Joel Haski plans to fly upside down from Perth to Sydney next year, which will mean hanging from the straps of his harness for 15 hours. He’ll have wheels fitted to the top of his wings, too, so he can even take off and land inverted. When you’ve been flying aerobatics for 26 years, you gotta keep it interesting.How I admired those early WW I fighter pilots as a kid. There seemed to be a mini craze too in the mid 1960's; this was probably the 50th anniversary stuff. If so, where is the centennial?
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It’s not all fun and games, though. About one in 10 passengers is a puker, and if they miss their sick bag the consequences of that 200km/h slipstream can be spectacular. “A guy vomited out the side of the plane once and it just covered my windscreen,” Haski says, wincing at the memory. “I had to land looking through chunks of meat pie.”
Jonny Quest: The Shadow Of The Condor (1964). This Hanna-Barbera cartoon series was waaay ahead of its time. It remains a personal favorite.
The Blue Max (1965) This hooked me. My dad took my brother and me to see it in the theater.
It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966). This may have started the craze, but I think not.
Get Smart: Snoopy Smart vs. The Red Baron (1968): My brother and I asked my dad to record this on super 8 film because we had to miss it and couldn't wait to see the rerun.
Enemy Ace comic book (1965): A good place to pick up German phrases.
There were lots and lots of scale models to build. The best were Renwal's Aeroskin series:
And finally there was the 1966 song:
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[Added] I forgot about Milton-Bradley's "Dogfight" (1963). That was another causative contender:
22 comments:
It was a craze brought on first by the Barbara Tuchman book, "The Guns of August", and the "The Blue Max".
It was picked up in the daily "Peanuts" strip and carried over to the special.
And, before the Royal Guardsmen, was the theme to "Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines", an actual song from the period.
It was a craze brought on first by the Barbara Tuchman book, "The Guns of August", and the "The Blue Max".
I was unaware of the Tuchman book and its influence. Was there much in there about the men and machines?
I forgot to add that there was a cool American Heritage board game called "Dog Fight" from 1963 link. We had that.
I had the Royal Guardsman album(!) that had "Snoopy vs. The Red Baron" on it.....AND Dogfight! Dogfight had plastic SPAD 13's and Fokker D7's that were on a plastic pedestal...as you got kills, you would slip a marker that looked like either a Maltese Cross or a Spad "Meatball" on the pedestal to mark the kill.
here you go....
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1509/dogfight
As a pre-teen boy, I didn't really get all "the mushy stuff" involving Ursula Undress in "The Blue Max." I got it later on, though.
I wonder if the '60s interest is due to it being 50 years since the war....like how we talked about the "Greatest Generation" of WWII in the '90s.
@Ron: We had Broadside as well, the American Heritage game about Revolutionary war naval battles. There was a Civil War game we didn't have.
Ursela Undress I didn't get either....but Nancy Sinatra I did!
Ah! The Christmas song!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh-J4GSPgAM
Yeah, I had Broadside too! The Civil War one (which I didn't have!) was Gettysburg!
I also had a card game about the show "12 O'Clock High", which was really "Identify That Nazi Bomber by its silhouette"
I wonder if the '60s interest is due to it being 50 years since the war...
That may be the best explanation, Ron.
I also had a card game about the show "12 O'Clock High", which was really "Identify That Nazi Bomber by its silhouette"
That sounds cool. Sort of like as a kid, certain people--men usually--could tell automobile make and model at a glance. Not so easy today, IMO, because they look so much alike.
A bubblegum song complete with goose stepping.
Some things are best left in the past.
@Sixty: Charles Schultz sued the band to ensure they'd never see a dime profit. That'll teach those nasty punks.
I could read that easily upside down but it goes right to left. Just like the Japanese comic books start at the back. Just like Egyptian hieroglyphs go this way or that.
It says, Throws darling yinyang mensas into the hair flogging maschinations.
You have to wake up PRETty early in the morning to pull one off old Chip.
You need an inverted oil system and an inverted fuel system to stay inverted.
You need an inverted oil system and an inverted fuel system to stay inverted.
Are they gravity driven?
Are they gravity driven?
The fuel system can be but the oil uses a pump.
The problem though is that the drain in the tank is on the bottom, which becomes the top if you're inverted.
FWIW, WWI nostalgia started in the 60s, a half century after, but WWII nostalgia began in the early 70s.
As I say, nobody wanted to talk about 'Nam, although, once Reagan came in, a lot of Vietnam material reflected the truth, rather than the Jane Fonda fantasy.
If you roll a normal airplane, the engine cuts out while you're inverted. It keeps spinning though so it starts right up again as you come around.
I wonder how the always inverted guy deals with collapsing the gas tank.
The cheap inverted system just puts the fuel outlet on a weighted floppy hose that of course moves to wherever the gasoline is; but a fuel tank needs to let air in somewhere so that draining fuel doesn't collapse the tank, and that vent is on the top.
When I was a kid I read 'No Parachute'. It was a great first-hand account of a WW1 British pilot. I've always been fascinated by those war machines and that periods aerial arms race.
https://www.amazon.com/No-Parachute-Fighter-Pilot-World/dp/B000FOHHB6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1471792620&sr=8-2&keywords=no+parachute
My parents had the Snoopy Christmas album by the Royal Guardsmen. We'd play both sides a LOT each year decorating the tree and the house.
˙sʇǝɹɔǝs sıɥ noʎ ןןǝʇ pןnoɔ ǝɥ ǝqʎɐɯ ɹo ˙ǝɟıן sıɥ ǝʌɐs pןnoɔ noʎ ˙suɹǝɔuoɔ ɹnoʎ ɟo ǝɯos ɥʇıʍ ʇoןıd ǝɥʇ oʇ ǝʇıɹʍ pןnoɥs noʎ sdɐɥɹǝd :uıpɹɐɥɥɹ@
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