Forget the EA. Watch out for the Enemy Pilot! (Video)

[Hellshade]

I've often been so close to a plane when I shoot it down that I almost ram the craft with my own. This is the first time I ever almost rammed the enemy pilot!

 

Makes you wonder how it would really effect you emotionally to see an actual human being falling from the sky right past your cockpit with no hope of survival. At that distance, you would have witnessed the sheer terror on his face. No wonder all the pilots nerves were completely shot. At any moment, that could have been them.

 

Hellshade

(make sure to click the HQ button!)

Edited April 5, 2009 by Hellshade

[Capt. Winters]

I've often been so close to a plane when I shoot it down that I almost ram the craft with my own. This is the first time I ever almost rammed the enemy pilot!

 

Makes you wonder how it would really effect you emotionally to see an actual human being falling from the sky right past your cockpit with no hope of survival. At that distance, you would have witnessed the sheer terror on his face. No wonder all the pilots nerves were completely shot. At any moment, that could have been them.

 

Hellshade

(make sure to click the HQ button!)

 

Hi Hellshade,

 

I imagine it would be horrific, I have a book at home called Silk and Barbed Wire which recounts the stories of Allied airmen who where shot down over Europe in WWII. one of the stories has a bomber crew bailing out in daylight, the navigator has just pulled his chute and settled into the decent when his chute partial collapses, then a person slips off the canopy and falls past him only metres away. It was the pilot who had jumped but his chute must have been hit by flak or something as it was just a shredded mess flapping about just above his head. he tells of looking his mate in the eye as he went past and just watched him dissapear clawing hopelessly against the empty sky into the vast landscape below, never to be seen again.

 

To see anyone going to certain death would be horrific but to see a mate go I imagine would be even worse.

 

But in WWI you didnt need to see the pilot up close to get that sence of dread, many have written of the horror of watching machines going down out of control with perfectly healthy pilots going to certain death.

 

And not just pilots, I have an account of a soldier who watched a two seater, engine shot out pilot slumped in the forward cockpit, rear gunner standing up waving his arms about, doing a very slow wide spin into the ground, (taking several minutes to do so) and he could hear the paniced screams of the rear gunner just before it hit the ground. the rear gunner was still alive when he reached the wreck but died shortly after. he says that image haunted him for almost 50 years.

 

actually thinking about it more I think the book is "The 13th mission" not "Silk and Barbed Wire"

 

regards Rob.

Edited April 5, 2009 by Capt. Winters

[cosmos33]

I think the absence of parachute for the most part of ww1 is the reason so many pilots always carried a hand gun with em. In case they lost control of the plane, or wouldn't wat to die burning from a engine fire. Must have been quite horrible.

[NS13Jarhead]

Was it my imagination or did the pilot explode when he hit the ground?

[von Baur]

I lit up three BE2's at about 8,000 feet on a campaign mission (I assume that won't happen again, now that I've installed 1.3 and the Hardcore dm patch). I was less than 100 feet from the second when it caught fire and the pilot and observer both bailed out, both in that same fetal position. After all three aircraft were dispatched I had occassion to notice one of the aircrew floating in midair, feet down and head up with his arms raised over his head. I realized that the two body positions (fetal on bailout and later stretched straight) were holdovers from CFS3 and this man was descending under an invisible parachute. It was rather amusing. I'm guessing your man was too low for the 'chute' to open and he bounced. The explosion was a bit much, though.

 

Has anyone else seen this effect? And not to be bloodthirsty, but if my assumption about it is correct does this include our own pilots?? Can we bail out and be lowered gently to Mother Earth by an invisible canopy of lifesaving silk? If so, it sounds like it's time for another patch.

[Hellshade]

It wasnt the pilot that exploded. That was where his aircraft crashed. If you look up and to the right of the crash, you will see the pilot "hanging" in mid air as he descends slowly to the ground. It's hard to tell unless you watch it a few times, but I circled hard right to get a better view of the pilot flying past and that put me in range to see where the aircraft crashed. Yes, the pilot floating down is a hold over from CFS3.

 

Hellshade

Edited April 5, 2009 by Hellshade

[shredward]

I may be wrong, but I think that one is hard-wired, beyond our reach.

Cheers,

shredward