BEST of WoFF - WORST of WoFF (planes, that is)

[33LIMA 972]

Just to see if we can kick up a bit of a ruckuss here, what are your most and least favourite planes, in WoFF? Either flying in, or flying with or against.

 

Some ground rules....

 

1. No griping - this is about the planes as you find them in WoFF, not a place for FM grumbles or dark mummerings about the correct number of barbs in Flashar's dragon's tail.

2. Posts should have a favourite and a non-favourite - preferably with one WoFF screenshot of each - and reason(s), rational or not; observations on other people's choices are welcome.

3. Feel free to post one pair of choices for each side.

 

I'll get this started. For the Luftstreitkrafte, my 'most favourite' is probably the Albatros D.V, which fact, combined with my earlier reference, gives me just the excuse I need to sneak in an extra screenshot of the aforementioned Jasta 5 bird...

 

 

...but for now, I'm leaning towards the even sleeker Pfalz D.III...

 

 

Reasons? Good looks, made a lasting impression from the Blue Max movie, and available 'skins' are only slightly less colourful than the Albatrosses. Plus she's less likely to make those creaking, crunching sounds which tell you something important has broken or fallen off.

 

Least favourite - the 'flying razor blade'. Why? Well, let's see now. What's the Fokker D.VIII/E.V got? Good looks? Nope. High speed? 'Fraid not. Agility? Hmmm...not really, in my hands anyway. Good all-round view from the cockpit? Not if you like to see what's above and ahead of you, which I tend to prefer.

 

 

So, who are your WoFF saints and sinners?

[33LIMA 972]

Et maintenant, les avions Francais...

 

My 'Best of WoFF' in this category has to go to the Nieuport 28.

 

 

And my reasons...well, they start with a childhood affection born with the lovely little Revell 1/72 kit, which neatly captured the slender elegance of what to my mind is easily the most visually-attractive rotary-engined machine of World War 1. In WoFF, sheer good looks combine with decent handling, high speed and two Vickers Guns, which, while offset from their usual central position, are still a big improvement on the single Vickers or Lewis of most Nieuports. The combination of attractive late-war French multi-colour camouflage, the contrasting bright national markings, and the varied unit or pilot markings that come with the WoFF version add to the attraction. In fact ,she's such a good looker that I'm going to post a second picture.

 

 

The only negative is that wide-framed windscreen frame, which, as I don't think it's armoured, must come into the 'What WERE they thinking?' category. If the US Air Service hadn't transitioned to SPAD XIIIs fairly soon, I'd guess that they might have binned and replaced these fittings, like the British did with the 'greenhouse' semi-enclosed cockpits on their S.E.5s. However, I have to say that Ankor's latest mod, combining subtle head bobbing with mouselook, makes me feel not at all like I'm sitting in front of an image glued immovably to my screen, which effect that windscreen tended to give, pre-mod.

 

 

As for the worst in the category, my pick is the Morane Type L 'parasol'.

 

 

This is a bit unfair, I know. The parasol was an advanced aircraft for its time. Its notable achievements included knocking down a Zeppelin (no mean feat in 1915) and being arguably the first successful fighter aircraft, beating challengers for the title like the Fokker eindekker thanks to Roland Garros and the defelector wedges which enabled him, and soon others like Pégoud, to fire ahead through the airscrew and take a mounting toll of Germain aircraft. However, the lack of a fixed horizontal stabiliser meant the machine needed constant pilot attention to avoid her standing on her tail or her nose. The WoFF version has an observer to guard your tail and while he has a good field of fire, there is no option in WoFF to leave him behind and fit a pilot-fired MG, either with the wedges or mounted above the wing to clear the prop disc. She's slow, feels underpowered even by WW1 standards, and seems to be in the B.E.2 bracket as regards agility ie not particularly agile at all. A great view downwards makes her a good spotter/recce aircraft but by 1915-16, she's definitely in the 'Fokker fodder' category, though perhaps not quite as defenceless as her Royal Aircraft Factory contemporary. Still, on account of her place in aviation history, and the nice rendition she gets in WoFF, I'll allow old parasol a second pic as well. But she's still my least favourite product of la Belle France that's featured in this sim, and a stark contrast to the N.28, as befits the years bwteeen them.

 

[jeanba 1,915]

I nearly would nearly have chosen the reverse !

Edited March 1, 2017 by jeanba

[Dutch_P47M 9]

, those nibble difficult early war planes like the Parrasol is for me the cream on a WW1 game. This is what I think, WW1 flysim is all about.

So for me it is the parrasols, Caudrons, Fee, Nieport N10, etc

[devere 6]

Worst would be the eindecker - the wing warping wierdo.

 

Best (in woff and all other WW1 sims) - the Scout Experimental.

[JimAttrill 24]

I liked the FE2b because you could see from the cockpit.  Some aircraft have almost no vision forward unless you cheat with F4.   I always wondered how Lindbergh flew the Ryan with no forward vision at all! 

[stljeffbb 0]

I haven't flown them all yet (not even close!), but I think for me, so far the best has been the Sopwith Triplane.  Worst might be the SPADs because it is difficult for me to see and also the unstable flying.  Just my quick 2 cents!

[Hellshade 110]

I haven't flown them all yet (not even close!), but I think for me, so far the best has been the Sopwith Triplane.  Worst might be the SPADs because it is difficult for me to see and also the unstable flying.  Just my quick 2 cents!

 

I'd have to agree.   

[Olham 164]

Haven't got screenshots, sorry. But anyway...

 

My PRICE FOR BEAUTY goes to the Albatros D.V, and the PRICE FOR BEAUTIFUL FLYING goes to the Sopwith Pup.

(In a war game, there should also be a PRIVE FOR BEST FIGHTER, but I'm not so much a warrior as I love beauty)

 

The ugliest plane for me, on the other hand, might be the DH.5.

The ugliest flying - I don't know; I'm absent from WOFF since some time and would have to try them all again first.

[Hauksbee 103]

My PRICE FOR BEAUTY goes to the Albatros D.V, and the PRICE FOR BEAUTIFUL FLYING goes to the Sopwith Pup.

The ugliest plane for me, on the other hand, might be the DH.5.

Did you, perhaps, mean "prize" for beauty? While I'd give the D.V high marks for beauty, I's have to give the Blue Ribbon First Prize to the Dr.1. Also for #1 flying. Many find it to be squirrelly, but it's always treated me well. Definitely, #1 for Ugly is the D.H.5.

[JFM 18]

For me the second-ugliest plane is the hideous Fokker D.II. Only thing fuglier than that eyesore is the Fokker D.III.   

[Olham 164]

Did you, perhaps, mean "prize" for beauty?

 

Yes, that's the "price" I meant!

 

 

The Dr.I is no beauty IMHO, but surely a great little fighter - climbed like a monkey indeed! 

Time to repeat this video - watch the takeoff climb from the cockpit - almost like a modern jet plane!

And this is a true rotary airplane!

 

Edited May 6, 2017 by Olham

[JFM 18]

Great video!

[JimAttrill 24]

Luckily this aircraft isn't available in WOFF - The BE9

 

 

It wasn't just the British who had aircraft like this - SPAD and Siemens both designed aircraft of a similar layout.    Who'd be a gunner? 

 

[JFM 18]

I would be a gunner! I'd love to fly planes like that! In the sim, of course. In real life, I'd just like to fly it. Olham could ride up front. 

[Hauksbee 103]

Just noticed that the D.V that 33LIMA used to lead off this thread turned up (in real life) in the "von Richtofen, Bohme and the Death of Boelcke" thread. (Posted by Jim Miller).

 

Edited May 10, 2017 by Hauksbee

[33LIMA 972]

GK Merrill in vol.1 of his Jasta 5 history describes that inverted Albie as 2065/17, Richard Flashar's machine, as indicated by the Jastafuhrer white upper wing chevron, later flown by von Hippel as a reserve aircraft...at least until his famous 18 Feb 18 crash after losing the lower wing in combat and ending up as photographed.

[JimAttrill 24]

Wasn't that V strut arrangement known to be a design fault enabling the lower wing to flex more than it should? 

[JFM 18]

Yes.

[JimAttrill 24]

This one also didn't work too well ... many people tried quadroplanes as they thought they would be even better than triplanes but that was not true.

[33LIMA 972]

My PRICE FOR BEAUTY goes to the Albatros D.V, and the PRICE FOR BEAUTIFUL FLYING goes to the Sopwith Pup.

 

This is my idea of a 'beautiful flying' Pup:

 

 

...as in, one that won't be flying for much longer, seen from behind the guns of an Albatros :)

[Olham 164]

This is my idea of a 'beautiful flying' Pup:

...as in, one that won't be flying for much longer, seen from behind the guns of an Albatros :)

 

...which is a very limited view on the Pup's beauty surely?

The view of the warrior from the other party.

Check it out as an aviator.

Walk around it. Touch it. Take it to the skies.

Then you will see - it may not be a good warcraft with it's slow-firing single machine gun -

but it is a beautyful aeroplane, which can give you all the joys of flying!

 

(...and if you haven't already: read Arthur G. Lee's book "No Parachute!" - it helped me

a lot to "understand the other side emotionally". A wonderful read - my fav British book)

 

Edited May 13, 2017 by Olham

[33LIMA 972]

...which is a very limited view on the Pup's beauty surely?

The view of the warrior from the other party.

Check it out as an aviator.

Walk around it. Touch it. Take it to the skies.

Then you will see - it may not be a good warcraft with it's slow-firing single machine gun -

but it is a beautyful aeroplane, which can give you all the joys of flying!

 

(...and if you haven't already: read Arthur G. Lee's book "No Parachute!" - it helped me

a lot to "understand the other side emotionally". A wonderful read - my fav British book)

 

 

Both 'No Parachute' and ''Open Cockpit' have been amongst my favourite WW1 aviation memoirs since I read library copies in the late 1960s. I recall Lee describing how on one occasion at high altitude their Pups 'boomed and zoomed' with complete impunity a flight of V-strutters which were hanging on their props and unable to get at the Pups at that height without exposing themselves and in the end just gave up.

 

I'm not 'dissing' the Pup - in a campaign mission last night with just one companion, we ran into three of the little beggars over the lines. While my flight-mate claimed one of them, and I got hits on the one I was dancing with, they more or less ran rings around us and I was luck to get away with a dead stick forced landing and 6 days in hospital! I still prefer my Jasta 5 D.III, though, seen here before the patrol in question, and in flight on the way to our patrol area.

 

 

[RAF_Louvert 101]

Your most and least favourite planes in WOFF?  This is an interesting question in that sometimes, (for me at least), the same plane can be both depending on what period of the war we are considering.  The Airco DH.2 early on in the conflict is my favorite mount, but when the Albs make their appearance I want to be as far from the Spinning Incinerator as I can get.

[33LIMA 972]

I must say, I enjoyed my DH2 career...while it lasted, Probably, the fact it was about six months before Boelcke's lot showed up to spoil the party, had something to do with that.