Now I know why it was called "BLOODY APRIL!"

We had dropped our payload over the target and were headed back towards our own lines when Jerry showed up to the party with quite a few of his friends. I was supposed to protect the bombers, but Jerry came in so hard and so fast that they blew right past me, making a bee line for the bombers. I watched in helpless horror as the trailing right side bomber went down in a ball of fire on the very first pass, having apparently been rammed by one of the trio of Albatross's that came screaming in on him. The German pilot found his mark, but at a terrible personal cost.

I quickly gained position to take a bit of a long range shot at another Alb that was harassing the bomber flight lead and successfully drove him off flight leaders tail. But it took a few seconds too long. Even as the lone Albatross peeled away from flight lead, I turned to see another pair hammering the second, trailing left side bomber. Almost immediately it tumbled uncontrollably out of the sky. In less than 30 seconds, 50% of my total flight had been wiped out by the Jerrys.

Bloody April indeed!

With just one bomber left to protect and literally swarms of Albatross around, I did the only thing I could do. I played the part of Rodeo Clown while flight leader broke for home as fast as possible. I twisted and turned like a writhing snake, both to keep their guns off of me but also to find any mark I could, no matter how briefly. Every second I delayed them, every moment that I taunted them with my Lewis rounds hammering into their planes, it gave flight leader that much more of a chance to make it home.

It was the most furious fight I ever remember. Those little bastards were everywhere and they just kept coming! If I chased one or two out of the sky or forced them to drop too far below the fight, no sooner did I think I had cleared the skies then two or three more of them showed up, buzzing round me like an angry swarm of hornets!

But it wasn't only the Albatross's I had to deal with. Jerry's AA was filling the sky with puffs of black smoke and those fellows seemed to know their business. Twice I recall literally flying right through black smoke! I think the only thing that kept them from hitting me was how erratic my flying had become in order to keep the swarms of Albatross off my tail. I could barely get my guns on one before I could see another on my tail or quickly coming around to do so! My maneuvers were so violent that I could hear the creaking and groaning of my poor little Sopwith Pups wings. To tell the truth I was equally scared that I would rip my own wings off from my evasive maneuvers as I was of Jerry's bullets. If the thick flak didn't blow me up or the swarm of Jerry's didn't shoot me down, I was certain I would die when my aircrafts wings came off due to stress.

Like a mad man possessed I fought them. Twisting, turning, diving, climbing, shooting! Anything to keep them from shooting me. Anything to get a few rounds into one of them, no matter how brief.

Did I survive? Watch and see.

RFC-54 sqdrn "Bloody April" Bomber Escort Mission (720p)




PS. You can see the second bomber fall out of the sky in the distance at 1:40 in, just to the right side of my engine. He's out of view by 1:45.

Nice. I enjoyed as usual. You always have great videos.
CT

Wow, some of that Archie was really close! Fantastic flying.

Well my friends my unexpected weekend off has come to a close. I got to fly a lot more WOFF actual Campaign Missions than I have in awhile and I can say it was a fantastic experience. Clearly between Dev patches and a great 3rd party modding community, WOFF is taking giant leaps forward all the time. All the same, it's back to the salt mines for me. I did however get 2 more Bloody April Campaign Missions in, so here they are.

By the way, they say that the average lifespan of an Allied pilot during Bloody April was 2 weeks. Now I see why. WOFF does an outstanding job of modeling the German air superiority. It feels hopeless and desperate up there.


Bloody April 2 - Campaign Mission (720p)



Bloody April 3 - Campaign Mission (720p)




Enjoy.

As usual great quality vid and impeccable flying skills Hellshade.
This time I found the pre-amble on your first vid riveting! My heart was pumping before I even got to the vid.

I always look forward to your contributions mate!! At least back at the salt mines your nerves should settle down and yo won't have to worry about who is on your six!

Hellshade near the end of the first video I noticed you pull up the map and although its not the latest moded version that has been very popular, yours does look like it was moded somewhat because your town names are much darker and easier to read that I recall the stock maps to be.

Did you make a change to your stock map and if so, what Font did you use because that one thing I would love to mod is to improve the text when zoomed at max (and I see that you were not zoomed in all the way, but the text still looked clearer to me than default).

Thanks!

Madmatt

No mods to the map at all. I think just the dark Gamma level makes the blacks a lot darker and clearer so they stand out nicely and are easier to read sir.

Ah yes, I hadn't thought of that. One interesting thing I noticed is that I looked over your SweetFX settings and it appears that some of the values that FlightFX begins with as "default" are not the same values that SweetFX Configurator uses as default.

This explains why i could punch in the same 1.5 gamma Tonemap setting you have with FlightFX and yet have it look different than if I did the same in SweetFX Configurator. It would appear that this is because FlightFX seems to set some different base values for exposure and maybe a few other things in Tonemap than what the SweetFX Configurator program I use does.

Interesting indeed... I need to dig into this a little more and see if there are other differences between the two.

I know a new version of SweetFX is on the horizon, very excited to see what is tweaked/added/changed/fixed.

Thanks for the great vids Hellshade!

Madmatt

Any time sir. I'm normally a tweak-a-holic too when it comes to my video settings but now they are finally right where I want them (first time in history, I think). I'm kind of glad about that because now when I finally get to fly WOFF, I can actually fly it instead of tweaking settings!