comic books

I have read alot of comic books on the Aces of WWI, one of how a German ace escorted a crippled Allied plane back to an Allied aerodrome, one where a German pilot was fighting dirty and was shooting a pilot on the ground after he got out of his damaged plane and then when another Allied plane came to attack the German plane that was attacking the Allied pilot on the ground the German pilot tried to flee but the leader of the German squadron cut off the German's escape route and made him fight it out. Do you really think anything like that happened between WWI pilots?

In a word, no.

Graham

Actually, escorting a crippled enemy 'plane home happened on occasion during the Battle of Britain.

I have a great deal of difficulty believing that a German aircraft would escort a crippled British aircraft to a British airfield, or vice versa, in either war. Do you have a source for this (aside from comic books).

Graham

well... I found those comics to be very hard to swallow--the ones mentioned in this thread are not even the most grievous offenders! I've read about the exisence of anecdotes about one side or the other escorting the other fellow down but I've never seen any hard evidence of this (ie. first person recollection or retelling of such things. Given, that in WWII it was common practice (for everybody) to strafe folks in their parachutes, it does seem a bit hard to believe they would escort folks back--and if this was WWI I can assure you that it would never have happened that way for a two-seater... they simply did too many things they needed to be prevented. Think about it this way, if you had to choose between 'fighting fair' and brazenly giving up one of your top-scoring pilots and thusly crippling the morale of your unit... what would you do? These comics actually have awful passages like the following (by the way, I happen to own all of the comics referred to on this thread and have every intention of besting them in every respect --except possibly for the artwork of George Evans, which is pretty good--but that's something different... one of my favorite passages is the following--which seems completely oblivious to the fact that Schlastas and other low-level attack units suffered more casualties more often then regular fighter unit. "we looked ahead and saw a dozen black fokkers with yellow noses. we saw the 'chivalrous' baron felix von kruesling and his squadron... strafing troops... killing... maiming.. mowing down our helpless boys on the ground..." My absolute favorite was, of course "REVENGE" in which a truly outrageous and plasticine romance develops between some nurse and in barely a page and half with such eggregrious lines as "all these weeks, I've kept up this masquerade... this polite, aloof front! but the mask is OFF now! ellen... listen to me... I ... I LOVE YOU! ever since that FIRST DAY..." "Oh Bill... you BIG GOOF! I thought you'd never come out with it!"
other splended passages include "there hasn't been a man who could keep his feelings from a woman since adam and eve, darling! oh, bill... I'm so happy! I..." In the words of Joe Bob Briggs for TNT's Monstervision "Thank God for the jump-cut" at any rate there is a passage that insinuates that it is somehow dishonorable to wait up sun and watch for stragglers leaving a dogfight of some 80-odd planes and pick one of them off as they leave... such comics were always about melodrama and rarely about actual combat considerations... I mean how else can James McCudden earn a VC in a mere four panels! I really love comics, and these were actually kinda inspired me in days of yore... but these are among the last things I would look to for accurate potrayals about the events themselves. I mean, that would be like assuming that the best way to learn about cops in Hong Kong would be to watch Jackie Chan and John Woo movies... great as they are, I wouldn't use them for reference material, not unless I was doing a superhero comic...
funny how virtually every protagonist can score multiple victories without a second thought, or always lands ace... we never see comics where your upper wing folds in the middle of a test flight because somebody back at the factory that made your plane didn't include the interwing ribbing struts or something like that... they were made for kids by people who wanted to entertain people and fit within the extremely rigid publishing limitations of their time. I think comics could be a great way to learn about aerial combat and it's long sordid history (I mean it's mostly about killing folks--even the two-seaters played a pivotal role in that, perhaps more so) but most artists clutter their pages with battles in which all of the major participants would have collided with each other towards certain death. Some of these people even drew Fokker Triplanes with stationary engines and engine cowlings from the SE5!!!! Well, sorry I ranted for so long, but both these subjects are pretty important to me... comics are fun I guess, but not on this subject I simply haven't seen a good comic about aerial combat yet... and I've been looking for awhile... so I guess that means it might be up to one of us to make them, huh?
thanks for your time,
Jarrod