Our aircraft

    Event ID: 215

    Categories: 

    General Event
    Deutsch
    Der rote Kampfflieger von Rittmeister Manfred Freiherrn von Richthofen, 1917, 351.000 - 400.000, Verlag Ullstein & Co, Berlin-Wien

    28 May 1917

    Date?
    50.84890767354939, 16.476310886960174
    Władysława Sikorskiego 19, 58-105 Świdnica, Polen
    Swidnica
    Schweidnitz

    Source ID: 4

    Der rote Kampfflieger von Rittmeister Manfred Freiherrn von Richthofen, 1917, 351.000 - 400.000, Verlag Ullstein & Co, Berlin-Wien p.  183 

    “As everyone is well aware, our aircraft have changed somewhat over the course of the war. The biggest difference is between a giant aeroplane and a fighter plane. The fighter plane is small, fast, manoeuvrable, but carries nothing. Only the cartridges and the machine guns. The giant aeroplane – you only have to look at the captured English giant aeroplane that landed smoothly on our side – is a colossus, designed only to carry as much as possible over large areas. It is dragging an incredible amount; three to five thousand kilograms are nothing for it. The petrol tanks are pure railway tankers. You no longer have the feeling of flying in such a big thing, you are ‘driving’. Flying is no longer done by feeling, but by technical instruments. Such a huge aeroplane has an incredible amount of horsepower. I don’t know the exact number, but it’s many thousands. The more, the better. It’s not impossible that we’ll be able to transport entire divisions in one of these things. You can go for a walk in its hull. In one corner there is an indescribable [184]something, the scientists have built a spark telegraph into it, with which one can communicate completely with the earth in flight. In the other corner hang the most beautiful Zervelat sausages, the famous aerial bombs of which those below are so afraid. The barrel of a gun stares out from every corner. It is a flying fortress. The wings with their struts look like pillared halls. I can’t get excited about these giant barges. I find them hideous, unathletic, boring, immobile. I prefer an aeroplane like ‘le petit rouge’. With this thing, it doesn’t matter whether you fly on your back, turn it upside down or do anything else, you just fly like a bird, and yet it’s not ‘winged flying’ like the albatross bird, but the whole thing is a ‘flying motor’. I think we’ll get to the point where we can buy flying suits for two marks fifty pfennigs that you just crawl into. There’s an engine and a propeller at one end, you put your arms in the wings and your legs in the tail, then you hop a bit, that’s the start, and then you’re off like a bird through the air. You are certainly laughing, dear reader, and so am I, but whether our children will laugh is not yet [185] clear. They would have laughed too if someone had told them fifty years ago that he would fly over Berlin. I can still see Zeppelin coming to Berlin for the first time in 1910, and now the Berlin range hardly looks up when such a thing roars through the air. Apart from these giant aeroplanes and the thing for fighter pilots, there are now countless others of all sizes. We are still a long way from the end of inventions. Who knows what we’ll be using in a year’s time to drill our way into the blue ether!”

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