Posted on 09/08/2020 4:15:46 AM PDT by jacknhoo
Here is some interesting 100+ year old footage of the Red Barron during WWI:
I had a patient who was in his mid-eighties when I bought my practice in 1970. He needed a tooth replaced on his upper full denture. When the lab sent it back for me to give it to him, I asked when he’d received this plate. His answer was” Right after the war!” I said “you’re not talking ‘46 are you?” He said “heck no, I mean in 1919”.
I asked how it was that he had every one of his lower teeth in excellent condition but none on top. He asked if I had heard of the Red Baron and then told me that he had the dubious distinction of having been the Baron’s last victim and when he crashed, the control stick knocked out most of his upper teeth, thus the full upper denture.
He told me what you all may have missed when they were working on the engine!!! If you watch it again you will see that the propeller AND the engine rotate together. He said there was no throttle..... just a kill button to stop the engine as needed to descend then it would start up again. Notice them squirting oil… on the valve stems I would guess, prior to spinning the prop.
The following is a very rare piece of film, 99 years old. It shows Baron Von Richthofen, doing an external prior to a mission, as well as his putting on a flying suit prior to flight in cold weather. If you look close you will notice Hermann Goering.
The Aussies claim that one of their machine gunners on the ground shot the Baron down on 4 June 1915…
To think this film is over 100 years old!
Just something to break up the mundane days. I have no idea who the dentist is writing the comments. The comments were in the email with no credit provided and the comments are not at the web site.
Was it the Aussies who shot him down? Somehow I always thought it was a flying beagle.
Holy crap, that is one of the absolute coolest things I have seen in a long time.
I felt the finger of history reach out and touch me!
Great movie on YouTube, The Red Barron they have an excellent story of his short life. I have watched it a dozen times, great special effects with a love story weaved in and lots of flying and battle scenes with the Flying Circus.
When I used to see pictures of WWI pilots, their flight garb made them look odd to me, they always seemed to be shaped...well, bottom heavy. Now, watching how he put his flight gear on, it makes sense!
—amazing—
“Baron.”
Thank you!
Wonderful footage, not seen that before. This type of motor is known as a Rotary Engine, where the crankshaft is fixed and the cylinder block rotates around it. Common in WW1 fighter planes.
Went to a lecture recently [BC = Before Covid] given by an expert on Richthofen. It’s pretty much certain that the fatal bullet was fired by either a machine-gunner or rifleman on the ground. Richthofen broke one of his own golden rules of air-fighting that day - never follow your target down low enough to be hit by small arms fire from the ground. And he paid the price. Interesting bit of pyschology there: why did he do it - why was he so careless? Had he become over-confident or was he suffering from Battle Fatigue?
Thanks, some real history here.
It was a Canadian, Billy Bishop.
The last part is a shotdown Sopwith Pup and its captured pilot goofing around with Richtofen and the other pilots. No harm, no foul, I guess.
looked more like the grey baron...
but really cool... i like the squad scene staged and no time to do it again...
hehehe
t
!00 year old film. Amazing stuff.
Good footage showing the startup of the Fokker DR1. You can see the engine and prop were bolted together and *both* rotated to provide cooling to the engine. Mush have been a beast of an aircraft to fly.
There exists film that was shot of Tsar Nicholas II's coronation. This was in 1896. If you look carefully you can see a group of, by that point, very old men. These were veterans of the Battle of Borodino.
It boggles the mind that these were men who likely had seen Napoleon Bonaparte on the field of battle, and lived long enough to be filmed in a motion picture.
That Fokker DR-1 was instantly recognizable. Imagine young first-time Brit, Aussie, or American pilots seeing that red tri-plane in the air coming at them.
His reputation was well-known. And air combat back then was at very close ranges... I don’t think they had parachutes in those tight cockpits. Maybe nearer the war’s end, yes, but not early on.
Now, planes break the sound barrier... and use missiles locked on from miles away.
Extraordinary film... from a time far away.
Billy Bishop was off killing other Germans at the time.
A beagle flying a dog house...
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