Joseph Carl Peter Jacobs

I’ve notice quite a lot of interest in both Josef Jacobs: WW1 German Ace, and his planes. He was quite the character! I have been collecting and searching for photos on both he and his planes for quite some time now and plan to both share and improve that collection on this thread. I hope others who may have photos or information concerning the man and his planes will contribute in the spirit of archive completeness. I ask only that the source of information or photos be listed along with said material.

I should state that although I am building a replica or two of his aircraft, I have no intention of selling or profiting from any of the information here. I hope no one else does either. The fact of the matter is that the World Wide Web is a wonderful tool but all too often, people mistake the publication of information or photos on the WWW as copyright infringement, its not! If you think it is then post a link to the image rather than the image itself. Copyright infringement is when someone or a corporation attempts to profit from publication of unauthorized or unlicensed original works of art and literature. This misconception sometimes inhibits us from using the web the way it was designed. Don’t fall victim to it. My intention here is to produce a central collection of all known information on JJ, sources and photos of the man and his machines. I ask for your help in doing so. Release that information that is trapped in your collection, site its source and invite folks interested in coming by and seeing the originals. In a 100 years, you and I will have long since pasted from this earth and no one will remember us, but the information or photos you have that may be lost to a fire in 2027 will have survived, because you had the foresight to put them here first. JJ deserves nothing less. The things we place here now, will be looked at 1000 years from now as the single source for dreams and research we did on an extraordinary man and his machines. Things on the WWW never go away, and will be here forever, no fires or hurricanes will wipe out this information, and it will be impervious to the destructive forces of time.


Unlike a few other threads, let’s remain objective. I have some information which is circumstantial and criticism, expressed doubt and questioning correctness are the point of posting the information not something we are attempting to avoid here, but please, let’s attack the concepts and information and not the people that post it.


Dark Angel

Other than the internet itself, I've found two main sources that will allow you to prowl through their collections. The first is the legacy of Dr. Parks and Andy Parks which is called the Lafayette Foundation and is located in Denver, CO, the second is the ED Ferko Collection of WW1 Photographs at the University of Texas in Dallas.



This is a sketch of a very young Jacobs. It is part of the Diary Collection on display at the Lafayette Foundation in Denver, CO USA. This is a truly wonderful collection with some really rare stuff, Jacobs' personal diary is just one of the treasures out there. Stop by and look into it, it’s worth its weight in gold. All time high ranking poster to the aerodrome Stephen Lawson is one of the main folks out there. If your are in Denver and miss it, you’ll never forgive yourself. The collection, if I am not mistaken, was put together by Andy Parks' father and grandfather and the sheer magnitude of artifacts is staggering. Look them up.

About the sketch itself; it was done by someone whose name I could not read from the work. If I am not mistaken it looked like a copy on poster type board. The image was held with the diary when I saw it, but I was not sure if it belonged to it originally.

The LaFayette foundation has a smallish collection of the personal artifacts of Joseph Jacobs including his war time diary, medals and casket drapes amongst other things. Of particular note is the diary.

The Ed Ferko Collection is actually multiple collections of photographs, engineering documents, factory photos and other goods pertaining to WW1 aviation. Quite literally this is the Indian Jones warehouse of WW1 aeroplane stuff. I went out there hoping to find a single picture of something and was faced with thousands of photographs I could not bear to leave behind. There may be as many as 1000 Fokker Triplane photos alone out there, that no one has ever seen on the internet before. Many of the photos are complete with negative plates. The staff is attempting to sort, categorize and scan the lot, but they are decades from being even half way through the effort. For now there are boxes of photo albums, with ownership/authorship indicated, and you simply have to start prowling through it.

Of particular interest to me when I first got there was the personal war time photo album of Jacobs,. Sadly there are no Fokker Triplane photos in the diary and surprisingly little photographic evidence of his aeroplanes. Such is the case with all of us, when we are the ones taking the photos, our self and our stuff rarely makes it into one of the photos. Still there are great photos in it of many things personal to the man.

[Dan_San_Abbott]

darkangel:
It is absolutely overwhelming. I have spent five weeks going through the photographs on fighter only. I don't think you could review the total collection in a year. Good luck on Josef Jacobs.
Blue skies,
Dan-San