What was a pilots daily diet?

Chock · 27 October 2009, 03:44 PM

I've known a few pilots who used to head to the hangars to have a whiff of the oxygen from the cockpits of the aeroplanes in an attempt to sober up early on Sunday morning, having been boozing the previous Saturday night, under the impression that it would make them feel a bit better and possibly sober them up a bit too LOL

On the subject of ex-Vietnam chopper pilots, a few of them ended up with jobs flying workers out to the oil rigs in the North Sea from Scotland in the 1970s. In those days it was not the highly regulated affair it is today with choppers that had flotation gear and everyone wearing immersion suits and having to do ditching drills etc. Often divers were flown out in little Bell 47 Sioux helicopters, which is probably not something that would be allowed today with their single engines going over the water. A friend of mine who was one of those underwater welding repair divers on those rigs tells me that he lost count of the amount of times he'd be flown out there and be sat alongside one of those crazy dudes who'd be inevitably wearing a cowboy hat and who would hold the cyclic between his knees so he had both hands free to enable him to roll a joint as they flew over the water.

Back on the subject at hand however, in the Osprey book on

Jasta Boelcke, it has a quote from one of the pilots relating about the Christmas meal they had in 1917 at the squadron, which a few other people were invited to (indicating it must have been considered a pretty good one), and in that the guy says that the main dish was based on potato soup. Wine appeared to be plentiful, rather unsurprisingly for France, but the spud-based meal is indicative of the blockade on Germany starting to affect the kind of food they could get their hands on.

Al

James A. Pratt III · 29 October 2009, 01:14 PM

I have read accounts of aircrew going hunting when not flying to keep the mess in meat ect. MVR was a big hunter. It's mentioned in a German airman remembers. I believe in FTFC

EVR does go hunting at least once.

allannieuport · 29 October 2009, 03:12 PM

Chaps ,

Winged Victory by V M Yeates decribes stunting in his Camel after a lot of Champage. Alcohol fueled flying.
There is a Discovery Channel episode I watched on American flyers. Chicken livers en brochete with strawberry icecream to follow was listed on the menu.
Very tasty.

Kind regads Allan