Many thanks for the valuable, and detailed, information.
You are certainly the "go to" guy for historical data!

My pleasure! But I'm certainly not "the" go-to guy. You've heard "mile wide but an inch deep"; I'm a mile deep but an inch wide. My WW1 aviation knowledge is like a knife: precision-honed and extremely sharp along a very narrow edge. The majority of me is harmless smooth metal.

My tuppenceworth - there aren't enough two-seaters, compared to scouts.

Two-seaters who 'see you coming' and bug out, unseen, doesn't wash, TAC, labels or not.

There have been some good books published recently which cover the operations of the 'working planes' and from these and some older classics like 'Into the Blue', these planes were half blind when working, taking pics or observing for the gunners, flying straight lines or predictable patterns. Which was what they were doing, a lot of the time, often on their own. Especially on art obs, as photo recces were sometimes flown by a formation of 2-seaters like Strutters, especially beyond the trenches or to an especially dangerous or important objective. Sometimes they escaped unseen; sometimes, spotted, they dived away and/or escaped, especially the Germans who were fast compared to 1916-17 RFC scouts; but other times, they were caught, sometimes by surprise.

Ideally, if possible, there should be significantly more 2-seaters flying simulated art obs or trench photo missions near the Lines. Preferably without magical abilities to see you coming, when they sometimes shouldn't, never mind often seeing you before you see them.

+1

I have tried suggestions on this forum to lighten the air activity, hell, I've even modified the visual range and scanning times in the simulation.xml file, but to no avail. It doesn't work right.

It would be nice if the devs can "fix" some things:

1. Whether light, medium, or heavy air activity, there are still too many scouts compared to bombers flying in the sky at any given time. (check to mission log to see it!)

2. All aircraft scan the sky at the same 5 second interval. So, just like you mentioned, this needs to be different for bombers who are focused on their mission and not actively scanning the skies like scouts.

3. When the AI is dogfighting or patrolling the skies, it's awesome, but otherwise it's very predictable. It's a bit of a cheat, but you can keep turn fighting an EA until they give up and return home, then just sneak up on it and shoot it down before it has a chance to react. I've seen that they will never engage you when their activity label shows "going home" unless you shoot at them.

4. More lone wolf patrols so that you don't have AI squad mates who turn to fight enemies before you can see them. Or program them not to react unless you do.

5. Turn off the whistling of dropped bombs. Just know there are enemy bombers nearby when something goes BOOM! Also, give us a chance to start back up our engines and take off after landing and turning off the engine so that we can intercept those pesky bombers.

6. I didn't notice if the enemy bombers have other bombing targets besides airfields and factories.


I apologize for going a bit off topic, but they're all related issues....somehow.

It would appear the Dev's are up on the bulk of these issues, least the two-seater issue, and I expect things will be taken care of in 2.0 - at least there will be changes in the right direction I think.

For a change maybe I can help with the sound (#5) issue. Or at least offer forth a suggestion.
Many times I try to change sounds around (actually blank them out) if it ruins my sense of "realism".
Things that I think I would not hear in the air. Though, so far, I am pretty happy with the "Realistic" setting in the Workshop.

Find the sound you don't wish to hear (I have done the pilot hit noises before in OFF) and replace them with a blank .wav file.
Rename the original if you wish it back.
Another option I have also done (with a freeware program that I forget the name of now)is to reduce the volume of the individual files.

I have read everything I can get a hold of on MvR so it's a topic of personal interest to me. Also I like WW1 aviation in general and a lot of history seems to be written about him.

Anyway reference your quote above what, in your opinion, is the reason for this?
In perusing his victory lists I have noticed this before so I am curious to see if your opinion coincides with mine.

Audacity?

As to MvR's post wounding propensity for scouts, I would guess the suggestion is that he was leery of going after those two seaters...

MORZ two seaters isd not hard two do.

I guess my thought was much more simple....that the RFC/RAF fighters by that stage of the war were so numerous and so aggressive they really couldn't be avoided. To fly was to fight them.

I'm inclined to agree with that, Duke. At times the Germans had tactical superiority but always the British had strategic and numerical superiority. By March/April 1918 there were more and more British fighters to deal with. Looking at Loewenhardt's score I mentioned earlier, you can see he started off in 1917 with a mix of balloons and two-seaters with the odd fighter here and there. Same as 1918 started. But then you see more and more fighters creeping into his tally and then from May through August they're almost all fighters--of those 36 victories in that period, 5 were two-seaters and one was a balloon. For MvR, he was gone most of the time he was alive in 1918, and the weather was often terrible when he was back. When he began scoring again (between 12 March -- 21 April) it was in support of Operation Michael, which the British were actively fighting against. In that period he only shot down four two-seaters (five if you include the Biff he shot down 12 March) but 12 single-seaters. However, I've not dealt deeply into the "why" of this subject so I hesitate to state concrete reasons without considering/researching many different factors.

I've not researched it personally but according to Franks/Guest/Bailey in Bloody April...Black September, in April 1917 the RFC had 25 squadrons supporting the Arras offensive, with about 365 airplanes of which one-third were fighters. In the 6. Armee, the Germans had about 200 airplanes, with about half being fighters.

Interesting fact to know. Any idea why Germany kept half their airforce as fighters? Seems to me you'd need more two seaters to gather all the intelligence about the enemy's position during the war.

Also, I've never read any books on WW1 observers or two-seater pilots to know what their experience was like during the war.

OldHat, that was just one Armee along the sector of the front opposing the Arras offensive. Other sectors likely had different ratios. But we also should remember Germans didn't have as many airplanes as their enemyies so they moved the Jagdstaffeln to "the hot sectors" of the front, so the amount of fighters in a sector waxed and waned as the strategic situations warranted.

Two excellent books that cover two-seater pilots and obs are Peter Hart's Somme Success and Bloody April. Fantastic reads, full of personal anecdotes from the two-seater men who flew during these battles. Frankly, it's impossible not to love these two books if one has any interest in WW1 aviation.

+1. I have read both and they are truly fantastic books. Specially the first one.

And,..well, wouldn´t it be great if 2.0 fixed this ratios and was released this weekend so that we, poor flyers could enjoy it tonight?

To take this a step further, and perhaps to be a bit simplistic, I would be curious what month the German victory claims moved decisively to single seaters from the two seaters if clear in the records and if they in fact ever did in a decisive fashion.

Already hard-pressed this must have been the deathknell for them in hindsight.

When your fighters are having to "waste" time shooting down enemy fighters then one supposes the two seaters are proceeding to and accomplishing their missions. And the two seaters are the power in "air power".

[/quote]
Interesting fact to know. Any idea why Germany kept half their airforce as fighters? Seems to me you'd need more two seaters to gather all the intelligence about the enemy's position during the war.
[/quote]

I suspect this was not by choice since fighters are inherently defensive weapons generally speaking.
The RFC/RAF, and other Allies, forced this upon the outnumbered Germans.

Thanks for the advice, JFM. I will look those books up.

I suspect this was not by choice since fighters are inherently defensive weapons generally speaking.
The RFC/RAF, and other Allies, forced this upon the outnumbered Germans. [/quote]

Ok. I didn't know that fighters were used mainly in defense roles.

That's always a "can of worms" statement and a general one by me.
Of course single seaters did much organized ground attack from, I will say, Cambrai (November 1917) till the end of the war and ballon busting was always in fashion but the main missions of an Air Force, in that time period, are done by the two-seaters IMHO.
The main mission of a fighter is to deny airspace to the enemy multi-place aircraft trying to do their tactical and strategic jobs. That was why fighters were developed in the first place - to protect your forces from the depredations of two-seaters.

I have to wonder who was more effective for.the war effort; MvR or the unnamed and unknown RFC observer who flew art obs for a year calling in aucurate and effective artillery fire?
I think this holds true even in WW2. The modern multi-role jets, with much improved ordinance selection, make it much more confusing.

Seems a good time for the old quote:
"Fighter pilots make movies, bomber pilots make history."

EDIT: As further proof of this does it not seem that historically the assignment of single seaters to ground attack is a luxury only afforded to the side that is "winning" the air war? If their fighters were needed to protect the bombers they were not frittered away in ground attack - a useful but quite secondary thought after their main mission (denial of air space) had been accomplished. Almost to give them something to do in the war. I don't see too many times in history where the losing side of an air contest was assigning fighters to ground attack. A broad brush but I think pretty aucurate.

Another great book Oldhat is Tumult in the Clouds: The British Experience of the War in the Air, 1914-1918, by Nigel Steel and Peter Hart. This isn't a who-shot-who book but rather a very interesting explanation of the RFC/RNAS/RAF during each year of the war. This book clearly demonstrates how fighter vs fighter dogfighting was just a small, small part of the air war.

Duke, I think both MvR/fighter pilots and obs were equal in effectiveness--but as regards the ground war. One fighter plane shot down is like a grain of pollen on a drop of dew in a 1000 square mile field. But shoot down an obs plane bringing back photo recon information for army strategy and you've potentially saved hundreds if not thousands of lives over time. But on the other hand the same could be said for a fighter plane, too, because each one shot down was prevented from shooting down any more two-seaters.

I agree this was true in WW2. Every now and then it's popular for people to regard the story of Brown and Stigler, when Stigler wouldn't shoot down Brown's crippled B-17 and allowed them to fly back to England. The two later became friends and their story is a darling internet tree-hugging example of humanitarianism. Meanwhile, I always wonder how many people were bombed to smithereens afterwards as a result? Because, after all, since Brown was allowed to depart for England without being shot down he just continued his combat tour of bombing sorties. So, sure, Stigler spared ten lives, but we'll never know how many lives that cost--of the people below counting on Luftwaffe defense/protection.

I don't know. I guess in the end it's all part of the madness of warfare.