An album of 130 pictures has been found in Essex. It is thought to be a souvenir from the German surrender in 1918
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2397887/German-airmen-quaffing-champagne-getting-drunk-British-troops-lived-hell-misery-trenches.html
Another great find Rods2! 
I was a bit taken back by the opening editorial explaining how German airmen when "quaffing" back champagne as British soldiers lived the daily horror in the trenches.
Later at the foot of a photograph showing those very airman having "a good time" the truth as us historians know it is stated
"the German pilots adopted a similar philosophy to their British counterparts: 'Live for today, tomorrow we die'"
The truth was that flying those machines was far more risky than being a soldier on the ground, with 13% killed/lost (British records). The losses of both German and British airman was very high, in excess of 80%, with only a small percentage surviving to the end of the war in an age that did not approve of military airman using parachutes. They lived to die tomorrow, as indeed their successors in World War II tended to do, especially in the RAF fighter and Bomber squadrons, with 50% killed/missing in the latter. 
To me that depends on how you look at it. The airmen where generally one on one. The army on the other hand where forced to march towards machine guns. I know where I would rather have been in that situation.
Yes I appreciate that is a simplistic view.
No, I appreciate what you mean. The numbers involved were obviously greater on the ground, with the RFC and Imperial Flying Corps pilots in far smaller numbers, and yes going across acres of machine gun spitting ground is no one's idea of fun. In fact it must have been hell!
However, I personally would rather be killed instantly by a bullet, than falling a few thousand feet, burning, and in dreadful pain, knowing any second you would be smashed into the ground. In fact some airman jumped rather than suffer being burnt to death. This of course was also the case with WW2 fighter pilots as well, although at least they had another final option; the parachute! 
That was one big advantage we had during the Battle of Britain aa a pilot could bail out in the morning and be flying again later that day, whereas for the Germans, those that survived ended up as POWs.
Indeed, or the Luftwaffe air crew who were badly injured, with their plane in shreds, would spend an agonising time in great pain as they went back across the Channel, often only to then suffer a very bad, painful, possibly fatal, landing. This was all a big factor in the Luftwaffe losing the Battle with highly demoralised air crew, who to add insult to injury, were told by their commanders that the RAF were on their last legs with few planes and pilots that could fly.
In WWI the odds were kept even with both combatants air crews flying, fighting and dying over the same foreign territory.
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Topic: Rare informal WWI pictures of German airman (Read 959 times)