Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: Pongo on January 07, 2003, 12:39:27 PM
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Canadian guy flew with the Naval Air Corps and died at the age of 106 on Friday.
And then there were none.
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I've been reading a book called "Fighter Aces" that re-printed the memoirs of some of The Great War's fighter pilots and it boggles my mind how those guys could go up in wood and fabric airplanes loaded with easily-punctured gas tanks, no armour, and no parachute.
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sad
and most of us will out live the last WW2 pilot as well
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:(
Hey, my Grandfather was a World War 1 pilot, he died at age 94 in 1991..anyone interested in his photo? I have two I can scan at home, one with his officers uniform on and one with flight gear.
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to bad...
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:( sigh...
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Originally posted by Ripsnort
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Hey, my Grandfather was a World War 1 pilot, he died at age 94 in 1991..anyone interested in his photo? I have two I can scan at home, one with his officers uniform on and one with flight gear.
Please do ! What did he fly ? Where ? when ? Any stories ?
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Originally posted by Hristo
Please do ! What did he fly ? Where ? when ? Any stories ?
Unfortunately, no stories. I do remember him speaking of the "Jenny" fondly...I know 0 about WW1 aircraft. :( I don't believe he saw any action though. He was listed as a "Airman" or something of that sort...maybe you can tell by his uniforms..will post them later.
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My grandfather was also a WW1 vet. Truck driver. He was one of the few soldiers who actually had a "chauffer's license" (got it in 1910).
My Mother was a history teacher, and had the WW1 vets group come speak at her classes every year. I received one of my prized possesions from that group, a picture book titled "Colliers Pictorial Review of the European War". It was published in 1915. If I can get to a scanner I'll share some of the pics.
Sadly I don't think any of them are left from that group. :(
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Here's Gramps at Kelly Field, Texas as a Cadet, then in 1916 as I presume an officer. Air Corp.
William D. Dover 1898-1991.
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Rip neat pictures!
After WWI My Grandfather F. Weimer and his friend "Shorty" Nigh, bought a surplus JN4. LOL My Dad has the pictures. Remember my Grandfather telling me he and Shorty learned to fly the day they bought the JN4 . Took a half hour lesson to learn controls. Navigation was "easy" follow the rail road tracks or any major highways LOL. Since this was 1919 1920 era who needed a license? If you had the money to get a "Jenny" you could fly one! My Grandmother finally forced my Grandfather to,(as she said) sell the dam thing before you break your fool neck or I'm leaving! My grandfather said almost 50 years later..."I shoulda kept the Jenny." LOLOL
Hajo
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From today's City section of the Ottawa Citizen, with a Daily Telegraph byline:
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Here's a pic of the print by Robert Taylor.
(http://www.aviationgallery.com/ww1/ballonbu.JPG)
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Very cool Hajo! LOL!
Mogi, thks for posting that, good article.
Chanter, it was very rare for a WW1 pilot to have a parachute, no?
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That's not a pilot Ripsnort, that's an observer who was in the ballon that just got shot down (the burning thing in the background).
Observers in balloons were deemed to be very valuable, more so than pilots who were ten a penny. Even with the horrific casualty rates (the life expectancy of an RFC recruit in April 1917 was 3 weeks! :eek: ), they had no problems with recruitment. Man for man, the war in the air was as bloody as anything on the ground - which is saying alot considering the British Army had 20,000 men killed in one day during the Somme offensive of 1916.
Parachutes were also said to diminish a man's fighting spirit.
Did you know that WW1 planes were regularrly going above 16 thousand feet, without oxygen in open cockpits, by 1918? :eek:
I'd reccommend Derek Robinson's Trilogy of RFC based WW1 books 'War Story', 'Hornet's Sting' and 'Goshawk Squadron' (in chronological order).
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Artillery spotters in balloons were issued parachutes on a regular basis, since they made easy targets.
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Ah, thks for the clarification!
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Anyone here read the Bandy Papers?
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Originally posted by gofaster
I've been reading a book called "Fighter Aces" that re-printed the memoirs of some of The Great War's fighter pilots and it boggles my mind how those guys could go up in wood and fabric airplanes loaded with easily-punctured gas tanks, no armour, and no parachute.
You might also be interested in "The Canvas Falcons" by Stephen Longstreet. Out of print, but a great book full of first hand accounts of WWI fighter aces.
Especially interesting is the development of guns onto fighter aircraft. Went from no guns, to pilots carrying pistols and excahnging fire with enemy recon planes flying the opposite direction, to observers with carbines, to mounting guns on fuselage and shooting off your own prop to the famous first synchronized MG developed by Fokker.
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I belive the Germans issued chutes to their pilots. RFC OTOH tought its pilots would just bail intead of engaging the enemy :rolleyes:
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Ernst Udet bailed out of his Fokker DVII when his radiator was shot out some time in 1918...
Some Germans were given parachutes, while others weren't... and by this time it was late in the war that the German pilots recieved parachutes.
BTW, the gun development did not go from rear observers to shooting through your own prop and getting it shot off.. instead it went to a gun mounted on the fuselage of a 1914 Recce RFC recce machine that fired down and to the right. Shortly after that, the first fighters were born (Morane Parasols and Morane Saulniers) that used deflector gear... which was just a solid triangle mounted on the prop, so any round that would strike the prop ricochetted off it. Then later came the synchronization gear which stopped the gun from firing anytime a propellor blade was in the way by use of a simple pushrod system.
-SW
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Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
BTW, the gun development did not go from rear observers to shooting through your own prop and getting it shot off.. instead it went to a gun mounted on the fuselage of a 1914 Recce RFC recce machine that fired down and to the right. Shortly after that, the first fighters were born (Morane Parasols and Morane Saulniers) that used deflector gear... which was just a solid triangle mounted on the prop, so any round that would strike the prop ricochetted off it. Then later came the synchronization gear which stopped the gun from firing anytime a propellor blade was in the way by use of a simple pushrod system.
-SW
Yes, this is true - I simply didn't want to list each and every step between firing with a carbine to the development of the synchronization gear - it's all in the book ;)
And yes, there are accounts of props having been shot off (it was one of the ones fitted with a deflection plate, btw)
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Yes, but I wanted to show off my knowledge of the air war in WWI. :)
-SW
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Didn't Oswald Boelcke, the father of ACM, shoot of his own prop and auger? Some say he did, others say he collided with Erwin Böhme.
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Books I have say that Bohme collided with Boelcke when a British fighter pursued by Richtofen cut in front of them. Bohme managed to keep his plane in the air, but the fabric on Boelcke's upper wing ripped away and he lost control.
-SW
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Well, My Grandfather was in WW1 in a transportation Co. of the 1st ID, after 3 months in the trenches he caught the flu and spent the rest of the war recovering on the French Reviera
tough war eh. Somthing Cool that happend to me is that while I was in the Army I was assinged to my Grandfathers company and found his name in the Unit History. I never got to know him well He died when I was 9 in the early 70s but my father says he mostly talked about french girls on the coast.
Gunns