Bagpipers at WWII Airshow

[OC Richard]

Well I can't hear the sounds this guy was making, but it's hard to imagine that it was very pleasant.

An experienced piper can usually make correct guesses by merely seeing a piper, and there are a number of red flags here.

For one, his bass drone position isn't one anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the pipes would exhibit. The bass drone has two tuning pins, and with most pipes the top pin would be pulled out high, up to the hempline, and the lower pin lower, around two finger-breadths. (One finger for old Lawries.) On a few makes of pipes the bass drone wants to have the two pins more or less equal. If you put the bass like there in the photo, with the bottom pin high and the top pin all the way down, the drone won't strike in well, and won't sound right. I'm guessing there was some howling of drones going on there.

Another odd thing is his exaggerated finger posture in the upper hand, which tells me this guy hasn't had instruction or guidance.



This guy looks like a piper, in the way his pipes are adjusted and the way he's holding them (well his tenor pins are oddly low). However he's wearing a blackcock tail in his Glengarry which isn't done with the mode of dress he's wearing. It would have been TOS like the other guy, in WWII, but without the goggles! The blackcock tail was for Full Dress. And his flashes are not of the Argyll pattern.

Neither of the chanters they're playing in their pipes existed in WWII.

I don't want to be negative but playing pipes 40 years as I have, and having seen thousands of pipers and WWII photos, I can't un-see what I've seen.

Actual WWII pipers, St Valery, 1944