Prototype Images (17 JUNE)

Coming in 2018. 

Roman Fort coming in 2018 

Germanic Warriors (first being released in September)

Britons / Iceni  (first being released in September)

Conquistadore (more prototype images expected late June) 

WW1 Pilot

Raymond Collishaw CB,DSO and Bar, OBE, DSC, DFC (22 November 1893 – 28 September 1976) was a distinguished Canadian fighter pilot, squadron leader, and commanding officer who served in the RNAS and later the RAF. He was the highest scoring RNAS ace and the second highest scoring Canadian pilot of the WW1. He was noted as a great leader in the air, leading many of his own formations into battle.

By the end of May, the Royal Flying Corps was badly in need of reinforcements, much due to the after-effects of Bloody April. As a result, Collishaw was posted to his previous squadron as a flight commander.Collishaw's "B" Flight would be composed entirely of Canadians.

Although British commanders had strongly discouraged pilots painting their aircraft, Collishaw's flight painted their Sopwith Triplanes black (though appearing dark brown), and called themselves the All-Black Flight, later known more simply as the Black Flight

The aircraft of the All-Black Flight were christened with suitable names.

Ellis Reid, of Toronto, flew Black Roger; J. E. Sharman, of Winnipeg, flew Black Death; Gerry Nash, of Hamilton, called his machine Black Sheep; and Marcus Alexander, of Toronto, christened his plane the Black Prince. The flight commander, Raymond Collishaw, flew a machine which gloried in the name Black Maria

During their first two months they claimed a record 87 German aircraft destroyed or driven down – which, strangely enough, brought Collishaw and the unit no wide publicity, though garnered a great deal of renown among their German opponents in the area. Collishaw later claimed that this was because officials in the regular Royal Flying Corps were loath to give credit to naval pilots.

June 6, 1917 was their grandest day. They were flying offensive patrols with 10 Triplanes. Collishaw was leading a patrol when they came across an Albatros 2-seater escorted by 15 Albatros and Halberstadt fighters. In the "fur ball" that ensued Collishaw dropped three Albatros’s, Nash downed an Aviatik two-seater and an Albatros, Reid downed a Halberstadt scout, Sharman and Alexander each downed an Albatros. In total the RNAS shot down 10 German aircraft without any losses.

German Mechanics 

Acoustic Location Device WW1 (will come with two figures)

Acoustic Location devices were used by military services from mid-WW1 to the early years of WW2 for the passive detection of approaching enemy aircraft by listening for the noise of their engines. These typically consisted of large acoustic horns attached to stethoscope-type earphones worn by monitors.

The first use of this type of equipment was claimed by commander Alfred Rawlinson of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, who in the autumn of 1916 was commanding a mobile anti-aircraft battery on the east coast of England. He needed a means of locating Zeppelins during cloudy conditions and improvised an apparatus from a pair of gramophone horns mounted on a rotating pole. Several of these pieces of equipment were able to give a fairly accurate fix on the approaching airships, allowing the guns to be directed at them despite being out of sight.

Although no hits were ever recorded by using this method, Rawlinson claimed to have forced a Zeppelin to jettison its bombs on one occasion.

Tubes connected the bases of two horizontal, gramophone-style horns to a pair of stethoscope earpieces. An operator moved the detector until he heard sound equally in each ear, at which point, ideally, the guns could be pointed in the direction of the aircraft. The two vertical cones estimated the target's height.

Improved forms of this instrument were still in use in 1939-1940, before being superseded by radar. Extract from Canadian War Museum website:

“The Mk 1 Sound Locator was manufactured by A.W. Gamage Ltd. in Britain during the first World War. In the early days of the First World War, anti-aircraft defence was a totally new field. The detection of unseen incoming aircraft was a major problem. The only possible solution with the technology available at the time was sound detectors, which could provide a rough idea of an aircraft's direction and height based upon the sound of its engine. Tubes connected the bases of two horizontally mounted gramophone-style horns to a pair of stethoscope earpieces. An operator moved the detector until the sound was heard equally in each ear, at which point (theoretically) it would be pointed in the direction of the aircraft. A second operator used the vertically mounted horns to estimate height. The system was rudimentary at best, however, as the location of the aircraft could only be established for the time that the sound was recorded. After a sound contact was made, laborious calculations were then required to properly aim an anti-aircraft gun, and any deviation in the aircraft's flight path rendered the system useless. It was, however, the only system available for detecting the approach of unseen aircraft until the development of radar in the 1930s.”