More wild anecdotes from a WWI fighter pilot:
- Allied and German pilots often dropped notes to each other to find out about their missing comrades or to express “regret for the death of some gallant enemy pilot” or drop wreaths during the funerals of well-known aces.
- Once a French captain got his squadron lost in Germany and had to emergency land behind enemy lines. The Germans sent a thank you note to the French for all the nice new airplanes, but asked what to do about the captain.
- One time a German pilot accidentally dropped an expensive fur glove while flying over a French aerodrome. The next day he came back and dropped the other glove “with a note in which he begged the finder to accept it with his compliments, as he had no use for one glove.” The new owner dropped a thank you note back to the German pilot.
(From Edwin C. Parson’s I Flew With the Lafayette Escadrille)
Charles Eugène Jules Marie Nungesser was a French ace pilot and
adventurer, best remembered as a rival of Charles Lindbergh. Nungesser
was a renowned ace in France, ranking third highest in the country with
43 air combat victories during World War I.
After the war, Nungesser mysteriously disappeared on an attempt to make the first non-stop transatlantic flight from Paris to New York, flying with wartime comrade François Coli in L’Oiseau Blanc (The White Bird).
Lieutenant Dorme, of the “Cigognes” Squadron, 1917.