Actually, I have some genuine period footage of a Fokker Dr1 taking off, and you'd be surprised how swiftly that thing gets off the deck. It climbs straight out at what looks like about 35-40 degrees nose up with no sign of slowing down or stopping until it is well out of shot! Even something as low powered as an AVRO 504 can lift off pretty rapid (check out the first five minutes of the film, Reach for the Sky, you'll see the one in the 'first solo' flight sequence get off the ground from a standing start literally in about seven seconds, and subsequently go up like a rocket).
Lots of people who fly genuine (or at least as genuine as they can be) WW1 aircraft, have commented that the original power ratings for LeRhone, Bentley and Oberursel rotaries were way off the mark too, with a serious underestimation of how much they were really kicking out, which isn't really that surprising since aerodynamics and internal combustion engines were both pretty much in their infancy as far as understanding was concerned at that time. Read Jane's Fighting Aircraft of WW1 for some contemporary reports of aircraft, and if you know anything about aerodynamics or engines, you'll see what I mean!
Although as Sailor Steve points out, generally speaking the ailerons on WW1 era aeroplanes were largely crappy, which probably would have meant fairly poor rates of roll. So I guess we are going for a bit of artistic license in that clip, and certainly no pilot of the sesquiplane Albatross variants who valued his life would have gone into a screaming dive if he wanted the lower wing to stay on.
Nevertheless, since many of the aircraft featured in that clip would have had rotary engines, they would indeed have turned on a sixpence in at least one direction, and could probably use gyroscopic precession to assist in rolling too. The later versions of the SPAD, one or two of which were armed with cannons (which presumably make an appearance in the film at some point since old Von Richthofen nailed one or two) were easily capable of diving at 200mph, as was the Fokker DVII (which incidentally, Von Richthofen had a say in the design of, even though he never used one in combat). Most Fokker aircraft had a lot of welded steel in their constuction too, so they were pretty tough old birds in a lot of respects.
Not every WW1 aircraft flopped around the sky like a flimsy box kite, and you have to remember that if someone is shooting at your ass, you'd be more likely to push things than any pilot you see flying something like that at an airshow would be inclined to do.
:D Chock
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