All good things must come to an end. My flight is tracking a pair of Aviatiks but my wingmen suddenly get spooked and pull up hard. They must see something. Eventually I see it too. A Pair of EIIIs in the distance coming towards us. I managed to take one down and awhile later relocate the pair of Aviatiks. I make some slashing diving attacks and my guns find their mark, but the rear gunner scores hard hits on me. I turn and fly for home, goggles filled with blood. I manage to land at my home airfield but then succumb to my wounds anyway. I just bled for too long for them to save me. I was a flying dead man. I just didn't know it.
I thought Bloody April ended - you know - in April. Here I am in early June and the Germans are still swarming the skies with planes. And I'm running with Very Light Regional Air Activity! I'd hate to see if I set it to normal or heavy.
I also remember the days of OFF when I would fight 6 enemy aircraft and come away with 6 kills. Those days are long gone.
Nieuport 10C in the picturesque Alsace area showing a train and truck convoy at a railway station.
(System_Specs)
Case: Cooler Master Storm Trooper PSU: Ultra X3,1000-Watt MB: Asus Maximus VI Extreme Mem: Corsair Vengeance (2x 8GB), PC3-12800, DDR3-1600MHz, Unbuffered CPU: Intel i7-4770K, OC to 4.427Ghz CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Seidon 240M Liquid CPU Cooler Vid Card: ASUS GTX 980Ti STRIX 6GB OS and Games on separate: Samsung 840 Series 250GB SSD Monitor: Primary ASUS PG27AQ 4k; Secondary Samsung SyncMaster BX2450L Periphs: MS Sidewinder FFB2 Pro, TrackIR 4
Flight took off to find enemy aircraft sighted in the area. We found a flight of DFW's going about their job of reporting what they see back to the Huns and naturally we can't let that happen, so my wingman and I engage. He comes in from their 6 o'clock while I make slashing attacks from above.
Who knew what a knock down, dragged out bar fight slug fest it would turn into? By the time it was almost over, I'm wounded, my gun jammed but I managed to get it working again, my engine has conked out, his engine has conked out and with precious little ammo left, I make a final un-powered slashing attack in hopes of a decisive victory before what little altitude we have runs out. After that, I'm left trying to make a dead stick landed down a road that runs through a line of trees and managed to clip a wing. Who knew duty for King and Country would be this hard?
Ordered to patrol behind enemy lines - we barely get onto their side of NML and we spot a flight of Albatri (DIII's I think) coming towards us at 11 o'clock low. Out numbered, I tried to keep my altitude higher than theirs and turn into their attacks to give them less time to keep their guns on me. Then I'd make diving slashing attacks and zoom back up onto my perch to try and take them out as targets of opportunity became available.
Being behind enemy lines, it wasn't 5 or 6 minutes into the engagement before another flight of Albatri joined the furball and it took them quite awhile to break their siege on me. I believe I killed one at the very end and I was at least able to put a few rounds into nearly everyone else. They are so much more difficult to shoot down now, post 2.16 patch, which is fantastic.
I created an RFC 20 campaign for a Bristol Fighter starting in Sept of 1917 so I would have a better chance of flying against newer enemy aircraft like Alb DVs. I was escorting a flight of FE2Bs when I spotted a recon flight of DFWs well below us. It had been a quiet patrol so far, so with altitude and speed advantage I broke formation and dove down towards them, my gun thundering! I knew I wouldn't be able to shoot them all down, but I figured I could at least shake them up a bit and maybe interrupt their mission. Despite taking some fire, I scattered most of their flight and possibly even got a kill. A sunny start tot he day...or so I thought.
RFC 20 Campaign - Mission 1, part 1 of 2
Fresh off my thrilling disruption of the DFWs, I looked around and found myself below altitude of the FE2Bs that I was assigned to protect. I began to climb over the patrol area to get back up to proper altitude when my mistake in breaking orders came home to roost. A flight of DR1s sitting on a perch above us took notice and dove into my flight of FE2Bs. Since I was too far below them, there was precious little I could do to get within range of protecting them other than waste valuable time trying to gain altitude. To make matters worse, the men I was supposed to protect separated into two distinct furballs some distance apart from one another. Each engaged with their own enemies. I couldn't save them both and adding fuel to the fire were the occasional DR 1 attacks on me, which burned away yet more time leaving my flight unprotected while I tried to save myself. My heart sank and my stomach felt sick when I saw a member of my flight suddenly pitch forward in a ball of flames and fall earthward, roasting the men inside alive. It was mere yards from me. After a time I managed to chase of the remaining DR 1s and took stock of what was left of my flight. It wasn't pretty.
RFC 20 Campaign - Mission 1 part 2 of 2
This is what happens when you disregard orders and decide to "have a go" at the Jerry's. I will be lucky if I'm not brought up on charges as I am completely responsible for the loss of these men's lives, including my own observer who died somewhere in the action. I know not when.
Second RFC mission was a bust. No contact. Mission 3 was to patrol the front lines to seek out and destroy enemy aircraft. So with the backdrop of an amazing sunrise, we ran across a flight of Alb DVs coming past us at 1 o'clock low and proceeded to engage. Scary and picturesque at the same time. Can't say enough good things about AnKors shader contributions.
Mission 4. Another patrol over the front to engage the enemy and deny them airspace. My Bristol Fighter is still a good match for the Alb DVas, however the poor FE2Bs make for a relatively easy snack for the Albatross's. After we engaged an enemy flight, I spent most of my time racing from one wingmen to another trying to scratch Albs off their tails. The losses among rear gunners are catastrophic. Even with me focusing on clearing their tails as fast as possible, it still feels like lambs to the slaughter.
Great Work, Hellshade... it seems to be very challenging to get you off one's Tail ...but I wonder, what your Gunner is doing all the Time... he seems to be reading the Newspapers, and when your Flying is too rough, he slaps you on your Head with his Gun-Barrels
I believe the devs have said (someone correct me if I'm wrong, please) that the tail gunners are programmed NOT fire during evasive maneuvers because in reality you can't hit squat when you are getting thrown around like crazy in the back seat. I have to say that it's not too hard to imagine that my tail gunner probably spends most of his time trying to keep his cookies from coming up.
Come to think of it, by definition, if I know that an enemy plane is within range, I'm flying as aggressively as possible. I'd rather avoid being hit if at all possible by flying unpredictably then keeping my craft fairly smooth and find out who is the better marksman - my backseat gunner or my opponent! And as soon as I hear rounds zinging past me or ripping into my crate (great sound effects Creaghorn!), I'm taking evasive action. Rear gunner be damned! LOL
But now that you have me thinking about it...I bet if we had co-op and someone was my rear gunner...I honestly wonder if they really would be able to hit all that much. Maybe lots of panic fire - of course - but it would be interesting to see if they would be able to actually score real hits. Seems like it would be just too chaotic in the back seat.
The fascinating Thing is, that WOFF has a great Variety of Rear Gunners (and Capabilities). You mentioned Panic-Fire... I've already had Guys who shot a Truckload of Bullets in all Kinds of Directions, or ones who kept firing a Targets out of Firing-Arc and so on. A lot of short-sightened Gunners, who rarely open fire, also. On the other Hand, there are true Rambos in the Sim, or "One-Shot-One-Kill-Snipers" Like in RL (I guess), it depends mostly on Luck, which Type of Gunner you get. I general, most Gunners don't seem to like switching Targets...