April 17th 1916 is a fine day for bombing railway yards, somebody at Wing has decided. So it's to the junction at Loos that 2 Squadron is ordered to despatch three BE2s. My 'B' Flight is given the bomb-chucking job, with 'A' Flight putting up a solitary Bristol Scout to cover the general area. I have reduced the Flight's fuel load to a still-generous 80% and straightened out the route to the target.



This is the entire force for a task that in World War 2 would have been recognised as meriting at least a squadron of medium bombers, each with several 250 or 500 pound bombs. Between the three BEs, we've got twelve little Cooper bombs.



At least the improved weather is holding.



The trip across the Lines is uneventful and I can soon make out the target. That's the railway yard down there, just above my left wing root.



I give the signal for the attack to begin. As the other two BEs edge out to my left, Archie starts to make his presence felt.



Bombs are soon bursting down below. I hope the hits are some of mine!



As we come off the target, the Archie becomes really intense. Crikey!



Looking back, I can see that one of the others has begun to lag. Never mind the Fokkers, I'm thinking, we'll be lucky to survive this barrage!



...to be continued!

I lead the run for home, straight back across the Lines.



Behind and around us, the sky is fairly filled with the angry black bursts of Archie.



Seeking salvation, I race for the nearest cloud.



'Race' is of course relative, when you're flying a BE. Finally, we reach the welcoming folds of milky white...



...then one by one, we pop out on the other side - into skies no longer darkened by the Hun gunners.



I put the nose down to complete the crossing of the Lines, feeling a little sheepish at not circling to allow the others to catch up.



Only when back over friendly territory do I throttle back and level off.



The sheds of Hesdigneul are a welcome sight when they come into view. As I come in, I can see that 'A' Flight's Bristol has landed ahead of us.



After we're safely down, I can see that I'm credited with four hits from four bombs. That looks good, except that Stretton and Whiting are credited with fifty-four, plus some with their Lewis Gun! Poor old Peason and Rodland drew a blank, though. Not a bad effort, all in all.



The lack of excitement from Fokkers or other Huns in the air that we saw was more than made up for by the hot reception we got from Archie. We'll have to watch that one.

These are great.

Super! Did you do anything to beef up the AA from its 99-pound-weakling status?

Thanks guys!

About the AA, what I did was used the max setting for ground guns in Workshop; then applied my original Flakmod which was designed for OFF, to increase flak rate of fire and reduce dispersion while not increasing lethality (which seemed to have only a little effect); then in the WoFF multimod, enabled 'AAA - increased rate of fire (Flak mod...)' but not the one to 'decrease dispersion'.

I also applied the mod which adds or increases flak at balloon sites

Oh and on top of that, I forgot to disable mods before updating to the 1.19 patch! I don't know if the patch affected any of the files or settings the flak settings and mods tweaked.

I'll be happy with what I'm seeing PROVIDED - slightly too much to my mind is better than too little - it's not especially lethal, especially as it's likely to mean that flak is more realistically useful as an indicator of the presence of other aircraft. Even as it is now, there still seem to be large gaps in the flak coverage near the lines, tho it's hard to tell if that's affected by cloud cover rather than limited placement of batteries (in facilities files?). The balloon flak mod should help.

Brilliant mate