Hasse Wind

Ah, the good old OFF Christmas tradition! Merry Christmas and a Happier New Year everybody!

Awesome to be back at CA! So much better in every way than the other site. I'll have to study the rules carefully and prepare for the exam Lou warned me about.

Great to see the WOFF gang back here at Combat Ace.

I'd gladly start our new DID campaign here. Everything works better and is much more modern. The other site is so 1990's.

There's a few of us still around, though the forum is dead. SimHQ is a terrible, terrible site. I wish the devs would move back here.

The map is there, and so are many of the required planes too. Unfortunately the Italian front will most likely never happen, though it would be an awesome addition to WOFF.

Yeah, I also think it's an Albatros B.I.

Biggles books have also been translated into several other languages. I remember reading a few of the books in my youth. I was going through a period of adventure literature, which included works from E. R. Burroughs, Karl May, W. E. Johns and C. S. Forester. Good times!

I'm not aware of any such unit histories. All books seem to be either about specific Jastas or aces, who naturally spent most of their careers in Jastas. And there aren't many such books either. I guess one problem for research is the loss of many of the Prussian military archives in WW2. Many Luftstreitkräfte war diaries were lost, so there's not much source material for aviation historians to research.

Thanks for the book recommendation! Sounds interesting. Not too many books have been written about those escadrilles.

Old men start the wars, but young men must fight them.

Hauskbee, try this link for the pronunciation: https://forvo.com/word/manfred_von_richthofen/#de

Also note that there's an H right after Richt, so it's Richthofen, not Richtofen. The name is composed of two words, Richt and Hofen. I suppose the English translation would be something like "Court of Judgement."

I was also one of the moderators. I think there were four of us. Hauksbee, Lou, Dej and yours truly. Four is probably excessive for our current needs though. It's very quiet here now compared to those good old days.

Well, they were only a few years old, so I'd still call them pretty modern.

SMS Ostfriesland was a Helgoland-class battleship - among the most modern battleships serving in the Kaiserliche Marine during the Great War. She had three sister ships: Helgoland, Thüringen and Oldenburg. SMS Ostfriesland took part in all the major naval operations of the German navy in the war, also the famous Battle of Jutland in 1916.

SimHQ nearly makes my eyes bleed, so I've been hanging around here instead. However, the devs are there and I don't think they're going to switch forums anytime soon, so it's inevitable that most activity will also take place at SimHQ.

Apparently the nurses were French.

Fantastic pics! Thanks for sharing the link, Hauksbee. It's a pity original colour photographs from the Great War days are so rare. Most of them are actually French. Professionally colourized B&W photos (like the ones in this series) are the next best thing, of course. One of the captions is badly wrong though - the one with the French cavalrymen at water. It claims that the light blue French uniforms were partly responsible for the heavy casualties the French suffered in the bloody battles of 1914. In fact, the light blue uniform (called bleu horizon in French) was adopted after the heavy fighting of the first few months of the war. The French went to war wearing blue and red uniforms, which were too visible for conditions of modern warfare. The bleu horizon uniforms were a great improvement over the old ones and were used until the 1920s.

Looking at Boelcke's body, it seems he has some injuries on his face: a cut above the left eye and the nose seems bruised. Possible a cut on the upper lip too? A recent unhealed injury is also clearly visible on his right hand. I think it's obvious that he must have hit his head, and he reflexively tried to soften the blow with his right hand. Maybe if had been wearing a crash helmet (which at least some German pilots used, based on photographic evidence) he would have walked away from the wreck.

Great stuff, JFM! I presume the medical documents regarding Boelcke's cause of death have been lost? Unfortunately the official news film about his funeral ceremony has also disappeared into the mists of history. It was called Wie das deutsche Heer seinen gefallenen Lufthelden Hauptmann Boelcke ehrte (How the German Army honoured its fallen aviator hero Captain Boelcke). Here's a picture of Boelcke's tomb at the military cemetary of Dessau (his hometown):

I remember reading somewhere that two nurses visited the aerodrome (Douai, I believe) and Boelcke took both of them for a short flight over the field in his Eindecker. Apparently only one of the nurses was photographed in the cockpit. Perhaps she was the prettier one? With only those two photos and the name Blanka, there's not much to go on, research-wise.

Less awful is still awful, I'm afraid... SimHQ will probably never get a tolerable layout. Out of curiosity, how did you get banned from SimHQ, Hauksbee?

Provided that it doesn't crush you beneath its great weight first as you attempt to lift it up against the intruder. That book would be the only source the WOFF devs would need to add the Belgians to the sim. Alas, I fear that will never happen.