• PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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      1 month ago

      They would also carry a little basket of hand grenades sometimes, and toss them out of the airplane to fall on any troops they saw down below.

      It was a fucking wild time lol. No radios, open cockpit, no artificial horizon. If you flew into a cloud you just lost your orientation and fell out of the sky and died. They just went up there.

      • real_squids@sopuli.xyz
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        1 month ago

        Didn’t you need like a fraction of training to become a pilot? Also imagine running into birds or bad weather, rain would probably feel like a soft top car at best

        • trollercoaster@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          It also was the era where the pilots of some types of combat aircraft suffered more losses in training accidents than in actual combat. While they were fighting a world war.

    • wjrii@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I also like the bonkers phase between the “just take a gun with you” era and the synchronizing gears. Seems to have boiled down to three or four ideas:

      1. Pusher prop and/or an extra 150 pounds of human to work a turret.
      2. Hope you don’t completely destroy your propeller before you defeat or fend off your opponent.
      3. Slap some armor on it, then proceed with plan #2 with somewhat more hope, though now with the possibility of richochets.
      4. Mount a bizarre triangle thing to the back of it that will deflect the bullets in a somewhat less suicidal manner than simple metal plates.
      • fakeman_pretendname@feddit.uk
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        1 month ago

        We also had:
        5. Stick it on top of the wing, firing roughly forwards and hope for the best (Nieuport Scouts)
        6. Mount it on the side of the cockpit at a jaunty angle, shooting outwards diagonally away from the propellor, and attack the enemy diagonally, like you’re a pawn on a chess board (Bristol Scout)

    • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      That does make a lot more sense than my brainfart of plane jousting…

      • CyberEgg
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        1 month ago

        Well, actually…

        On September 7 [1914], Russian Pyotr Nesterov was the first pilot to destroy an enemy airplane, but he did it by ramming his Morane into an Austrian Albatros. Both air crews died as a result.

        • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          So the first kill was a type of Kamikaze? Surprisingly unchivalrous for what I’ve read about early military aviation.