William Faulkner has some wonderful stories about the WW1 days when people would go up in these rickety planes with a handgun, and take potshots with it with one hand while they flew the plane with the other, or take up a big basket of hand grenades and be lobbing them down at people on the ground while the people on the ground were shooting at them with infantry weapons.
Pilots in war have always been nuts, but there’s levels of nuts.
I love seeing pictures of WW1 infantry preparing to let loose an anti-aircraft volley from their bolt-action rifles. What a wild time of military developments
Somewhere there is a Vietnam book where an American pilot told a story about “One-Shot Charlie”. There was an old Vietnamese man in some village who had some kind of ancient rifle, and every time they were flying nearby, he’d come out of his house and fire a single shot at the aircraft going past him half a mile up or whatever, and then go back inside. Just kind of a “I hate the fuck out of you but all I have is this rifle but fuck yes I will do my part.”
They loved him. They never tried to attack him and I think would have been legitimately angry if someone had tried to hurt him. When you are in war you find your moments of safety and humor where you can.
Flight of the Intruder opens with an A-6 bombadier being hit and killed in the Korean War by a round from a bolt-action rifle at low altitude.
No gun, no problem. If you are wearing shoes you always have options.
W was a piece of shit in many many ways, but you can’t deny his humanity in that moment. Dude handled it like a champ and couldn’t wait for whatever was coming after the second shoe. You could tell that was his favorite thing that ever happened in a press conference.
I love watching this video. The look of bewildered amusement on his face after the first shot is so relatable.
He has impressive reflexes for a drunk who got off coke.
Still ate shit on a Segway.
That’s how it all started. Guys in planes with handguns.
The French eventually put a forward-mounted gun on the plane but had to install deflectors on the prop that would protect it from bullets. On the German side Fokker developed an interrupter gear to be mounted onto the Fokker Eindekker which prevented the mounted gun from discharging when the propeller was in the way. It wasn’t perfect, but better than the deflectors.
ETA: The story goes that Fokker himself went up to demonstrate the forward-mounted machine-gun with the interrupter gear, but once he got behind an Allied scouting plane, he didn’t have the heart to kill the crew. It didn’t take long, before other pilots gladly started shooting down enemy planes.
With biplanes, guns were sometimes mounted on the upper wing to evade the problem, though eventually the central powers developed their own interrupter gear mechanism.
Note that those flying contraptions were considered more valuable than pilots, and they were sent up without parachutes in order to given them incentive to return with the plane, or at least get it to the ground with less damage. As I flew WWI flying simulations, I noticed I had a while to think up some good last words while staring at the looming ground. Too bad no one would ever hear them.
My Post Civil War American History professor told us that the enemy pilots used to wave to each other as they flew past each other. Then one day some asshole pulled out his revolver and shot the guy waving at him, and that’s when they started mounting guns on airplanes.
Waving at each other just shows how fucked up society was at the time:
“Sure, you’re spotting for the artillery that’ll kill hundreds of my countrymen, but they’re only peasants. Us two, we’re nobles.”
There is a wonderful movie about a dog fighting ww1 pilot who is a pig. Both pilots guns jam so they start throwing shit at eachother. It’s called Porco Rosso, it’s a wonderful film on Netflix(atleast in Canda). If you haven’t checked it out I suggest you do. "I’d rather be a pig than a faciast:
? It was pretty clear that the male characters’ behaviour was not being celebrated. Porco is troubled and self-hating, and Curtis and the pirates are explicitly villains. Sexism is real so I think depiction of it is necessary, so long as it’s not applauded or encouraged. I might even use it as a start point for talking about misogyny with my daughters one day.
Well damn, I guess Birth of a Nation gets a pass on it’s racism because it was made in 1915.
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