News

May 18, 2015

Great War Display Team

We’re very excited to have booked the Great War Display Team to perform at War and Peace this year on Saturday 25 and Sunday 26 July! You can watch the fantastic 9 WW1 replica aircraft performing and dogfighting (massed aerial battles) in the skies above you and be transformed back to the time of WW1 derring-do!

Watch videos of their incredible performances on their YouTube channel and find out more information on their website.

Started out in 1988, The Great War Display Team was originally called The Wombats and was an ad-hoc collection of aircraft including 5 SE5as, 2 Fokker Dr1s and a Fokker D7, many of them flown by their builders. 2014 was the 25th anniversary of the Team's formation and two of the original members, Des Biggs and Doug Gregory, were still flying with the Team until the previous year - Doug even flew his SE5a in January 2013 to celebrate his 90th Birthday!

The Team currently has 5 different types of aircraft available to fly, with 9 aircraft in total. For a large show with a long crowd line the full Team, with all 9 aircraft dog-fighting together, presents a spectacle which can be seen nowhere else..

WW1 Pilots
WW1 pilots were generally in their late teens or very early 20s, many straight out of school. They had very little training, initially a pilot arriving at the Front with 10 hours total flying would be seen as well qualified. Later in the War training did improve and new pilots would have perhaps 30 hours when they started operations. If you think that to obtain a Private Pilot’s licence today a pilot must fly a minimum of 45 hours the experience of the WW1 pilots is put into perspective. No wonder they were known as the “20-Minuters” - their average life expectancy over the Front.

The pilots flew without parachutes for most of the War although the Germans introduced them in 1918, but the allies continued without them until the end. Thus being trapped in a burning aircraft was a constant fear and many carried pistols to provide a quick end or jumped from their burning aircraft without a parachute.

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