Скачать или смотреть The Flying Joke That Built America’s Air Supremacy

By 1918, the European powers had been fighting World War 1 in the skies for nearly four years. Their pilots were seasoned veterans with hundreds of combat hours. Their aircraft were refined killing machines. And now, as America belatedly decided to show up with pilots of its own, the Europeans on both sides bet that they wouldn’t even last a week.

It probably wouldn’t have been a bad wager. The new American 94th Aero Squadron was blessed with the mighty Nieuport 28 - a French airplane that nobody wanted and that could often barely fly as fabric was prone to peeling off its wings.

Yet, on April 14, 1918, America's rookie pilots and questionable planes finally found themselves forced to the Western Front and climbing to intercept a squadron of German Albatros D.IIIs – the deadly airplanes responsible for destroying hundreds of British aircraft during the infamous “Bloody April” a year before.


Those German pilots were about to learn what Europeans would discover repeatedly over the next century: America’s simple farm boys in flying deathtraps might show up late to wars, but they make one hell of an entrance.


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