JimAttrill

At least you can use your own avatars here which is streng verboten over there at SimHq. Dunno why.

My wife left France when she was three, but her parents always spoke to their two girls in French. They also went after normal school to the Alliance Francaise to keep their French up to scratch. They both got BA's with French majors (which had more to do with literature of course). Last year she was employed by Rio Tinto to do some management training at mines in Quebec. She found most of the delegates could speak good French if required, though some were pretty hard to understand. The big problem she had was translating some of the management terms into French of any sort. And sorting out the difference between 'accountability' and 'responsibility' was not easy as the French don't draw a difference between the two. On return here she has had to change her pronunciation of Montreal back to the English version She liked the food mostly but didn't eat any poutine which looks pretty horrible to non-Canadians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poutine I insisted on calling it 'putain' which of course is something else

My French-speaking wife agrees with that - the stress is on the first, but the last syllable is completely unstressed and almost unheard. This would be the standard French pronunciation of such a word. (not like Reims which sounds like rañz with a nasal n rather than an m - English speakers tend to call it 'reems' which is not right at all). And of course there are the Flemish names like Paschendaele (called 'passion dale' by the British) where you have to know a bit of Flemish or Dutch pronunciation to get it right - or even Afrikaans.

I used to live at Gosfield in Essex for a while. I spent a lot of time in one of the pubs there. The next village up the road was Hedingham sometimes called Sybil Hedingham. Often foreigners* would ask the way to 'hedingham' and all the locals would deny all knowledge of such a place. This is because the local pronunciation was more like 'Hayam'. (A foreigner* is anyone from more than 10 miles away or sometimes even less. Londoners were as foreign as the Japanese to them and about as well liked) I liked that pub. When they called 'time gentlemen' all the foreigners* would leave and we would carry on drinking. I once left there at 4am! My car was alone in the car park with a police car next to it with two cops. I then walked home....

I do know that the British and the US in WWII put victory markings below the cockpit canopy and the Germans always used the rudder but when did the practice start? Did any pilot of any side in WWI show victories on their aircraft?

the one base (used by the Germans though) that you can't get wrong in English is Fismes. This is not pronounceable in English unless you drop the middle S. And then you get the French pronunciation right.

I like it here. I think there will be a mass migration of WOFFers back from SimHq sometime soon. That is, when SimHq ceases to be the 'official' WOFF forum site.

They used the Cherry Blossom, the Chrysanthemum and other flowers, sometimes with petals missing for just a 'damaged'

Never saw 633 squadron but I've got the book! Maybe I'll download it sometime. And from reading in Wiki about the film, I know know that I have seen one of the aircraft used to make it. The aircraft is now in USAAF colours in the USAF museum at Dayton, Ohio

More than interesting! I know that the manufacture of the aircraft included all sorts of woodworkers including piano makers but I didn't know that Goering said a thing against piano makers. The manufacture of the Mosquito was a great thing in that all sorts of furniture makers could now join in the war effort even though they knew nothing about making aircraft out of aluminium. But all hail to De Havilland for doing what he wanted to do. And the Mosquito was a great aircraft - as shown in this video

It seems the Japanese put the victory markings of the aircraft on the side. Often Chrysanthemums. So often the aircraft had more victories than the pilot. And in the IJN the names below the cockpit were those of the ground crew who looked after the aircraft, not the pilot.

Well I must say that I never read Noddy books when I was a kid - too busy reading W. E Johns "Biggles" books. I think I was a bit precocious when it came to reading. My first school teacher had trouble with me with the A - Apple B - Bear C - Cat stuff. I was already reading the newspaper from cover to cover before I ever went to school. Teachers don't like that. I ended up with a bad school career mostly caused by looking out of the window all day. Here are some pics of Noddy, Big Ears and Golly

Publicity photo of course. He has that "Steely-eyed trained killer" look :-D

It's interesting that they didn't want to show victories on their aircraft in case they were shot down and landed in enemy territory. The only times I have read of pilots being attacked by infantry are in fiction. And Frank Luke after being shot down defended himself with his pistol until killed. If he had surrendered he most likely would not have been killed. Most of the infantry thought pilots were completely mad to do such a dangerous thing and captured enemy pilots without any bad feeling (so it seems). So I don't go for that argument at all. A greater possibility is that pilots didn't always fly the same aircraft in combat although Bill Lambert of 24 sqn always seemed to fly only one aircraft at a time. Certainly MvR regularly flew about 3 different aircraft. Of my experience is an RAF squadron of fighters in 1969-73 where each aircraft had a pilots name below the cockpit. But operational requirements dictated that certain pilots had to fly certain sorties and 'their' aircraft might not be serviceable. I know that the pilots did try to fly 'their' aircraft but that wasn't always possible. Especially when his aircraft had become a 'hangar queen' and was being cannibalised of parts to keep the others going. We tried to avoid this as it doubled the maintenance hours but sometimes.....

Robinson's jam used to use a 'gollywog' on their labels. Apart from the fact that the Golly (a form of Dolly) was black, the word 'wog' has always been an insult to any dark-skinned person. It was reputed to come from "western oriental gentleman" and if you believe that you are on a different planet. There is a common expression in England "Wogs begin at Dover" (or Calais in some sayings) so that includes the rest of the world! The derogatory word "wog" is reputed to come from the black doll gollywog and I reckon that is right. The garage man in the Noddy series of childrens books has been replaced by a white man. Noddy and Big Ears have been reputed to be in a homosexual relationship but I suppose that is ok now, if not preferable to some.

Here is the Bf109F-4 flown by Marseille - note the negro boy insignia and the victory markings on the tail.

That is one amazing model! The first balsa model I made was of a D-9. I painted it bright yellow but was scared to try to fly it as none of those scale models flew well, if at all.

Who did the badge? It's very well done. I have my suspicions ......

I could be a bit wrong here but I would reckon that the knights on both sides spoke the same language which was French. Being booted out of France later helped the English language a lot as the aristocracy realised that they were English and not French. At the time of this battle Chaucer had been dead 15 years which was not long. From Wiki: "French was the mother tongue of the English king until Henry IV (1399–1413). He was the first to take the oath in English, and his son, Henry V (1413–1422), was the first to write in English." So it was a period of transition.

Rüdel was shot down a few times (3?) behind Russian lines and managed to get back to the German side. Notably his observer gunner in 1944-5 was not only a medical doctor but a Knight's Cross holder - Ernst Gadermann. It seems he was also a good shot. I did read Rüdel's book but it was a long time ago and I have lost it. His previous gunner Hentschel was also a Knight's Cross holder but he drowned after a crash. Rüdel was interviewed (in German of course) by Capt. Eric Brown. He was, it seemed, just about the ultimate believer in the Nazi faith. Not exactly a laugh a minute. From Wiki "Rudel was a teetotaler and non-smoker. His fellow pilots coined the phrase Hans-Ulrich Rudel, er trinkt nur Sprudel (Hans-Ulrich Rudel, he drinks only sparkling water)."

There's no reason to stop flying in WOFF even if the development stops. Some are still flying OFF (I think) - there are often some people using that forum.

There's are two Bf109s in our local War Museum here. One is a crashed yellow nose Bf109E from the Battle of Britain which was sent here to help recruiting and the other is a Bf108F-2 trop from North Africa. I'll have a look at the air filter when I am next there. The Spitfire VC as used in the Western Desert had a huge Vokes filter fitted which slowed it down a lot (and made it look ugly as well). I think the later Mk IX and Mk VIII Spitfires had better looking and more efficient dust and sand filters called an Aero-Vee also made by Vokes but much smaller. The intake on those could be closed when taxying and parked to stop sand getting in. I have often wondered how long these engines in the desert lasted but haven't found any data on that. Of course most aircraft either crashed or were shot down anyway so engine wear was a small problem!

My father was in Egypt in WWII and he worked on P40s. The only thing he ever told me about those days was that the pilots spent more time watching the oil pressure gauge than looking out for Me109s. The Allison motor didn't like the desert sand at all.

Thanks, I'll have a double gin with caffiene-free tonic

Yes, the longbowmen did well against the crossbowmen but the French were over-armoured and sank in the mud. It can't have been easy sloshing around in loads of sticky mud while carrying quite a few pounds of iron armour around. A sort of medieval Paschendaele it seems. Are these the same battlefield detectives that worked out that the Spanish armada got sunk because their cannonballs were no good? They found some genuine spanish cannonballs and made a modern muzzle loader out of an old tank gun. They proudly set the gun and loaded it with black powder etc and then fired it at foot-thick oak planks. When the smoke cleared the planks had big holes in them. Cause of much hilarity and end of that theory anyway. Of course the Armada was defeated by the English weather as much as anything else.