Definitive French and Lithuanian Aviation History sites

[Zoe Brain]

You will have to make heavy use of Google Translate though... but it's worth it.

French:
http://albindenis.free.fr/Site_escad...e_centaine.htm

Lithuanian:
http://www.plienosparnai.lt/page.php?3

Apparently, this confusion of serial numbers was necessary for the Germans that wanted to avoid Entente sanctions.

Thus, Lithuanian military aviation purchased
four fighters Fokker D VII,
two fighter Albatros D III,
one - Alb DV,
eleven training appropriate Alb C Ib,
three armored Alb J II/S II,
two LVG C VI,
one LVG CV Alb B II, Alb C III and Ru CI,
two Alb C XV,
four two-seater fighter Halb CL II,
five Halb CL IV,
one Halb C IV,
six Halb CV,
six DFW CV - a total of 50 aircraft. They were not all complete and usable, some of them lack the wings of planes.

[Boney10]

The French recourse looks very interesting, good find Zoe

[Zoe Brain]

Anyone wanting to do a Lithuanian vs Pole vs Red vs White vs Knights of St John of Malta/Freikorps...

Here are the aircraft that were built or rebuilt in Lithuania that fought in the war of independence.
Seq. No. Plane title Number
First LVG C VI Nr.9001
Second LVG C VI Nr.9005
3rd LVG C VI Nr.9006
4th LVG C VI Nr.9088
5th LVG C VI Nr.9090
6th LVG C VI Nr.9092
7th LVG C VI Nr.7626
8th LVG C VI Nr.8942
9th LVG C VI Nr.5001
10. LVG C VI Nr.5003
11th LVG C VI Nr.11100
12th LVG C VI Nr.11102
13th LVG C VI Nr.12017
14th Halb CV Nr.5974
15th Halb CV Nr.5978
16th Alb C III Nr.5081
17th Alb C III Nr.15298
18th Alb C III Nr.5086
19th Alb C III Nr.15292
20th Alb C III Nr.5084
21st Alb C III Nr.4171
22nd Fok D VII No.2
23rd Alb J II Nr.710

[john snelling]

The French site is amazing. I've been using it for many years.

[fast.git]

Crazy amount of information.

[Jager]

Anyone wanting to do a Lithuanian vs Pole vs Red vs White vs Knights of St John of Malta/Freikorps...

Knights of Malta???
Karl

[fast.git]

Knights of Malta???
Karl

Yep. It's a Roman Catholic lay religious order dating back to the Middle Ages. It was one of the military orders of knights, and ruled Malta for more than 200 years before it was removed from power by a certain Corsican. Despite this, the order survives to this day.

You might have heard them referred to as Knights Hospitaller, an order founded in Jerusalem around 1050 to care for sick pilgrims to the Holy Land. After the First Crusade, they became a military order.

[Jager]

Yep. It's a Roman Catholic lay religious order dating back to the Middle Ages. It was one of the military orders of knights, and ruled Malta for more than 200 years before it was removed from power by a certain Corsican. Despite this, the order survives to this day.

You might have heard them referred to as Knights Hospitaller, an order founded in Jerusalem around 1050 to care for sick pilgrims to the Holy Land. After the First Crusade, they became a military order.

Oh I know who they are; I have a friend who is a member.
But the Order involved in the multi-sided cluster-**** that was eastern Europe and Russia post WW1??
Karl

[Zoe Brain]

Oh I know who they are; I have a friend who is a member.
But the Order involved in the multi-sided cluster-**** that was eastern Europe and Russia post WW1??
Karl

Oh yes.

Western Volunteer Army Albatros XV, 1919



Count von Keller and Co.
See http://www.osjknights.com/History-After-Malta.htm

Count Keller, OSJ, was a graduate of the Nicholas Cavalry School and his uncle had been one of the last Commandants of the OSJ Corps des Pages. General Keller used a large plain white Maltese cross breast badge for all officers under his command....Keller adopted a white Maltese Cross breast plate for his officers and planned to lead a Russian monarchist army led by Knights of the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem in the crusade against the Bolsheviks. General Keller was soon fighting Ukrainian Socialist formations and was captured in Kiev with the remnant of the anti-Bolshevik army in December 1918.

Which as you can imagine, didn't end well for him.

The West Volunteer Army was led by officers who were Knights of Malta. The Russian formations were led by Knights of the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. The German formations were often led by men who were both Knights of the German Order of St. John, the Johanniter Orden and of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

On March 4, 1919 by Order number 24 Colonel Bermondt made the Maltese cross breast badge the emblem of his SOSJ army and enameled it black in memory of General Graf Keller. High level German nationalists backed this re-establishment of the Russian Sovereign Imperial Order of St. John of Jerusalem. Among them was General Ludendorff who had been Chief of Staff of the German Army during WWI. His chief intelligence officer Major Walter Nicholai was also involved. The Protector of the Order was the legitimate heir to the Russian throne, Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovich. Grand Duke Cyril continued to finance the SOSJ venture with the help of the American Grand Priory. Prince Awaloff and Grand Duke Cyril planned to join with German forces to drive the Bolsheviks out of the Baltic. This idea to cooperate with Germany was unique to these Knights of St. John who believed that Russian-German cooperation was the only way to rid the world of the Bolsheviks.

In 1919 Colonel Prince Pavel Awaloff-Bermondt, supported by the Johanniter Orden, the Romanoff Pretender Grand Duke Cyril, and American financier J. P. Morgan, Jr., OSJ, became Commander in chief of the Russian Imperial Army. He led the SOSJ and apparently Johanniter-Orden plan, financed through attorney W. N. Cromwell, OSJ, American Grand Prior, to clear the Bolsheviks from the Baltic and to set up a pro-German government. Most of the officials of what became known in the Fall of 1919 as the West Russian Government were members of the OSJ. Prince Awaloff recorded much of this information in his memoirs which he wrote in 1925 in Hamburg, Germany.

Recorded history in that period is stranger than most conspiracy theories. This Charlie Foxtrot put paid to much of the SOSJ's more militant lunatic fringe, and now they're best known for the St John's Ambulance Brigade rather than crusades to liberate the Baltic. They were even in 1919, this was a distinctly fringe group.

Awaloff proclaimed himself Governor-General of Western Russia for a brief time in late 1919. The short-lived government in the Duchy of Courland, Latvia, with headquarters in Mitau, was the closest that the Order had come to gaining a permanent sovereign territory since the loss of Malta in 1798.

Which is definitely traditional, if you read Chaucer's Knight's tale:
Ful ofte tyme he hadde the bord bigonne
Aboven alle nacions in pruce;
In lettow hadde he reysed and in ruce,

Or in more modern English
Full oft the table's roster he'd begun
Above all nations' knights in Prussia.
In Latvia raided he, and Russia,

[csadn]

<- is having flashbacks to the research he was doing for a putative Eastern-European sourcebook for _Crimson Skies_, where most of these groups still existed under the overall header of "Whites" -- ow ow ow ow ow...

[Jager]

<- is having flashbacks to the research he was doing for a putative Eastern-European sourcebook for _Crimson Skies_, where most of these groups still existed under the overall header of "Whites" -- ow ow ow ow ow...

If you still have this research in digital, I would want a PM for my own what-if post WW1 campaign.
Karl

[csadn]

If you still have this research in digital, I would want a PM for my own what-if post WW1 campaign.

Digital? [snort] I fear most of it is still colloidal, and I have no idea where the pieces of paper I made notes on are hiding. I think you'll be better off waiting to see what Zoe digs up next. :)

[sigh] Pity I don't know who to talk to about rebooting _CS_ -- there's at least three, and possibly four, sourcebooks I have in the works; plus, I figured out how to get around the "problems" of publishing anything relating to historical mid-'30s Germany in non-US markets.

[Zoe Brain]

I think you'll be better off waiting to see what Zoe digs up next.

The Polish-Russian War and the Fight for Polish Independence, 1918-1921. A brief overview by A. Mongeon.
http://home.golden.net/~medals/1918-1921war.html

THE BOLSHEVIK WAR, 1919-1920 An Outline Bozenna Kirkpatrick
http://www.electronicmuseum.ca/Sovie...w_outline.html

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtop...8a50dd7c6c7f22

http://www.conflicts.rem33.com/image...nd/rebirth.htm
The Rebirth of Poland By Anna M. Cienciala (Kansas University)




Then there's Finland. One of the nastier civil wars played out there.

But for a real dog's breakfast.... Turkey. Millions displaced. Multiple genocides.

This was the way it was supposed to be...



But the only groups with armies not rapidly demobilising and sickened by the thought of war were the Greeks and the Turks, the latter defeated but not unbowed. And the Greek Government had recently been taken over by a pro-German king who was to say the least "on the nose" with the former Entente, and wildly unpopular with the populace. So the Entente, no sooner after divvying up the spoils, effectively repudiated their own treaty and let the Greeks and Turks fight it out. The Reds gave Attaturk an Attaboy, the French Black Sea fleet mutinied big time...

The losers were the Italian and Greek christian minorities in Turkey, and any moslem Turks in the Balkans. And the Armenians and Kurds of course - they both got it in the neck, backstabbed by "friends", massacred by enemies.

France kept much of the territory it had been ceded - it was under British and Australian occupation anyway - the Brits Blitzed Mesopotamia, capturing all the German and Turkish aircraft parks there, wiping out the Turkish air arm (apart from a handful of planes) but didn't bother with its assigned "sphere of influence" as everyone wanted to go home, Italy just stuck with owning Rhodes, abandoning the colonists on the mainland, who were promptly massacred... the Greeks advanced deep into Turkey, behaving like the SS in Russia in 1941, then the Turks counter-attacked, behaving like the NKVD in East Prussia in 1945...

I would rather leave those blood-soaked pages of history unturned.

[csadn]

I would rather leave those blood-soaked pages of history unturned.

Don't get me started -- the gutless slugs at Microsoft allowed a "Confederation of Dixie" into _Crimson Skies_, yet wouldn't allow anyone to write anything about it; the only way it could be mentioned is in lists (for ex.: "Allies and Enemies", or "Users Of This Unit"). Gee, guys -- you mention something like this, then act surprised when it dredges up some Unfortunate Details? If you were so concerned about it causing problem, WHY THE [CENSORED] DID YOU BOTHER INCLUDING IT IN THE FIRST PLACE?

The stupidity of Suits drives me up the walls (even further).