Olham

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?

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?

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!

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...

Ah, I knew this Albatros, but not the connection - thanks for the info, LIMA!

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.

The violation of Belgian neutrality, how ever bad it surely was, was a logical strategic idea, which must have been thought by the British too; at least to their strategists. The Schlieffen plan was not a new design - it was in the drawers since many years. When Great Britain warned, that the violation of Belgium would make them enter the war, that was only just a warning and a reason for them to help stopping Germany - due to their own world-wide interests. They just didn't want Germany to rise to be one of the big players in Europe. All throughout history, the strong powers have never ever cared about the neutrality of any small, military weak country. Not the British, and not the French. So, their pointing on Germany with their fingers only shows the typical double standards of the politicians (then and now). But, to make that clear: the German Kaiser was politically a catastrophy for Germany and for Europe, and his inconstancy on one hand, and his aggressiveness on the other, sure fanned the flames in a catastrophic way. 'Craving for status' was a common German disease in those days, fanned by the papers. I wished there had been a diplomatic solution, to let Germany become one of Europe's leading nations (which it achieved at long last, after all - so it was a logical evolution). But too many "leaders" had too many different interests, and tried to prevent that, while Germany tried to outgun it. A horrible inability on ALL sides IMHO, to deal with the situation any better.

Added today: Gattsu - Spain, Europe All the maps are in post #1 of this thread

I have not read "The Sleepwalkers" (yet, but will read it soon), but from all I did read, I came to the conclusion, that saying, a single country made the Great War happen, would be like saying nowadays, that the Americans were guilty for the climate change. The whole constellation of powers was like a growing ammunition dump with many uncovered fuses, in which several people from different countries did smoke cigarettes despite all the warning signs. It may have been the German cigarette that ignited the powder. But if it had not, soon someone elses cigarette would have. The Germans were closely watching the Russians, the French watched the growing German industrial and military power, and the British must have watched the building of German warships, and Germany's desire for colonies. The "established" European powers feared the newcomer, and teamed up with Russia. A decision that they may have regretted later. And the second world war - most serious historians agree here - would not have happened without the harsh peace treaty conditions against Germany after the first world war.