JimAttrill

I had a feeling that the Albatros would not be easy to make with all that plywood panelling on the fuselage. I saw that they had a few women helping out with the fabric - I think the others also used women for this. Pity about the watermark on the picture though.

I do notice that the so-called 'RFC helmet and goggles' worn by Fokker are in the earlier film from 1911 or so, long before the war....

Hey Olham, I loved the Anthony Fokker film. Unfortunately I only seem to see the bottom half of the video... Pictures of Werner Voss I have never seen etc. It's a pity the yank can't pronounce Fokker correctly? He says 'Fauwker' all the time. And the idiot in the background who always wants the dates of stuff. But great - I have never seen these videos. And the other one in Dutch I can understand a bit from my knowledge of Afrikaans

It is true that the Luftwaffe never 'rested' any of their aircrew all through the war. The 'experten' just kept on going until they got shot down. Possibly this is because they had the idea that all actions would be Blitz actions and over before resting would be necessary.

what such a war meant..... Listen to Elgar's Cello Concerto (preferably one by Jacqueline du Pré) and you will know. It brings tears to my eyes.

As the article says, the Spitfire was more difficult to make than the Spitfire. In those days there was a shortage of skilled aircraft metal workers - the Hurricane wing was easier to make and was fabric covered in the early days. It was also difficult to fit 8 machine guns into the Spitfire wing, whereas it was easy with the Hurricane. The last mark of Hurricane, the IID was fitted with a 40mm cannon and was used for tank busting in the Western Desert - rather like the JU87G which had a 37mm Flak gun fitted. And yes, the Spitfire will for ever hold the record for the fastest piston-engined aircraft. A PR Mk XI - with no guns, was flown in a dive to Mach .92 by Tony Martindale. The prop and reduction gear flew off but he managed to land it (and the instruments that measured the speed) back at Farnborough. The wings were sort of swept back by this time and the aircraft never flew again. He went on to work for RR cars but unfortunately died in 1959 unlike his colleague Eric Brown who died this year. Brown admits he could never fly the aircraft that fast as he was not strong enough to pull out of the dive, whereas Martindale was big and over six feet tall.

I'm not sure about the French thoughts at the time, but the general population of Britain and Germany wanted the war. And so they got it. You only have to look at photos of happy volunteers on both sides. This feeling lasted until about 1916.

By the way, did you know that DB was always a complete sh1t to his ground crew? He thought that the sun shone out of his @ss and was always rude to those who he outranked. This carried on even after he left the RAF although he used to use their facilities. Never met him myself but I know many who did. Johny Johnston was not much better - I think the adulation of the populace went to their heads. JEJ used RAF Argosies to transport earth from Kenya to Aden for his garden when he was CinC there. After complaints the practice was stopped. In his autobiography Johnston says how well he got on with his ground crew. That seems to be a figment of his imagination. I did serve under Al Deere for a while before he retired and he was a real gentleman to all personnel.

I think Pierre Clostermann mentions the beer run in Spitfires in "The Big Show". And Mike Dora's comments about the Buccaneer underwing tanks being used for wine doesn't surprise me. Just about all the servicing panels on aircraft were taken off and cigarettes and booze hidden therein. I don't think HM Customs would suspect a drop tank full of vino! I heard of Shackleton crews returning from overseas stopping at the end of the runway and chucking out loads of contraband before going to their dispersals and the Customs inspectors. With the Varsity we used to hide stuff in the bomb aimer's bay and then lock it and lose the key.

Capt. Eric Brown (who died recently aged 97) flew the TA 152h and was disappointed in its rate of roll caused by the longer wings. And they had no MW (water methanol) or nitrous oxide to get the best speed out of it. I think that given half a chance he would have rated the FW190 above all other fighters such as the Spitfire IX and the P51. The FW190A had a terrific rate of roll so he writes. And good visibility because of the characteristic nose-down flying attitude and the clear canopy.

One of my wife's uncles was taken to Germany to work in WWII. He suffered from bad health from then on and never got a job.

A Canadian called Barker did well in one against a whole squadron of Fokker VIIs. He was, of course, an extremely good Camel pilot first.

I don't think so. By 1919 ALL the Camels had been scrapped and the Snipe continued in front line service until 1923. I reckon this was mainly due to the Bentley rotary engine which was better than any of the French engines.

A very interesting story of an unknown man.

Life is getting very dodgy in the DiD Campaign as we are now at last in 1918 and it is hard to survive. But give it a bash - Lou is still on his 'A' first name pilot with a huge score. Others have gone up the alphabet a bit as their pilots are promoted upwards

My pilot is a Flight Lieutenant in the RNAS. He should get the Distinguished Service Cross.

ROF has one, but WOFF not.

Many people consider that Pat Pattle was actually the highest-scoring RAF pilot of WWII. This is because the situation in Greece was very disorganised and many aircraft he destroyed were not claimed as there was no one to process the claims anyway.

I forget how many times I have sent emails without the attachment I have discovered that when I use Thunderbird and mention 'attachment' in the email it then prompts me to attach the attachment. Baby stuff but it works

The links are there - I can't edit that post but you will find the link doesn't work because the dropbox file has been removed now. And anyone who is running HitR is likely to want to upgrade to WOFF anyway. You don't need more computer power to do so - maybe less as some of the CPU processing is now on the Video Card.

When I first worked on Harriers in 1969 they had shiny polyeurathane paint and roundels with the white ring. Trying to stand on a wet wing with RAF issue rubber-soled shoes was quite dangerous given the extreme anhedral of the wing. They discovered that the white rings were easily visible from 20 000ft and painted out the white. Later the shiny paint was replaced by matt paint. This was before the more modern low-vis markings came into use.

Lots of nice souvenirs there!

There's a Australian guy with WOFF who is 93 ......

Here are some excerpts from his report on the Bf109G flown in August 1944: " had to he flown off as any attempt to pull it off the ground early resulted in aileron snatching as the wing slats opened unevenly [..] The elevator heaviness was perhaps a necessity in view of the high wing loading of the Bf 109G as over-application of longitudinal control in manœvres easily induced the slats to open, which, in turn, gave rise to aileron snatching and completely ruined sighting of any aircraft being attacked." The wing slots were "automatic Handley-page leading-edge slots". These were independent of each other with no linkage. And of the He 111: "In bad weather the surfeit of transparent panels was downright dangerous and the fact that this was recognised was to be seen from the provision made for elevating the pilot's seat and controls for landing and taxying, allowing his head to emerge through a sliding panel in the upper decking where it was in part protected from the slipstream by a small retractable windscreen. This instant Tiger Moth transformation in a frontline bomber always symbolized for me the eccentricities of functional design that the German aircraft industry seemed to come up with from time to time, and which, surprisingly enough, seemed to be accepted by the Luftwaffe". And of the Bf 110: "the Bf 110 suffered from the same serious fault as the Bf 109 - the automatic slats kept popping out unevenly in tight turns, sighting being ruined by the resultant lateral wobble [...] As with the Bf 109, care had to be taken not to hold off too high as the automatic slats were activated as the speed decayed and could cause a wing to drop." These negative things notwithstanding, Capt. Brown liked most German aircraft he flew, with the exception of the He 177 which he thought felt like a "glass aeroplane", referring to its lack of strength and not the glass windscreens. Wings of the Luftwaffe Pilot Press Ltd 1977

No, he found that the many small panels made it hard to see properly - especially as the war carried on and the glass quality became poor. The He111 had a hole in the roof and the pilot would stick his head out in order to land (I kid you not!). As the hole was opened a little windscreen came up in front of it. Rather like open cockpit flying.