Paper Airplanes, part 2

 

 The flight wasn't too bad.
We thought the food service was pretty decent
though the steward had a bad habit
of putting his fingers into the beer.

 

 

 

 

And as usual
the seats were too cramped
with not much leg room.
Yet we all got a window seat
so we shouldn't complain.

 

 

 Once upon a time,
air travel was a dream,
a fantastic idea of flying
comfortably from place to place
in a machine that seemed to defy the laws of physics.
 

Who could imagine a vehicle like that?
Who would trust riding in such a dangerous thing?

Soldiers it seems.

Today I present four photos
of World War One era
German soldiers enjoying
a stress free flight in an "airplane".

Or at least something that resembled one. 

 

 

 

 

My first photo has four enlisted men seated in the narrow fuselage of a canvas covered monoplane powered by a single-engine prop. The aeroplane seems to be at a high altitude yet still low enough that they can see their army barracks down below. The four soldiers appear to be be having a good time. Among the clouds in the background is a gigantic zeppelin airship, a large biplane below it, and a bird-like monoplane on the right. On the side of their aircraft is a sign that reads:

 Flucht aus Bitsch 338 meter Höhe
~
Escape from Bitsch 338 meters high

 

Obviously there was no way a photographer could take such a picture unless they placed the soldiers into a fake aeroplane painted onto a canvas screen. The photographer did leave his mark on the lower right, S. Graetz, Photograph, Bitsch, Lothringen. Bitsch is now known as Bitche, a commune in the Moselle department in northeastern France, about 43 miles north of Strasbourg. But when these German soldiers posed for their novelty photo Bitsch belonged to Germany as part of the Alsace-Lorraine region acquired by Germany as a prize for winning the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. 

 

The German army built a training base there in 1900 that covered 3285 hectares with a camp for 3,500 soldiers and 100 officers. At the end of 1918 France recovered the Alsace-Lorraine and converted the camp into a facility for French soldiers. But when Germany invaded and took over France in 1940, the camp was used again by the German army until 1945. The base is still used by the French military. 

 

This postcard was sent on 13 August 1913 from Metz, also in the Moselle department which was then in Germany. Notice that Herr Graetz was a bit careless and failed to properly crop the image. The photograph really fooled no one as the edges of the scene reveal the illusion.

 

 

 

 

 

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In this next photo a trio of soldiers appear to be flying over a town. The aeroplane is a similar single-wing aircraft with one prop. The curious rack above the pilot and passengers supports a fuel tank, likely with a gravity fed line to the stout 4-cylinder engine. As in the previous photo the background shows a zeppelin airship and a biplane. One the side of the open cockpit are two small signs:

Mit Donner, Hagel
und Blitz, schuf Gott
die Wüste Döberitz.
~
With thunder, hail
and lightning, God created
the desert of Döberitz.

In Döberitz gibts
kein Sünd weil
da Keine Mädel sind.
~
In Döberitz
there is no sin
because there are no girls

Döberitz is one half of Dallgow-Döberitz, a small municipality in the Havelland district of Brandenburg, Germany. In 1894 the Imperial German Army established a training base in Döberitz, where later one of Germany's first military airfields was built. This photo was sent on 20 July 1914, just eight days before Germany invaded Belgium precipitating the start of the Great War of 1914-1918.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

This third trick postcard has another quartet of German enlisted men sitting in a single wing aeroplane with much the same features as the previous "aircraft". One soldier dramatically points to something he sees below in their army base. The pilot keeps a good grip on the steering wheel. Once again a zeppelin and large biplane are in the sky background. The photographer's name was Jos. Jeuck, if I read the German Fractur font correctly.

The card was sent on 28 November 1916 from Truppenübungsplatz Heuberg, a large military training ground  in the districts of Sigmaringen and Zollernalbkreis in Baden-Württemberg. It was first established in 1885 on 47.9 square kilometres (11,800 acres) of hilly land north of the Bodensee—Lake Constanz, and is still used for military training.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

The fourth and last photo has the largest group of flying soldiers, a quintet if you don't count the monkey. Clearly this a party flight that came with full conssessions. Like the previous aeroplanes this is another monoplane with a complicated rigging of wire cables keeping the wings in position. Below them are row after row of army barracks and above is another airship. This time its companion biplane has flown ahead. On the fuselage is the name of a German city, Darmstadt, located south of Frankfurt. The monkey is unidentified but I've seen him before on other soldiers' photos from Darmstadt so he/she may be a representative of a Darmstadt brewery.  Hanging on the right wing is a sign.

Die Zeit vergeht,
die Wolken ziehn,
Wir fliegen vergnügt
zur Heimat hin!
~
Time goes by,
the clouds move,
We fly happily
to our homeland!

The postmark on this card is marred as the stamp was removed and the full date is lost. But it seems likely that it was written during the war years. Fortunately there is enough of the mark left to identify that it comes from the Darmstadt übungsplatz, another military training base near Griesheim, Germany, just outside Darmstadt. The base began in 1864 as a site for firing exercises by Hessian artillery regiments. In 1908 August Euler (1868–1957), a pioneer German aviator, aircraft designer, and the first person to attain a German pilot's license, founded Germany's first aircraft factory not far from the military base. Euler leased the training area's parade ground for his flight tests which is now known as August-Euler-Flugplatz.

 

 

 

Any photographer located near a military base would be foolish to ignore a ready market of thousands of soldiers eager to buy a photograph of their military service to send to their folks back home. This kind of silly postcard of people pretending to drive an automobile, steer a ship, or even ride in a balloon was already a popular novelty of photographers at seaside resorts and spas in the 1910s. But the diffeence here is that this was a make-believe aeroplane, a new machine that had never been contemplated, much less seen, before the summer of 1908 when Wilbur and Orville Wright first demonstrated their Wright Flyer in Europe. Within months dozens of other aviators were able to match, or even surpass, this amazing achievement of human flight in a powered aircraft. 

 

Back in July 2022 in my story, Paper Airplanes, I featured a collection of similar photo postcards that included a number of French soldiers "flying" fake aeroplanes produced by French photographers. This kind of fun photo gimmick was clearly popular with soldiers on both sides of the war. The images retain a charm that shows off the individual persoanlities of each soldier and his mates. We can spot the prankster, the serious fellow, or the callow daredevil. 

 

But we forget that air travel as we understand it did not exist in 1913, the date of the first photo from Bitsch. Though by the end of the war there were aircraft large enough for a crew of more than two men, the idea of a single-wing passenger airplane capable of carrying five soldiers and a monkey was a complete fantasy created by an clever  photographer. What I like most about these photos is that they depict a wonder of imagination, a fantastic imagery of air travel not unlike something devised by a science fiction writer like the French novelist Jules Verne (1828—1905). 

The other curiosity about these postcards is how the fake aeroplane and scenery is nearly identical in each photo despite being taken by different photographers. I suspect that each studio ordered a canvas scene from a theatrical supply house. The "ground view" was tailored to each military base but copied from a standard drawing. 

 

I've been unable to find an actual historical aeroplane that served as a model for these faux ones, but the painted version uses elements from several early monoplane designs. As a way of illustrating what those first aeroplanes looked like here is a colorized historic film of the 1910 London to Manchester air race.

 

 

 

And to get a true sense of what it was like
to fly one these early aeroplanes,
here is short video of a reproduction 1912 Taube
built and flown by Michel Fithian on 9/1/2018.
I think his airplane most closely resembles
the faux aeroplane in my postcards,
though it is only a single seater
and there is no rooom for a monkey.

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where everyone is preparing for take off.
Please make sure your seat back and
trays are in their full upright position.