And they had lions mascots!



Whisky and Soda!




Suck on this libbos! These were a sign of machismo!

Did you get lost on your way to the History board?

Skull & Crossbones, check
Coffin & Candles, check
Grosses couilles, check

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Instead of a parashoot you were given a pistol to shoot yourself in the head if your plane caught on fire.

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Actually, by the summer of 1918 the German pilots were starting to be equipped with parachutes. Ernst Udet owed his life to one:

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Suddenly the Fokker nosed down into a spin from which Udet could not pull out. He was wearing one of the new Heinecke parachutes that German pilots were just being equipped with, and he stood up in the cockpit to jump. As he did so, a rush of wind knocked him backward. But instead of tumbling into the wide-open sky, Udet to his horror realized that his parachute harness was caught on the rudder. Frantically, he struggled with the harness as the earth spun closer. With a final superhuman effort he yanked himself free and floated down into no man's land. He quickly scrambled back to the German lines and, taking his harrowing experience in stride, was flying again that same afternoon. The next day he shot down a Spad fighter for his 36th victory.

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http://www.historynet.com/ernst-udet-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-german-world-war-i-ace.htm


Hermann Goring, with parachute harness

The British had also developed parachutes but didn't issue them to pilots on the reasoning that it would encourage pilots to unnecessarily abandon their airplanes ...

30 minutes average time to live for a pilot !

Always been a fantasy of mine. If I had a chance to go back in time that would be one of them.

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The War to End All Wars was nothing but the greatest massive slaughter like the world has ever seen that basically resolved nothing. Useless senseless slaughter. Simply set the stage for the next war.

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True that. Also resulted in the downfall of three monarchs and their empires: Wilhelm II in Germany, Nicholas II in Russia, and Charles 1 in Austro-Hungary (grand-nephew of Emperor Franz Joseph, who died in November 1916). (Not to mention the Bolshevik Revolution and civil war in Russia, and near civil war in Germany, too.)
Obviously, none of them could have foreseen what they were leading their countries into.

Prophetic words from Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898): "You know where a war begins, but you never know where it ends."

The Original AG 76 said:

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The War to End All Wars was nothing but the greatest massive slaughter like the world has ever seen that basically resolved nothing. Useless senseless slaughter. Simply set the stage for the next war.

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And the next and the next. 99.9999% of our trouble with the middle east is due to the "winners" in WWI dividing SW Asia into their own little fiefdoms, totally ignoring history and tribalism.

And back to the OP, I once read that many of the early aircraft engines were lubricated with castor oil. And since they leaked all the time, the pilot was constantly in a spray of castor oil, which gave him the runs.

As if merely being in WWI air combat wouldn't do that to you anyway.

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And back to the OP, I once read that many of the early aircraft engines were lubricated with castor oil.

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IIRC, it was the rotary engines that were lubricated with castor oil. Non-rotary engines (such as on the SE-5, SPAD 13, Fokker D.VII, and Albatross fighters) didn't have to use castor oil. No wonder von Richthofen favored the D.VII over the Dr.1 Triplane (but he didn't live long enough to fly it in combat)

Before going to Vietnam my grandfather was chief of combat operations for the SR71 program out of kadena/Naha, Okinawa. When he got to Vietnam he was stationed in Da Nang and given a pistol. He was told to shoot himself if it looked like he would be captured.

He laughed about that years later and said just glad I never had to consider that.