On Thu, 23 Feb 2006 14:32:50 GMT, mrtravel wrote:

Johnny Bravo wrote:

As for a precision maneuver, how about Ernst Udet about picking up a hankerchief
sitting on a runway, using a wingtip, to win a bet with Hollywood starlet Mary
Pickford.

Compared to that a 360 degree dive is a piece of cake.

I would bet that he was a better pilot than Snoopy's nemisis, even
though Manfred was credited with more kills.

Udet's story is a pretty facinating read, that guy had the devil's own luck
during WWI. He started out as a pilot for an artillery observer. He went above
and beyond the call of duty to save a defective plane (at one point the observer
was out on the wing to counterbalance the spin the plane was undergoing),
winning him the Iron Cross.

On a later bombing mission he crashed just after takeoff after banking left,
earning him 7 days in the brig for careless maneuvering. On his next mission
that same careless maneuvering saved his plane when a live bomb got hung up
underneath him and he shook it free. When he got back he was transferred to a
fighter squadron and given a brand new Fokker which crashed on takeoff due to a
mechanical defect.

In his first encounter with the enemy, he froze and couldn't fire. Return
fire from his intended target actually shot his goggles off, cutting his face
with glass splinters. Determined to make up for his private failure he ended up
going solo against 20 French bombers. He nailed one on his first pass and dove
down as others chased him. Shortly afterwards several more German planes
arrived and attacked. Udet went after a damaged bomber that had been seperated
from the formation and damaged it further, but couldn't shoot it down because
his guns jammed.

On May 25th Udet ran into Georges Guynemer (who died in Sep 1917 with 53 kills
and had 45 at the time of this encounter), they sparred for a while but neither
one could press home a decisive advantage. Udet's guns jammed and in a rare
moment of chivalry (rare for that late in the war), Guynemer waved to Udet and
flew off.

Richthofen invited Udet to join Jagdgeschwader 1 less than a month before
Richthofen was killed. Udet arrived at 10am and flew his first mission with
Richthofen at noon, shooting down an observation plane during a head on pass.
After a fight with a few Sopwith Camels, Richthofen got one, and a few strafing
runs on the trenches they returned to the field where Udet was immediately given
command of Jasta 11, one quarter of Richthofen's group.

In May 1918 he got a little careless and got shot down by the gunner of an
observation plane. When he bailed out, his chute got tangled in the tail of his
plane, but he got it free and landed without injury in no-man's land. By
nightfall he was safely behind his own lines.

In a later fight with a couple of Sopwith Camels he actually hit one of them
with his own plane. Udet was unscathed, his opponent suffered enough damage to
his upper wing to bring down the plane. Udet later visited the pilot in the
hospital.

When the war ended, fighter pilots weren't exactly in high demand. He
traveled to North and South America where he participated in air shows, and flew
camera planes for some of the more exotic Hollywood pictures shot in Africa.