BS: Favourite World War 1 Fighter Plane

Subject: RE: BS: Favourite World War 1 Fighter Plane
From: The Walrus
Date: 16 May 03 - 06:15 PM

Great War period scout/fighter aircraft?
I'd have to nominat three of them.
The Sopwith Pup
The Sopwith Tripehound^H^H^H^H^H Triplane
and the 'Brisfit' - the Bristol Fighter (F2?)


Harvey,

Sorry mate, for WWII, it's got to be the Hurribird (Hawker Hurricane) for me, the 'plane that did the *real* work in the Battle of Britain.

Regards

Walrus

Subject: RE: BS: Favourite World War 1 Fighter Plane
From: harvey andrews
Date: 16 May 03 - 05:49 PM

SE 5A, because my Dad loved it. For my generation it was the Spitfire.

Subject: RE: BS: Favourite World War 1 Fighter Plane
From: Raedwulf
Date: 16 May 03 - 05:18 PM

Damn! That site's not available at the moment! "...exceeded its allocated data transfer...".

I'm a little bit tempted by the Fokker Eindekker - one of the few monplanes in the war, & a frighteningly effective fighter in its day. I have to go for something Sopwith though (call it English bias if you like!).

I could go for the Sopwith 1-&-a-half strutter, if only for the name (why build it with 1 1/2 struts?!), the Snipe was probably the best fighter of the war, though it only just made it into service before the end. The Triplane was a damn fine aircraft too.

But, perhaps inevitably, I have to plump for the Sopwith Camel. A superb warplane, tricky to fly, but highly manoeuvrable, & one of the first in a fine British tradition of giving our planes a bit of character by giving them names, instead of boring old Mark/Type numbers!! :)

Subject: RE: BS: Favourite World War 1 Fighter Plane
From: GUEST,DaveB.inVa
Date: 16 May 03 - 05:12 PM

My favorite fighter would be the Sopwith Camel. But my love has always been with the bombers. I love the Handley Page O/400 as well as the German Gotha bombers. The zeppelin bombers are pretty cool too with the special "height climber" zeppelins that could reach over 20000ft.

My favorite aircraft of all time is definatley the B-29 Superfortress of WWII. The earlier models were ok but the later B-29B's and the Silverplate Superfortresses were extremely technolocially advanced and could do over 400mph.

Subject: RE: BS: Favourite World War 1 Fighter Plane
From: Giac
Date: 16 May 03 - 04:56 PM

Gareth -- thanks for the link, that's a wonderful site.

Mary

Subject: RE: BS: Favourite World War 1 Fighter Plane
From: Cluin
Date: 16 May 03 - 04:23 PM

A grade school teacher, who was doing a class on World War II heard that the father of one of her students, Helga Jansson, had been a fighter pilot during the war with the RAF. Mr Jansson had having left Sweden in `39 to join the war. She invited him to come in and speak to the class, He was more than happy to talk, and began with a story about a morning patrol where he had been nearly shot down.
    "Ve had been up for about tventy minutes flying over enemy territory, vhen ve noticed, yust in time, dere vas t'ree Fokkers diving on us from above."
    At the first mention of `Fokkers' the class giggled a little bit. The teacher interrupted the story to ask Mr. Jansson to explain to the class that a 'Fokker' was a particular type of plane flown by the German Air Force.
    Jansson replied, "Ya, dat is true, Miss, but dese Fokkers vas Messerschmidts".


(okay, so it was about WWII planes...)

Subject: RE: BS: Favourite World War 1 Fighter Plane
From: Allan Dennehy
Date: 16 May 03 - 04:20 PM

Stand back everybody, I'm coming out of the closet! I've seen every Discovery programe ever about fighter planes, old and new. There is something really beautiful about those vintage planes, though. Only time I got really close to one was in the sixties. I was a child playing football out on the road when suddenly about 20 or 30 biplanes started fighting it out in the Dublin mountains a couple of miles from us whilst a couple of helicopters filmed it all. We all stood with our mouths open for half an hour or so as one of the planes got "shot down," span towards the ground with smoke pouring from its tail, then pulled out of its dive, switched of the smoke trail and climbed back up to the dog fight. Remember the blockbuster movie "The Blue Max?" Well that was part of it. I'll never forget that day.
Anyway, I know its not a fighter, but I'm going for the Vickers Vimy bomber.
Hope you get your 10 hits and many more Little Hawk.

Subject: RE: BS: Favourite World War 1 Fighter Plane
From: Gareth
Date: 16 May 03 - 04:16 PM

Click 'Ere Enjoy.

Gareth

Subject: RE: BS: Favourite World War 1 Fighter Plane
From: artbrooks
Date: 16 May 03 - 03:59 PM

Interesting as the SPADs, Neupots and Fokker Triplanes are (with apologies to Eddie Rickenbacker, the Red Baron, and that lot), I kind of favor the Curtis Nancy NC-1. This was the first aircraft to fly the Atantic, in 1919.

Subject: BS: Favourite World War 1 Fighter Plane
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 May 03 - 03:37 PM

I thought..."what topic have we not yet touched upon ever on Mudcat?" And came up with this...

Okay. My favourite is the Albatros series of fighters, from the Albatros D.III to the D.VA. They were very graceful, beautiful looking little planes, and served as the backbone of the German forces for most of the war, being flown by virtually all the German aces, from Richthofen on down. They were biplanes. Their one weak point was that they could not sustain a sharp dive very long without shedding their wings (with fatal consequences). This was somewhat remedied in the D.VA model.

Go for it, Mudcat. We'll see if this thread hits 10 posts.

- LH