Hauksbee

Yes, but they are not mutually exclusive, either. Sometimes, when you really need the truth, a good pedant can save the day.

I think that's because Martin Caiden's restored Ju-52 was named "Iron Annie" (He was an aviation writer a few years back.)

"Amen!" to that.

Was the Halberstadt D.II much used in the German Air force? I rarely see it mentioned. I've never heard it being discussed around here. After this discussion, I think I shall look into this plane more closely.

I, too, have noticed that they're not a very congenial lot.

Thanks, Shred. Olham, too. I guess the wing thing is only an (virtual) urban legend.

Back in the 80's, I had a commercial art job with an ex-Corsair pilot who wanted to market WWII airplane models by mail. He was a great one for telling stories. The one I remember most is his account of landing a Corsair. The technique involved waiting until the wheels were nearly on deck, and then pulling the stick back sharply into your gut and stalling the wing. At which point, the plane simply fell onto the deck. Hence the bounce.

All we need to make the picture complete is a D-VII on a strafing run!

A few days ago, I was poking around on the Front Page of Combat Ace. There was a discussion about WWI Mod for IL-2 '46 called "Dark Blue World". Has anyone here played with it? .

Any progress on this fascinating project?

The IL-2 'Dark Blue World' has P-40's and China-Burma missions?

Well! The Devs are still alive and codeing. Nice looking plane, to be sure...but isn't WOFF going to have any sunshine?

OK! You're on.

Nice program, but...where are all those brand-new, inexperienced, inept pilots when I'm flying OFF? Those AI b-----ds never miss; never cut you any slack. Never yet have I had a foe that sidled up alongside my smoking machine, tossed a cheery wave of the hand and flew away. Ah well. Maybe in WOOF.

My ex-wife was the grand-niece of the Stearman who designed the PT-17. (My brush with fame!)

Just received the following from my sister: a neverending source of fascinating internet snippets. It seems, that in the early days of Air Mail and passenger service, a series of visual directional cues were built across the country. I'd never heard of these, Great stuff! . JUST A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY... Every so often, usually in the vast deserts of the American Southwest, a hiker or a backpacker will run across something puzzling: a large concrete arrow, as much as seventy feet in length, sitting in the middle of scrub-covered nowhere. What are these giant arrows? Some kind of surveying mark? Landing beacons for flying saucers? Earth’s turn signals? No, it's the Transcontinental Air Mail Route . On August 20, 1920, the United States opened its first coast-to-coast airmail delivery route, just 60 years after the Pony Express closed up shop. There were no good aviation charts in those days, so pilots had to eyeball their way across the country using landmarks. This meant that flying in bad weather was difficult, and night flying was just about impossible. The Postal Service solved the problem with the world’s first ground-based civilian navigation system: a series of lit beacons that would extend from New York to San Francisco . Every ten miles, pilots would pass a bright yellow concrete arrow. Each arrow would be surmounted by a 51-foot steel tower and lit by a million-candlepower rotating beacon. (A generator shed at the tail of each arrow powered the beacon.) Now mail could get from the Atlantic to the Pacific not in a matter of weeks, but in just 30 hours or so. Even the dumbest of air mail pilots, it seems, could follow a series of bright yellow arrows straight out of a Tex Avery cartoon. By 1924, just a year after Congress funded it, the line of giant concrete markers stretched from Rock Springs , Wyoming to Cleveland , Ohio . The next summer, it reached all the way to New York , and by 1929 it spanned the continent uninterrupted, the envy of postal systems worldwide. Radio and radar are, of course, infinitely less cool than a concrete Yellow Brick Road from sea to shining sea, but I think we all know how this story ends. New advances in communication and navigation technology made the big arrows obsolete, and the Commerce Department decommissioned the beacons in the 1940s. The steel towers were torn down and went to the war effort. But the hundreds of arrows remain. Their yellow paint is gone, their concrete cracks a little more with every winter frost, and no one crosses their path much, except for coyotes and tumbleweeds. But they’re still out there. .

A classical example of "be careful what you wish for". As the Wiki article says, he campaigned for the job, and got it. But he was 'way out of his depth from the beginning. He was a fighter pilot and Squadron commander, not an 'industrial-level' businessman. And it was downhill from there. I knew the story of how he was invited to fly the Curtiss Hawk II in America, and was greatly impressed by its dive-bombing abilities, and how he prevailed upon the Luftwaffe to buy two for evaluation. What I didn't know was the price Goering extracted: membership in the party. (pic. of the remaining Curtiss below. Polish Museum) .

Found it.

I'm in. But the 'Subscription' button appears, blinks, and then disappears as the page loads. Where does it go?

It is. And, they were. The problem, (as with the great comic books of our past) is that we have grown and our games/comics have not grown with us. They are still being pitched to the people we once were.

Interesting topics have a way of doing that.

...but not by much! I must confess that I tried most of the WWI flying sims. I hated the lot of them. Everything looked like it should be piloted by the Super Mario Brothers. I even bought RB3D twice. (forgot that I had already bought it a year or so ago) How incredibly primitive! No TrackIR. I felt like I was fighting a war looking through the letter slot on the front door. I'd look around with the hat switch. Nobody in sight. Then something would zip past my nose and be gone again. Very frustrating. Then one morning, everything changed. I got an e-mail from OBD with a bunch of breath-taking pics, and the following question: "If there was a WWI Sim that looked like this, would you buy it?" And that was all she wrote.

Let's not get too crazy! The Stickies are crowding the daily Forum posts off the page.

I remember it well.

A friend of mine, who has done Civil War re-enacting for years now, has told me (on several occasions) that the Confederates (the grey guys) have a great reluctance to fall down on cue. Of course, Mark is a Union soldier. But it seems as thought the Union troops have to fire three volleys in re-enactments to do the work of one volley in real life.