Talk:Roland Garros (aviator)

Death Date ?
Hello, apparently he was killed on 25th Oct 1918 - not 5th Oct 1918. See this official French Army source:

http://www.memoiredeshommes.sga.defense.gouv.fr/

17.2.2005


 * After a search (récherche), you can even find a facsimile of his Army registration. Remember to enter his birth date as dd-mm-yyyy (06-10-1888), and click his name on the results page. However, you must click at one of these first:


 * If you first click at Morts pour la France 1914-1918, you get this: facsimile civil (?) data Roland Garros
 * If you first click at Aéronautique 1914-1918 and perform the same search you get this one: facsimile Air Force data Roland Garros
 * I am not quite sure of the date of his death, but the (civil) facsimile reads surely something like 25, 28 or 29. Still, this may be the date when his date was confirmed, instead of the day of his demise. Anyway, I suppose the facsimiles are free from copyrights, and one of them would be great for illustrating the text. B222 (talk) 04:29, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * And I found this link at the french Wikipédia: geanology site, date of death: oct 25, 1918

B222 (talk) 04:55, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Not an Ace?
I have found from what I consider to be reliable sources that Garros did shoot down five planes. Couold you show me a source saying he only shot down three? omnijohn 13:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Succeeded of failed to burn his plane?
In the description of the events of 18 April 1915, Roland Garros (aviator) page claims Garros succeeded in burning the aircraft, while Interrupter gear claims Before he could burn his aircraft, he was captured.... Whomever can cite a reliable source on this, please correct the misleading page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ahtih (talk • contribs) 20:00, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I no longer have this source handy to make a proper citation, but the book "Flying Aces of World War I" (Gene Gurney, Scholastic, 1973) stated that the aircraft was wet, and Garros was unable to ignite it before being discovered and captured. However, I'm going from memory... I'm sharing this in case someone in the community has access to this source. ApostleGreen (talk) 02:22, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Use of deflector plates
This is descibed in the body of the article - I don't think this needs to be in the lead as well - especially in a form that actually contradicts the article!! --Soundofmusicals (talk) 18:26, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Not moved. Jafeluv (talk) 07:36, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Roland Garros (aviator) → Roland Garros – All 3 other disambiguations of term "Roland Garros" are named after the aviator, thus it seems to me that he is the primary topic. This is exactly how the articles are treated on the French Wikipedia, where fr:Roland Garros links to the man and has a hatnote linking to the tournament. This is also true for other articles, for example, Arnold Palmer links to the golfer with a hatnote to Arnold Palmer (drink). — sligocki (talk) 23:01, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Roland Garros → Roland Garros (disambiguous)
 * Oppose. Roland Garros now most commonly refers to the stadium to which he gave his name, or by metonymy, the French Open. Merely being first has nothing to do with WP:PRIMARYTOPIC on the English Wikipedia. Tassedethe (talk) 06:04, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, I am not saying he should be the primary topic because he came first, but because everything else is named for him. — sligocki (talk) 00:11, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think this is a policy or guideline anywhere, and frankly, it might not be a good rule of thumb. A lot of famous people were named after somebody else with a Wikipedia article but are still the primary topic. For example, Benedict Arnold refers to the American Revolutionary War general and not his great-grandfather. –CWenger ( ^ •  @ ) 00:27, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Just because something is named after something else doesn't make the first thing the primary topic. Boston is named after Boston, Lincolnshire but nobody suggests that is the primary topic. Tassedethe (talk) 01:53, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Support. Roland Garros (alone) only properly refers to the aviator. The airport is Aéroport de la Réunion Roland Garros, or Roland Garros Airport, and the site of the tennis tournament is Stade Roland Garros. In English, the tournament itself is the French Open. LRT24 (talk) 15:32, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose: I bet most people hear "Roland Garros" watching the French Open, and the most clarifying page for those readers would be the disambiguation page. –CWenger ( ^ •  @ ) 16:35, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
 * A hatnote accomplishes the same thing, without making everybody go to a DAB page. LRT24 (talk) 18:12, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
 * A disambiguation page provides more opportunity to clarify though, and it seems wrong for the aviator to be made the primary topic if the most prevalent contemporary usage of "Roland Garros" is to refer to the French Open. –CWenger ( ^ •  @ ) 18:42, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Support. No need to disambiguate the name, there's no reason to call any other article by this name. Specific hatnotes to the stadium and tournament are justified as well as the one to the DAB, making three in all which is unusual but appropriate in this case. Andrewa (talk) 16:38, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Support. A well-known historical figure, clearly the source for all other dab links. SteveStrummer (talk) 16:43, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Tassedethe and CWenger. Last month, the dab page was viewed 40,223 times, but the aviator was only viewed 14,106 times. More importantly, the page views of the dab increase significantly at the date the French Open began, clearly showing that many people typing 'Roland Garros' are looking for the stadium and that the aviator does not meet the criteria set out at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Jenks24 (talk) 09:32, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
 * However, if this move request is successful the dab page should be moved to Roland Garros (disambiguation) (as opposed "(disambiguous)"), per standard practice. Jenks24 (talk) 09:34, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
 * If you have a look at other months, the aviator gets more views than either Stade Roland Garros or Roland Garros Airport (I'm not including French Open, since most people probably don't get to it from this DAB page). We can't base any decision on two weeks a year. LRT24 (talk) 18:48, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
 * My point is that the page views of the dab go up significantly during the French Open, which means that while people may not be searching for it the entire year, when they do type in "Roland Garros", they expect to find either the French Open or the stadium. On another note Roland Garros (aviator) and Stade Roland Garros have roughly the same number of incoming links, meaning there is no clear primary topic, which is what's required by WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Jenks24 (talk) 20:08, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Peter E. James (talk) 21:30, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
 * That shouldn't be a consideration. As Roland Garros is a DAB, there shouldn't be links going to it anyway. They need to be cleaned up either way. LRT24 (talk) 19:00, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The first determining factor listed at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is "Incoming wikilinks from Special:WhatLinksHere"... –CWenger ( ^ •  @ ) 19:04, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, it specifically says that those are NOT determining factors, but tools that might be helpful. The incoming links are inherently going to be biased toward tennis, since we have articles on about 2000 tennis players. The number of articles that would logically link to the pilot are bound to be fewer. LRT24 (talk) 19:39, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It also says they "may help to support the determination of a primary topic in a discussion"—far from "shouldn't be a consideration" as you stated. –CWenger ( ^ •  @ ) 20:15, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It's easier to find incorrect links when they point to a disambiguation page, and links such as these may be evidence that people expect another article to be there. Peter E. James (talk) 20:16, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Just noting that I cleaned up all the links that were leading to the dab page and the majority of the links to "Roland Garros" had to be corrected to "French Open" (eg. 'Some Player won Roland Garros in 1984' and the like), which only strengthens my opinion that the aviator is not the primary topic. Perhaps the tennis tournament is, but that's a discussion for another day. Jenks24 (talk) 21:45, 12 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Oppose, not the primary topic (if there is one, it's surely the tennis venue).--Kotniski (talk) 16:03, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Officer of the Legion of Honor
Was Garros awarded Officier de la Légion d'honneur in 1918 posthumously or before he was killed in action that year? Dick Kimball (talk) 16:43, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Not an ace? (revisited)
I found references tending to confirm 5 air victories, Garros being the first "ace," and his being unable to burn his airplane before the Germans could sieze it:
 * In a two week period in March 1915 Garros downed no fewer than five German aircraft, an achievement that led to his being dubbed an "ace" in an American newspaper; the term stuck and was consequently attributed to other Allied pilots who similarly achieved five successes.
 * Garros' run of good fortune deserted him however the following month, April 1915, when he was obliged to crash land his aircraft behind German lines. Caught trying to burn his aircraft so as to protect the secret of his forward firing machine gun Garros was placed into captivity and his aircraft handed over to aircraft designer Anton Fokker. 

There's also this from the French Wikipédia:
 * Une panne contraint bientôt le sous-lieutenant Garros à atterrir en territoire occupé 18 avril 1915 et il est fait prisonnier avant d'avoir pu mettre le feu à son avion : son système est aussitôt étudié et amélioré par Anthony Fokker qui en équipera son Fokker E III avec lequel l’aviation allemande va dominer les airs jusqu’à la fin de 1915.

With my attempt comme une vache espagnole to translate it:
 * A failure soon forced Second Lieutenant Garros to land in occupied territory on April 18, 1915 and he was taken prisoner before he could set fire to his aircraft: its system was immediately studied and improved by Anthony Fokker to equip his Fokker E III with which German aviation would dominate the air until the end of 1915.

Dick Kimball (talk) 18:44, 24 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Van Wyngarden, as cited in the article, follows the research of Norman Franks, who is the recognised authority on details concerning WWI aces' scores - this supersedes earlier, less accurate sources. The article may very well be subject to improvement based on the French Wiki article, but this is not in itself a source (Wikipedia is not incestuous) - and in fact (at the risk of seeming "un-PC") one needs to be aware of "Gallic hype" - French writing, especially on subjects like this, is traditionally rather more "flowery" than a careful writer in English would be allowed. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 20:14, 24 March 2014 (UTC)


 * "Gallic hype" ? Does it mean that a French source is ipso facto less valuable than an British one? Because that is exactly what this sounds like. Talk about "hype"... It seems to me the Brits (and many English native speakers at large) proclaim themselves the big experts on anything WW1 and WW2 a bit too easily, and some of them don't like it too much when something good can be said about their old friends/rivals the French, amirite? The use of the word "gallic" in itself, like in "gallic shrug", shows the bias, and makes whoever use it lose much of their credibility. Talking about hype, there's this in the article: "Legend has it that after examining the plane, German aircraft engineers, led by Fokker, designed the improved interrupter gear system. In fact the work on Fokker's system had been going for at least six months before Garros's aircraft fell into their hands." First, this has no source, and no one seems to care (including the guy who mentioned "gallic hype" above), and second, this doesn't mean that the germans could achieve the design of their system without examining the Garros one (we'll probably never know). It could be a coincidence that the germans developed theirs successfully after finding Garros's plane. I have no problem with that. But suggesting that the sources found in an article in French are less to be trusted that those from an article in another language based on a nation's character is not only offensive, it is just plain stupid, as in xenophobic stupid. Oh yes, there is this "recognized authority" who just happens to be from an English-speaking nation (British, I presume? I didn't check), but no, the Brits didn't invent the study of History or the use of carefulness and unbiased approach in the study of History. I am sorry if this is news to anyone. Onaryc (talk) 12:48, 28 October 2015 (UTC)


 * This is a Wiki talk page, and is very specifically NOT a forum - we post here primarily to explain changes we have made to an article or to suggest changes other people might make - its aim is to improve an article, and therefore the encyclopedia as a whole. Personal remarks are "out", for all manner of reasons. I will now proceed to be very naughty and answer the above.


 * Precisely because we respect French sources, some of us have read quite a few, and if you had done the same you would not be startled at the suggestion that books authored by people of French speaking background tend to use "flowery", and at times even hyperbolic, language. They just do. Open any one of them at random and see if I am right. I attempt no explanation - it may be due to differing culture (we are, I hope, allowed to suggest the French have a distinct culture, which differs in many respects from the "Ango-Saxon" way of looking at things, without being "xenophobic stupid") - or it may be a product of the nature of the languages themselves - the French themselves are known to lay great stress on the unique characteristics of their (have to admit it) beautiful and expressive language, so this also might be conceded without undue surprise. Or it may even be a product of the translation process. My description of French writing on historical subjects as "gallic hype" was, even bearing all this in mind, unfortunate - and in this context I suppose I had better apologise.


 * The relevant points I was actually trying to make were: firstly - in history, as much as the other social and physical sciences, it is a general rule that recent works take priority over older ones, unless the older sources are patently superior (as occasionally they are, of course) or (for instance) the more recent work is careless, derivative, or patently inaccurate, in which case we may discount it altogether. In this case we are comparing good old sources with good "more recent" ones, and have taken the word of the more recent. Everything here is (we hope) based on published sources rather than "made up" - if you have sincere doubts as to the accuracy of any statement then add a "citation required" tag. My second point was that another wiki article (including one from the German, Italian or French editions of Wikipedia) CANNOT be used as a source - although it may be "mined" as a useful source for books etc. for your own further reading. All else circular citation and referential incest. And yet sometimes things not sourced in one article are better covered in another - do read our article on gun synchronisation. We may need to duplicate some citations and improve the text of this (older) article in light of the other more recent and comprehensive one.


 * It is a good rule NEVER to cite a work you haven't read, and don't have open in front of you as you cite it. My own editing is backed up by a considerable personal library, to which I am constantly adding. Great fun, actually, especially for one of my advanced years. Libraries (and even the internet) are also useful tools, but you can't beat a good book (wheeze wheeze). --Soundofmusicals (talk) 05:24, 29 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you for rather patronisingly reminding me what a Wiki talk page is for, but I am perfectly aware of it, and commented on your comment anyway, because I thought it deserved to be. So I am guilty of that, without feeling guilty in the least, I must add. I am not even trying to argue about what the sources say and which should be considered, I was only arguing about the way you dismissed some sources because of "Gallic hype" and supposedly "flowery" French writing, as if that was a proven fact. I am also aware that you cannot cite a wiki article as source, and I was not suggesting that you should, at any time. In your reply, you do apologise, and I accept the apology, for what it's worth. I am more interested in what you said about the French language and what you call the translation process. I have read and practised English for decades now, spoken it, heard it. I know that words of French origin in English tend to be regarded as more solemn, more "intellectual", more "flowery". Also maybe more snobbish-sounding. A simple word like "freedom" is translated as "liberté" in French, because "free" is "libre". But if you use the word "liberty" in English, it will immediately sound more solemn, or sophisticated, or refined or whatever, to an English ear. But this is all in the English ear, or mind. The French word "liberté" is based on the French word "libre", just like "freedom" is based on "free". So the word "liberté" doesn't necessarily have any of those "flowery" qualities that the English word "liberty" will have. And that goes for so many other English words of French origin, and also, probably, for the differences in sentence structure in both languages. Which may be the reason why a French text may sound more flowery and hyperbolic if translated a bit too sloppily by a lazy or overworked translator. Someone once told me that English words of three syllables or more are French, and I've found this to be true more often than not. No wonder that in translation French writing may sound hyperbolic to you. In fact, as a native speaker of english, you may not be aware of the very hyperbolic aspect of your own language. When you find a film good, it's "the best film I've ever seen in my entire life". A tasty dessert is "amazing", everything is "outstanding", and "sooooo wonderful". I could go on. Sounds all quite hyperbolic to me, even if I see it all the time and am used to it.


 * One last thing though. From a French point of view, the "Anglo-Saxon" vision of anything French is often surprising, to say the least. Patronising at best, and at worst, well, it becomes French bashing. There are all sorts of books about the French in the humour section of bookshops in Britain. This has no equivalent in France about the British. And when it comes to war, especially WW2, the British have a way of "humbly" letting you know that they're the big heroes and they saved your sorry arses that gets a little annoying after a while. They tend to conveniently forget that they lost the battles in 1940, just like the French, only they had an island to retreat to. Just like they seem to forget that only a combination of allied nations including the Russians (absent from the war in 1940 because of their pact with Hitler) could defeat the Nazi armies after a few years, and just like they forget that the French shot down half of the German planes when they mention the Battle of Normandy that took place later. I have always wondered if this state of mind explains the patronising, half-condescending, half-amused attitude towards us.


 * I hope I didn't sound too flowery. Cheers mate. Onaryc (talk) 19:05, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Succeeded of failed to burn his plane? (revisited)
See the article on gun synchronisation for authorities etc. on this one - For the record - a photograph of the propeller from Garros' Morane L does seem to show evidence of having been scorched, at least. Garros surely at least attempted to burn his aircraft when he force landed, but equally obviously, any damage was insufficient to conceal the nature of the deflector plates. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 20:44, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Encounter with Zeppelin?
According to some sources I've been reading it looks like the Aug. 3, 1914 report of him ramming a Zeppelin was discredited.

https://airminded.org/2013/05/15/the-first-death-of-roland-garros/

https://books.google.com/books?id=titSAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA1230&lpg=PA1230&dq=Roland+Garros+zeppelin&source=bl&ots=j4C7bbvVMy&sig=QneU_41s5-oMqrR6eBFM3SefuDA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjt4dG2k6XVAhVKl1QKHYLYCxIQ6AEISDAG#v=onepage&q=Roland%20Garros%20zeppelin&f=false

http://acepilots.com/wwi/zeppelin.html

I don't have time at the moment to look more into it, but it seems that, at best, there is some ambiguity as to what actually happened that day if the entire story isn't simply false.

Lukesimonds1234 (talk) 19:33, 25 July 2017 (UTC)