Olham

Thanks for sharing, Hauksbee - will watch it tomorrow with the morning coffee. Claude Dornier, by the way, had a French father and citizenship. Even after getting the German one in Württemberg, he kept the French one. Human beings are funny, aren't they? He built aircraft, which were used to attack his own fatherland.

That "wings-coming-off" thing is totally overdone in RoF.

Indeed - a minor hit on the engine could cause oil sputtering, and you cannot wipe that off; you will cause a blurry smear film, which allows no good aiming.

Thank you for your great photos, Jim - I bet Elephant has the same glowing red cheeks as I have when we see them. The writing in the wing cutout in the photo above reads, by the way: Bei Standlauf ... Staublech verwenden

There had been an SMS Ostfriesland? I hadn't known that until know. Ostfriesland (East Frisia) is my native homeland; it lies east of the Netherlands, by the North Sea.

I made several attempts with the AIRCO DH.2, cause it is a characterful (is that a word?) aeroplane, and it has a grand forward vision. As long as no cheeky Albatros D.I and D.II are chasing, and you can concentrate on the flying, it is a lovely craft. But those Albs clearly show the pilot, how quick the advance of technology was in that war...

Whatever that "cable" or "pipe" may turn out (or not turn out) to be - I find it somehow sad, that after such a short time of history we already lost so much detail-knowledge. Great drawing/plan of that Daimler engine, Jim - thanks for sharing!

Hey, sounds promising!

...which is a very limited view on the Pup's beauty surely? The view of the warrior from the other party. Check it out as an aviator. Walk around it. Touch it. Take it to the skies. Then you will see - it may not be a good warcraft with it's slow-firing single machine gun - but it is a beautyful aeroplane, which can give you all the joys of flying! (...and if you haven't already: read Arthur G. Lee's book "No Parachute!" - it helped me a lot to "understand the other side emotionally". A wonderful read - my fav British book)

Greast idea for a thread, Jim - and what a cornucopia of pics! We may find Elephant here more oftennow! That pipe you don't know - do you have it in ANY other pictures? Cause, I was just wondering: you pointed out that there was the fuel fill-in just in that forward are - could it be a fuel pipe, going from a fuel tank (on the ground just aft of the wing) to that hatch?

Dutch, I am recently playing NAVAL ACTION (BETA VERSION). I'll come back to flying some day, but I'm not one who can immerse into two games parallel. What do you find wrong here? I prefer it twenty times above the other forum. Far better layout, easier to handle, and I can attach more images. I don't think Erik or anyone was "blind" (or deaf rather?) to our desires - there simply was no one here for quite some time. With the exception of tireless Hauksbee (who should receive a reawrd for reviving it) and a few others. But if you have ideas, tell them here - Erik will soon get his Braille translator back from the repair. The BOC is the "Barmy OFF(ic)ers Club. You must be real barmy (and prove it!) to be accepted as a member.

Hey, Erik - nice to "see" you!

Time to repeat some old footage from the Albatros Flugzeugwerke, Germany. Thanks to CRITICAL PAST, we can all watch it today. It only has projector noise, so better turn the volume down. Enjoy!

You can count me double - on some days, I can't even remember that it's me...

Hmm - maybe one would need to get a colour chart from a British maker of Artists' Oil Colours. The specific naming sounds a lot like such companies and artists might name the tones.

What a pity that we have so little evidence left of some of the colours. So, while the lozenge fabric is pretty much covered today, we still do not have any reliable proof (as far as I know) of how the painted wing camos looked - the dark green-pale green-redbrown, and the dark green-mauve.

Thanks for the info, Geezer - I wouldn't have thought it even darkens the plywood fuselage that much. But then it appears quite warm-toned indeed, as we can see on these Albatros replicas. There might be brighter and darker versions of plywood, depending on the grain? And then of course it depends, in which kind of sunlight (daytime) it was photographed.

Great info again, Jim. I see I had no idea how aircraft lift and balancing work.

Yes, that's the "price" I meant! The Dr.I is no beauty IMHO, but surely a great little fighter - climbed like a monkey indeed! Time to repeat this video - watch the takeoff climb from the cockpit - almost like a modern jet plane! And this is a true rotary airplane!

Well, under the photo in the book it says neither "Blanca" nor "Bianca" - but "Blanka" with a "k" - which is even more unusual for any Romanic language, French or Italian. but it did exists, as WIKI knows. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanka

I find new details every time I watch it. I had always thought, that the tailplane was a kind of "additional semi-wing" providing some lift. But when I see those tiny plugs they push it on to, I can't imagine it had any lift at all. Is it the "warm tone" of the plywood making it appear so dark in B/W footage? Or could these be fuselages with a brown finish?

Knew nothing about Loewenhardt's death yet - is there any good book from him or another Jasta 10 member? Yeah, parachutes would be nice to have. They could even be impleneted rather easily in WOOF, I guess, since the original engine had them.

The main spar of a fighter craft (or actually of ANY aircraft) is one of those parts which have to stand and "survive" the major G-forces on an aircraft. In flight, not only the weight of the whole aircraft including the engine, tank, amo and the pilot are hanging on them, but the weight even mulitplies by 3, 4 or even more, in a tight turn. I just can't imagine that the short kick by an undercarriage could break this spar. After all the tire was an airfilled rubber tire, and Boelcke's wing was not stiffly fixed - it could "evade" the push by bouncing downwards. So I think the most damage on the wing itself would be either a hole in the fabric, or one or more cracked wing rib(s) - or both. But would that make the Albatros so hard to control? On the other hand: how would it be, if this damage (a hole in fabric plus one or more broken ribs) would multiply with a ripped-off aileron? JFM said, that aileron damage might even make the other aileron stuck, if I got that right. Now, with one aileron missing, and the other stuck (in which - maybe unfavourable - position?) it could be hard even for an aviator like Boelcke to land the aircraft safely. Still he might have survived it unharmed, had the ground been flat, firm and dry. The impact in soggy clay soil is a different matter. I guess the undercarriage would sink in enough to stop the aircaft quite suddenly. Now the only movement left would be a quick nose-over, until the slamming-in spinner and nose would cause the final halt. In such a sudden, violent stop and forward-bending move, Boelcke could have been slammed even only against the wooden brim of the upper wing cut-out, and died from that. That curved wooden brim itself was perhaps not very strong, but in build-photos from TVAL it looks like the brim was connected to the wing's main spar - something you would not want to collide with. Maybe JFM can clear this up a bit more?) I wonder, if the doctors checked if his neck spine was intact - maybe someone decided not to tell the full truth? "Head injury" sounds more heroic somehow, than "broken neck" does...

Boelcke didn't say more about the event in his book, than Bronnenkant quoted. So it was just a brief visit, two brief flights, just an hour or two with women, not with war. If nothing "ignited" between the nurses and Boelcke - well, then it was just that.

Haven't got screenshots, sorry. But anyway... My PRICE FOR BEAUTY goes to the Albatros D.V, and the PRICE FOR BEAUTIFUL FLYING goes to the Sopwith Pup. (In a war game, there should also be a PRIVE FOR BEST FIGHTER, but I'm not so much a warrior as I love beauty) The ugliest plane for me, on the other hand, might be the DH.5. The ugliest flying - I don't know; I'm absent from WOFF since some time and would have to try them all again first.