Hauksbee

As any ROF pilot knows so well!

When you put it that way, I'd have to agree.

Aha! Thanks.

Must have required an extra measure of courage to fly with that reservoir of boiling water so close to your head.

A nice collection film clips of the U.S.Navy experimenting with airplanes sinking Battleships. In most cases, obsolete American ones. But there is one that marked a watershed in naval/aerial warfare: the sinking of the Ostfreidland, a German battleship seized after WWI. At the time, it was an article of faith among the hard-core "Battleship Admirals" that an airplane could never sink a battleship. When the Ostfriedland rolled over and sank there were tears on the cheeks of several Admirals who were there as observers. (or, so it is said).

From 2000 to 2015, I lived in Westport, Mass...a mere stone's throw from Fall River. I toured the USS Massachusetts. Somehow I thought such a big ship on the outside would be spacious on the inside. No so. All inside rooms were small; one might say 'cramped'. Turns out, on a warship, "ship functions" trump "human needs" every time. Then we went over to the Destroyer "USS Kennedy" and got another lesson in "small". It was late in the day so we didn't do the complete tour; only poked our heads in. That was enough to see that a Destroyer was a narrow hallway with a ship built around it. Daylight was fading fast and we spent the last moments before closing time to take a look at the Submarine USS Lionfish. This made the Destroyer look positively roomy. Again, a central hallway packed with machinery and weaponry. You bunked between, above and under torpedoes. The engine room was a huge diesel engine with perhaps three, maybe four, feet between it and the hull. The conning tower had an upper and lower floor. The upper had the periscope with enough room for one man to look through it. Maybe a second man on the other side. The floor below, the command center, was...well, picture the smallest bathroom you've ever been in. Every Hollywood submarine you've seen, (with six to eight officers looking at nautical charts on a dining-room sized table), is a lie.

This morning as I scanned our Combat Ace index page, I was struck by the disparity 'tween Replies, and Views. Replies are modest in number, but Views are nearly all in the hundreds. Which tells me that we have a following; numerous, but silent. Admittedly, some of that number is just us Repliers checking in to follow a topic, and some are probably lurkers trying to avoid buying a round at the BOC; some may even be agents of the Kaiser keeping a weather eye on us. But that still leaves quite a few unaccounted for. So c'mon, you lot! Let's hear from y'.

Eric: I think Hasse Wind has it right. As I recall it, there were three and one dropped out (for reasons never disclosed, and I don't recall the Dev's being in the mix, tho' it's quite possible) and a thread was posted asking if anyone wanted to pick up the slack. After a few days, I raised my hand and got the job. ps: If you are of a mind to confirm some others to formal Moderator status, I'd suggest Hasse Wind and RAF_Lou. If the rolls will support a fourth, then certainly Olham should be included seeing as he was the backbone of the site back in the day.

Good idea, Eric. I can't even remember who the other two Moderators were. (tho' I think Dej was one). Could we review the tools and responsibilities for Moderators?

My bad. I'll put that in long-term memory.

A set of shears comes with the job. I'm open to all suggestions.

I notice the rather generous amount of padding on the edges of the cockpit. All planes, to a greater or lesser degree, seem to have this. Did pilots of the WWI era get thrown about that much? Did they hit the cockpit coming regularly?

I stumbled over this in an odd folder. We've seen it before, but it's still good one more time. I've always wondered about her. Who was she? Did she ever see Boelke again? Did she survive the war? And the next one? For one brief second she entered history, then dropped out again.

After a little poking around, I find that "Blanca" (or Blanka) is Spanish for 'White', or 'pure'.

OK, Eric. 'Got it.

Jim: Agreed. Once there was a picture of the "hoop" from a different angle, it definitely was not a hand-hold. As far as your search for a Photo Hosting Site goes, I use www.tinypic.com I found it after a long and frustrating search. 'Can't remember how many sites I tried, that looked simple to use, but were impossible in practice. Here's two screen shots of it

Erik: Here's a suggestion for Housekeeping. I've felt, for a long time, that Pinned Topics were crowding the opening page here at Combat Ace. Here's my suggestions for those to RETAIN, and those to DELETE. (1) RETAIN...WOFF Screenshotsand Videos (2) RETAIN...OFF Forum Pilots Maps (3) DELETE...Graphics SetUp: An Easy Pictorial Guide (4) RETAIN...Screenshots, Videos. Media, OFF Posters (5) DELETE...WOFF: Reports From the Front (6) DELETE...OFF Campaign "DID" Standard, etc. (7) DELETE...OFF BHaH Reports from the Front (8) DELETE...No More Big Holes in the Screenshot/Videos Section (9) DELETE...OFF PHASE 4 PREVIEW MOVIE 1 (10) DELETE..PHASE 4 DEVELOPMENT SCREENSHOTS (11)..RETAIN..OFF General Help Topics

A strange language Welsh is. At least when it comes to spelling. Does anyone here know who undertook the task of transliterating the sound of Welsh using the Latin alphabet? I'd bet it was some Churchman, or group of church scribes.

About that odd "hoop", Jim... In the "Death of Beolcke" thread, you posted two pics of Albs on their backs and commented that the cabane struts were strong enough to stop the upper wing from crunching the pilot. Could it be that on earlier models it was not the case, and the hoop is there for pilot safety? Secondarily, could it be something for the pilot to hold onto while hammering on his guns to un-jam them? The Alb pilot sat low in the cockpit. To get his butt off the seat, stand and reach forward over the windscreen, and hammer on his guns, could be a good balancing trick. (?) ps: I've read that the Alb derived from a pre-war racing model, but I've never see one; do you have photos on that?

Agreed. It's a bit long in places. And I am skeptical about the narration. I doubt if it ever crossed the desk of William Randolph Hearst. Proper young women did not discuss extra-marital affairs in documentary/travelogues. If those are Grace Drummond-Hays actual words, they were probably written long after the event and dubbed over some Zeppelin footage. But what excellent Zeppelin footage it is! There certainly was something majestic about them.

Just noticed that the D.V that 33LIMA used to lead off this thread turned up (in real life) in the "von Richtofen, Bohme and the Death of Boelcke" thread. (Posted by Jim Miller).

First...has it really been five years? Time is flying faster than it used to. I don't see why you feel "every other posting" is a link to SimHQ. (Even tho' I, myself, just posted one not long ago) You said, in your post above, "I have and do stand ready to be involved at whatever level the community needs to which as of today I thought was simply to be left alone and free of my involvement." I, for one, would welcome your involvement at any level, tho' upon re-reading, you seem to entertaining the notion that OBD might be lured back. I find that improbable in the extreme, and even if they did, it wouldn't be the same. I think, if we have a future, it will mean re-building the membership from scratch. But you know more than us the dynamics of website management. Is there anything you think we should be doing?

Jim...please resume your posting. You have a terrific library of WWI history.

Dutch_P-47M: I can't see that the forum Owners have anything to do with this. They just provide space. We do the rest. Hasse Wind: I agree that SimHQ can make your eyes bleed. Recently they added avatars. Didn't help a bit. And WOOF will never be back. Ever. JFM: It is true that Views always outnumber Replies. What struck me this morning was how many Views we're getting. On Day #2 of WOFF going to SimHQ there seemed to be a mass exodus that left a vacuum in its wake. I kept looking to see if 'Combat Ace' feeling would simply make the move with our old friends. It has not. The wit and banter, and miscellaneous WWI info evaporated. As far as I can see, most old friends also disappeared. And a whole raft of new names suddenly appeared. Where had they been? But...somebody's stopping by.