Tout sang qui coule est rouge

[andonio64]

Dear friends,
Here is my next work, I will build the Roden 1/32 Spad XIII Early kindly assigned to me after the promise I made : “I definitely want to pay a tribute to corporal Eugene Bullard (Tout sang qui coule est rouge / All blood runs red)”.
Before opening the box and starting all the preliminary operations (including photos) I have made a research for historical information and also for photos showing the famous bleeding heart.

Here are some of the sources I accessed to get information:
http://www.theaerodrome.com/forum/showthread.php?t=66158
http://www.theaerodrome.com/forum/showthread.php?t=55190
https://www.historynet.com/eugene-bullard-americas-first-black-fighter-pilot/
http://albindenis.free.fr/Site_escadrille/escadrille085.htm

I tried to put together a sort of chronology of his military life :
      
15 November 1916
Joined Lafayette Flying Corps
   
28 June 1917
Was promoted to corporal

27 August 1917
Arrived at Escadrille 93 (In this Esc. He probably flew a Ni 24 painted in silver with the black duck sign of the Squadron)


13 September 1917
Quits Escadrille 93

13 September 1917
Joined Escadrille N85 which was equipped with Nieuports (The symbol of this Squadron was a Bull until July 1918, then it was replaced by a Joker)

11 November 1917
Quits Escadrille N85   

25 November 1917
Escadrille N.93 became SPA 93 - The Escadrille SPA 93 changed its machines from Nieuport 24 to SPAD VII

Late 1917
He applied for the U.S. Army Air Corps but was rejected
   
9 February 1918
Escadrille N 85 became SPA 85   

But what happened from November 1917 to the end of the war? I have read on an Italian forum (A very old post dating back to 2011) that on 11 November 1917 Bullard was definitely grounded and sent back to his infantry regiment because he had a very harsh quarrel with a French officer. Bullard should have had a strong and maybe difficult character…

[andonio64]

I was not able to find other elements to confirm
1-   Had he ever had the bleeding heart painted on his plane?
2-   If so on which plane?
3-   If it was a SPAD was it a VII or a XIII?

1 - Here is what Greg VanWyngarden says in the Aerodrome :
Many years later, Bullard is said to have stated that he flew a blue 'SPAD' with a personal red bleeding heart emblem (stabbed with a dagger), with the legend "Tout sang qui coule est rouge” (All blood runs red) written surrounding it.

So it could be just a story he talked about after returning home, but (Greg VanWyngarden again):
Jon Guttman wrote an article about Bullard in “Windsock” magazine, and Ray Rimell did a colored profile of Bullard’s Escadrille 85 Spad VII based on Jon’s directions.


I don’t know on which basis Jon and Ray have produced this profile, although the scheme is provisional and based on Bullards tale.

There is no photo of Bullard’s plane with the bleeding heart but a fake one which was touched up replacing the Indian’s head of the Lafayette corps with a modern drawing. See the type of character used for the motto, it’s something like ARIAL, and the rigging shadows on the fuselage appear cancelled, and in any case the plane is a Nieuport.

ORIGINAL (found here: https://tacairnet.com/2014/06/03/raoul-luf-lufbery/  )


FAKE


There is also this image here (a SPAD) but the bleeding heart is exactly the same of the previous photo, it seems cut and paste from one pic to the other



2 - According to what Greg VanWyngarden says in the Aerodrome he flied mainly Ni 24 because SPADS arrived to his Squadrons after he left. But I read that SPAD XIII started being used by the Armée de l'Air in May 1917, the Escadrilles assumed the prefix SPA  when most of the machines were of that type, but this does not meanthat when called N an Escadrille had only Nieuports, maybe it could have a few SPADS...


3 - SPAD VII or SPAD XIII (I have no clues on this but the profile published by Ray Rimell)

I also bought as E-Book “Eugene Bullard – world’s first black fighter pilot” and will start reading it in the next days.


I would like to read  your opinions on this!

Thanks

Antonio

[Borsos]

Hello Antonio,

I love your project and will follow your progress closely. I wished, I could give you a better answer then wikipedia regarding Bullards later career in WW1, but wikipedia.fr says „ Le 11 janvier 1918, il est réaffecté au 170e régiment d'infanterie française, et sert au camp de La Fontaine du Berger près d'Orcines, dans le Puy-de-Dôme, où il forme les jeunes recrues avant qu'elles aillent au front, jusqu'�  l'armistice de 1918.“ (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Bullard)

When it comes to the daggered heart and his slogan, it all depends on what kind of historical proof you need to be happy with. The fun thing with ww1 planes is for me: There‘s so much room for artistic license. So if you like the story, just go for it!

Best regards,
Andreas

[masterKamera]

I was not able to find other elements to confirm
1-   Had he ever had the bleeding heart painted on his plane?
2-   If so on which plane?
3-   If it was a SPAD was it a VII or a XIII?

1 - Here is what Greg VanWyngarden says in the Aerodrome :
Many years later, Bullard is said to have stated that he flew a blue 'SPAD' with a personal red bleeding heart emblem (stabbed with a dagger), with the legend "Tout sang qui coule est rouge” (All blood runs red) written surrounding it.

So it could be just a story he talked about after returning home, but (Greg VanWyngarden again):
Jon Guttman wrote an article about Bullard in “Windsock” magazine, and Ray Rimell did a colored profile of Bullard’s Escadrille 85 Spad VII based on Jon’s directions.


I don’t know on which basis Jon and Ray have produced this profile, although the scheme is provisional and based on Bullards tale.

There is no photo of Bullard’s plane with the bleeding heart but a fake one which was touched up replacing the Indian’s head of the Lafayette corps with a modern drawing. See the type of character used for the motto, it’s something like ARIAL, and the rigging shadows on the fuselage appear cancelled, and in any case the plane is a Nieuport.

ORIGINAL (found here: https://tacairnet.com/2014/06/03/raoul-luf-lufbery/  )


FAKE


There is also this image here (a SPAD) but the bleeding heart is exactly the same of the previous photo, it seems cut and paste from one pic to the other



2 - According to what Greg VanWyngarden says in the Aerodrome he flied mainly Ni 24 because SPADS arrived to his Squadrons after he left. But I read that SPAD XIII started being used by the Armée de l'Air in May 1917, the Escadrilles assumed the prefix SPA  when most of the machines were of that type, but this does not meanthat when called N an Escadrille had only Nieuports, maybe it could have a few SPADS...


3 - SPAD VII or SPAD XIII (I have no clues on this but the profile published by Ray Rimell)

I also bought as E-Book “Eugene Bullard – world’s first black fighter pilot” and will start reading it in the next days.


I would like to read  your opinions on this!

Thanks

Antonio

per your photos...

the bottom photo has the original artwork of the bleeding heart.  if you notice the bend in the heart is actualy on the natural bend of the fuselage of that airraft.  in the top photo of it on a plane, the heart logo has the bend, but the bend is on a FLAT surface of the fuselage.

and the writing around the logo is 100% poorly done photo shop work. wrong angle to it,, ie it was written on a flat surface, not the multi curved surface of an aircraft..

however the logo doesnt need the writing to work, and unless one took the time to hand draw it... well it just doesnt work sadly. But i honestly doubt the words were ever painted on the logo.

[RAGIII]

I say go with the option you like. Personally I would tend to go with Ray's drawing based on Jon's interpretation. Of course I am always up for a scheme based on conjecture. For example Udets candy striped DVII and Erich Loewenhardt's Yellow fuselage DVII. By the way the SPAD in the bottom photo looks like a 13 to Me.
JMHO,
RAGIII

[andonio64]

per your photos...

the bottom photo has the original artwork of the bleeding heart.  if you notice the bend in the heart is actualy on the natural bend of the fuselage of that airraft.  in the top photo of it on a plane, the heart logo has the bend, but the bend is on a FLAT surface of the fuselage.

and the writing around the logo is 100% poorly done photo shop work. wrong angle to it,, ie it was written on a flat surface, not the multi curved surface of an aircraft..

however the logo doesnt need the writing to work, and unless one took the time to hand draw it... well it just doesnt work sadly. But i honestly doubt the words were ever painted on the logo.

Hi masterKamera, thanks for your interesting reply,
I am not so sure about your interpretation I am enough sure that the bleeding heart was designed by someone and pasted on both the photos because shows the hilt of the sword always on the right, and this mean that in one case it appears towards the front and in the other case towards the tail, so the clumsy designer was maybe unable to flip the sword in photoshop leaving the lettering in the same position, moreover to me the curving you talk about is not evident at all and the two drawings are too much identical to be real, even more so that it shows on two different planes! See the position of the sword with respect to the heart contour and also the shape of the hearth which is too much regular.

Moreover Bullard had never gone higher in grade than Corporal and having no certified victories it would be very unlikely that he was allowed to paint a personal marking replacing the squadron one.
If the man in the SPAD is Bullard then it is plausible he shows the chief head on his Nieuport.

That said I still go for the hypothesis he had no personal marking ever and the story he told long after the war is an invention of his drinking with friends in a pub...

I say go with the option you like. Personally I would tend to go with Ray's drawing based on Jon's interpretation. Of course I am always up for a scheme based on conjecture. For example Udets candy striped DVII and Erich Loewenhardt's Yellow fuselage DVII. By the way the SPAD in the bottom photo looks like a 13 to Me.
JMHO,
RAGIII

Thank you Rick for this comment!
I agree with your position, I will pretend I was one of the friends of Bullard fascinated by his war histories in the pub and will paint my SPAD XIII as suggested by Ray.

[andonio64]

Hello Antonio,

I love your project and will follow your progress closely. I wished, I could give you a better answer then wikipedia regarding Bullards later career in WW1, but wikipedia.fr says „ Le 11 janvier 1918, il est réaffecté au 170e régiment d'infanterie française, et sert au camp de La Fontaine du Berger près d'Orcines, dans le Puy-de-Dôme, où il forme les jeunes recrues avant qu'elles aillent au front, jusqu'�  l'armistice de 1918.“ (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Bullard)

When it comes to the daggered heart and his slogan, it all depends on what kind of historical proof you need to be happy with. The fun thing with ww1 planes is for me: There‘s so much room for artistic license. So if you like the story, just go for it!

Best regards,
Andreas

Andreas, thanks for your additional research which fits with the information I had, about my project... well as I said above I won't care of historical proofs (I always look for it but as you say not often we can reach it on WW1 planes!) and go for Ray Rimell profile.

Antonio

[WD]

BLUF(Bottom Line Up Front) it's your model, so you're going to be the one having to make the decision. Yes, I'm like you in that I want to do as accurate a job as I can, but at the end of the day, and especially with WWI a/c, sometimes we just have to push forward and go with what we feel is best.
There's a lot about Eugene Bullard's career and life we'll never be able to reliably verify, and his wife said he wasn't above telling a tall tale. (In truth, I think she just said he was a liar, but  . . . ) Anyway, he was a heck of a man, but then most of the men we study about here were.

WD

PS: I used to have a lesson on him I used to teach my students, so he's kind of special to me.

[andonio64]

BLUF(Bottom Line Up Front) it's your model, so you're going to be the one having to make the decision. Yes, I'm like you in that I want to do as accurate a job as I can, but at the end of the day, and especially with WWI a/c, sometimes we just have to push forward and go with what we feel is best.
There's a lot about Eugene Bullard's career and life we'll never be able to reliably verify, and his wife said he wasn't above telling a tall tale. (In truth, I think she just said he was a liar, but  . . . ) Anyway, he was a heck of a man, but then most of the men we study about here were.

WD

PS: I used to have a lesson on him I used to teach my students, so he's kind of special to me.

Thanks for your very interesting and passionate reply. I feel a great respect and admiration for Bullard and for all the difficulties he faced because of his skin color and I think being a bit "braggart" (I don't know if the word sounds correct without being offensive - which is not my intention of course) is always a more or less hidden side of all the men who are aware of their own value.

I will go - as said for the painting schema by Ray Rimell and will try to print decals on my own for the bleeding heart.

Antonio

[Monty]

Hi Antonio! Really great to have you back on a fascinating and rare subject - but something really worth doing! There are some interesting thoughts about this - I definitely agree the Spad XIII has the heart emblem applied, the shading, tone and general feel of the heart itself on the fabric surface is just authentic to me. Then I think someone photoshopped it and added the lettering around it on the XIII pic. Then I think someone "lifted" this new marking and put it on the Nieuport! Just look at the stringer highlights showing up! My feeling is a heart without the lettering on a XIII in natural fabric finish (Bit yellow but definitely not blue), but I'm not altogether sure if the lettering wasn't added later.... Do you need help making the heart decals? Regards, Marc

[KiwiZac]

I'm very excited Antiono!!

[WD]

Antonio,
             Fighter pilots tend to be "that way" quite often. There's an old joke: if you meet a pilot, don't ask him if he's a fighter pilot. Why?  If he was, he would have already told you, and if he isn't, you'll just hurt his feelings by asking. 

WD

[andonio64]

Hi Antonio! Really great to have you back on a fascinating and rare subject - but something really worth doing! There are some interesting thoughts about this - I definitely agree the Spad XIII has the heart emblem applied, the shading, tone and general feel of the heart itself on the fabric surface is just authentic to me. Then I think someone photoshopped it and added the lettering around it on the XIII pic. Then I think someone "lifted" this new marking and put it on the Nieuport! Just look at the stringer highlights showing up! My feeling is a heart without the lettering on a XIII in natural fabric finish (Bit yellow but definitely not blue), but I'm not altogether sure if the lettering wasn't added later.... Do you need help making the heart decals? Regards, Marc

Thanks Marc for your thougts, I would like to add a couple of considerations:

If the heart had to be red, well the B&W photo with the negatives available at that time would have shown a red shape nearly black.
See this photo of the Nieuport of an Italian ace using a red heart as personal mark (Pier Ruggiero Piccio):


Then if you look at the picture of the heart on the SPAD, you will see two "lines" indicating the fuselage surface change of inclination, if you compare them with the picture on the Nieuport you see THE SAME lines where they should not appear (this is probably what masterKamera meant and I did not understand).

So IF one of the two photos should be considered real, it is the SPAD one, but for the above considerations on the grey tone and for the unreal typeface shown on it I am pretty sure it is not tue either.

In any case as I said I will follow the indications of Ray Rimell.

As per your help offer on the decals, yes! I can prepare the drawing, but I always have problems in printing on the decal sheets with my inkjet, and all the decals I printe at home after a couple of years have detached from the model...

Let me know how you could help me!

Thanks again

Antonio

[andonio64]

Antonio,
             Fighter pilots tend to be "that way" quite often. There's an old joke: if you meet a pilot, don't ask him if he's a fighter pilot. Why?  If he was, he would have already told you, and if he isn't, you'll just hurt his feelings by asking. 

WD

Ha ha, I imagined that, it's part of their "role" !

Antonio

[andonio64]

I'm very excited Antiono!!

Thank you Zac!