Down we go again, lining up for a stern attack on the remaining vic of Dorniers. I decide to go for the chap on the left.



He must be thoroughly rattled by my attack, for he makes little apparent effort to maintain his place in the vic and banks first right...



...then out and away, left and out of formation. On my next pass, he’ll be on his own, without the extra protection of the fire of the other bombers. ‘Stupid boy!’, as Captain Mainwaring would have muttered, had he been there, and cognisant of the basic tenets of bomber operations in daylight.



But there isn’t going to be another pass. Even as the Dornier slides away, I’m hit again, and this time it’s done something rather nasty.



I break away, leaving the Hun apparently heading for home on his own. I’m now more concerned about the grey trail I’m leaving behind, and turn for home too, easing off the power. The boys will have to continue the party without me - we'll catch up and compare notes later.



My trusty Merlin seems to be running normally and my first thought is that I’ve got a fuel leak. I watch the gauges for top and bottom tanks, but they show no change in their readings. Likewise, the coolant and oil temperatures seem to be behaving themselves.



I lose altitude slowly as I approach Brighton.



Rather suddenly, things start going visibly wrong. My oil and coolant temps start going off the clock. Within a few seconds, power is draining away and my prop is whirring to a stop. Engine oil starts flecking my windscreen. Soon, I’ll be flying a rather inefficient glider.



Prop stopped. Engine possibly seized. Losing height steadily. Passing over Brighton, looking for a suitable field somewhere beyond the built-up area.



Bit of a turnaround. One moment, I’m the avenging angel of death; seconds later, I’m struggling to keep body and soul together.



Lower down and running out of options, I realise the ground here is rather undulating, not to mention the hedgerows criss-crossing it.



I’m looking for a level run of land along which I can force land, but it’s not easy to find one. Finding myself heading straight for dead ground beyond a crest I hadn't noticed in time...



...I turn right, trying to get down into what looks like a more suitable field, but find my momentum carries me over another crest, with the ground falling away sharply on the other side. Suddenly, I’m back up where I started, and beginning to feel the first real tinges of alarm.



I turn rather hard left, risking a stall in an effort to lose height and speed in time to get down again before I run into the nearest treeline. Those trees are coming up rather fast by the time I flare to brake my descent…and I can now see that there’s a line of telegraph poles running across between the gap in the trees!



I swish or scrunch onto the grass, slide along for several seconds, somehow missing the obstacles…and blow up!



Crikey!

But all is not lost. Earlier, the dreaded target marking bracket had re-appeared. I leave this off, always, so could not recall quite the right keystrokes to get rid of it, at first. Unfortunately, the combos I tried included Alt+tabbing myself out of the sim. I got back in, but this seemingly killed the WotR ‘runtime’ element, preventing the mission outcome from being recorded.

So I’ll be able to resume my campaign after all, without any kills (which would only have been ‘probables’) but also without my virtual death (which was definitely ‘confirmed’!). An acceptable trade-off, methinks – I’ll take and run with it!