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Thursday, July 9, 2020

Germany's Secret Air Force


Germany's Secret Air Force
Mark Felton Productions

The title on this one intrigued me because I've run into Germany's Secret Air Force before when I was checking up on Babylon Berlin.

There were two kinds of radial engines used in early airplanes. There was the kind where the engine block is bolted to the airframe and the crankshaft rotates and turns the propeller. Then there is the Rotary engine where the crankshaft is bolted to the airframe and the entire engine block rotates and turns the propeller. There aren't too many of those around anymore, so I was intrigued to see some tinkering being done on a Rotary engine at the 5:30 mark.

Junkers CL.I
I was very surprised to see the all metal Junkers CL.I monoplane (at the 5:50 mark). I didn't think monoplanes appeared until around 1930. Germany really emphasized engineering. We didn't beat them in WW2 because we had sharper swords, we beat them because we had a thousand times as many war clubs. Alternately you could say we beat them because we all worked together, whereas German was busy destroying a significant portion of their population.

1 comment:

  1. The Military Aviation Museum in Virginia Beach, VA has a flyable example of the rotating engine block type in their WWI collection. For a smaller museum, they have a surprisingly eclectic collection of aircraft.

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