Discovery Channel Docu on MvR

[Kilian]

Hello.

Yesterday ive seen a discovery channel documentation about MvR's last flight with Alan Bennett. It was very interesting. They had put up something like a lazer cannon to simulate the ground fire and the right angles of the australian ground troops. If i understood this right they came to the conclusion that Brown could not have downed MvR because in a dive his guns would have been to unprecise because of the diffusion of the bullets. Does someone here know from which year this docu was?

Kilian

[JFM]

That's a few years old now.

Okay, just checked. First aired December 18, 2002.

Red Baron documentary video

[Roadhog]

Dear Kilian and JMF, I remember the documentary from when it first aired back in 2002 and thought it was excellent. Are copies of it for sale? When watching the lazer "guns" at work I kept thinking about an incident that occurred at Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning back in 1978.

The Infantry School's Air Defense Committee had to teach a block of instruction entitled "The Role of Small Arms in Air Defense." They made a big deal about the class being a waste of their time since in all the years that they taught it, no group at Fort Benning had ever brought down onr of their drones with M-16 fire. Well, the boys troted out their foam rubber gas-engined drone and made several passes in front of us down range.

When we began to fire, it suddenly jerked and spiraled into a crash. Somebody had clipped one end of the propeller off. Outside of that, they was not a mark on the five-foot aircraft. The Air Defense guys said that we had just proven the "golden BB theory of air defense." That being even a small BB can bring down the world's most expensive aircraft under the right conditions. Next they unpacked their "backup" drone but despite several hits to the wings and fuselage, we were unable to shoot it down. VR, Scott Price

PS Thanks so very much for the postcards Kilian.