November 8, 2018
Published in The New York Review, November 8, 2018: World War I Relived Day by Day by Patrick Chovanec Four years ago, I went to war. Like many of the people whose stories I followed in my daily “live-tweets” on World War I, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. What began […]
February 10, 2023
Today in Microsoft Flight Simulator, I’ll be flying the Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny”, the first mass-produced aircraft in America and a favorite of the old-time “barnstormers”. And to help frame the story, I’m at a small dirt airstrip outside of Americus, Georgia in May 1923, where a 21-year-old Charles Lindbergh is buying his first plane – […]
December 15, 2022
Welcome to Courmelles Aerodrome, on the southwest outskirts of Soissons, for a tour of the French “Aisne Sector” of the Western Front today in MSFS, in the Dorand AR.1. The Dorand AR.1 is a two-seat observation biplane (the AR stands for Avion de Reconnaissance) developed in 1916, in response to the newer, deadlier fighter planes […]
December 15, 2022
Today in Microsoft Flight Sim I’m going to be flying the Nieuport 17, one of the premier French fighter planes of the First World War. Introduced in early 1916, the Nieuport 17 was the first French plane to make use of the German-invented synchronized machine gun, timed to shoot through the blade of the propeller […]
December 13, 2022
Today in Microsoft Flight Simulator I’m going to be checking out the Fokker Dr.I triplane, made famous in World War I by “The Red Baron”. For anyone who missed it, you might want to check out my earlier post on the French-build Nieuport 17, which offers a good backdrop for this new post today. The […]