DPP: Historical pilots

[lizziec]

Hello everyone :) So yesterday we looked at the neuroses, psychoses and maladies of Pilots and those around them. Today's DPP is Historical Pilots (hello, still marking history exams!). I'm pretty sure we've had this one recently, but I swear it was in my calendar before the post in question and as I'm rather in love with the idea, it stays ;)

Which historical period would you place our pilots in? How would they get on there? Would they do a similar sort of job to the one they do in the colonial fleet? How would the constraints of the time affect them?

For example, I could kind of see them in World War Two. Lee would, of course, be a fighter pilot and I imagine Kara working for the Air Transport Auxiliary (yay! a flying job for women in World War II), accidentally coming across a dogfight and saving Lee's skin with some awesome manoeuvre. Or Kara coming up with some way to disguise herself to join the air force proper :)

And if Lee existed in the Napoleonic Wars times I could see him being a Hornblower type - duty and loyalty and sometimes doing the right thing even if it's not exactly straight (like pushing the captain down into the hold). Which leads my brain to wonder if Lee was Hornblower, would Archie be friends with him and still die to protect him as he did in Hornblower (Retribution?) first by taking bullet and then by claiming that Hornblower's crime was his own as he was going to die anyway. Oh god my brain...</sidetrackking tangent>

Feel free to drabble or just throw out there/discuss your thoughts on our pilots in Earth's history :D

Comments

[winegums.livejournal.com]

OOOOH, I know EXACTLY the time period and story for them!!!! That is, if you can take a tiny element of AU fantasy creeping into the mix, and it's really imagining pilots into another fandom - the Napoleonic wars, as retold in Naomi Novik's Temeraire series (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Temeraire-k-His-Majestys-Dragon/dp/0007258712/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1308776654&sr=1-1).

Short description: it's like Hornblower with dragons. Specifically, with dragons forming an air force.(you see WHY it's perfection, now?)

Oh, and better yet, the deadliest acid-spitting dragons in the English Air Corps will only accept female captains (EVEN BETTER, DO YOU SEE WHAT I'M SEEING HERE?) , who wear men's clothes and serve in absolute secrecy because it'd cause a scandal if the public ever found out about women fighting, when the women in question are every bit as jockish and badass as the men, and occasionally wear their hair cropped short like a certain Viper pilot we all know.

[lizziec]

That series sounds amazing. I may have to see whether or not KCC libraries stock them (or risk ordering from amazon... I'm always scared of doing that because it tends to expand and then I end up spending £manylots). The way you describe it I could totally see pilots in those roles. It's possibly the most perfect fit for Kara ever (she'd essentially be the same person... but on Dragons).

O/T: Would you mind if I add you as a friend? :)

[winegums.livejournal.com]

I know, Kara would be so at home in this story, right? Better yet, the aviators usually work their way up the chain of command so Kara and Lee could totally be lieutenants together if they were assigned to the same dragon, or Kara ends up as Lee's first lieutenant for a while (and they could well be part of the American Air Corps, too, if we want our accents kept straight).

If you're getting any of the books, try the first two, they're totally worth it. And I don't mind friending at all, though my journal contains fuck-all :).