Stringbags

Friday, October 19, 2012

Dreidecker

Today we bring you a groovy shot of an anonymous (to us) Fokker Dr.I...

Project 914 Archives

Fade to Black...

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Yeah-yeah... it's been a while since the last post here on Stringbags. Ya'll can calm down, your blogmeister hasn't forsaken his creation, at least not yet. He's just been busy with other stuff...

Anyhoo, speaking of your blogmeister... he recently took delivery of a fair-sized collection of photos which included a few views of WWI types. Here's one of 'em... the Bristol M.1 Monoplane...

Project 914 Archives (S.Donacik collection)

Fade to Black...

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Royalty

The Albatros D.I you see below was flown by Prince Tassilo Wilhelm Humbert Leopold Friedrich Karl of Prussia. (Henceforth, this fella shall be referred to as 'the Prince'.) The Prince, besides being royalty, was also an Olympic athlete, having participated in the 2012 Summer games in Stockholm, Sweden. During the First World War he commanded FA(A)258, an artillery observation unit equipped with 2-seaters, but sometimes flew patrols with Jasta Boelcke.

On March 21st, 1917, while flying one such patrol, he was forced down into 'No-Man's Land' with an engine damaged by gunfire, and a minor foot wound. After setting his crate down, the Prince attempted to run toward the German lines, but was fired on by an Australian outfit, hit, and captured. A little over a month later, he succumbed to his wounds. More info HERE.

This photo shows the Albatros D.I flown by the Prince on that day in March of 1917, surrounded by a group of mostly Australians... presumably the same lot who had fired on and captured him.

Project 914 Archives

Fade to Black...

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Crooked Cross

Today we bring you a nifty shot of Leutnant Paul Billik of Jasta 12 and his early-production Albatros D.V. Billik finished the war with 31 victories to his credit and may have been awarded the Pour le Merite (Blue Max) had he not been shot down and captured on August 10th, 1918. He continued on into civil aviation after the war and was killed in a landing accident at Staaken, Berlin on March 8th, 1926 while flying a Junkers F.13.

Project 914 Archives

And no, the crooked cross on his Albatros had nothing whatever to do with the National Socialist movement. That symbol which has come to be reviled the world over used to actually represent a number of good things, hope and good fortune among them, before Herr Schicklgruber and his cronies adopted it as their own...

Fade to Black...

Saturday, August 4, 2012

A Motley Bunch

Today we bring you a photo with alotta character... and it shows some characters, too. Generally we like to try and pretty up most of the images we share, but in this case we've left things untouched... except for some fooling about with levels and saturation to help the details show through decades of fading.

Anyhoo, the photo shows an Avro 504 of either the Royal Flying Corps or maybe the very early days of the Royal Air Force. The original image was found on a forum, and the fella who posted it seemed to think that it's a post-war photo... if so, then it would be RAF and not RFC.

The fella who posted this photo on that forum (HERE) was also looking for more info as to the who, what, where, why, when, and how of it... but, sadly, the thread received no replies whatsoever. As your blogmeister has mentioned in the past, he loves these early birds, but knows relatively little about them. So we present this here both because it's a groovy photo, and also in the hopes that someone with a bit of specialized knowledge will see it and be able to help the guy from that forum out a bit...

Fade to Black...

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Breathe Easy

Here's something different... an early O2 system (we assume) being demonstrated by Wilhelm Hippert of Jasta 74 next to his Fokker D.VII. A nice idea for modelers who like to display their work as... not necessarily a diorama, but perhaps a 'vignette' of sorts, with a figure or three.