I don’t much listen to NPR in the daytime anymore, so I missed today’s Writer’s Almanac. I surely regret it, as will be seen should one peruse languagehat’s thoughtful preservation of the text: languagehat.com: THE OLD PILOT.
I spent about two years as a member of a MMORPG called “Dawn of Aces.” At some point a number of pilots from another, earlier WWI aviation MMORPG showed up. On one of their sites, someone had comemmorated an all-pilot fly-in in honor of a member who had died.
The screenshots showed hundreds and hundreds of digital SE5s and DVIIs and Camels and Nieuports stacked up into the digital sky, the pilots weeping into their textchat channels. The site, now lost to me, is one of the most moving and stange things I have ever seen.
Did I mention? Mom and Dad gave me a DVD of Hell’s Angels. The flight sequences are largely unequaled, and unlikely to ever be shot again with real aeroplanes. I only gave them a cursory review, not wanting to spoil the flick, but I noted a proper otaku insistence on theatrical demonstrations of technical accuracy.
Sometimes I see the biplanes circling in the distance, wings flashing against sunset clouds on the horizon. I love all planes, but only wood and cloth really makes my heart rise.
If you follow laguagehat’s link, you can get the .ra stream of the show, of course…
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/docs/2005/04/11/
It does boggle one that we won’t see as much realplane action. Progress, I suppose.
I had some strong reminiscences as I pondered the Personal Courage wing at the Museum of Flight: many an hour spent poring over trivia about airplanes came back to me.
I have always found the WWII planes almost viscerally appealing, but the WWI ships I saw struck me in a whole new way. They were/are so small, so fragile looking, more an extension of the pilot than the more solid metal machines from a generation later. My explanations (to my young aviators) that the planes were made of wood and paper were not altogether registering.