100 years ago this month, the United States entered 'Great War'

SPRUCE CREEK FLY-IN — Artists paint or sculpt. Tim Plunkett builds World War I-era airplanes.

His live-in girlfriend of six years, Carolyn Paul, tells Plunkett he is an artist and this is his art.

"I had never thought about it that way," said Plunkett, a 67-year-old Air Force and Delta Airlines veteran and retired Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University professor who remains active as a test pilot. "In a lot of ways, she's right."

Building, displaying and flying these planes are a perfect expression of Plunkett's passions: aviation, aeronautical engineering and history. Next to soaring through the clear blue, he's in his element showing his red and white German Fokker D7, explaining all of its features, from its distinctive markings to the stirrups at the bottom of the cockpit and the machine gun mounted on top.

"You want to pay homage to the people in 1917 who flew and built these planes," Plunkett said. "These airplanes are like a historical character, like Lincoln or Washington. ... You would not want an inaccurate depiction. You have to be true to history."

Plunkett, who owns eight airplanes, has built three fully functioning World War I-era airplanes, the German Fokker D7 and Dr1 Triplane and a British Sopwith Camel. He's building a fourth, a British 1917 Royal Air Force SE5a, and regularly flies a friend's German Albatross DVa.

He keeps them at his home hangar and in the Fly-In community hangars and shops, flies them at airshows and has attracted interest from other enthusiasts from around the globe.

He calls the planes "unstable, uncoordinated, unbalanced, tail heavy, high drag, slow turning ... hard to land and unpredictable."

Anything else?

"And about the most fun you can have as a pilot," he wrote in a blog post a few years ago.

He followed that up in a recent interview in the Fly-In.

"It's a Zen-Buddhist experience. You have to be one with the airplane," he said. "That is how you land it. That is how you survive."

Lure of danger

The airplanes of World War I were deadly dangerous.

Little more than 10 years after the Wright brothers' first fixed-wing flight in Kitty Hawk, N.C., the armies of the Allieds and Central Powers were sending up airplanes and balloons to scout the enemy. Before long, they were being shot at, then doing some shooting themselves, dragging technology ahead with every turn.

Even still, in 1915, the average life expectancy of an Allied pilot was 11 days, according to the BBC.

Most of the planes that were manufactured during the war were rejected as too unstable for use, Plunkett said. The airplanes were primitive. The training was worse. Plunkett said 77 percent of the pilots of World War I didn't survive.

And yet the armies saw an advantage of turning their pilots into rock stars, putting their faces on trading cards and billing them as "aces."

Plunkett admits getting a thrill from the challenge of flying WWI planes, without modern-day comforts and built-in safety measures that have come with a century of engineering.

"Part of the lure of flying is facing danger and the thrill of danger," he said. "I think it's the ultimate challenge when you face death. The outcome is decided only by you. It's decided by your ability. It's very thrilling, it's very addictive and it's very fulfilling."

Why WWI?

The United States entered the "Great War" 100 years ago this month. By then, war had ravaged Europe for nearly three years, as the new machines of death — the machine gun, flamethrower, poison gas and others — largely proved their point.

More than 17 million people died worldwide; some 117,000 were Americans. Compare that with Russia and the Ottoman Empire, which each lost 3 million. Germany, Austria-Hungary, the British Empire, France and Italy all lost millions more.

The United States' late entry was in part due to the readiness of its military, which had traditionally been low during peacetime.

"We were isolationists," Plunkett said. But although President Woodrow Wilson's public stance was that of neutrality, the United States provided munitions to the British, who were among the Allies fighting against Central Powers Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Some in the United States perked up when the Germans sank the Lusitania, a British ocean liner, killing 1,198, including 128 Americans, in the North Atlantic. But it would still be two more years before Wilson would seek and gain authorization from Congress to prepare to join the fight.

Plunkett said America's relatively smaller role in World War I, as compared with World War II, contributes to why it is largely forgotten in popular culture today.

J.R. Williams of Monterey, California, sees Plunkett's point. As past president of the League of World War I Aviation Historians, Williams met Plunkett about six years ago at a conference in Orlando and the two are Facebook friends.

“As an aviator his whole life, (Plunkett) has embraced a period of history in a way most people can’t,” Williams said. “He has the airplanes and he flies them and they are authentic replicas. By doing so, he does as much, if not more, to preserve this period of military and aviation history.”

Capturing imagination

The two men are also members of “the cult of the Red Baron,” as Williams puts it. The “Red Baron,” or Manfred von Richthofen, was considered the ace of the World War I aces. A German, von Richthofen is perhaps best known from the exploits of a cartoon beagle dreaming on his doghouse.

“Charles M. Schultz made him a cult figure,” Williams said.

In 1966, half a century after von Richthofen's death, the "Peanuts" cartoonist breathed new life into the Red Baron.

Snoopy imagined himself battling the Baron but always getting shot down. In real life, Von Richthofen claimed 80 air-combat victories before being shot down himself over France 100 years ago this month.

The Red Baron flew a Fokker-built triplane, a precursor to the Fokker replica that’s Plunkett’s pride and joy.

Meanwhile, Plunkett was also drawn to the air battles of World War I in 1966, although it wasn't because of "Peanuts," but rather a dramatic film he saw while studying aeronautical engineering at the University of Alabama.

"Back in those days there was only one movie. You didn’t have a choice. So I got there and there was this movie called 'The Blue Max.' I had no idea what that was, but it didn’t matter. It was the only film showing," he said. "It was an outstanding World War I flying film. And in that film, they were flying these airplanes. They were flying the triplane. I just was absolutely enthralled by that movie, and I said, 'One day I will fly a Fokker Triplane.'

"... And when I was 55, I owned a Fokker Triplane," Plunkett said. "I think I was really fascinated from that time on with World War I flying and World War I history, and throughout my life, this is what I’ve done."

Myths and consequences

Plunkett wants to dispel a few myths about World War I, starting with who won.

In his view, it wasn't the Americans or their allies, the Brits, French and Russians. Nor was it the Germans.

An armistice signed by the combatants in the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 halted fighting. A few boundaries in Europe were changed, a fact not lost on a burgeoning German leader named Adolph Hitler.

"World War I never really ended," Plunkett said. "It became World War II. No one won or lost World War I."

Yet it was a time from which rapid change sprung. Improvements in aviation would, within decades, make it safe, routine and inexpensive. With those many steps forward, Plunkett senses something was lost: The feeling those aces felt as they danced and dodged over the fields of France, Belgium and Germany 100 years ago.

"If you're looking for a flying challenge, you look back in time," he said. "This takes it back as far as you can go, other than a Wright Flyer. ... Somebody asked me about my Vietnam experience. War is fun if you don't get killed."

It's frightening to teach yourself how to fly a Fokker D7.

"To fly these airplanes, you have to have tactile sense. You've got to hear the wind in the wings. You've got to hear the airplane's vibrations."

There's nowhere near as much instrumentation. "It's mostly visual," he said. "And the flight controls ... these were all feel."

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