Hauksbee

Found these while looking for something else. Classical serendipity. The top pic. seems to be true color photography, though the primitive color technology required very long exposures. The bottom two look like color retouch.

...continuing on into WWII. Greg "Pappy" Boyington was 31 when he commanded the Black Sheep. And I recall seeing a promo for "Memphis Belle" where they had brought members of the original crew for a pre-screening. One of them said, while shaking his head and laughing, "That was us allright." I thought he was saying that the film makers had got the events right. (which they didn't) Actually, he was remembering that they were still children in 1941.

Fortunately, in a P-39, Lily was sitting right at the center of gravity. Probably all she had to do was adjust her seat back a few inches and the plane, and herself, were perfectly in trim.

Yup, that's A. Fokker all right. What I liked most was the section near the beginning where Hermann Goring pulls off his flying helmet and there's a leather face shield covering all but the eyes. Then that comes off and he unwinds about five feet of scarf that's keeping the cold wind off his neck (and from blowing down into his jacket) I'd often wondered about face protection in bad weather. I've ridden a motorcycle in the rain. At 60mph those rain drop sting! At 120mph+ they must be bloody painful. To say nothing of sleet, snow and frostbite quality wind.

Today I found the new pics of the Aviatik. It seems that the MG slides fore and aft on a rail outside the gunners cockpit. But with the gun set so low, how does the gunner manage to sight down the barrel on anything at the same level, let alone draw a bead on attacks from above?

OK! I want that one too. (Will there be no end to this?)

Style is who you are.

Thanks, Olham. You've just saved me hours of searching because I really wanted that one!

http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/30-ways-the-world-used-to-be-cooler

Was the 'Clock System' for calling out which angles an attacker was coming in from, in use during WWI? Certainly not for fighter pilots, but perhaps by bomber crews? Or, was it a WWII innovation? (as I suspect)

I dont know, but I suspect not. It took years before the works of Moebius and Phillipe Druillet arrived via 'Heavy Metal'. Today my self control crumbled and I bought about $100 of books seen in those links. "Le Grand Duc" was not among them, but I feel it won't be long. Maybe I can con the family into getting them for Christmas.

With the right set of buns on the seat, they've always been pretty sexy.

The French certainly know how to announce an Air Show!

Amen!

Works every time!

In truth, they've just been luring you Germans into a false sense of security, and when you least expect it....

Look on the tool bar at the bottom right of your monitor screen. If TrackIR is running, you'll see its icon there

Great looking stuff...especially the paint job (skin) on the Morane. I hope someone does that when P4 gets here. I tried to find the title of this book. It might be LE PILOTE A L'EDELWEISS but an amazon.com search found nothing. Perhaps one of our French speaking pilots can help here. Then I went back and started following the links in the column to the far left. There is treasure here. Great art...and all too damned expensive. Books with mouth-watering airplane art ranging from $50+ to $150+. Here's a clip from "The Speedbirds". It's a book about the Schneider Cup races. Then you turn it upside-down and there are illustrations of what the Schneider Cup planes might look like in 2100. Almost every link had something I wanted. Don't miss it.

http://www.wimp.com/aviationrace/

...to soak up the water in the cockpit?

All that and ABBA too! Nice work.

The new skin rocks!

On the whole, not much has changed.

I'll take the King's shilling!

I'll call this one a hit.