Hoho, as a Brit who was born in Gosport, Hampshire, four miles from the site of Grange Airfield where the great Smith-Barry 'taught the world to fly' at the RFC School of Special Flying, I can't help being amused by the USA-biased view of desirable Great War aircraft - 'I gotta have a SPAD.' With the honourable exception of volunteers who served with the French Air Force or enlisted with the British RFC, RNAS or RAF by way of Canada or the other Commonwealth forces, no American pilot participated in the conflict until the last year of the war - so the contribution of those brave flying doughboys who did make it into combat was a minor factor in the Allied victory. I salute them all, but I reckon we Old-Worlders might know just a li'l bit about early war-flying, eh?
I flew in iEN's Dawn of Aces for years. It was a fun sim once the crucial role of the two-seater was recognised and the whole point of WW1 air-fighting could be re-created by spotting for the artillery, dropping all the hangars and capturing the field. Up until then, it just seemed to be an endless furball 'tween the two closest airfields - fun, but not a fair picture of WW1 flying. The greatest killer of troops in WW1 was artillery, and that artillery was blind without the spotters in the BE2c or RE8 or Albatros C.III calling out the fall of shot via morse W/T. Aerial photography replaced the scribbled notes made by observers desperate to see what the enemy was doing 'over the hill' - more work for the two-seaters. And the single-seater, being slightly faster and more nimble, evolved into the first specialised fighter aircraft to stop the spotting, which led to fighter escorts and combat patrols, which led to the whirling dogfights wot the fighter-jockeys know and love . . . but the core of all air forces 1914-19 (we Brits were still fighting the Reds in Russia) was the two-seater. Well done, AH, on including the Bristol F2B Fighter ('Biff' in WW1, or plain 'Fighter'; the 'Brisfit' nickname was post-WW1) in the initial planeset; hope the RE8, BE2 series and Albatros and Rumplers appear eventually, alongside the better-known SE5/5a, et al.
