An Interesting Website

[mjkerner]

http://www.allworldwars.com/index.htm

I hadn't run across this one before. Enjoy.

[Erwin]

Amazing and fascinating stuff. Thanks...

"I just rolled on my turn and got lined up taking some interim instrument readings and recording oxygen - normal procedure - when I felt or heard an explosion. I have no idea what or anything - it just - I don't know whether I heard it or not but I felt it - just like everything stopped, and I can't say that I heard it - I don't know. It seemed to me that it - well, I immediately looked up and all I could see through my canopy was just orange light - definitely orange is all I know, but everything I could see was that color. This explosion seemed to me to be behind me and to the right . I was looking at the instruments at the time - I had just looked at them - everything was perfect - the only thing wrong with the aircraft was the auto pilot pitch control and I wasn't using the auto pilot. I had been straight and level on this particular leg of one or two minutes - I don't know - not very long - everything lined up and started taking my readings and then the explosion. I remember saying to myself, or saying out loud, I don't know, I think it was "Oh, God, I've had it now", or something like that - the first thing that entered my mind, and I couldn't tell you how much time passed - it would be impossible - it just seemed that everything was standing still for a little while. I just saw that red glow, looked down - the right wing started to drop - I corrected it and brought the right wing up fine. The nose started to drop and I pulled back on the stick and there was no connection between the controls and the tail, and the plane just nosed straight over and I feel sure that the wings broke off broadside of the wind that way - they must have folded down this way and came off. The airplane tumbled on over, ended up in an inverted position with nose high - I don't know how much of the airplane was left. It was nose high - canopy here - my head was pointing - I'd say - well I can't estimate what angle it was to the ground - 45 degrees or more, but it wasn't flat - straight down - the nose was high and the tail or the airplane was low and it started spinning very violently, and it slid me forward against forward my seat belt all the way/and I couldn't get back to the back of the seat. I immediately said "OK, I've got to get out"

[JonS]

"Friend or Foe? Aircraft Identification, 1940"

Heh. My grandfather had a pretty cool WWII. He joined the navy, then spent about a year training and getting a comission in the UK, then went to the US for about another year and did ... something? Radar FDC training, maybe? When he wasn't shagging American girls, that is. He did a couple of Atlantic (and Russian?) convoy runs on a jeep carrier, and finally wound up in Ceylon as FDC. I'm pretty sure he never heard a shot fired in anger, nor saw an enemy combatant that wasn't already in a PW cage.

Anyway, the point here, and the tie in, is that he used to tell a story about doing an aircraft recognition course. Apparently the OHP foils used were so old, scratched and faded that it was nigh-on impossible to see what each of the planes being projected actually was. The whole class still got near top marks, though, by memorising the patterns of scratches and smudges.

"Ok, what's this one?"

"Ah, the scratches that look a bit like a hash mark in the top left corner and the thumbprint near the middle - that's a Bf-109!"

"Correct!"

"By the way, Sir, I think you have the foil upside down."

"That'll do, Midshipman."

"Yessir."

[gnorffy]

The title of that page is misleading.

Although I guess 'TheTwoMostPopularoftheNineWorldWars.com' is a bit much to type.