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    CA-WW1 - the Roland Walfisch
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    Spotting for the Gunners in the LFG Roland C II!   In an air war notable for the sheer variety of planes of all shapes and sizes that made it to the front, the LFG Roland C II must be one of the most distinctive, if not also one of the most attractive. 'Truely, this aircraft is a whale!' was the reaction of one of the German procurement people who came to see what they'd be getting for their reichsmarks, giving the Walfisch its enduring nick-name. But it was also one of the most advanced aircraft of its day, a compact, fast, streamlined single-bay two-seater general purpose aeroplane in a world where other such machines were bigger, slower or ungainlier…and mostly, all three.   'The best German aircraft now' was reportedly the verdict of RFC ace Albert Ball, who frequently came up against (and shot down) the type in the summer and early autumn of 1916. However, though sometimes encountered in sizeable formations in this its heyday, the Roland was produced in comparatively small numbers and its front-line service career was over by about mid-1917. Speedy in the air, it was slow and expensive to make. Its thin wings tended to warp in the harsh conditions of front-line airfields and visibility for landing was poor, resulting in many crashes or hard landings. But still, it was a notable performer for its time, whose capabilities generally matched its good looks.   Many of us will know the type from the 1960s Airfix 1/72 kit, helpfully moulded in light blue plastic in imitation of the distinctive finish initially carried by the Roland. It made up into a nice model, with decent crew figures instead of the dreaded 'goggled alien' of earlier Airfix WW1 kits.     One day, I will make this kit again, notwithstanding that newer versions are available. In the meantime, I can fly the Roland in simulators. I don't yet have the Rise of Flight Roland, seen here escorting my DFW C V in a recent mission...     ...but I do have and like the First Eagles versions from the A Team Skunkworks. Though they have a 'Spandau' machine gun for the observer, instead of a 'Parabellum', there are a couple of interesting variants, including this one with a captured Lewis Gun fitted to fire ahead over the propeller arc, which was tried in real life:     But for this mission I chose Wings Over Flanders Fields. Having flown the Roland in Over Flanders Fields, I was keen to see how I made out with this machine in the latest incarnation of this sim, with Ankor's self-shadowing mod and the new AI and landscapes of WOFF.   The campaign Creating a new pilot, I tabbed throught the available German 'Bomber/recce' squadrons flying in September 1916 till I found one that flew the Roland in the British sector - WOFF still provides a better representation of the RFC order of battle, and would benefit in particular from the addition of French two-seaters more suitable for either 1916 or 1918 than the Morane L (really a 1914-15 type) and the licence-built Strutter (gone from the front by mid-1918).   I ended up with Feldflieger Abteilung (Artillerie) 240, based at  in Flanders. I believe the 'Artillerie' indicates that we specialise in observing for the artillery and can correct their fire using radio transmitters, one of the major jobs for two-seaters in WW1, along with photo or visual reconnaisance and to a lesser extent, bombing. Here's our roster and our operational area.     Even without tabbing to the Intelligence summary, I knew that the deadliest foes we could expect to face in our sector would be DH-2 'pusher' fighters and the more modern French Nieuport scout, both types used by several RFC squadrons. With the British fighters apt to patrol up to ten to twelve miles on the German side of the Lines, I knew also that we must be prepared to meet them in the air, whatever our task would be.   The mission It's 12 September 1916, and our assigned task for this morning is artillery observation. Down to the south west we must go, from our airfield at Houplin down to the trench-lines. There are no less of six of us on this operation, with myself leading the full flying strength of the staffel. When I draw an 'art obs' mission in OFF or WOFF, I generally fly to the front and orbit near any friendly artillery barrage in progress, as if I was directing the fire. It's not possible actually to call down fire onto ground targets (although after this mission I'm no longer so sure, of which, more later). If there's no artillery fire going on, I regard my radio transmitter (or the battery's receiver) as having 'gone dark' and do a bit of recce work, so that the taxpayers still get their money's worth.     We have an escort, but I wasn't going to put much faith in the two obsolete Fokker Eindekkers we'd been allocated. For all I knew they were the last ones at the Front, still able to beat up a BE2c but well outclassed by any fighter we were likely to meet. My own flight would serve as my escort. I would do the virtual artillery-spotting. Knowing that formation-keeping in WOFF was considerably improved over OFF, I knew my comrades would be able to keep up quite well as I circled over the front. Anyone trying to shoot down the spotter - me - would have to get through them, first. At least, that was the theory.   Here we are, lined up opposite the sheds and ready for the 'off'. I had chosen a camouflaged skin from those available in WOFF, but the rest of the flight are in the original, distinctive and rather racy light blue. I checked my controls and started up. Then I called up the Tactical Display (TAC), set its target type to 'aircraft', checked its range was suitably low (I left it at half a mile) and turned the TAC off again: it was now ready to padlock air targets, when turned on again. I didn't expect to do too much (if any) dog-fighting on this mission but if I had to break formation and fight individually, I decided I was going to make good use of my forward-firing MG, relying on the observer to cover my tail. Which is more or less how it came to pass.     But that lay in the furture. I roared off the airfield and tried some gentle turns before setting course for the Front and throttling back to allow my flight to catch up. I found the ailerons deceptively light and the rudder heavy. It was easy to under-bank and slip outwards, or worse still, over-bank and find yourself in a nasty side-slip, if you didn't give her plenty of top or bottom rudder. This was nearly to be my undoing.     But that, too, lay in the future. For now, I watched my flight catch up from astern. One of them took several minutes, during which time I saw two aircraft fly past overhead - the two Fokkers, I supposed. This was the only time I saw them, as it turned out.     At at last we were all in a nice diamond formation. I opened the throttle wide and I began to climb, maintaining forward pressure on the stick to stop my tail heavy plane's nose from rising too much. All around us, thin clouds loomed, slipped past below, beneath or beside us, then loomed ahead again.       I spent a little time admiring and exploring my plane, inside and out, between navigating and scanning the skies. Visibility downwards was, as expected, not good, but in every other direction, I had a superb view, unobstructed by the usual high-mounted biplane upper wing.       Looking behind, the sight of my flight tucked in behind me inspired confidence…to much, perhaps, I thought, remembering Albert Ball's opinion that such formations were easier to surprise as the aircrew tended to feel a false sense of security and relax.         On we went. Climb rate was less than stellar and we were not far above five thousand feet as we came up the the trench-lines. Our Fokker escorts were nowhere to be seen and I decided I wasn't going to hang about looking for them. I was at a respectable height for artillery observation and was now at the Front, where lay our targets. I leveled off and throttled back slightly. I had arrived at the war.     Approaching the area over the Lines where we were tasked with spotting for the Gunners, I turned on the Tactical Display to get a navigation check. Instead, I got a surprise. In fact, I got two surprises.     First, knowing that I was headed roughly in the direction of my target area, I was startled to notice that the pale blue line showing the path to my next waypoint, instead of pointing up, straight ahead, had slewed around to my left rear. If that wasn't strange enough, the text displayed beneath the TAC itself was telling me that it was high time to go home. In fact, not even home - to the nearest airfield. Had I inadvertently skipped a waypoint? No, I was fairly sure I had done no such thing. My true objective still lay ahead.  Who's leading this mission, anyway - me or the Tactical Display? Pilots in the German Air Service may often be mere NCOs but while I may have to take orders from my commissioned observer - my own alter ego, anyway - I'm certainly not at the beck and call of an on-screen visual aid. Sod that, I thought. On we go.   Actually, the TAC was trying to be helpful. Looking behind, the reason for the device's caution was not hard to see. An aircraft was slicing into our formation from our left rear. And though I didn't notice it at the time, three other aircraft were below and behind us to the right.     My initial reaction, seeing just the one presumed enemy attacking, was that I'm not going to break formation and get distracted from my objective for the sake of one aggressive Englishman. Unfortunately, those on the right of my formation didn't agree that staying together and meeting the enemy with massed fires was the best bet. That side of my formation broke up rapidly, as Rolands wheeled off and after the Nieuport. All very commendable perhaps and it certainly seemed to put off the foe-man, who turned away.     I now had a decision to make, and I needed to make it immediately, before the passage of time removed one of my options. I could hold my course to the objective, with what looked to be two remaining flight-mates. Or I could turn us back to join the battle, keeping my formation, if not intact, then together; and resuming my progress to the objective when the battle had been won.   Keeping to my present course seemed to comply with the Master Principle of War - Selection and Maintenance of the Aim...but at the expense of one nearly as important - Concentration of Force. Incidentally, contrary to what John Keegan said in 'The Face of Battle', these principles, far from being thought old-fashioned, were taught at Sandhurst in the late 1970s.   Anyhow I had read too many accounts - Trafalgar, for one - of forces that are (or get) split up, then being defeated in detail, even by numerically weaker enemies. So I turned back to join the fight. By this point I had realised there was more than one enemy aircraft. I picked up one who lay ahead and gave the attack order, so that the others would pick their own targets. Mine, I recognised as a Nieuport Scout. He was manouevring a few hundred feet below, to my half-right.     I made a series of swooping attacks on him, allowing my observer a crack as I whizzed past. While I kept up my speed and most of my height, the tightly-turning Nieuport was able to turn in under my attacks most of the time. He in his turn was prevented from having a determined go at me by the presence nearby of at least one other Roland.       After a few more passes I got behind him and stayed there long enough to get in several good bursts from not too far out. He stopped manoeuvring and settled into a steady glide earthwards, emitting a spluttering trail of grey smoke. I watched as he piled up into the mud behind me. Got him!       But the fight wasn't over yet! ...to be continued!

    Steel Fury - King Tiger!
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    Going to war with the ultimate predator - the Koenigstiger heavy tank!     For this mission reports, it's back to terra firma - speficically, to the snowy wastes of the Russian Front in World War Two. Our hosts are Graviteam, in the form of their excellent tank simulator Steel Fury - Kharkov 1942. The 'Kharkov 1942' bit of the title is now pretty well redundant, as modders have greatly extended the scope of the sim, not least into North Africa and with many later-war AFVs...including the tank which is the star of this particular show.   The tank The mighty Panzerkampfwagen Tiger Ausfuehrung B - better known as the Tiger II or the King Tiger - needs little introduction. Combining the sloped armour that the Soviet T-34 taught the Germans to apply to tanks with the other design concepts of the original Tiger I, the King Tiger was one of the outstanding tank designs of World War 2; perhaps the most effective tank on the battlefield from the summer of 1944 till the end of the war. Its early transmission problems were dealt with and its reliability was soon adequate. With very thick armour all around and especially frontally, and a powerful gun that combimed deadly armour-piercing capability with extreme accuracy, the King Tiger was a formidable enemy, if you were unlucky enough to meet one in the field. They were not invincible, of course. In Normandy in July 1944, Lt John Gorman of the 2nd Battalion, Irish Guards, Guards Armoured Division, surpised a King Tiger but was perhaps himself surprised when his gunner's first round - they had a 75mm HE 'up the spout' - had little effect. The Sherman's gun then got a stoppage and Gorman ordered his driver to ram, which caused the startled German crew to bail out. Gorman's crew did likewise, one of them briefly sharing a ditch with the German tankers. A 'borrowed' Sherman Firefly's 17 pounder gun enabled the intrepid Gorman to settle the matter permanently.     The mission One of these days I will go to virtual war in Steel Fury in a Panzer 38(t) or even a Panzer III. But for now, the prospect of fighting in, rather than against, heavily-armed and heavily-armoured  tanks retains, for me, a certain irresistible appeal. So I was glad to find that the modders have not only provided SF with a King Tiger, but some missions for the beast as well. Here's the one I elected to play for this mission report - 'Counterstrike' by Deviator, with adjustments by Lockie and input also from Woofiedog and Tanker.     I'm using the latest NTA mod, Lockie's latest mission pack, and the winter weather mod, all enabled via the indispensable Jonesoft Generic Mod Enabler (JSGME). The weather mod by Maleshkin transforms the standard SF environment into a winter wonderland which nicely captures the essence of the Eastern Front at its chilliest. Details of all of these are available over on the Graviteam Steel Fury forum, here. [Edit, August 2014 - the NTA add-on has been discontinued, but a successor, the Steel Tank Add-on (STA) is now available: http://stasf2008.ephpbb.com/t6-steel-tank-add-on-steel-fury ] It's worth mentioning that the this mission has a long video intro consisting of some excellent clips of German armour and other troops in action, including some combat camera footage I had not seen before - from the Deutsche Wochenschau newsreels by the look of it.   And here's the mission. The screenie below was taken a little way into the mission itself, by which time my platoon of King Tigers (blue trapezoids) had driven out in front of the dismounted infantry we were supporting. It was early 1945 and the mission itself was a counterattack, by elements of the 3rd SS Panzer Division 'Totenkopf', on the village of Pettend in Hungary, a German ally which was then feeling the full weight of the Soviet steamroller as the red tide swept westwards towards the Reich. I have the orders panel turned off for clarity; incidentally, in-game, I also turned off the 'head up display (ammo load, turret orientation etc) using Ctrl+backspace and could also have turned off the orange diamond/arrowheads (Ctrl+|) that act as target indicators, which you can see in some of the screenshots which follow.   The orders in the panel I have turned off tell us simply that our the aim is to seize and hold the village, destroying enemy forces in the area. From the markings on the map, these can be seen to consist of infantry defensive positions in an arc on the outskirts of the village, likely with tank support; I'm not ruling out the possibility that they may also have antitank guns.     Our own force consists of our brave grenadiers in what appears to be weak company strength, with just my under-strength platoon of three King Tigers for fire support. Looking at the map, the terrain was fairly open and I contemplated going either left- or right-flanking. From either flank, I could have supported the advancing grenadiers by fire at roughly right-angles to their axis of advance, in the approved manner, perhaps finishing with an assault on Pettend timed to arrive on the objective at the same time as the troops, for maximum shock effect. But after milling about a bit the grenadiers seemed to be in a hurry to get at the Ivans rather than give me time for any fancy manoeuvres. So I formed us up in line formation and decided we would just roll on into the objective, ahead of the infantry, to shield them, and basically shooting anything that looked likely to hold them up. Plan made - time to get busy! I lined myself up and waited for my two other King Tigers to get into position, either side of my own tank.       ...to be continued!

    CA-WW1 - the French and the Yanks 2
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    The other nationalities in Wings Over Flanders Fields   Part 2 - the US Army Air Service The plane For this WOFF campaign mission with the US Army Air Service, I should perhaps have chosen the SPAD XIII, instead of 'yet another Nieuport'. But this Nieuport is different. For starters, the Nieu.28 has been one of my personal favourites, from the mid-1960s when I built Revell's little 1/72 kit in their new range of WW1 fighters, great models for their day, with classic Brian Knight box art.     And while the 28 retained the rotary engine of its predecessors, it replaced the weak single spar lower wing and V-struts with a more conventional, but no less elegant, wing structure. The aircraft may have been infamous for shedding the plywood leading edge of the upper wing and attached fabric on pulling out from a power dive. Sometimes, unburnt petrol collected in the engine cowl went on fire. But apparently, unlike the lower wing failures of the V-strutted Nieuports, these issues, though alarming, were rarely if ever fatal. And the Nieu.28 was fast, agile and fairly reliable - certainly more so than the SPAD XIIIs which replaced them, the geared Hispano-Suiza engine proving so unreliable that French units equipped with the XIII reportedly kept a stock of SPAD VIIs to maintain flying strength.   Besides, I had previously flown a series of comparative mission reports featuring the Nieu.28 in First Eagles 2, Rise of Flight, Over Flanders Fields and IL-2  Dark Blue World 1916 (here). So with WOFF having supplanted OFF, this mission report serves nicely, if I may say so, to bring that series up-to-date.   The unit I elected to fly with the first unit to receive the Nieuport 28, the 95th Pursuit Squadron, the 'Kicking Mules'. Held back for additional gunnery training, the unit wasn't in action until the beginning of May 1918, by which time fellow First Pursuit Group unit the 94th 'Hat in the Ring' Pursuit had already seen some action. Here's the WOFF squadron board for the 95th; many of the named pilots are recognisably those who really flew with the squadron at this time.     We are based at Toul, not far from the shattered battlefield of Verdun, scene of one of the war's most awful battles, during 1916, when the French army fought the Germans to a standstill in a desperate and costly but successful defensive effort. Two years later the front here is relatively quiet, although further north in the British sector, the Germans have unleashed their spring offensive in a last-gasp effort to turn the tide and win the war in the west.   The mission Here's the mission briefing. We're putting up two flights as escort to a reconnaisance by three French Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutters from Escadrille Sop 43, flying down from Beauzee sur Aire. This type was already obsolescent when the French started using it in large numbers during 1917, to replace even older 'pusher' types. At this point in the war, the French Strutters were in the course of being replaced themselves, generally by the excellent Breguet 14.     Here were are lined up and good to go. I'm flying with a single flight-mate, with the squadron's other flight on 'top cover'. I have chosen the 'skin' of Lt Quentin Roosevelt, the President's son, who had the dubious distinction of being pictured on German postcards lying dead and broken beside his crashed Nieuport, after being shot down in July. If this is one of the 'skins' I've copied over from OFF, it works fine; the long grey fillet atop the rear fuselage is not a glitch, it was on the real aircraft.     After take-off I took it easy until my number two had caught up, then sped off to the rendez-vous point with the two-seaters, climbing hard. The skies were an unbroken blue, visibility good but hazy at longer range.     It wasn't long before I spotted them; three Strutters with the distinctive French roundels, all in un-camouflaged clear doped linen finish, which made them relatively easy to see from above, against the ground. By this time I had lost sight of the squadron's other flight but trusted they would be up and behind us, somewhere. In turn, I took my own station above and behind the Sopwiths, weaving left and right to keep station while maintaining my airspeed.     Our route was a long slanting one which took us back and forward over the zig-zagging front lines. All seemed peaceful, until I heard from somewhere close by, above the noise of my own motor, the sound of an aero-engine revving and stuttering. Looking back, the cause was not hard to see. My flight-mate's engine was on fire!     There had been some Archie fire earlier but the skies were now clear of both AA bursts and enemy aircraft. So I took this to be one of the random failures WOFF simulates (unless you have it turned off) - perhaps one of those fires from pooling petrol in the cowling. Despite the dark smoke and the pyrotechnics, my buddy seemed under control, and quickly turned back towards friendly territory.     Though I was relieved at the prospect my flight-mate would get away with it, I was rather less happy at the thought of a long solo escort flight. Suddenly, I felt very lonely. I'd have felt a whole lot happier if I could have seen the other flight of Nieuports, but wherever they were, they were invisible to me. Nothing else for it. I flew on, zig-zagging behind and above the three Sopwiths, varying my turning points and keeping an even more careful look-out.     But the skies around us remained clear, apart from some intermittent Archie. The German gunners must have fancied a challenge, for instead of targeting the straight-flying two-seaters, when they did cut loose, it generally seemed to be at my Nieuport. This did no damage but it certainly made me feel all the more exposed and vulnerable.     The flight stretched on interminably. Whether it's Silent Hunter 2/SH3 or IL-2, I've never much liked time compression. The 'warp' feature of CFS/CFS2 I did like, though not quite so well when in CFS3 it changed to very rapid time acceleration. At least it dropped you out if enemies were near, which WOFF's current time acceleration 'warp replacement' does not. Best of all is the 'next encounter' facility in European Air War and Strike Fighters/First Eagles. But without it auto-quitting when contact was imminent, and especially up on my own, I was reluctant to speed things up. I flew on in real time. The tension left little room for boredom!     Nearing their turning point for home, the Sopwiths flew past two of Verdun's large forts, both set in the sea of shell-cratered mud that stretched all around and as far as Verdun itself to the south-west. I urged them on. Since my flight-mate's departure, any desire on my part for a fight with the Boche had evaporated. My sole concern now was to see my charges as far as their objective, watch them make that turn for home, then see them safely over the lines. And then get myself home in one piece. Victory claims and medals could wait for another day!     Finally, the Sopwiths turned left and headed back towards friendly territory, just a short distance to the south. I turned with them. The mission had ended uneventfully, but I had no regrets. The relief of the anxiety I'd felt since losing my flight-mate was palpable. The satisfaction of a mission accomplished more than made up for the lack of air combat. I'd got my charges back safely!     But not quite. Looking back not a moment too soon, I was appalled to see at least three Albatros scouts with candy-striped tails breaking formation and peeling off to attack. Worse if anything, they looked to be after my Sopwiths!     Groaning at being so nearly home free and now having to fight at bay and badly outnumbered, I nosed down and around, and cut them off. An aggressive defence seemed the best policy. At any rate, they were not going to get my Sopwiths! Get stuck into them, give them plenty to keep themselves occupied, then dive for home at the first opportunity. And I would do my level best to get one of the Boche first, if I possibly could.     This seemed to work quite well. The enemy pilots appeared to forget about the Strutters, evidently intent on shooting me down first. I was soon in the middle of a stiff little dogfight with the three Albatros scouts, hurling my machine about the sky, taking snap-shots each time an Albatros sailed across my path. Likewise, the Boche were taking shots at me, whenever they got the chance. I tried to edge the fight towards my own side of the Lines, ready to dive away for safety when the right moment came.     But it never did. Instead, there was a horrible rending and ripping sound as the top left wing of my evidently over-stressed aircraft tore off!     Down she went, straight down. I throttled back but the flight controls seemed not to be answering. The end came suddenly, inevitably.     To add insult to injury, what I was quite certain was a structural failure was credited to enemy action; either way one of the Boche will doubtless be putting in a claim for ein Amerikaner kaput.     Given that the real-life Nieuport 28's structural issues seemed to have killed few if any pilots, I was a little miffed that my tenacity and at the end, my rather courageous solo defence of the Sopwiths should end thus. I hope mes camarades Francais in the two-seaters will carry with them back to their base a suitably glowing account of the brave end of the pilote Américain courageux who saw them safely home at the expense of his own virtual life. Perhaps a posthumous Légion d'Honneur will be in order?

    CA-WW1 - the French and the Yanks
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    The other nationalities in Wings Over Flanders Fields   Part 1 - the French air service    I can't do a biography-based mission report for the US and French sides as I only have memoirs by British and German pilots. But for the sake of completeness, I'm going to do a separate pair of  mission reports in Wings Over Flanders Fields, one flying for the Aéronautique Militaire, the other for the US Army Air Service. First up, it's the French service, flying the little Nieuport 11, aptly nicknamed the bébé (baby).    The plane Oddly enough, pre-war Nieuport designs were monoplanes. Their first biplane was the two-seat Nieuport 10 of 1915, which set the pattern for the aircraft which were to follow: biplanes with a much smaller lower wing, joined to the upper one with a V-shaped interplane strut. These were intended from the start to be armed. The early Nieuport 10 AV had the observer in front ('en avant', hence AV) with a circular cut-out in the upper wing, to enable him to stand up and fire a carbine or a Hotchkiss machine-gun pintle-mounted on the wing in front. But the later Nieuport 10 AR, and the more powerful Nieuport 12 which followed, moved the observer to the rear ('en arriere', hence AR) where he manned a Lewis Gun on a moveable or rotating mount.   The Nieuport 10 AV   During 1915, some Nieuport 10s were flown as fighters on patrols, with a Lewis Gun fixed above the upper wing to fire ahead, high enough to miss the propeller arc. Their success inspired the Nieuport 11, a smaller, nimbler development. This was arguably the first real fighter aircraft; genuinely capable of air-to-air combat in a way the inferior Fokker monoplanes were not - the latter being interceptors rather than fighters, with a synchronised gun but primitive wing-warping roll control and generally not well-suited to dog-fighting. In the hands of France's emerging aces like Georges Guynemer and Jean Navarre, the Nieuport 11 was instrumental by early 1916 in reversing the German's brief period of ascendancy in the air, 'the Fokker Scourge'. The British contribution was the DH-2, but while also better than the Fokker, this 'pusher' design was a technological blind alley. By contrast the Nieuport 11 proved capable of significant further development. Later versions, the Nieuport 16, 17, 23, 24 and 27, were widely used by both French and British, and later by the US Escadrille Layfayette. RFC aces like Albert Ball and Billy Bishop also rose to prominence flying Nieuport Scouts. The type was widely used by Italian and Russian air forces as well as on the Western Front, despite a continuing and alarming tendency to failures of the weak lower wing, often killing the pilot. All in all, the Nieuport V-strutters were one of the war's classic designs, inspiring the layout of the German Albatros D III which from early 1917, largely swung the air superiority pendulum back towards the Germans.   Recommended reading on Nieuport aircraft would include Crowood's 'Nieuport Aircraft of WW1' by Ray Sanger and Osprey's 'Nieuport Aces of WW1' by Norman Franks.   The unit For this mission, I created a new French pilot and assigned him to Escadrille N.12 (the French gave squadron numbers a leading alphabetic designator which - though a change could sometimes lag behind a change of aircraft - indicated the principal type of aircraft flown - 'N' for Nieuport, Spa for SPAD, for example). The unit had a long and worthy combat history. There's a great online source here; even if you speak no French, the  illustrations, maps and tabular information tell their own story. The unit marking was a blue and while 'fanion' or guidon with the number '12', usually in red, carried on the side of the fuselage.   As you can see, it's 1 May 1916 and we are based at La Cense, near Compiegne. Happily, we are close enough to La Belle Paris for us to have some interesting and diverting 'R and R', on our days off. But that's a very different kind of mission with quite distinct objectives!     The mission Here's the brief for today's mission, which takes us well away from the delights of Paris. It's a patrol along a dog-leg route, up to the trench lines, which are not too far away. I'm leading a flight of three; a second flight of two aircraft is also flying the mission, as 'top cover'. Our briefed mission height is 10,000 feet.     Starting on the grass in front of the sheds at La Cense, I waited till the first couple of machines had roared off then sped after them. All of us were in green and brown 'shadow shading' camouflage, apart from one fellow who was in clear doped linen, with prominent blue, white and red chevrons on his fuselage. This was the aircraft of squadron ace Lt Pierre Dufaur de Gavardine, said in the Osprey aces book to have scored six victories with the unit, before being badly wounded early in 1917.     I was quickly off the ground and climbing steadily. With the front just a short distance away, I hoped to meet the Boche in the air before very much longer and perhaps indulge the superiority of my neat little aircraft, at the expense of some inferior Fokkers, Aviatiks or the like. Would my hopes be realised or dashed? I would find out in good time.     ...to be continued!

    Desert Storm - Mission 09 - Highway of Death
    beachav8r
    By beachav8r,
      One of the major events that occurred late in the war was the near total destruction of Iraqi forces retreating from Kuwait. The carnage on the "Highway of Death" is cited as one of the primary reasons the war was soon brought to a close because the Coalition thought international support would waiver with continued decimation of the Iraqi Army. Senior military leaders agree that it was important to destroy Saddam's retreating military hardware. Later investigation would show only a quarter or less of the vehicles were military, however the others were trucks and vehicles stuffed with war loot confiscated from Kuwait. The death tolls vary widely, but I come down on the side of those who think it numbered in the hundreds instead of thousands. If the vehicle in front of me and behind me blows up, I think I'm just going to high tail it across the desert. Controversy aside, the attacks on Highway 80 (and the lesser reported Highway 8) were incredible examples of the devastation concentrated airpower can have on pent up forces.   On the night of February 26, an E-8 JSTARS noted columns of vehicles departing Kuwait, retreating north toward Iraq.       The first aircraft on scene were A-6 Intruders that spotted the six mile long column running the length of Highway 80. They bombed the lead and trail sections of the column with GATOR anti-tank mines to prevent the column from moving. From then on, it wasn't much more than a static bombing range for Coalition aircraft of every type.         Heading for Highway 80...     The assembled Coalition fleet in the Gulf...     For my strike, I used CBU-87/B instead of GATOR...         Picking up the coastline and some vehicles on the radar...     In hot!     Soon we have the column burning, which makes for an easy reference point...         My wingman doing some damage with his Snakeyes...         Cont..
    An OV-10 loiters and throws white phosphorus rockets at the enemy column (framerate killer!)...     Care must be taken not to get too low because there are enemy air defense units in the mix...       With the initial strike completed, the entirety of Coalition air power will hit the column for two days, destroying 1500 to 2000 vehicles...       I next take up an A-10 to do some damage. Upon arrival on-scene, I order my wingman to make the first attack and he drops CBU on the column making it easy for my subsequent attacks...           Hmm..stay in my truck or leave my truck?     Leave my truck...     The airspace over the column is positively packed with Coalition aircraft. OV-10s, A-10s, F-4s, A-6s, A-7s, AV-8Bs, and others scream in from all directions...       Deconfliction is a bit of a problem and disasters almost occur..             We keep repeating passes until we run out of bombs..         The temptation to drift ever lower during your attacks is a problem. Soon you find yourself down in small arms territory and you expose yourself to a lot of fire...     The targets are endless...     We switch to guns, which in the SF2 A-10A aren't very effective. They seem to have more bullet drop and less of a "laser" fire feel to them compared to the DCS A-10C. Lazing around at low altitude trying to pick of targets with the gun seems hazardous so we pack up and head home.         I can't imagine what it must have been like to have been in that convoy for those two days. Once the bombs started to drop, I can't imagine many Iraqis decided to stay with their vehicles. Given the choice of showing up without their vehicles in Iraq and the consequences of that though, maybe some had no real choice. It indicates what a callous disregard Saddam Hussein had for his own forces that he would even put them in that position.   BeachAV8R

    CA-WW1 - Wings of War
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    Flying the famous Fokker D VII in another WOFF campaign mission inspired by a World War One classic!   The man and the book  I believe Rudolph Stark's 'Wings of War' was first published, in English at any rate, in 1933. It was translated by Claude W Sykes, described by Norman Franks as 'among the better aviation writers of the period' in his introduction to a recent reprint of Sykes's 'German War Birds', written under the pen-name 'Vigilant' and one of my favourite WW1 air war books from my younger days.   'Wings of War' starts during 1917 with Stark a two-seater pilot, yearning to transfer to single-seater 'scouts', as fighters were commonly called in those days. His transfer comes through and he receives his fighter pilot training at Jastaschule 2 at Saultain, near Valenciennes in occupied France. There's little said about this period; he completes his training just before Christmas 1917 and the book really begins with his posting to the Bavarian Jasta 34 at Chenois, flying against the French, not far from where his two-seater unit was based.   Stark flies a sleek Pfalz D III, his lilac personal colours being painted on top of the type's distinctive silver-doped factory finish. His first air combat in single-seaters is nearly his last. With two others, they attack a twin-engined Caudron but a French fighter loops onto Stark's tail and riddles his Pfalz, holing the petrol tank. Stark is lucky to escape after an involuntary spin earthwards. Racing for home, seemingly pursued by further gunfire, he lands to realise the rattling behind him is his seat-belt buckle flapping against the fuselage, the belt having been parted by a French bullet.   In March 1918, Jasta 34 moves north, to Le Cateau, to participate in the German spring offensive against the British. This was designed to win a decisive victory on the Western front, using troops freed up by the collapse of Imperial Russia and the truce with the Soviets, before the arrival of substantial US forces in France swung the balance of forces irreversibly against Imperial Germany. The fighing is intense and Stark, still apparently flying the Pfalz, claims his first victory in late March, a British two-seater. In May, Stark is made temporary leader of Jasta 77, based at the same airfield, and in June, he is appointed to command another Bavarian jagdstaffel, Jasta 35, in the Cambrai area. By August, their attacks having stalled, the Germans are facing a British counter-offensive and Jasta 35 is pleased to receive its first Fokker D VIIs, as replacements for some some of its older aircraft. Supplies of the superb new German fighter are limited, though, and in September, the staffel is compelled to accept instead some more machines from Bavarian manufacturers, the Pfalz D XII, to the disappointment of those pilots who don't get Fokkers.   It is all to no avail. Driven back on the ground and outnumbered in the air, the Germans are clearly losing the war. Falling back as the front is pushed east, Jasta 34 fights on, to the Armistice in November, bombed on the ground and harried in the skies above.   While Stark's book covers just the last year of the war, he had an interesting and eventful time of it, flying in combat the Fokker Dr I triplane as well as the Fokker D VII and the Pfalz D III. His combat memoir is a vivid one with rather more detail on places, units and planes than you tend to get in a wartime account. In fact, most printed descriptions of the Pfalz D XII rely heavily on Stark's quoted views of the type. 'Wings of War' (mine is the 1973 Arms & Armour Press edition) also benefits from the inclusion amongst its illustrations of reproductions of several of the author's own paintings, depicting some of his fights in the air. Highly recommended.     The air war in autumn 1918 By this point in the war, German fortunes were in terminal decline. In an effort to contest the increasing numerical and technical superiority of enemy fighters such as the SPAD XIII, the Camel, the SE5a and the newer Dolphin, the Germans had, in early and mid-1918, held competitive trials for fighter prototypes from many manufacturers, with frontline pilots participating in the evaluations. Anthony Fokker's entry to the trials was his company's V11, which, with a fuselage lengthened to solve initial handling problems, was the star of the show in the early trials. It was ordered into production as the Fokker D VII, regarded by many as the best German fighter of the war and a worthy match for anything in the enemy camp, with its responsive controls and relatively viceless handling. But many units had to soldier on with obsolescent Albatros and Pfalz scouts, against stronger enemy air arms which now included the RAF's 'Independent Force' carrying out 'strategic' day and night bombing and the first units of the United States Army Air Service, flying first the elegant Nieuport 28 but by the end of the summer, transitioning to the often-unreliable but sturdier SPAD XIII.   The mission Here's my pilot for this campaign mission, evidently a family member of the author! I've started him off in September 1918, because this is the month from which the unit, in WOFF, is fully equipped with the plane I wanted to fly, the Fokker DVII. Previously, the staffel was said by Rudolph Stark to be flying a mix of the Allbatros DV, the Pfalz D III and (tho not featured in WOFF) unspecified Rolands.     And here's Jasta 35's line-up for the campaign. I'm starting off in the second flight, with myself and two other pilots. The author himself is in the first flight. As their designation indicates, our Fokkers are made under licence by the Ostdeutsche Albatros Werke (OAW). Despite the late stage of the war, we seem to have plenty of both aircraft and pilots. At this point, we're based at Lieu St. Amand, just north of Cambrai, in Flanders.     Here's our briefing for the first mission. The full staffel is turning out to protect a pair of Hannover CL IIIs on a medium-level reconnaisance mission, down to the sourh-west, to an objective just the far side of the trench lines. The first flight is described as flying top cover so I'll be taking on the role of close (or closer) escort for the two-seaters.     Here we are, both flights lined up on the airfield and good to go. In the briefing stage, you have the opportunity to pick a 'skin' for your plane and here, from those available, I'd chosen that of Xaver Prey. I'm not sure if this skin comes with WOFF or OFF - I've experimentally copied over the skins from OFF to WOFF using Jonesoft's mod enabler pending purchase of the official WOFF skin pack.   Anyhow, you can see from the line-up that there are variations in the 'lozenge' fabric covering of our machines, as there were in real life, but we all carry the Jasta 35b unit colours of a white chevron on the top of the upper wing and a black chevron underneath the lower one. My individual marking comprises the black and white bands you can see behind my cockpit, Rudolph Stark's machine had a lilac nose and fuselage band and a black-edged lilac tailplane.     Off we went, into the clear blue September skies. This was my first campaign mission in WOFF during this late period of the war. Flying for the side which was just two months away from collapse, I was more than a little anxious as to what the next hour or so would bring. With good reason, as it turned out!     ...to be continued!

Portal by DevFuse · Based on IP.Board Portal by IPS


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