Howdy, it's a long flight from Koln to anywhere.

Crap....I realy wanted this to live the whole war. Alas.

My fault realy, was to sure of myself while landing. Hit hard and nosed over...ever so slowly but enough
to break my neck I guess. Poor Mom.







Shame realy....but wait..... I hear a Boom Boom. Why it's Basil Brush, the brother of Baron Basil von Borste and he's somehow
come back to life.

Ack! RIP Alfred!

Lederhosen, nice historical touch with the use of the memorandum and notification of death forms.

lederhosen, that hurts! Very sorry to hear of Alfred's demise. Long live "the Fox".

Danger lurks everywhere.

Good Luck Basil!

Lederhosen, that's too bad, I'm afraid you are just the beginning of a long line of wooden crosses. I can't even imagine the odds of Arthur making it all the way through the war.

Journal Entry: May 18, 1915
Bertincourt

I made it from Koln to Bertincourt the other day. It was a very long and monotonous flight and much to my amazement, I didn't get lost. I arrived around lunchtime and was quickly ushered into Hauptmann von Schoenebeck's office. I smartly came to attention and stood ramrod straight as I gave him my orders. He glanced at my orders and began a close scrutiny of me, which was very unnerving. I should add that I come from a middle class family and Jasta 1 is an exceptional Jasta filled with only the best that Germany has to offer, I was very concerned that I wouldn't be accepted. Well, as I stood there starting to sweat, Hauptmann von Schoenebeck began to stare intently into my eyes which only made me more nervous. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, he broke the silence and stated, "I see from your papers that you come from Schwemmelsbach, what does you father do there?" "He is a grocer, Herr Hauptmann.", I answered and feared what was to come next. I didn't have long to wait, for the dreaded "I see" came next, so that was it. He looked up at me and said, "You know what Auge? I don't care what your father does, I don't really even care where you come from, all I care about is can you fly and can you follow my orders. Well, can you?" "Yes, sir." I stammered. "Good, we are a close knit group of fliers and we work as one. We don't have time for the inane social conventions that you were accustomed to back home. You will find that as long as you do your job competently, you will fit right in, understood?" he said. "Yes, sir" I answered. "Now get out of my office." he barked and I turned and left as quickly as I could. He was correct, none of the other men even asked about my history, all they wanted to know was what I've flown and how many hours did I have. I think I'm going to like it here.

Just reflecting a bit on this DID campaign thus far.

1915...few aircraft and lots of space to fly in. It's a cheery time for both sides as war flying isn't very dangerous. If you stick to your mission only then conflicts with the other side are rare indeed, allowing pilots and observers time to improve their skills. Shoots and recce must of been very good by Sep 15. A first taste of what's to come in the form of Mg's being mounted to Be's etc.. the arms race has began.

Thus far my biggest "HUN" has been the engines errupting into fireballs. For the past 5 months Alfred has whatched at least 3 members of his flight go west this way and had three fires himself too! I found myself looking at the Rev&oil indicators and listening to the engine more than looking for beastly Huns. Alas one moment of overconfidence and even the tame Be2 can become a Hun on landing. So far No.16 Sqn has had 3 crews dead due to fire, I crashed as have a few others, and some just never returned. Except for the ones lost over Hunland, due to ?????, almost all casualties have been due to accidents.....and that sounds about correct.

I can see now were the mess traditions of these very young crews started. They had plenty of time in the evenings to drink and play at the mess, after all this war aint so bad is it?

Lederhosen, very good points. I sometimes wonder if maybe the engine failures are turned up a little to high. I stated in another thread that I've read a lot of WWI memoirs and I don't remember anyone ever mentioning engines just bursting into flames.

I agree that system failures are more deadly than the AI enemy at this time.
It won't be long until things change as the forward mounted scouts arrive.

I'm no WWI engine historian. I think too many failures occur, at least for my liking.
Now I can understand a engine going bad, losing power, seizing up, and dieing. We get all flamers though with our Aviatiks.
Like you mentioned, there sure are a lot of fires. Lost two Aviatiks yesterday in one mission that way. We've plenty of Aviatiks, but are down to 4 men again. We've lost 4 in about a weeks time, had 2 replacements come, and lost 2 again.

I read some where that the rotary engines had many a problem. Lots of camel missions would lose 50% or more due to dud engine forcing the pilots to return home. Plus many a new pilot didn't realy know how to adjust the fuel/air correctly when they arrived at the front..(no wonder with so few hours).

Somewhere I have Bletchy's engine failure doc from RB3d days. That was quite a good a mod.

Hey, can we deliberately blow engines by going too lean or hot?
Is that modeled into WOFF?
or are failures all just random?

Lederhosen, like you I've read plenty of accounts where the engine failed, but I don't think they ever mentioned fire. I just think that the incidence of fire is too frequent. Oh well, just my opinion.

Oldhat, if anyone could figure this out it would be you. I've always thought the Devs should recruit you to help them.

Journal Entry: September 17, 1915
St. Pol-sur-mer

It's been a long time since I've written anything in my journal, mainly because it's been so blasted dull around here. We fly plenty of sorties, but they are all of the same type. Shooting enemy aeroplanes has even lost it's excitement, something needs to give. All of the above was true until this morning's sortie. Some wise person once said, "You should be careful what you wish for", well they were right.

This morning we were ordered to fly a line patrol down along a line from Lens to Loos. We've flown this sortie a hundred times, we could probably fly it in our sleep. We always encounter the Huns down there and sometimes we are successful in bringing down one or two. I was leading with my mates Andy Baker and Fred Bates and we had settled in for our usual patrol. In a short while, I spotted three Aviatiks approaching from the south. I signaled the flight and we dove to attack. I thought, "three's a good number, we will each get one today". What follows was probably my fault because I've always taught the other pilots that the key to successfully attacking the Aviatik is to get really close, I mean really close. I usually get Tom within 25 to 30 yards of the enemy before he attacks. I think that is why almost all of our victories are flamers because I've also instructed Tom to aim for the engine. Anyway, I'm sidling up close to my Hun and I look to the right and see Fred is as well. I look to the left just in time to see Andy's machine collide with the Hun machine. The Hun immediately went into a spin which led to his top wing collapsing. Andy's machine also started to spin, but fortunately Andy was able to recover and began limping to a friendly airfield. Once I saw that it looked like Andy would be okay, I turned my attention back to my targeted Hun. I quickly sent him spiraling to earth. Tom was also successful in bringing his Hun down. Today was my 36th victory, but at almost a cost I wasn't prepared to bear.



Of course, when Andy made it back to St Pol, the first thing he said was, "How'd you like that, mate? Think of all the ammo I saved."