BE2 Replica, small model Fokker Triplane behind, plus two other models in photo:-

Same BE2 with a small model of a Bristol Fighter to upper left and a Sopwith Camel, I think, to right:-

Fuselage and Wings of a replica Sopwith Camel under construction. This may now be completed:-

Sopwith Camel wing being worked on:-

Effigy of Lieutenant Ross Robertson:-

Cross erected at Marquion in France by the Germans at the grave of Lt Ross Robertson inscribed, “Er starb den heldentod – eng Flieger.” “He died the death of a hero – an English Airman.” He was buried there on 17/5/1917:-

Model of a Rumpler? Taube. Plus Bristol Fighter:-

Small Models of Fokker Triplane and Sopwith Camel:-

Part of the Fokker Triplane of the famous Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen. Souvenir hunters apparently got to it very quickly:-

Hooge Crater Museum is on the Menin Road just at Bellewaarde, less than a stone’s throw from our hotel. The museum was described in a pamphlet we picked up in In Flanders Fields Museum as the best privately owned museum in Flanders. It’s housed in a former chapel and is utterly jam-packed with exhibits relating to the Great War.

In front of the former doors to the chapel lies this German grave marker:-

From the Menin Road the path to the museum entrance is lined by stone, shaped as sandbags as if it were a trench:-

Entrance and door. Again made to simulate a trench:-

Almost the first thing you encounter in the museum proper is this Fokker DR 1. A Fokker triplane in the scarlet colours as flown by Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron:-

Typical exhibits. (Tank track on left):-

British Officer mannequin with part of a tank behind:-

Trench Mortars?:-

Greenhill Books, 1994, 264 (+ xiv) p

Despite its title this book is not about the German aeroplanes of the First World War but rather the pilots who flew them. When originally published in 1931 it was the first book in English to deal with the German airmen of the time. Many of those names were familiar to me from other books on the war in the air (Quentin Reynolds’s They Fought For The Sky, Alexander McKee’s The Friendless Sky) but these mainly dealt with the Western Front. Here, as well as names such as Max Immelman, Oswald Boelcke, the Richthofen brothers, Werner Voss, Ernst Udet and Herman Göring, coverage is also given to other war theatres: Gunther Plüchow’s exploits in the far East, flying out of Tsingtao till it fell to the Japanese, Leutnant v Eschwege – dubbed “The Eagle of the Ægean Sea” by his Bulgarian Allies – whose base was Drama in Macedonia, “odd jobs” on the Eastern Front blowing up Russian supply railway lines, and in the Sinai doing the same to railways and aqueducts. These latter adventures at times read almost like Biggles stories, though not fiction and told from the opposite side.

The book is prefaced by an introduction (from 1994) by Norman Franks giving some historical context and two lists; pilots who achieved a “score” of 30 or more and all who were awarded the “Pour le Mérite” (“the Blue Max.”) It also has an odd typographical quirk where every semi-colon is preceded by a space ; as here. Was this a 1930s standard?

Since 1931 some of the incidents have been illuminated by more recent research. For instance, the famous “Red Baron,” Manfred von Richthofen, is now thought to have been killed by a bullet fired by an infantryman rather than Captain Roy Brown.

‘Vigilant’ (Claud W Sykes) when dealing with the Western Front has an irritating habit of referring to “English” aeroplanes or pilots when “British” would be more accurate but this is probably the term the Germans used and he is telling the tales from the German viewpoint. He is clearly much taken with the valour and chivalry of fliers on both sides and takes pains to point out that the German air force kept flying and fighting up to the armistice but the last sentence of his final paragraph, â”Im Kreig geboren, im Kreig gestorben.* Germany has no flying Corps and we all look forward to the day when no country will need one. But a few months before we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the armistice, two Germans, setting forth from a Dominion of the British Empire, flew the Atlantic from east to west. The third member of the crew was a British subject. Germany has still a future in the air!” reads somewhat chillingly now.

*Born in the war, died in the war. This refers to the fact that the German Flying Corps did not exist as such before the war and was forced by the armistice to hand over its aeroplanes and so did not outlive it.