the best position. The pilot was René Fonck. He collected such a terrible burst from close range, that his SPAD began producing dark smoke. I had him! Following him, I saw a fire break out around the engine. There I left him, it was too dangerous with so many French aces around and above me. I even got another one, and this one I got with good deflection shooting. He was circling with me, but higher, and he didn't let me get closer. But then I could fire at a spot some meters in front of him. Although Creaghorn's tracers are much harder to see than those from OFF, I could see them well against the azure of the high sky. And so I shot up the engine of Monsieur Schmitt, another French ace. But then my ammo went out, just when I tried to drive a Nieuport 17 off a wingman. Now it was me, who had to run! The Nupe was pretty close, there was that white cloud in front of me, and I went diving right into it! For seconds without sight, the panic crawled up, I might be diving to steeply, and rip off my wings! I performed a wide right turn. Would the Frenchman follow? But when I came out the lower end, he wasn't there anymore! Now to the non-event: the whole sim suddenly froze, and after a while, I got back to the desktop. No claims for Fonck and Schmitt! I checked the bottom right corner and saw: KASPERSKI SECURITY had started an automatic update! That must have been the crash! In future, I will unplug the net connection, and then switch off the Anti-Virus Protection for the flying time. What do you guys think about the subtle colours of the Labels? (I had to switch them on, to check who we were fighting there!)

PS: Here is some more from Württemberg http://en.wikipedia....%BCrttemberg%29 And a page about the whole of Germany's Orders. Seems more detailed in German than in English perhaps. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_deutschen_Orden_und_Ehrenzeichen

Thanks, Lou - I think I will give it a try with my 1916 Halberstadt ace - then it's not yet so crowded in the air.

Lou, I must take some time and read on about Paul, I suppose. Here is what I found - I didn't know this Orden myself; so I learnt something new: It is the "Goldenes Militärverdienstkreuz" (Golden Military Merits Cross) , which was, due to it's limited awardings, regarded as the "Pour Le Merite" for non-commisioned officers and lower ranks. In World War 1, it was only awarded 1760 times.

I know, that RAF_Louvert and you are doing this. Would you say, that the towns, roads and rivers in OFF are accurate enough to follow them with a paper map? I'm pretty sure I had such a screen recently. In the center, I still saw everything in front of me, but the edges were red. But that was, when I had crashed into a wingmate in midair, and I was regarded dead or dying; aircraft out of control. I also sometimes heard my own cry from the pain of an impact. When I then looked at the health points, they had sunk. But as you say - it doesn't seem to have any further effect. I also think, injuries by bullets should appear more, and depending on the lethality of the injury, you fade out sooner or later through the loss of blood.

I have now flown a mission with the ATI SmoothVision setting "Edge detect" (see also: Screenshots thread). Firstly, I was surprised: although "Edge detect" does 24 samples of AA, my 4870 card performed it without problems. Here is a picture close abouve the ground - the graphic parts of the trees seem to "merge" better.

Just had one of my finest fights against a French Nieuport 24 pilot from Escadrille 78. He parried my attacks with great style, as these pictures may show. It was an honour to fight him. It wasn't his flying, that made him loose, but the terrible fire power of the Albatros. I had hit him with a short burst; he carried on fighting great, but suddenly - as if a cable had snapped - his agile craft lost it's ability to turn tight. He flew a wide turn, I crossed into it, and shot him down. It felt really sad, when it was over. (By the way: these screenshots were made with the ATI setting "Edge detect")