Hauksbee

But...was he painting lions, and such? I always assumed those were done out at the squadrons/Jasta, not at the factory. Do we know if he was doing specialty paint schemes, or just applying a standard-issue, by-the-book paint job?

In my opinion, it was his best work.

Good then. I went straight to amazon.com and got Vol.2; for some reason Vol.1 is not available. Reading the cover blurbs, it seems that, despite their differences, Bart Bandy and Harry Flashman would have got on well together.

Brusilev Campaign? Never heard of it... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brusilov_Offensive According to this link, it would take a "Lord of the Rings" trilogy to pack The Brusilev Campaign into a movie.

Wow! A digital lake named after an Internet alias? Now, that's sheer poetry. Thanks, Jammer.

And now we see the Ken Burns side of Jammer28. Very nice.

Here's a link to Willi Rosenstein that covers some post-WWI... http://www.historicracing.com/top100.cfm?d...0&fromrow=1

I was wondering how German footage got spliced in with film shot in the landing craft. But pretty good anyway!

Very pretty lady. Maybe light color bands under the iron crosses?

Whenever I get into an Albatros, I inevitably dress it with Bruno Loezer's colors. Love it. Simple, bold, reads well at a distance.

My bad.

He was using neither.

Yes! to all of the above...but the one detail that really knocks me out [and which I never would have expected] is the sounds of the airframe creaking and groaning around me. Many is the time when I've settled with my adversaries [i live in QC] I'll just keep flying, diving and zooming, pulling high-G turns, just to listen to the plane strain and flex around me. Especially if there's a nice, warm, dawn, or dusk, light. Sopwith Pups are my favorite. They make the best music.

Is the photo printed on glossy paper? If it is, perhaps you can just turn it to a very oblique angle and check the light reflecting off. If the writing is not as shiney as the paper stock, it's probably real.

'Certainly was an Eindecker! Where the hell did he come from? The Tiger Moth should be re-named 'The Chameleon' since it seems to be able to morph into just about anything. There are a few shots of pilots about to get hosed by a plane on their six, and many times those radial engines look like they're attached to a Stearman biplane. I think I even saw rounbded wintips as they peeled away.

This is why 'Fast Forward' buttons were invented. Now that I've found the 'Skip-To-Next-Chapter' button, I can watch "Flyboys" start-to-finish, without any of the BS. Of course, it's a pretty short movie then, and I still have to watch that stupid Zeppelin fly so low that a well-aimed rock would have brought it down. EDIT: A quick note on "The Blue Max". As was mentioned above, it's a movie made from a novel and there's only so much that you can cram into 90 minutes or so. Agreed. But I'd love to see a re-make with a few of the main events kept in the film. First, Willi didn't die in a contest of skill with Stachel. Stachel murdered him by crowding him on landing approach [in the fog] so Willi flew into a factory smokestack. Because the very first D.VII's had arrived [but only two] and Stachel meant to have one. How did the scriptwriters miss that one? The central issue with Stachel is not just that he's a commoner, and very sensitive about it. Stachel would probably be called bi-polar these days. One minute he appears to be an ordinary, even likeable guy, but when he feels his interests are being threatened, he becomes vicious, and even murderous. I always liked George Peppard, but the script they handed him made his Stachel a very pale shadow of the real one.

I'd say 'yes', and 'yes'. Brooks was a newbie who got sucked into a furball. He was 'way over-matched and certainly he'd want to get the hell outta there. Voss, on the other hand...well, I can see him saying to himself, 'Keep cool. I can do this." After all, it could be that the SE-5's had been on a long patrol and low on fuel. They might run out of ammo. He doesn't have to shoot down everyone, just outlast them. Was he unlucky? I'd say so. He put bullets into every plane without downing any of McCudden's flight. Another inch or so on any shot, might have made all the difference. But it wasn't his day.

I'm glad to see that Jeremy Kemp is still with us. He had a touch for playing semi-villianous, but still likeable, characters.

Thanks for at least partially restoring my faith in the History Channel. I'm happy to hear they got it right that time. My comment, "there's no way to prove it, of course,..." I was actually referring to whether or not Voss saw his situation as hopeless.

Now THAT was a dogfight!

Amen to that.

Ooops! That's the version I'm running! It's the version you'll find if you go to the Microsoft website. Why don't I want it?

Everything I've read about MvR indicates that he was an OK student, and a methodical hunter, but not what we'd call a 'natural stick-and-rudder' pilot. He was, however, a very good marksman and could pull off brilliant deflection shots and frequently brought down planes with a handful of bullets. One history of the war in the air put it this way, [paraphrased], "WWI saw three generations of pilots, or better, three successive waves. First were the Pioneers, because they were the only ones who could fly. They did not last long. Next came the Romantics. These created the "Knights of the Skies" legends: the lone hunter, mano-a-mano duels at 10,000, and chivalrous Udet-Guynemer gestures. They were quickly superceded by the Professionals to whom flying was a job and group tactics became the order of the day." The author [might have been Charles Gibbs-Smith] cited von Richtofen as the very embodiment of the Professionals. There was nothing flashy about him or his flying. You'd think that with 80 kills, there'd be a host of stories about his encounters, but the only one I've heard much about is his duel with Lanoe Hawker. He did not seek a white-knuckle flying, look-your-opponent-in-the-eye encounter. The Professionals came to the realization that only a jerk seeks a fair fight. So if we could set up a one-on-one with a Voss, Mannoick or a Rickenbacker, MvR might easily come off second best.

Can turn it off, then back on, and make it happen again?

Interesting. Were the clouds low enough that he could have made it? The Dr.1 was a climber.