Disturbing Kills

[Pappy55 1]

Last night I was just testing my new video card in Quick Combat

 

I manovered behind the enemy aircraft and let the lead fly.. After a few seconds i heard a loud crack and his wing snaped off along with a tearing of fabric sound just before I saw the pilot fall out the plane 5000ft to his death..

 

That really got me thinking about real ww1 air combat and the fact they hand no chutes..

[Mr. Lucky 0]

That's part of the immersion in OFF we've seen little of in other sims. It pulls you in and you feel unexpected emotions. Not on the same scale as real combat I'm sure, but more than just sitting in front of a screen. I remember the shock and horror I felt the first time I saw my wingman blown up by a burst of flak. He was there one second and the next he was just pieces tumbling out of the sky.

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

I was left dumbstruck once, when a flaming Victim I had shot down at low level, plummeted earthwards, and the pilot jumped a few seconds before it hit the ground..... I just flew away thinking "Poor Bastard"

[carrick58 23]

I remember slidin behind a shiney Albat D-3 and firing she started a turn and flames just poured out. About that time I knocked over the coffee cup spilling the black liquid all over my newly carpeted War room

.

[Bullethead 12]

I shot the whole lower left wing off a Fee one time (it was hard to bring myself to fire on a Fee at all, but war is Hell ). Anyay, the wing came off and the crate tipped over into a vertical rolling spin. I figured it was done for and circled around to watch him crash. But unbelievably, the AI pilot got the thing back under control more or less. He stopped the spin and got it nearly level, but was stuck going around in big, slowly descending circles. It took him a long time, but he eventually crashed.

 

I found this quite disturbing because it was almost exactly like a chilling quote from Cecil Lewis, which has haunted me for years. The only real difference is he was talking about a Parasol and this was a Fee:

 

Roberts was a crack pilot, and if human skill could have got that machine out, he would have done it. His elevators and ailerons wer still intact, and by shutting off his engine he almost managed to avert disaster--but not quite.

 

He could not stop the machine spinning: but he could stop it going into a vertical diving spin. He tried every combination of elevator and bank. No good. The machine went on slowly spinning, round, and round, and round, all the way down from eight thousand feet to the ground. It took about five minutes. He and his observer were sitting there, waiting for death, for that time.

 

The machine fell just this side of the lines. They say a man in the trenches heard shoults, as it might have been for help, come from the machine just before it struck the ground and smashed to a pile of wreckage.

 

The observer was killed, for the fuselage broke in half: but Roberts escaped. He was badly smashed up, but breathing. They got him on to a stretcher and sent him down to hospital. He had been out all through the Somme battle without leave, his nerves were right on the edge, and we heard, with what truth I never knew, that this fearful experience put him out of his mind. As far as we were concerned he was gone--the dead or wounded never came back to us--and in the switfly changing pattern of the days we forgot him.

[Hasse Wind 46]

Every now and then when I shoot somebody down I think how macabre this hobby actually is - but then I remind myself that they are just computer characters and it's much better to fight a war on a PC screen than in the real world. The worst kills are always the burning planes, when somebody jumps out screaming to meet a certain death. Actually I don't always hear the screams, as I've adjusted my sound settings and made the engine very loud, but I know it's there.

[Tanyrhiew 0]

The very first Be2c I've shot down in OFF in a Bloody April campaign set me thinking. Set alight the Be2c at about 3000 ft, the plane flew on fire in a wide lazy spiral slowly descending towards the ground. Being pressed for time, when it was at a about 1000 ft I put a stop to this, at which point the observer jumped out and the plane dived into the ground. A little voice in my head said 'You callous bastard, he'd nearly made it!". Set me thinking about the plight of observers trying to land planes with a dead pilot. Didn't think a game would get me like that.

 

As Yeates put it "there's no glory in death".

Edited November 6, 2009 by Tanyrhiew

[carrick58 23]

I much prefer OFF to buying guns or a real war.

[JFM 18]

I carry a big stick, and it can get very loud eight times.

 

I may be considered a savage but shooting down computer airplanes doesn't bother me in the slightest. The more BE2s I can attack unmercifully and burn, the better. This is why I own OFF, after all, to shoot down other airplanes and not get shot down myself. Seeing a guy jump out just means I can move on to the next target.

[Rickitycrate 10]

Right on Jim, I understand that, hehe.

[Bullethead 12]

I may be considered a savage....

Hmmm..... When my unit came back to the rear and was packing up to go home, in our tent city there was an "Amnesty Box". This was where you could drop off all the illegal trophies you'd picked up but weren't allowed to take home. no questions asked. If you dumped the stuff during the amnesty period, it was like it never happened. The box was intended for things like AK-47s, grenades, etc. However, it ended up containing at least as many scalps, ears, entire heads, arms, and other body parts than weaponry. Savage enough for you? Edited November 7, 2009 by Bullethead

[Rickitycrate 10]

Disturbing kills. Not a kill but a death. Lost a DiD Pilot while he was observing. Took a flak shell direct. Plane flaked apart trailing pieces parts rearward so I had a good look as the kite dissolved around me. Seems like slow motion but it must have been fast. A different perspective on a common occurence.

[JFM 18]

Hmmm..... When my unit came back to the rear and was packing up to go home, in our tent city there was an "Amnesty Box". This was where you could drop off all the illegal trophies you'd picked up but weren't allowed to take home. no questions asked. If you dumped the stuff during the amnesty period, it was like it never happened. The box was intended for things like AK-47s, grenades, etc. However, it ended up containing at least as many scalps, ears, entire heads, arms, and other body parts than weaponry. Savage enough for you?

 

Real war is horrible, obviously, but what does the Amnesty Box have to do with me flying a computer airplane and shooting other computer airplanes?

[Duce Lewis 3]

Back in P2 I dove down to rescue a wingie with a Camel hot on his tail

Executed a perfect stike and drilled the Tommy from his 10 O'Clock

Happy with myself, I clicked Pause to memorialize the moment

Clicked an external view then statred panning around for the best angle

That's when I spotted my wingie again, who had passed out of my line of sight

He was fully engulfed in a fireball! ... ...I WAS TOO LATE!!!

I dispated the offender but was still totally deflated

Edited November 7, 2009 by Duce Lewis

[carrick58 23]

TOASTY:

[Siggi 10]

Hmmm..... When my unit came back to the rear and was packing up to go home, in our tent city there was an "Amnesty Box". This was where you could drop off all the illegal trophies you'd picked up but weren't allowed to take home. no questions asked. If you dumped the stuff during the amnesty period, it was like it never happened. The box was intended for things like AK-47s, grenades, etc. However, it ended up containing at least as many scalps, ears, entire heads, arms, and other body parts than weaponry. Savage enough for you?

 

What kind of moron takes a head? In that heat? Arms?? Where did they keep them, in the beer fridge?! Where did he/they stash it/them on the way back from the field, in a backpack? I think somebody was pulling your leg. Or did you see this yourself? A person would have to be some kind of psychotic to take a head.

[GwynO 16]

What kind of moron takes a head? In that heat? Arms?? Where did they keep them, in the beer fridge?! Where did he/they stash it/them on the way back from the field, in a backpack? I think somebody was pulling your leg. Or did you see this yourself? A person would have to be some kind of psychotic to take a head.

 

If I ever had to kill someone, especially in battle, I would definitely take the head because my ancestors did just the same, I might even stick it on a pole outside my house to warn others not to mess with me or my family. I guess you could pickle it somehow, or maybe just the heat would dry it out especially with all the hot sand, then it would be a mummified head!

[Siggi 10]

Ears are one thing, quick to take and easy to carry, but a head? An arm? Only a seriously ill lunatic would do such a thing on civvie-street, never mind in a combat-zone. Any real soldier will devote whatever spare capacity he has to weaponry and ammo, not bloody body-parts. The notion is absurd beyond belief.

[Wels 2]

Hello,

 

really felt sorry for the pilot ..

 

 

It's only a game, a game ...

 

 

Here it was ME who got killed (very disturbing lol) by german AA/FlaK - gave a bad bump in my FFB joystick, short afterly the plane rolled slowly to the left, and then went vertically down - no chance to regain control with all controls dead ...

 

1. Archie ahead - oh oh ..

 

 

 

2. Now what was that "boom" ?!

 

 

 

Greetings,

Catfish

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

Well, they have no guilt about doing it to you...So I am with Mick Mannock!

 

"Flamerenoes..... sizzle, sizzle Boom"

 

Or indeed, as he said on the Red Baron's Death "I hope the bastard burned all the way down"

[Hasse Wind 46]

Well, they have no guilt about doing it to you...So I am with Mick Mannock!

 

"Flamerenoes..... sizzle, sizzle Boom"

 

Or indeed, as he said on the Red Baron's Death "I hope the bastard burned all the way down"

 

And they call us, the noble servants of Der Kaiser Wilhelm II, Huns and barbarians?

 

***

 

Wels, those are superb pics! Though as I think about it, I've never seen any bad screenshots here. The sim is so good that everything one captures on the screen will look great on the forum.

[CaptSopwith 26]

I had a very eerie balloon busting mission last week with my namesake pilot flying a Sopwith Pup. I posted about this particular event in another thread, but since it was overlooked, I'll bump myself (I'm allowed to do that, right? )

 

Finally, well over the target balloon and with flak all around me, I blipped the rotary engine, rolled my Pup, and dived on the target.

 

The gas bag went up in a sheet of flame after only a few rounds. I'm still not sure if I hit it or if there was so much shrapnel in the air from their own artillery that friendly fire did the balloon in. At any rate, I pulled up hard, cranked the engine back to full blast, and booked it West for our lines, my flight in tow.

 

I had lost sight of the Albatros fighters and was bent on getting back over friendly territory as quickly as I could. The flak was still bursting all around us and, after glancing off the right of my tail, I could see a trail of smoke in the distance. Craning my neck around (or in my case, pushing the hat switch a little to the right to get a better look), I could see one of our own had been hit by flak, burning, and spiraling slowly to earth. I don't know how the OBD guys pulled this effect off, but the sickening look of smoking, trailing debris and burning wreckage slowly winding to earth in a trail of deathly black smoke is still one the eeriest things I've ever seen in a game, and it never fails to turn my stomach. Damn, I thought, who did we just lose?

 

I watched him all the way down. This Sopwith Pup, mangled and broken, falling to earth silently in the distance, trailing smoke, burning embers, intermittently belching flame as it tumbled to earth. It was a sickening feeling, and knowing we had just lost one of our own made it worse.

 

If you ever want to make this game very personal, go into your pilot dossier file and edit your fellow pilots so that they all have namesakes of people you know. The next time a wingman gets flamed over the lines, it becomes intensely personal.

Edited November 7, 2009 by _CaptSopwith

[carrick58 23]

Speaking of Body Parts, Heard this from my 1st wifes uncle. He was part of the U.S. Glider Force that went into France on D Day. He said as things came in from the beach and it was becomeing a rear area. No one would feed them since they were with the airborne. ( Your rations were allocated to whatever unit u were assigned ) and their unit the 101st was still scattered and moving about. Anyway they found an Artillery mobile kitchen ? and sat down in the dirt along side the chow line his buddy Ollie said hey dewey ya want the light or dark meat this time ? as he unrolled part of a foot he found in a field not far from there. Dewey told me after that they were fed everytime they showed up and always at the head of the line untill they were rounded up by MP s and sent back to the line. True? dont know but its part of history.

[Bullethead 12]

What kind of moron takes a head? In that heat? Arms?? Where did they keep them, in the beer fridge?! Where did he/they stash it/them on the way back from the field, in a backpack? I think somebody was pulling your leg. Or did you see this yourself? A person would have to be some kind of psychotic to take a head.

 

Bear in mind that Desert Storm was fought in the dead of winter, January and February. Deserts get COLD in the winter, AND wet. In fact, I have never been so shivering cold for so long before or since, and it really wasn't THAT cold on an absolute scale. We only had frost 2 or 3 times. HOWEVER, it rained on average 2 out of every 3 days (it was the wettest winter on record there), there was always AT LEAST a 15-knot wind blowing (usually stronger), and the ambient temperature during the day ranged from the low 30sF to the low 40sF, so the wind chill was always down close to 10^F, often lower. When you're in an uncovered hole in that weather, you never dry out, and even though it's not REALLY that cold, it just sucks the heat right out of you. Every swingin' Richard had walking pneumonia, but all the corpsmen had was patches for bulletholes, without a single cough drop.

 

So, dead meat actually kept fairly well over there. I mean, there were MOUNTAINS (20-30' tall) of dead goats every few miles, all killed by anthrax shells. They'd gathered them up but never got around to burning them before the civilians evacuated the area thinking the Iraqis were going to keep heading south. That had happened back in like September when things were classic desert, so I guess they kinda mummified naturally. But then they got rained on a lot, so got pretty moldy, although the temperature was as if they were in a fridge.

 

But to be honest, nobody'd had a bath since deploying (other than scrubbing off hurriedly AND washing all their clothes in 5 gallons of cold water, in the cold wind, every 2 weeks). For instance, I took my 1st real shower of 1991, with hot water and soap, on 13 March, the day after we rotated back to the rear. So we smelled pretty rank ourselves. Having a hunk of rotten meat around really didn't make a difference.

 

As to pulling your leg, how about this.... The day they called the cease fire, I was just downwind of the Highway of Death (the freeway between Kuwait City and Basra). We'd killed like 20,000 guys there, and there they lay. We stayed there a couple of weeks. One morning, I climbed out of my hole to discover that during the night, a jackal had raided my case of MREs, which I'd left sitting just outside. But he'd left me a severed, rather burned, and somewhat chewed-on forearm, which he'd apparently been carrying when he happened across my stash. So I bent such fingers as remained into a bird and stuck the thing elbow-first into the sand beside my hole. And there it stayed until we left about a week later. My ossifers agreed with the sentiment so didn't bother me about it. In fact, some took photos of it.

[Siggi 10]

In Bosnia we went for quality over quantity.