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A couple of images

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Had a nice stroll through Delemere Forest on Saturday and took a few nice photos that I'd thought I'd share:

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Biggles Flies...in the face of realism

(or the perils of trying to write about what combat flying in WW1 was REALLY like) Like many men of my age (no, I'm NOT going to say what that is), as a boy I read Biggles. I know I'm not alone in the fact that my interest in aviation in general and WW1 aviation in particular comes from reading Captain WE John's stirring stories of derring do from the age of about six onward. It seemed to real, so vital, so exciting. Biggles has got a lot to answer for! As I got older and read in more depth on the subject it became apparent that things in WW1 were very different. Yes, compared to the squalid nightmare that was trench warfare on the Western Front, the war in the air was glamorous, the pilots - particularly the Aces - were the knights of the air. But, that's only comparative; for far too many life for the aircrew was short, brutal, very uncomfortable and incredibly stressful. The aircraft were often unreliable, some were structurally unsound. Early ones could bare...

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