For some of us, the “Peanuts” comic strip was our introduction to the history of World War I fighter pilots.
Snoopy, the Flying Ace, sits on top of his doghouse with gritted teeth, wearing his cap, goggles and scarf. His house stands in for his plane: a Sopwith Camel.
The Sopwith Camel, it turns out, is a real plane. And one is on display at a new exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
At the center of the exhibit is an old-school biplane. Its wooden body and propeller have been beautifully restored. There’s a red, white and blue circle on the side indicating a British warplane. And just in front of the pilot’s seat is a hump.
“When we look at the camel, we see the machine guns in front of the cockpit, above the engine. And there’s a hump that encloses that and that’s what gives the camel its name,” said Roger Connor, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum.
Connor says the plane didn’t go much faster than 100 miles per hour, but it was agile and could turn and outrun most planes.
What people may not know about the Sopwith Camel is that the oil from the engines created a particular sickness for the pilots. The engines were lubricated with castor oil. That oil sprayed out while the engine was roaring, and some of that spray landed on the pilot’s face. If they ingested it, they would find themselves needing to go to the bathroom.
The Red Baron and why Snoopy fought him
In the “Peanuts” cartoon, Snoopy’s nemesis is The Red Baron, who was an actual World War I pilot. His name was Manfred von Richthofen, and he was Germany’s top flying ace who was celebrated by Germans for shooting down the most planes.
In the world of Snoopy, we never see The Red Baron.
The creator of Snoopy was, of course, “Peanuts” comic strip creator Charles Schulz. He first envisioned and drew Snoopy as a World War I flying ace in 1965, during the Vietnam War.
“He’s doing so as a way to gently bring in the idea of military service, as the U.S. is ramping up operations in Vietnam,” Connor said. “Because this was the 50th anniversary of the war, there’s some nostalgia for World War I, but also that Snoopy versus the Red Baron was a comfortable way of talking about the realities of war using that mythology rather than the real gore and brutality of the war.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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