Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI - Discovered Crash Site

Discovered Crash Site

Very little remains of these giant bombers, although nearly a century after the end of World War I amateur historians of the "Poelcapelle 1917 Association vzw" working in Poelkapelle, northeast of Ypres, identified a wreck that was found in 1981 by Daniel Parrein, a local farmer who was plowing his land. For a while it was thought that the wreck was that of French ace Georges Guynemer's SPAD S.XIII; however that was discounted when repair tools were found at the site, and further research pointed that the engine was a Mercedes D.IVa, possibly of a Gotha G bomber. A comparison of recovered parts was inconclusive, since the parts were common to a number of aircraft other than the Gotha G.

In 2007 the researchers, Piet Steen with some help of Johan Vanbeselaere, finally made a conclusive ID after visiting one of the very few partial specimens (the distinctive engine nacelles) in a Krakow air museum. With the help of the Polish aviation historians, parts were identified as those of Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI R.34/16, which crashed on 21 April 1918 after a mission against the British Royal Flying Corps field at Saint-Omer, France. The R.VI was shot down, apparently by anti-aircraft fire of the British 2nd Army, while trying to cross the front line, killing all seven crew members.

Read more about this topic:  Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI

Famous quotes containing the words discovered, crash and/or site:

    The true faith discovered was
    When painted panel, statuary,
    Glass-mosaic, window-glass,
    Amended what was told awry
    By some peasant gospeller....
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    The tree the tempest with a crash of wood
    Throws down in front of us is not to bar
    Our passage to our journey’s end for good,
    But just to ask us who we think we are....
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    It is not menstrual blood per se which disturbs the imagination—unstanchable as that red flood may be—but rather the albumen in the blood, the uterine shreds, placental jellyfish of the female sea. This is the chthonian matrix from which we rose. We have an evolutionary revulsion from slime, our site of biologic origins. Every month, it is woman’s fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.
    Camille Paglia (b. 1947)