Grey visor cap Real or Fake?

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Dear Ben, if you read German, I can give you some things to read about this issue. It is a professional interest of mine, actually.

Here is an image of one of these aircraft. The decision was earlier, actually, about 1958/9. Lockheed routinely made use of such payments, in fact.

Procurement scandals about aircraft or other weapons are a normal part of modern defense management.

Just read the headlines, especially when it comes to body armor, armored vehicles for stability operations, etc.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Here is Franz Josef Strauss... on the left.
nonetheless a great man of the FRG not the least because he was controversial.

I shall leave it to Ben VK in the UK to identify the man in the middle of the couch in Bonn and the office he held at said time.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Another Starfighter in West German service.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

and a recruiting poster to go with this man and his plane. All of which is to say that the military history of Germany hardly ended in 1945.

[Adrian Stevenson]

Here is Franz Josef Strauss... on the left.
nonetheless a great man of the FRG not the least because he was controversial.

I shall leave it to Ben VK in the UK to identify the man in the middle of the couch in Bonn and the office he held at said time.

I would say it is "Monty".

This is a very intresting thread. In my youth I would have foolishly dismissed many items as "modern rubbish", it is only now I realise that they do have a worth and are now historical items in their own right.

Cheers, Ade.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I would say it is "Monty".

This is a very intresting thread. In my youth I would have foolishly dismissed many items as "modern rubbish", it is only now I realise that they do have a worth and are now historical items in their own right.

Cheers, Ade.

Dear Friend, you are right, FM Montgomery was Deputy SACEUR at the time. Surely the Bundeswehr and NVA are interesting in their own right, but perhaps not to the average collector of III. Reich material. I tend to see the history of war as a continuum, ergo I embrace this latter period.

[vady]

yes, super thread; thanks to all, esp. fb, for the images and contributions.

>115 Luftwaffe pilots died in F-104 crashes<

ben - I think these aircraft were dubbed "flying coffins" - tho fb can speak more authoritatively to this I would suspect...


the recruiting posters, as mentioned, were pretty neat; future collectibles if not present ones in some quarters.

Dear Friend, you are right, FM Montgomery was Deputy SACEUR at the time. Surely the Bundeswehr and NVA are interesting in their own right, but perhaps not to the average collector of III. Reich material. I tend to see the history of war as a continuum, ergo I embrace this latter period.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

The Starfighter was called a flying coffin, as you point out.
I can recall them hic cupping as they flew by low over my head while I drove around in Rheinland Pfalz in an earlier phase of my life.

When Strauss arranged to buy these, he also considered the F 105 and the Mirage. The aircraft were the assurance that the FRG had equal access to nuclear capable aircraft at a time when being in on massive retaliatory blow against the Warsaw Pact was central to FRG statecraft at a time when the US put all its cards in the thermonuclear weapon.

I think these things are very collectible, actually.

I am glad they interest some of you.

Happy flying coffins to all.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Here is another nice poster. Here the aircraft are Saberjets, I think F 86D.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I should imagine the same graphic artist did similar things prior to 1945, or was in the same school. For instance, Liska reinvented himself for Daimler Benz with very good results.

This is not a value judgment, mind you, but a historical foot note.

I am very fond of this style of graphic arts.