Fighting the red baron
 

Tonight on channel 4. 21.00. Fast jet pilots experiencing ww1 aircraft.
DO.

I don't fancy landing the Avro 504 (no brakes!) :bored:

I thought the programme was interesting to see how aerial combat began quite chivalrous, at first, to become a developed form of warfare. Its quite difficult to imagine professional soldiers waving at the enemy!

One at least of the two WWI a/c looked suspiciously like a replica, certainly it had a flat 4 engine (possibly a Continental ?) up front.

And I can't imagine the Shuttleworth trustees being too keen to let film making folk play around for hours with the genuine article.

mike

I'm sorry to say I missed it, but doubtless it'll get repeated sometime soon.

But on the brakes issue - those of us with lots of quality time in older microlights are very used to this. I can claim about 300 hrs on low performance aeroplanes without brakes. On grass, it's a non-issue, on a downslope on tarmac it can be quite exciting, but hard runways didn't exist during WW1 so that's a non-issue also.

G

I concur, I regularly fit brake pads/shoes on aircraft for folk who seem to live on the brakes. I too flew mirages/pathfinders/quicksilvers in the old days and got used to not having brakes.... in fact I put over 700 hours on the C42 and never fitted brakes, I only used them on strips <200m or when finishing up a parking manoeuvre from about 2mph.
Good programme, have it on disk if anyone wants it.

The "Junkers" is a modified Bowers Fly Baby and I think the "SE5a" is a 3/4 scale replica based on a modified Currie Wot. How they handle in comparison to the real things I have no idea and as there are no flying Junkers CL1's any more I don't think there is anybody alive who does know. According to the replica's owners the Red Airforce operated captured examples until the early 1930's as they were very good aeroplanes. I'm reasonably sure that the Fly Baby is non-aerobatic whereas the Wot is at least semi-aerobatic so it's no surprise that the Se5a won the dogfighting!

An entertaining program but the only flying that accurately reflected reality was the photography from the genuine Bristol F2b from Shuttleworth.

They could have done the whole thing so much more accurately had they got the Old Rhienbeck folks to provide the aircraft and do the flying. There are accurate replicas out there that can be reasonably flown to 3-4G that could be flown by their normal pilots in a way that is safe and much more representative of the real thing.

I guess that would be much harder to put together though, when there is the option of a pair of cheap to insure ex-service pilots and two very replaceable 1930's lookalike planes. I personally don't give a damn what a Harrier pilot thinks of a Currie Wot.