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Thoughts about World War One air combat.

C

Cowboy1968

Charter Member
This morning I had some time on my hands, so I put together a little combat mission in my WWI install. The mission was a patrol up and down no mans land at 10,000 ft. the time was 9:30 in the morning. In the mission you are a lead pilot of a flight of SPAD S.XII fighters in US service. Just another mission of hunting recon birds. You get an easy kill. a German recon plane, but later in the flight you have a chance (I random chanced this) you get into a tangle with some German Gotha Bombers flying on western course at 8,500 ft. There is also a random chance that the escort of Phalz XIIs will show up.

that was the ground laying for my thoughts.

I flew the mission and relearned a lot of things about flying those "old glorified box kites". First thing is when you are high 10,000 to 15,000 ft you do have a drop off in horsepower.....(no superchargers in those days).....and next you learn just how hard it is to hold a straight line in those birds when you are up in the currents. and the thinner air. No matter how much wing you have stability was an issue with just about every type.

Gunnery under those conditions is a hard to do. with your own engine not being able to overcome the wind currents and so on, but yet still strong enough to cause torque on the plane, you have a very shacking gun platform at best. so you have to really get close to get a good aimed shot off. you can almost really see faces.

It was a personal war.....you really had to see each other

the guns were all pretty much .30 cals or the equivalent, This means you are shooting beebees at each other. It took a lot. I can see how the guy on your wing became your best friend for life. the Teamwork is one aspect of this Sim that we really don't see, and I wish we did.

I take my hat off to those braves men who nearly a century ago climbed into glorified motorized kites and took the blue skies over Europe. Once they were in the air, they didn't have to only worry about just how flimsy those birds were, but they had to fight each other as well as the skies.
 
Not to mention hypoxia,and freezing cold. When the weather was crappy( VFR on top)we would trundle over the rockies and coast mountains in our unpressurized,un heated DC-6B's, CS2F's, AT-802's and assorted Aerodogs at10000- 14500ft, and you didn't want to be up there long. After about 45 minutes, you were getting spotty, and any kind of physical activity was damned difficult(and a hang over devestating!). There was a O2 bottle up front for the drivers, but the engineers were SOL. One trip out one spring, I got playing the 'trim' game with the pilots at 12000ft. Run to the back. Wait untill he re-trimmed. Run to the front. wait till he re-trimmed. Do that for 15 minutes or so, and you can have the poor bugger wrestling the aircraft through a 5000 ft fuegoid, and he has no idea why. But I was almost dead, gasping and totaly nackered. But I was warm.
The other thing never discused was the surifet of 'regularity' those guys must have suffered from. Rotary engines have a 'total loss' oil systen.The lube oil goes through the engine; and over the side. You were covered in it, breathing it,and swallowing it. The lubricating oil of choice? Castor oil. (Castrol)
Those guys had big brass ones.
 
add on top of the caster oil in the rotary engines. you have to look at the planes with the inline engines too. prime examples of cookers would be the Albatros D.III, D.V and D.Va with the wing mounted radiator. also the Phalz D.III and D.IIIa have to be added to that list. Then you have to also look at the Royal Aircraft Factory F.B.5. The radiator was right behind the pilot. when bullets puts holes in those things the water under pleasure will just scald those guys.

Those guys were NONE BUT THE BRAVE!
 
Yep. Years back, as a young erk, I was fortunate enough to work on CWH's Hurricane. The coolant lines ran down the sides of the cockpit. Lots of those poor buggers paid for that.
 
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