Sopwith Pup vs. S.E.5

[Glider]

No, its very detailed being 237 pages long, covering everything from theory and practice of flight to the medical aspects and what clothing to wear.
It also has about 50 pages of adverts a bit like an early Janes Fighting Ships.
If anyone want to know about the latest thinking circa 1918 it would take some beating.

 

[timshatz]

Graeme, still the stuff they tell pilots today. Don't turn back. And still, to this day, plenty do.

Didn't McCudden die because he tried to turn back?

I've seen a bunch of pages from that book. Very cool stuff, good instruction all of it. No idea where I saw it though.

 

[renrich]

Interesting discussion with many good points being made. I might add that the first powered flight took place in 1903(?) over a course of a few hundred yards and an altitude of a few feet and 14 years later dogfights are being fought many miles away from base and thousands of feet above the ground. Amazing!

 

[Soundbreaker Welch?]

It sure is.

I'm not sure what Orville Wright thought of it!

Wilbur Wright did not live to see WWI, while his brother got to see the first jets in action.

All that terrible fighting from the invention of those two brothers. But what can we say, we love them for what they invented.

 

[BombTaxi]

Very little was thought of the military value of aircraft until the RFC's vital reconnaissance work during the BEF retreat from Mons. As late as 1912, both the Army and Admiralty were dismissive of the utility of heavier-than-air machines, although they recognised the long-anticipated potential of lighter-than-air craft - indeed, there had been numerous 'zeppelin scares' in Europe and the UK prior to the war.

On the subject of progress, the Germans in particular made huge leaps in the four years of the Great War. They took lighter-than-air craft to their logical limit, then developed strategic bombers to replace them, as well as putting all-metal aircraft into service before war's end. And they also developed pioneering tactics - the Jastas were two decades ahead of the RAF's 'Big Wings', and the 'Fire Plan' to destroy London with heavy bombers eerily predicted the strategy developed by an ex-RFC fighter pilot named Arthur Harris, which came to fruition over Hamburg 25 years later.

As an aside, Harris wasn't the only ex-RFC man to have a major influence on the course WWII - Hugh Dowding, Portal, and Sholto Douglas all learned their trade as combat pilots in the RFC, and their decisions shaped a large part of the air war in the West during WWII...

 

[Marcel]

Sounds like a good read Glider. Heavily illustrated with "Dos and Don'ts" or more of a policy and procedure manual?

I think he means this book:
http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/world-war-i/practical-flying-raf-manual-1918-a-6717.html

 

[Graeme]

I think he means this book:
http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/world-war-i/practical-flying-raf-manual-1918-a-6717.html

Thanks for finding that Marcel!