Olham

...and you live to tell the story??? I would expect to be ripped to shreds by the blast. Or maybe that's what you think you should be courtmarshalled for? ..

Sounds like you had to get suicidal-close?

Hey, I always thought I'd got all the best out of OFF, but I never tried rockets. Never even once. UncleAl used to attack ground targets with them, and maybe balloons. Not sure about E/A.

What did you fly - Pup or Tripe? White-knuckly fighting with wet hands, and no need for a cardiac pacemaker... Mmuahahahahaaa!!!

More "nose art" on Farmans - found at "Belgian Wings" website, which I recommend to visit. http://www.belgian-wings.be/webpages/navigator/Photos/MilltaryPics/ww1_precurseurs/Farman%20F40/Farman%20F.40-F.41%20frontpage.html

Just found this early example of "nose art" over at THE AERODROME. They obviously took it from a marketing cartoon for "BROWNIE's Camera". http://www.theaerodrome.com/forum/other-wwi-aviation/54002-brownie-cartoon-belgian-aircraft.html

Yes, it is - I can get each page, and magnify it. You need to click on a page, then on "Full resolution", and then you can even zoom in and read.

Thanks for the pics, Socrate. Your postings made me wonder, if perhaps "L'Illustration" might be common property today, which can openly be read by everyone. So I looked into WIKI COMMONS, and really - there are many links to these magazines: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:L%27Illustration Enjoy looking through the ones you perhaps don't have.

The night photo and the winter picture are some great, rather rare views from the aviation of WW1. Thank you for sharing, Socrate!

Update 24 October 2013 - 15:28 h Berlin summer time (= GMT + 2) hurrican3, Pennsylvania, added. LtCasey, Germany, added. The maps are in post 1 of this thread

Tony, you lucky man - what a great project to join into! Good success!

Lothar von Richthofen made the experience, that even a partly missing airfoil on the top wing made the craft difficult to fly. So I guess you won't find any volunteers. Definitely not me - Mmuahahahahaaa!!!

..and if we had to prove it with Einstein's relativity theory - a German wonder weapon! Mmuahahahahaaa!!!

Better than guesswork or half-knowledge, anytime - thanks, Jim!

Found this link posted on "THE AERODROME". Maybe interesting for research for the Balkan front. A pity that they haven't added the Western Front maps yet, or the Italian theater maps. (Well, maybe the Austrians didn't have maps for the Western front) http://lazarus.elte.hu/hun/digkonyv/topo/3felmeres.htm

Well, if we see the fast development of aircraft in WW1, the Fokker Eindecker and the Halberstadt were actually like "different generations". According to WIKI, the last of the Eindeckers, the E.IV, was test-flown by Boelcke as early as November 1915 (and Boelcke was rather stand-offish about it). The Halberstadt D-types were conceptioned as the successor of the Eindecker. The first prototype flew in February 1916; three months after Boelcke's testing of the Fokker E.IV. Three months were a long time in a development race that lead from the Taube to the Fokker D.VII F; or from the Morane Saulnier to the SPAD XIII - in only 4 years. The Halberstadt could not carry two machine guns very well; the D.IV and D.V did have the installation option for a second machine gun, but that overcharged the aircraft with it's OPEL 120 PS engine. With the Albatros D.I and D.II the Germans received a new fighter concept in late September 1916. Although much heavier than any other fighter before, it's 160 PS Mercedes engine allowed it to carry 2 machine guns and still be some 20 km/h faster than a Nieuport 11 or Airco DH-2. This new concept must have been the end for the Halberstadt.

I guess it depends on what you did with an aircraft - after all they were less sturdy than today's craft.. If you dived until you had gained a fast speed, and then suddenly pulled up in a brutal way... F. K. Kurt Jentsch witnessed his commander falling like that. He dived onto a lower flying SPAD with his Albatros, and when he caught up the plane, the wings came off - all four - and the fuselage fell like a stone, while the wings looked like slowly tumbling down sheets of paper. But that was obviously a very brutal manoeuver, and it was an Albatros D.III or D.V. I guess generally the pilots would have felt, how far they could go, and only a handful of men ever drove their aircraft to extremes - maybe only in dispair.

Watched the video now. It seems they have made the DM so, that you easily shed your wings, when you pull out of a dive too hard. I have lost the wings of Albatros planes, when I pulled stick to hard/turned real tight in turn fights. But I have given up telling them. Every time I mentioned something I found wrong or overdone, the same group of RoF-defenders jumped at me, and if I didn't stop, my threads got closed pretty soon. Could be a great sim, but...

Thanks for the good historical knowledge, Shredward. Now I know why I always liked the craft.

Aha! A (virtual) urban legend. (My apologies, Olham. My response seems to have changed your post. Not sure how that could have happened)

The Junkers Ju52 transport plane was nicknamed "Tante Ju" by the pilots ("Aunty Ju").

Yep, as Corsair says: you start the sim, and in the first (smaller) panel you select "Mods: Off" Now you should be able to connect.

Naw, let the picture grow on you. It's a great shot. I like the British look of war birds - I even find there is a beauty in the S.E.5a, and in the Bristol Fighter anyway. These birds must not always fight - I liked Arthur Gould Lee's descriptions very much, when he wrote about the daily life in his squadron - the life between the patrols and the fighting. And when I started reading "Open Cockpit"; the first part, where he revisited France and La Gorgue many years after the war's end, then I realised how he felt proud of their achievements, and sad about the chaps who hadn't made it, and melancholic about the days of youth he had seen here, and which were now gone; leaving echoes in his memories. No shooting. Let the picture grow on you.

Not that OFF was wrong, MudWasp - Jim means, that von Richthofen and Imelmann WERE in Jasta 2 at that date, but they had not yet reached ace status. They were pretty much unknown pilots then.

No problem, MudWasp - even Germans get the two names mixed up.