Olham

Just downloaded WOFF_3 ! Now I backup the drive, before I install - in an hour or less I should be there! Horrido!!!

Wow - have you been through a car-wash with your DH-4, Adger? The new shine and gloss looks impressive! Maybe a tad overdone (IMHO), but impressive.

Even, if they are half within each other? Like two spheres, which not just touch each other, but are partly moved into each other?

Tomorrow we have a bank holiday here - "Ascension Day" - and I hope I'll get started (if the weather isn't too nice). Hauksbee - - did you ever work with SketchUp? Said to be easier, and can be converted to GMax. - can several "bodies" get merged together, or must all of the 3D form be formed out of one single body?

I first thought it was a belated 1st April joke - Xmas in May, so to say. But it is true! Could you already try it out a little, Adger?

(1) Mmuahahahahaaa!!! (2) Sounds very familiar to me, Hauksbee!

Hey, that was a quick answer - did you sit behind a bush, lurking for me to appear? I will invite Robert_Wiggins aka rjw - he also started some modelling recently. Maybe we could work on things together?

Hauksbee, I am about to give the 3D modelling a try next week. I found great vodeos showing quick work, looking like a cakewalk. But I doubt it is so easy - it is just knowing where all the tools, key commands etc. are to be found, I guess. Are you still able to help or "walk me through" a bit here and there?

A film about the production of Albatros scouts. The other seems to be about American planes (the roundel looked American). You can see some stitching of canvas onto frame here. NOTE: the roundel seems to be applied as a self-adhesive foil, like modern sign-writing on vans and trucks!

Glad you like it, Adger! Wow, the Halberstadt looks neat and impressive in such a large close-up!

Great stuff, Adger! Thanks to Geezer! Must look for this mod! Is it on the WOFF website already?

Shu - weeet!!! That mod ads a lot to the atmosphere on an airfield! Does it also contain additions to German fields?

On a Tuesday, high over the Western Front...

I guess it is one thing to be a good fighter pilot and maybe the leader of one wing - and totally another being the General field Marshal to command thousands of men, and to think in much larger categories. Hugh Dowding may have never been the dashing, reckless fighter pilot with a bunch of victories under his belt - but this man surely felt REALLY responsible for his pilots, and he managed tohandle the tricky balance between the care for his subordinates, and the rescue of England. I wonder how many sleepless night that attitude must have cost him. Salute to a good man!

Man, reading that really choked my throat, to say the least...

Yeah, hum... - aerh - ... any weak spots on a Snipe, perchance? No? Hmmm... Where did I put that form again; the application for my pension...

Not only that, Hauksbee. The even worse disadvantage for the German fighters was the strategy, to bind them to the bombers strictly. Fighters can only "work" successfully against enemy fighters, when they can operate freely. The German "highest command" (Hitler and Göring) were a disaster for the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe, and I wonder how the much better educated field marshals and generals could sleep at night, with such "big head/big mouth/short know-how" leaders. Göring fought this battle as a "war of attrition"; as if he calculated it like this: "3000 British vs 4500 Germans will end with British: Nill - Germans: 1500 pilots." That is not only an extremely misanthropic attitude, it is also a strategic catastrophy. They simply lost too many good pilots, and they couldn't replace them so easily.

Mmuahahahahaaa!!! Widow, I tried countless times to win the Great Air War singlehandedly - I always ended up as minced meat... But hear, hear - you are exercising on the Snpe? Must I worry with my obsolete Albatros???

Haven't seen the film yet, but I had read about the content - what a terrible family disaster... As to the question in post #1: it seems to me that asking, and pointing out, who STARTED the Great War, is like a clever attempt to detract attention from the fact, that everyone knew this war seemed to be inevitable; and that most of the war parties wanted to fight it - from the fact, that this war would have happened anyway, sooner or later. It seems to me, as if Kaiser Wilhelm was just the "fuse, that went off earliest". It is like asking: who was guilty for all the terrible battles, all the bloodshed and cruelty. This was not a movie, where you could easily divide by saying, the Entente were the good ones, and the Central Powers were the bad ones; and Germany was the villain. It seems to me though, that it is still seen this way by many today.

Damn, Jim - I had no idea you were so sensible! But then I just listened into it a bit at AMAZON, and I can imagine that it can bring tears to the eyes. Cello, or so I find, is generally an instrument to express the sufferings of our souls very deeply.

...until it drowned in the mud. Even intelligent men like Rudyard Kipling sent their sons to the "great hooray!" - and only later realised, what such a war meant...

After 99 years we can see a formation of Albatros again - ain't this beautiful ? (Thank you for bringing it to my attention, Elephant!) Enjoy...

Found this story on the 3 Squadron RAAF website: http://www.3squadron.org.au/indexpages/history1.htm THE GHOST RE.8 An extraordinary incident happened on the 17th December 1917, when an RE8 piloted by Lieutenant James Sandy with his observer, Sergeant Henry Hughes, was ranging artillery fire for the 8-inch Howitzers of the 151st Siege Battery. 35 minutes after they'd started, they were attacked by six Albatros D.5a Scouts. Lieutenant Sandy fought them off and, before long, he'd shot one down close to Armentieres. About then, two other 3 Squadron RE8s who happened to be nearby, came to Sandy's assistance. Within a few minutes, the remaining enemy aircraft broke off the fight and headed for their own lines. (In itself, this wasn't unusual because German pilots generally held great respect for the RE8 with the pilot's propeller-synchronised Vickers machine gun and the observer's Lewis gun to defend the rear.) After the enemy aircraft had left, both of the other RE8s clearly saw that Sandy's RE8 ... number A3816, with the unmistakable letter "B" on the fuselage ... was flying straight and steady, so they waved a farewell and flew off to resume their own assignments. However, Sandy's wireless messages directing the Artillery Battery had ceased transmission. By nightfall, A3816 had not returned to the aerodrome. On the following night, a telegram from Number 12 Stationery Hospital at St. Pol told of finding the bodies of the two airmen in their grounded RE8 in a neighbouring field. A postmortem of the bodies and an examination of the RE8 showed that both pilot and observer had been killed in aerial combat and that the RE8 had flown itself around in wide left-hand circles until its petrol ran out. What had happened was that a single enemy armour-piercing bullet had passed through the observer's left lung and thence into the base of the pilot's skull. The RE8 came down 50 miles south-west of the battle scene out of skies that hadn't seen any other aerial combat that day. It had crash-landed without further injuring the bodies of the airmen and with the throttle still wide open. The aircraft itself was not badly damaged in spite of its uncontrolled 50 mile flight and this, in itself, was a classic example of the stability and flying qualities of the RE8.