Homer Earp is slowly advancing...


Here is a loose Collection of different Missions... the Sound may be a bit of Dark Humor ;-)

CW3SF, Same thing here. After today's mission I get no more contacts to the end of the challenge. Looks like you're gonna make it. Good job!

Olham, thanks! The skin is totally fictional. James Franco can never have enough stars!
I regret not being able to take part in the first 5 or 6 challenges. Hopefully Rick will keep organizing these for a long time to come and enable us to scratch the itch.

Way to go Nietzsche, we're almost there!

Capitaine James Franco
Mission #27
14 November 1917
Dawn patrol of the friendly front lines west of Laon. Encountered a flight of D.Vs flying low over front. James gave order to attack and dove on them gun blazin'. Dogfight was joined by a formation of Pfalzen from a nearby airfield. It looked like being inside a hornet's nest. Albatrosen high, Pfalzen below.




The choice was obvious: take care of Albs before the silver scouts. After countless twists and turns, one of the D.Vs went down quickly followed by another, curtesy of James' wingman's gun.





The rest of Albs decided that it was the Pfalz turn and disengaged in the direction of their airfield. The Pfalzen put up a fierce fight, but eventually one of them was taken out by the member of B Flight. James damaged one and it spiraled down out of control.




This last fight brought B Flight very close to Vivaise airfield. James was able to down another D.V attempting to eliminate his wingman. The German machine disintegrated mid-air. In that instant a Flak burst hit James' SPAD inflicting blast damage. James took stock of situation. He was shaken up and estimated to be operating at 95% of efficiency. Thankfully the fuel tank was not hit. It was high time to return to base, but with only few miles to the front his engine died and he had to look for a good spot to land. He was too low to glide over the front and he had to set down along the train tracks close to the edge of NML and was immediately surrounded by enemy soldiers.




He spent 3 days in captivity, but managed to escape. Upon his return he was informed B Flight was credited with 11 enemy machines downed during the last mission.

Capitaine James Franco
Mission #28
25 November 1917
No contact made on the latest patrol over friendly front lines north of Soissons, however the wingman seemed very eager to get back to base.

Capitaine James Franco
Mission #29
28 November 1917
It is very lonely patroling enemy front lines east of Soissons at 5,000 m. no contact except a flock of Nieuports.

Mission #30
1 December 1917
Patrol enemy front lines west of Laon. this is a repeat of last mission. No contact. It appears James has ran out of Germans. War will be over almost one year sooner and Fokker will not have a chance to create D.VII.

Final Stats:
30 missions
33.3 hrs flying
70 kills
4 medals
3 trips to hospital

List of downed Aces:
August Raben
Walter von Bulow-Bothkamp
Georg Schlenker
Hans Auer
Xaver Dannhuber
Otto Sowa
Rudolf Matthaei x3
Max Raspe
Gotthard Sachsenberg
Karl-Heinrich Voss
Fritz Rumey
Kurt Monnington x2
Ludwig Hanstein
Walther Secker
Walter Boning
Werner Bussmann
Arthur Rahn
Hans Muller x2
Richard Flashar
Heinrich Arntzen
Albert Haussmann
Rudolf Windisch

.

Curtis has made it to the end of the competition as well.



Congrats to the rest of you who survived this affair and condolences to our fallen brethren.

Fun as always Rick, many thanks!

.

Well, my Results are not so impressive, but I'm through, also



Can it be, that this Challenge holds the Record of the highest Player-Death-Rate? Over 50% ?!?
Fullofit, that truly was some Terminator-Performance

Actually, it's pretty much par... as you guys finish up, remember to run the survey one more time for the official final tally!

I will finish this evening ( 2200 hrs or so Colorado time zone ) and post asap after.

I need to go for the "gusto" to top Fullofit!

CW3SF, fingers crossed!

You guys take your time... my "prize" is taking just as long as I thought it would, which is why I procrastinated so long in starting it...so no hurry!

Good luck in the final stretch - I've been keeping up with the fantastic stories and screenshots and wish you all the best. It's too bad so many of us didn't live this far!

But you know who I feel the worst for? Fullofit's friend, flieger Robert Matthei - that poor guy got shot down 3 times by the same pilot already

I could not get the form to work, so here is my stats. I will try again tomorow am to "punch in" my stats.

CW3SF TOD DANIELS 30 missions 72 kills 4 medals 27 weeks 3 wounds 5 promotions

Fullofit, if you had 2 more kills or if I had 2 less they would have had to give out a medal to both of us.

Sure was hard to find "targets" the last few weeks.

"The Old Geezer"

CW3SF, Congrats! Looks like you're the winner.

Mission #30 was almost a disaster. Myself and 5 lads ( most with kills and several missions ) set out to fly over enemy land. I lead them to 13000 feet and searched for some time. "A" flight with 5 " worthless bastards" was nearby at all times. I kept over them for mutual support ( what a joke that was).

Soon a flight of 5 Alb's came out of the clouds and went after the A flight. I turned my flight into the fight
and gave the order to attack. We had a 10 t0 5 advantage. With in a moment we had them just where we wanted
them. I was on one Alb's 6 and ready to fire when I noticed I had "ALL" of them to my self. I was about 8 miles inside of enemy airspace with all 5 of the Alb's after my ass. I got some bullets into a few then got hit and wounded. By now I had gone down to less than 10,000 feet and went to 100% throtle in a shallow dive
for home. Two of them kept after me all of the way to my airspace. At last I saw one of my airfields and went down low over it--- then my ground gunners fired at the Alb's and they left.

Why all of the 10 pilots ran for home is a mystery to me ( with in the WOFF game ).

My task was over, no kills, but alive.

In a perfect world, later that night I had all of the cowards hung from an oak tree.

Folks, as much as I hate to say it, I am going to have to withdraw from the challenge because I will unlikely be able to fi is it due to personal commitments that will leave little time for flying for a few weeks at least.

I will pop I when I can to keep abreast of things. Thanks for your efforts on this challenge Ricky. It has been fun so far.

Best regards to all.

Please enter all final results in the pilot survey and I will try to have the results up later...

Alright, here we go!


According to my (admittedly rusty) Excel Spreadsheet Computational Skills, CW3SF is the overall winner, with Fullofit just behind! So Congratulations to CW3SF!!!

Great job and thanks to all who participated!

Now, let's talk for a minute. After drawing, writing, voicing, performing and *singing* the last challenge intro, I've pretty much gone as far down that rabbit hole as I can manage. So unless you want to wait 20 or so years until I retire, the challenges will be a bit more pared down, at least in that department. What I plan do do first is to revisit some of the earlier challenges in a redux format, since I died early in most of them, they will be mostly new to me, wholly new to some of our newer players and will give everyone else a chance to see how much they have improved in the last couple of years.

As we are shifting gears, I will not be giving out certificates anymore. Instead, I will be awarding all participants a piece of custom art to commemorate the event. The first one is not ready yet, I am trying to get it down reasonably well and, as with most things, my vision exceeds my talent. But it will come eventually and the ones for future challenges should be better as I will not be chasing down the dead ends that I am this time as I try to figure out the program and dust off my 20 year old painting skills. So I will send those out to all participants along with Lou's wonderful medal when I am finished. Then we can look to the next challenge!

RR out!