I have always loved planes. When The Blue Max, Zeppelin, The Great Waldo Pepper, Or even Darling Lily would come on tv I had to watch. As a teen I got into gaming and WoW has all the things I like.
The Historical Aspect
The Action
I think the planes look cool
The Pilots
Other
I have always loved planes. When The Blue Max, Zeppelin, The Great Waldo Pepper, Or even Darling Lily would come on tv I had to watch. As a teen I got into gaming and WoW has all the things I like.
My dad and I own Flyboys, which I had seen soon after I got interested. We are also hoping to get a Red Baron DVD dubbed in English soon.
Definitely the historical aspect. My mother was a history teacher and one of the first books I had an interest in learning to read was The American Heritage History of World War I by S.L.A. Marshall copyright 1964. I was fascinated by the photography and the artwork, especially the Raemaekers pieces.
Later as I began to be a true history buff, I always found that I was most interested in the First World War, the transition of the world as it was into the world as it is, the failure to make a lasting peace, and the repercussions that haunted us throughout the twentieth century and those we are still dealing with today. It also helps that I live near the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri. If you are ever in my fair city, it is truly worth a visit!
Played tons of Dogfight as a kid. Read the designer notes until I memorized them. In my teens it was Richthofen's war. In my 30's it was Red Baron. Now it is WOW and Rise of Flight ( which I still suck at)
Can't count how many times I've seen The Blue Max since the first time I saw it in the theatre (1966)
Now my wife loved The Blue Max just for "that actor" and as you all know I loved Dawn Patrol. She just likes the love story.
Tom
If you guys have Netflix, "The Red Baron" is available in english for streaming.
It is the historical aspect and the technology that interests me very much. Not only aircrafts but also ships and other weapons of WW I.
Aircrafts, ships powered by turbines, MGs, Handgranades, Guns that could shoot over your own sight, radio, ... these were all new and sometimes untestet techniques.
At least, sometimes it makes me wonder how thousands of young men could get up and attack the enemy with the sound of the officers pipe, while they would know that there is just a little chance to survive.
Did you know that WW I was the first war in history that costs more lives through force of arms than through diseases.
But I also fly Aircombat simulations on PC and love the war games.
This depends if you count the 1918 flu pandemic or not. I would regard it as direct consequence of the war (starving population, weakened immune systems, bad medical supply and sanitation situation).
Some even say that, since the flu hit the Central Powers before it reached the Allies, it may have helped determine the outcome of the war. The "Spanish Flu" (it didn't come from Spain, but the king of Spain got it) killed even young, healthy and well-fed people. As a poem from the era put it...
All the world is sighing now,
The flu is at the door,
And many folks are dying now,
Who never died before.
As with all war games, the historical part is what gets me initially interested. This game enhances it by being a blast to play!! (and it is my first foray into miniatures).
Keith
G'day Hunter!
Its an enjoyable Movie but terribly inaccurate from an Historical point of view!
When he shoots down Lanoe Hawker they have Hawker in a SE5a when of course he was flying a DH-2 & they have Hawker screaming like a madman all through the battle (for what reason? who knows?)
Then there is the sort of friendship with Rob Brown who MvR shoots down TWICE in the movie so they can meet & it even has MVR saving Roy's life after the first one.
Then there is the Romance with the nurse who looks old enough to be his Mother or at least his oldest Sister.
Also they have Voss having a Bently engine in his Triplane when it was actually a captured French Rotary.
Well I could go on & on but thats enough.
Enjoy it for the Aircraft & the Action!
Biggles, Airfix Kits, Blue Max, Ace of Aces and the history of course. The technology was in it's infancy so that is very interesting in itself.
I am a Tankie at heart but I do have a soft spot for WW1 aircraft
Richard
I voted for the Pilots. I got a book in th 5th grade back in the 60's from the scholastic book program that they run in the US. The little paperback featured all of the major pilots from both sides, Guynemeyer, Ball, Mannock, Fonck, Richthofen, Boelcke. It had b/w pictures of them and their aircraft. Their stories were better than anything Hollywood could have made up. A few years later a friend of mine, Paul Saarbacker, introduced me to Richthofen's War and I have been gaming WWI aircraft, in some form or another ever since.
I used to play that as a kid, too! I wonder if my parents still have it...
Is it wrong to admit that it was the final series of Blackadder that piqued my interest in WW1?
No, Blackadder Goes Forth was awesome, even if dear old Flash isn't quite the RFC role model we'd like, Woof!
doubled up for some reason.. odd.. lol
Oh no, that was spot on - you could see the research that had gone into it.... ;-)
I grew up in southern california and used to go to an air museum at what was then the orange county airport,(tallmantz aviation) it was a quantset hut type of hangar that was dusty and smelled like old canvas.(atmosphere) I loved looking at those old planes and thought what guts those guys had to fly those while getting shot at! been hooked since
I noticed my fascination did grow more and more with the years as i learned more about how basic things were back then. It was a certain spirit there. these men did things noone did before. they had to work out the rules of air combat by simply trial and (fatal) error.
i think they were more free-minded spirits than the generations of pilots following them. i never liked it when things are too much worked out. there has still to be some kind of thrill and pioneer spirit to be interesting.
for me ww1 aviation does have this all. of course, its part of history now and history gets gloryfied too easily. it was sheer horror to climb in these wiry crates and fight for you life. but the image which survived was the one of daring madmen in colorful flying machines doing stunning things.
For me it was a mixture of the history and Biggles books (seems a common theme doesn't it) - I also started playing wargames in the late 60's (my girls would like to point out that is the 1860's by the way), and I did own a copy of AH's Richthofen's War - which is how I found out the hard way how nasty Bloody April was (playing a campaign, and just losing shedloads of my RFC pilots every game)
My Grandfather flew RE8's so I have always had an interest in WW1 aviation.
I've always been interested in military history. I've played Dogfight , Richtofens War . I have also built countless airfix 1/72 kits.
I really got involved in WWI aircraft gaming, when Hostile Aircraft came out in 1995. I'm heavily into WoW now.
I built warplane models as a kid. What really kicked off WWI for me was The Blue Max in 1966 and wargaming with the old TSR's WWI rpg game Dawn Patrol in the 1970's and 1980's. Then WoW came along and I'm hooked!!
My interest in WW1 comes from my grandfather, he and both of his brothers served in the Army during WW1. My Grandfather was a combat Engineer. His one brother was with the signal corps, and his other was state side as a test pilot for the army Air Service.
I can remember my dad putting together the old Revell 1/28th scale Camel and Dr I kits, which were then hung in our bedroom. When I was 10 or so I bought TSR's Dawn Patrol. I've always maintained that interest, be it model building, wargaming, or the military history aspect of it.
I'm with the Biggles-crowd.
Hello All,
I am a little late getting to this post. The cool planes and historical factor both had an equal pull on me to do this period. My interest in this period goes back to when I was about 9 or 10 years old. That is when this group called the Royal Guardsmen put out this song called " Snoopy and the Red Barron". Laugh if you want, but that song got me into doing some research and the rest is history(pun intended)HA!HA!HA!
Check this out Keith.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...83960203831616#
Rob.
"Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death."
Curiously my interest in WWI aviation came from WoW. I've always been interested in history to varying degrees but never really singled anything. I'd seen WoW several times at the LGS and one day on a whim I bought it since it looked like a quick and interesting game. I soon realised how little I knew about WWI, and in particular the planes, and having watched many hours of docos on youtube and a very good DVD set I found, I discovered the whole thing fascinated me so now I'm hooked Two particular things seem to hold my interest at the moment - NZ's contribution to WWI aviation and the big bombers of WWI (of which I had no idea before WoW).
I do have wartime aviation history in the family - my great uncle was Chief of Air Staff in NZ in the 60s and I spent a bit of time with him which was cool - but this wasn't really a motivational factor in exploring WWI history.
So, I'm assuming you saw this video on youtube. It's a 5 part series. Is there others that you've seen and can share?
Tom
Rob,
That was a dog gone good video! My wife and I just got done watching this and were laughing like a bunch of nuts(maybe we are)! Now I will be hounding her (pun intended) for a Snoopy dog box plane. Three years ago I bought this neat Halloween decoration that has Snoopy in a pumpkin patch. It comes with a figure of Snoopy about three inches high, and his red dog box. When you press one of the pumpkin heads, it makes a sound like a Sopwith Camel engine. Yep ole Snoopy still has a place in my heart.
Check out the files section Keith. There is a card for him. just ignore the one of Kyte flying a desk. No! Don't even ask. Suffice it to say, that was not my finest hour.
Rob.
"Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death."
I have always felt that WWI would have been the best period to have flown in combat. The planes have a romantic feel to them as does the entire era.
But as a history buff I tend to over-romanticize many eras that were in reality horrifying.
Well put Bart. Being a former reenactor, I do not know how many times I have heard " I would have loved to live back then". People do not know what they are saying when they make that statement. Back then would kill most of these people. Boredom,impatience,desease, and physical labor would do in about half. I love to read,dream, and wish that times were a little more laid back then what they are, but I will take the comforts of this era for right now.
We definitely get the best of it - they got to either fly in epic combat or drink in the officers mess... thanks to WoW we can do both at the same time
I agree that half of the population who say they would love to live in the past do not even dream of any hardships, perhaps its the thought of the freedom that average person had (of course if you were rich there was all those society standard one had to keep up with) that attracts people. However there was one equal fact the people from all branches of society that had to put up with and that was the heat! As a former reenactor wool uniforms are not the most pleasant things to to wear or soldier in especially in 30c heat and even more so if you were an Officer. As a young man I spent a lot of time in the Army soldiering in all types of weather, and really appreciate the fact that when the heat gets bad I can retire into my bedroom/model room and enjoy the comforts of an air conditioner, its fun to reenact the past but live in it, no thanks
"Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death."
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