Great thread topic.

There are all sorts of cool landmarks that aren't in game "landmarks" that have a storied history

Philadelphia at KPHL literally right on the final approach is Fort Mifflin.. Built in 1771 during the American Revolutionary War.

South of there, still on the Delaware River is Fort Mott built in 1896 part of the coastal defense system

 

11 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

Thank you! 
 

(PS. I'm guessing you may be a Jethro Tull fan?)

Yes 🙂

Spent a very interesting morning today flying around the Somme region first (found some craters mentioned here) and then took a flight around Bastogne.  Having recently watched Band of Brothers I was curious to check it out from the air.  It’s interesting how the tv show makes it seem like the soldiers are isolated in the middle of nowhere in a massive forest.  The reality flying over is it looks like they were dug in inside a relatively small area of woods quite close to the town of Foy and also a very short distance from the town of Bastonge.  That explains why they were able to medevac injured troops pretty quickly in jeeps.

Fascinating to explore these historic battlefields, I think I’ll be doing a lot of this in the next little while.

Fantastic idea.

At the moment I'm reading Stefan Zweig's book. I'll check out the American Mlitary Cemetary in Romagne sous Montfaucon, and Vauquois Hill, where the French and Germans exploded mines, an blew off the top if the hill.

Terrible.

Cheers, Rob

On 4/16/2021 at 11:36 PM, Dominique_K said:

 

Finish your flight at the Ossuary in Douaumont which contains the remains of  130 000 unidentified German and French soldiers who died in die Hölle von Verdun/l'Enfer de Verdun.

 

 

The thing about that are those 130,000 are just the missing in action (the identifiable dead where buried elsewhere in war cemeteries.) .

Unsurprisingly, World War I does not make for exciting "one man saves the world" Hollywood movies. There is not much individual heroics and skill can do when your entire trench is suddenly buried under 2 metres of mud thrown up by a railway shell.

There is still 460 square miles of France near Verdun marked of as a red zone too dangerous to enter due to unexploded munitions over 100 years later.

Edited April 19, 20215 yr by Glenn Fitzpatrick

4 hours ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

 

 

The thing about that are those 130,000 are just the missing in action (the identifiable dead where buried elsewhere in war cemeteries.) .

 

Not MIA, unidentified. There is also, close by, a French war cemetery with 16 142 tombs.

Although you can make out the British cemeteries as you fly above the front it's a shame that they don't really appear as they are in real life. Beautifully well kept and manicured with clean white gravestones.

I just wish they had updated the ortho around Ypres. I guess there were artifacts in the orthophotos like clouds so default textures are used in parts of the area. I hope Bing will update this in the future as I'm looking forward to explore the area. 

I'm from Sweden so I have no family connection to the great war but I have a great interest in history and especially WW1.

Fort Douaumont memorial near Verdun is depicted and is a POI in the sim. Quite a lot of the preserved battlefield is also easy enough to spot.

14 hours ago, robcap said:

At the moment I'm reading Stefan Zweig's book.

It really is quite something. And a very sombering read, considering where he ends it and that he and his wife commited suicide out of desperation in exile.

If he had just held out a decade longer, he would have seen after all that turmoil the Europe he always dreamed of slowly emerging from the ashes.