*TriPlanes*

Very nice pictures ❗ 🙂
Do you have that plane? Where did you downloaded it?

Yes they are both in my folder and both are my screen shots.
I downloaded them at http://www.flightsim.com but see that they are available

The best part, you have to start the engine yourself. CLEAR!

Did they shoot the guns through the props on those planes because that is what it looks like?

Anonymous wrote:

Did they shoot the guns through the props on those planes because that is what it looks like?

I read once that the first shot by a pilot was with a handgun and it escalated from there.
They did have to "reinvent" the machinegun to time it to fire between the prop blades.
Wing cannon came much later on.
They also dropped "bombs" grenade type by hand.

The machine gun was connected to a timing chain to the engine, which was timed to fire rounds between the prop blades.

Seideric wrote:

The machine gun was connected to a timing chain to the engine, which was timed to fire rounds between the prop blades.

Cool idea, thanks. 👍

My pleaseure RadarMan. As a kid I loved the idea of the Red Barron (and Snoopy too). The history channel, TLC, one of those, has a documentary on him and how he died.

Best guess as to who shot him, with postmortem. I can not recall as to the extent of the postmortem ie photographs, records, or actually digging him up. The caliber of round. Having a national rifle champian try to replicate the shot with a similar sized plane. He was shot in the chest but I do not know if it did hit his heart or clipped a major artery, I want to say that he lived a few minites after being shot enough to try and land in a farmers field. Some say he lived through the landing although it destroyed the Tri-Plane.

The Red Baron was killed by a single bullet which entered his body at the rear and slightly below the right armpit before passing through his chest and emerging from the left side about 4 inches below the armpit but about 3 inches higher than the entry point - clearly a bullet that must have been fired from a position below the Baron's triplane. Most probable is a Capt. Brown using a Lewis gun.

The Red Baron flew the Fokker Dr. 1, built 1917, powered by Thulin-built Le Rhone 9J 9-cylinder air-cooled rotary 110 HP engine, weighed 1,289 lbs., max. speed of 103 MPH, max. ceiling of 19,685 feet, 2 synchronized Spandau machine guns

Von Richthofen had eighty victories and they have been well researched. you can see a detailed list of The Red Baron's Kills here:

http://history1900s.about.com/library/misc/blredbaronkills.htm

A surprisingly large percentage of his 80 kills can be matched to specific British loss records. Most of his victories came in the spring. In March/April of 1917, he downed 31 planes. In the same two months of 1918, he downed 17 aircraft. During most other months of active flying (from Sept. 1916 through April 191😎, he usually claimed 3 to 6 kills each month. In the three months Aug., Sept., and Nov. 1917, while recovering from his injury, he only shot down 6 planes altogether.

He brought down sixteen B.E.2's, thirteen F.E.2's, eight Sopwith Camels, seven R.E.8's, five Brisfit's, five Spad VII's, five Nieuports, and fewer numbers of nine other types.

HEY!! Talking about Snoopy has anyone seen a flying Snoopy Doghouse!!!

Ok, now I am depressed as it happens everytime I think about the Baron, it almost feels like I knew Manfred von Richthofen.

Ok forgot to log back in after killing my Cookies.

The above is my post, and I could not log in to edit my spelling.

Seideric,
What an interesting story, thanks.

I must go now, to defend the free world!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂
Laugh and the world laughs with you
😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂

Interesting stuff there, thanks, I'm having a look at the statistics now. What was it that MADE him so good as opposed to the other aircraft & pilots?

You can imagine how slow those things flew with all that drag. Was it just strength in the materials technology they lacked which is why they didn't make single-wing fighters?

D.

horrgakx wrote:

Interesting stuff there, thanks, I'm having a look at the statistics now. What was it that MADE him so good as opposed to the other aircraft & pilots?

You can imagine how slow those things flew with all that drag. Was it just strength in the materials technology they lacked which is why they didn't make single-wing fighters?

D.

Why was he so good, what makes a Tiger Woods, Babe Ruth, Sandy Koufax, Lance Armstrong, Mohammad Ali, your born to be the best and if you find what you are best in, the skies the limit.

As far as the construction of the aircraft, they started with Kitty Hawk and progressed from there, the tri's were just another step.
Amazing world once we look at it.

More about the life of the Red Baron: http://www.acepilots.com/wwi/ger_richthofen.html

More about the death of the Red Baron: http://www.anzacs.net/who-killed-the-Red-Baron.htm

RadarMan my brother in flight, the airplane started flying before Kitty Hawk.

First in the minds of people, in reality the first flight is uncertain, and I am not going to spend my time trying to figure it out. But when the Wright brothers get all the credit it gets to be a burr under my saddle.

The Wright brothers never claimed to be the first to fly. In his earliest scientific paper, presented to the Western Society of Engineers in 1901, Wilbur Wright alluded to English inventor Hiram Maxim, who launched a steam-powered biplane with a three-man crew on an unintentional flight in 1893 with disastrous consequences. The crew survived, but due to the lack of suitable controls, the machine was wrecked.

Wilbur and Orville Wright wished to be remembered for making the first controlled and sustained powered flight. but was this even so? Unknown.

but...

There was a German in PA. that made a powered flight of about a quarter mile before the Wright Bros, 17 Dec 1903 flight. The write up was in the local PA paper but there were no pictures of the flight. The pilot could not get high enough and crashed into a farmers barn. The reporter was the passenger on this flight. They both received steam burns as the German was using a steam engine to drive the prop. If anyone knows the name of this guy please post it. But was this a controlled flight?

31 March 1903 - Richard William Pearse of Waitohi New Zealand, made a powered flight. Although Pearse himself later conceded that the Americans deserved the honour of being the first to make a controlled and sustained flight.

17 December 1903 - The Wright Brothers' Flier, took to the air at the Kill Devil Hills in North Carolina.

Press Release - 21 June 2004 - For Immediate Release

SpaceShipOne Makes History: First Private Manned Mission to Space

The world witnessed the dawn of a new space age today, as investor and philanthropist Paul G. Allen and Scaled Composites launched the first private manned vehicle beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. The successful launch demonstrated that the final frontier is now open to private enterprise.

Under the command of test pilot Mike Melvill, SpaceShipOne reached a record breaking altitude of 328,491 feet (approximately 62 miles or 100 km), making Melvill the first civilian to fly a spaceship out of the atmosphere and the first private pilot to earn astronaut wings.

This flight begins an exciting new era in space travel,” said Paul G. Allen, sole sponsor in the SpaceShipOne program. “Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites are part of a new generation of explorers who are sparking the imagination of a huge number of people worldwide and ushering in the birth of a new industry of privately funded manned space flight.”

The historic flight also marks the first time an aerospace program has successfully completed a manned mission without government sponsorship. “Today’s flight marks a critical turning point in the history of aerospace,” said Scaled Composites founder and CEO Burt Rutan. “ We have redefined space travel as we know it.”

“Our success proves without question that manned space flight does not require mammoth government expenditures,” Rutan declared. “It can be done by a small company operating with limited resources and a few dozen dedicated employees.”

A large crowd watched the momentous flight live from the grounds of the Mojave Airport, joining millions of others around the world who tuned in by television, radio, and the internet. Dignitaries attending the event included U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher, the Commanding Officer of Edwards Air Force Base, General Pearson and the China Lake Naval Air Warfare Center, Admiral Venlet; former astronaut Buzz Aldrin, and Konrad Dannenberg, one of Werner Von Braun’s lead scientists on this country’s original space development effort. Hundreds of media representatives were also on hand to record history in the making.

(end of press release)

So I will use the "Wright's Brothers" name to give the honor to all in the Brotherhood of the Wing, all the inventers and crack pots* out there that got it "Right" and forged on with the dream of flying and got us off the ground, and to those that fly those wacky flying machines.

*A crack pot is just an inventor with an outlandish idea after all, some are more Cracked than others though.

You are truly well versed in the history of flight and for that I one who has always loved to read and study history commend you.
Too many regard the subject as unimportant but...well you know the saying.

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blearlyflight.htm Interesting timeline.

http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/awakening101/leonardo.html

Great sites, I will be reading up.

On the site: http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blearlyflight.htm

I believe made an error,

"The ancient Greek engineer, Hero of Alexandria, worked with air pressure and steam to create sources of power. One experiment that he developed was the aeolipile which used jets of steam to create rotary motion."

Hmm. Heron of Alexandria, not hero, used Water, Air pressure, and weight for sources of power and was a genius, he made all sorts of very cool things. But as far as I know and have heard the aeolipile was only made it as far as a toy. Imagine the steam engine invented around 115BC, it was, and then if it was realised how to use it. Thomas Savery pattened first steam engine in 1698. look were we went in 306 years...

But!!! Laterb the idea of the aeopile was used to try and power a horseless carriages but in a way like a jet engine. hmmm... but you could not get enough force to overcome the weight of the contraption to get it moving for a sustaind time.

Nikola Tesla is one of my favorite inventors. I so wish I was not so electrically stupid. Hmm why doesn't electricity just keep flowing out of a socket when you unplug some thing? 🙂

Seideric wrote:

Hmm why doesn't electricity just keep flowing out of a socket when you unplug some thing? 🙂

It does. I keep a rubber bucket under my empty sockets. 🙄

Just downloaded the file after having the pleasure of pushing a Fokker DR 1 onto the grass strip at Halton last weekend. I thought it was amazingly heavy for it's size!
We followed behind in a cessna 152, and from what I saw it performed like a little beauty.
I'm not usually a fan of vintage aircraft but this was an amazing site!!!

Seideric is right. 😀 😉

Its ''Heron'' the right name .He lives from 65AC-125AC.He was Geometric & Enginner.He has write books about Metric,Reflecting Telescopes,Astronomy and more.

The only disagreement with my friend Seideric is that his ''aeolipile'' wasnt a toy.He was try to ,lets say, promoted it about using it in some applications like weight lift and same thing but he wasnt lucky.... 😕

Good point Seideric

Greekman72 😉

It has always been a great mystery on who killed the Red Baron, until about 2004. Forensic detectives have proved definitively that the shot was fired from under the plane, and at such at angle that it could not have been fired from the air. Australian infantry on the ground killed the Red Baron, and thus, he never lost an air battle.

As for saying the Wright brothers were a step towards air combat is a farce. The Wright brothers, while extremely innovative and improved early flight immensely, held back aviation improvement for years and years. They would sue anyone who had an airplane that turned, because it MUST be infringing on their wing bending design, while in truth, the aeleron was a vast improvement to the Wright's design.

In 1915, a committe known as NACA was formed and considerably improved the fledgling aviation in the United States, while, as you know, in Europe, airplanes were already fighting each other in the air.

The United States ultimately caught up, but for everything the Wright's did to improve aviation, they did at least as much to hinder it.

And, I'm late for work, but I'd like to include a quote to show the age of aviation:
"Opfer müssen gebracht werden!" (Sacrifices Must be Made!)
-Otto Lilienthal, 1896, the first man killed in aviation