Anniversary of famous World War One aerial dogfight

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TheBicyclingGuitarist
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23 Sep 2012, 4:32 pm

On September 23, 1917, the World War One German flying ace Werner Voss met his death fighting against more than half a dozen of the top British aces. He had one plane helping him for part of the time, but much of the time he fought them alone. This was an extended dogfight lasting ten minutes, practically an eternity compared to most dogfights of the time. There was more than once Voss could have used the superior climb rate of his prototype Fokker Triplane to escape the fight, but he always dove back in and put holes into all of the British planes, severely damaging several of them. He was trying to shoot down all the British aces he was fighting all by himself!

Finally he was wounded and flew straight and level long enough for the British ace Rhys-Davids to shoot him down. Voss was one of the greatest pilots of the war in terms of piloting skill. He was twenty years old when he died.


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CockneyRebel
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23 Sep 2012, 5:29 pm

It's too bad there isn't any footage of that. It would be something to be able to watch it.


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TheBicyclingGuitarist
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23 Sep 2012, 6:23 pm

CockneyRebel wrote:
It's too bad there isn't any footage of that. It would be something to be able to watch it.


Hi CockneyRebel. I am honored by your interest in this thread. Thank you! World War One aviation, especially anything to do with the Red Baron or Fokker Triplanes, has always been a "special interest" of mine since I was a boy.

I'm sure the flying was spectacular. The Fokker Triplane Voss was flying had an ability to hang on its prop and shoot straight upwards, and also to skid sideways, shoot a burst at someone beside you, and then turn back frontwards. It had a rotary engine where the whole engine spins with the propeller, a tremendous amount of torque. Also, all the weight (engine fuel ammo and pilot) were within a very short space of each other, not spread out. These and other design factors combined to make this plane one of the most maneuverable fighter planes of that war.

It had weaknesses. The top wing failed sometimes and it was grounded for a month while all the wings were rebuilt. It was slow, partly because of the drag of the three wings (although some drag was reduced by not having external bracing wires between the wings). Some relatively recent research indicates that it may have been slower mainly because the angle of the propeller blades was set to maximize rate of climb more than speed. The engines (German built versions of a French design) were not always reliable; Werner Voss used a French engine from a captured British Nieuport fighter in his personal Fokker Triplane to replace the German built version. They were underpowered and needed Castor Oil as an engine lubricant, a raw material that the Allies for the most part succeeded in keeping from reaching Germany during the war. Its performance especially suffered at altitude. Still, some German aces held onto Fokker Triplanes as their personal preferred mounts until the end (or very near) of the war.

YouTube has some videos of replica Fokker Triplanes. No originals have existed since the Second World War when museums were bombed along with everything else in Germany. My personal favorite is this one, that has SEVEN Fokker Triplanes all painted in markings from Jasta 11 in Spring 1918, the lead squadron of the Red Baron's Flying Circus. This group includes some owned by Peter Jackson if I'm not mistaken (the director of the Lord of the Rings films).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iJpzsbsD2M[/youtube]

As for footage of the Voss fight, according to my understanding of General Relativity those moments of time still exist. Even though for us those moments are "past" and considered to be gone forever, if a person were a sufficient distance away in space from where we are and were to start moving in a direction away from us, those moments would actually be happening right NOW for that person! So I can imagine, if that moment is happening right now, maybe someday I could view it somehow live (not Memorex...old commercials is it live or is it Memorex). Funny thing is according to relativity, that if the motion were to be towards us instead of away from us, then for that person their now would be our future. For them, things that haven't happened yet for us are now. Weird, huh?

Here is an interesting YouTube video of the Voss fight made using a Flight game program:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKspJtIMPH0[/youtube]


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TheBicyclingGuitarist
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25 Sep 2012, 3:51 am

I just posted the following video to YouTube of a live performance this last Saturday night of a 1995 song I wrote about the Red Baron, the top-scoring flying ace of World War One. There's an older video also on my YouTube channel where I play this song somewhat differently. The other older video has some great aviation art in the video from several noted artists who gave their permission for me to use their work for this song.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ak2kIp5J40[/youtube]


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