Your Longest Career Cheating Death

[Akmatov 1]

the challenge are not masses of kills. The real challenge is here, to survive one year, two years - the whole war.

 

Olham made this comment in another thread and it got me wondering. At this point I'm not even trying out a career, I'm spending my time on basic flying skills.

 

But I'm wondering how long people manage to survive, on full realism or close to it, in OFF? Also, curious about how many kills folks might manage before going down in flames.

 

I don't know how it played out historically, but my sense is the death rate of pilots who actually flew in combat must have been well over 50%. I seem to recall that in WW2 the USAAF used 50% as the guide for setting the required number of missions before they rotated a pilot back to training duties and my sense is that WW1 was a lot worse for everyone.

[Slartibartfast 153]

Me I am generally managing around 20 hours in Sopwith Strutters before I make a stupid mistake e.g. I will make one more strafing run or something that daft... Kills I usually rack around 7 confirmed but many more unconfirmed...

[Olham 164]

Akmatov, the average life expectancy of a rea life WW1 pilot was 17 hours.

 

Here in OFF we have the "Krauts vs Crumpets" Full DiD Campaign running.

You can see here, how long everone survived so far:

 

http://www.hetzer.talktalk.net/sitenavigation.html

 

Click on all pictures.

[GregSM 0]

I hear you, Slartibartfast!

 

My best so far has been thirty-some hours, mostly in an Eindecker. Not easy! But aircraft performance, or role, isn't nearly as important to me as tactics and self-discipline, adhering to a set of very conservative tactical principles. After some hours, an insidious, irresistible complacency displaces my better judgement. It's as dangerous as anything else. This thirty-some hour guy, for instance, died due to collision with a friendly. Quite deliberately, I set after a lone, fatally crippled enemy plane that was about to fall to the several friendlies with which I could clearly see it was already engaged. Boom! Avoidable but inevitable.

 

 

Cheers,

 

 

Greg

[carrick58 23]

About 30 some hours. But that only happened one time. I mostly I get killed off before that or I kill myself doing some dumb thing while landing or attacking at 4 to 1 odds.

[RAF_Louvert 101]

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Akmatov, as Olham has mentioned here 17 hours was the average for our RL counterparts back in the day. My current DID pilot, Flt. Lt. Frederick "Chappy" Chapman, has beaten all the odds and survived 100 missions and over 130 combat flying hours, but even he has drawn the short lot on occasion. He is in fact currently in captivity and recovering in a Hun hospital from injuries sustained in mission 100, (I say "currently" because I already know his fate, but I don't want to give away all the details yet). I fly my campaign pilots very carefully and attempt to weigh each mission in terms of survivability while still doing my best to complete the assignment given. I fly full DID with no TAC or on-screen aids of any kind, and I use a "paper" map to navigate rather than the one in the game. I will look at a mission and determine if it seems reasonable given the circumstances. For instance, Chappy's squadron is currently stationed up a Furnes on the coast so it would not have been remotely likely that they would have been given the task of destroying a railyard 60+ miles to the southeast deep inside Hunland, even though the sim engine might generate such a mission. The beauty is however that you can look through the other available "assigned" targets for that particular mission and choose one that is far more realistic in terms of distance from your aerodrome. The only time I won't do this is when the assignment is, (what was referred to in the day as), "The Long Recon". That was one assignment that every flyer drew from time-to-time and there was no getting out of it. So, when my DID pilot is given the job of say, flying well east of Thielt as escort for a trio of B/R planes, all I can do is keep a sharp eye out, fly smart, and hope for the best.

 

Several things I recommend if you want to survive:

 

1. If you are on the nasty side of the mud do not follow your enemy down, no matter how tempting or close you are to the kill. You might get lucky and make it home, but eventually you will be pounced upon by higher EA, or hit by ground fire, and your career will end.

 

2. Always fight from the top down, pushing the highest threat below you while keeping your alt. Don't get fixated on a single target but take each best opportunity as it presents itself, even if you haven't "finished" with an earlier foe.

 

3. Shoot smart. Don't blaze away like you are trying to saw an enemy's wing off. Short, accurate bursts into the cockpit and engine. You have very little ammo and you never know when you are going to need it to fight your way home.

 

4. Stick with your flight. A lone flyer is far easier to kill than one travelling with friends.

 

5. Mission is secondary, living to fight another day is primary. This may sound like treason, but a dead pilot is of no use what so ever to his country. Try your best to complete your mission and protect your wingmen, but in the end making it back alive allows you the opportunity to continue fighting for the cause.

 

6. Know when to run. When a mission becomes undoable, or a dog fight unwinnable , don't kill yourself trying to force a different outcome. Break off and make for home.

 

7. N.O.E. can save your arse! Nape-of-the-Earth flying is your best chance of escaping when you've been stupid and are caught low and fat. Point yourself towards the nearest section of front lines and fly inches off the ground, bobbing in and around trees and any other ground objects that might provide cover as your beat it back home. The enemy AI do not like to stay down that low with you for more than a second or two and then they will pop back up a bit, and each time they do it widens the gap. If you make it back across and they are still hot on your tail try and find a friendly base or gun emplacement nearby and drag them over it. If you have ammo and feel the odds are now more in your favour, climb, turn and fight, while trying to gain the alt advantage, and once you have it, keep it! (refer back to item 2)

 

8. Land if you have to before it's too late. If you have taken damage and are loosing control functions and/or fuel, find the nearest friendly base and set her down. Barring that, start watching for a smooth field on your side of the lines and make for it. Dead stick landings are a lot harder when your kite is all shot up or damaged from AA, so don't wait til the engine conks completely.

 

9. When you land after a good mission, (and any mission you make it back from is a good one), celebrate!

 

 

Best of luck Akmatov.

 

Lou

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

Really good advice there. Think I'll call it "Lou's dicta."

 

[Akmatov 1]

the average life expectancy of a real life WW1 pilot was 17 hours.

 

At first I wondered about that, but then I remembered that in the spring of 1917 the average RFC pilot was good for 11 days. Not sure how long an 'average' sortie was, but the two numbers seem mutually supporting. I don't remember the number of hours of stick time that was thought to qualify a pilot to fly at the front, but I remember thinking the low number of hours was criminal. Hmm, wonder if some of the more durable pilots had more flying experience before arriving at the Front than was provided by the sausage factory flight school system run by the RFC.

 

Great advice uncleal and RAF_Louvert. I particularly like live to fight another day approach and I will definately spend some time practising down in the weeds dodging trees this weekend. :)

Edited February 18, 2010 by Akmatov

[RAF_Louvert 101]

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"Lou's Dicta" ... LOL! I like it Herr Prop-Wasche.

 

Akmatov, hope you find the advice of some use Sir. As to your pondering about the number of hours a flight student had before he was "breveted". It varied, A LOT. The French were the best at preparing their young aviateurs, and most had upwards of three to five months training at the large flight schools such as Avord. They began with the "penguins" and systematically worked their way along, all the way to full acrobatics training, before being sent to the front. The Americans tended to follow the French model, likely because so many of the early American volunteers flew with the French before the U.S. entered the War. The Germans and Austrians also provided a lot of first-rate, practical training. The Brits were atrocious and sent pilots to live, or more likely die, with as little as 8 hours of actual flying, and often none of it in the planes they would be assigned in combat, (they did however vastly improve their system as time went on but not until losing many, many unprepared flyers). The Belgians didn't seem to have a clue and did everything from requiring their flyers to go to England and pay for their own training; to pawning them off on the French, (the lucky ones); to sending them to their own small flight schools where they could sit for months and get no more than 20 hours of flight time before being sent up. In fact, in the Belgian schools, any initiative on the part of a young student to try and press beyond the rudimentary take-offs and landings being woefully taught resulted in several days of lock-up for the "offender". Read Willy Coppen's "Days On The Wing" if you want the full, first-hand account on Belgian flight training.

 

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[MikeDixonUK 5]

The main thing I'd advise to avoid death would be to never attack an enemy craft that is already being engaged by a friendly aircraft and always make sure you have room to break away from your enemy in an instant, probably 80% of the times I've died in previous campaigns and missions is because I've either crashed into what I was chasing, or someone else has crashed into me.

 

By the way Chappy, the Squadron isn't posted up at the coast anymore, we thought that while you're away we'd move the entire Squadron down south near Cambrai to try to give you the slip.

[RAF_Louvert 101]

.

 

Aaah, very well then, Mike. Being held incommunicado by my Hun captors, I of course receive no news of my squadmates or their whereabouts. That is one way to get rid of me; move while I'm away from camp.

 

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[Akmatov 1]

Akmatov, hope you find the advice of some use

 

This is all of great interest and hopefully once I get better at flapping my wings successfully I'll be able to put it to some good use.

 

Getting interested recently in OOF again, I realized that although I have been slamming around with flight sims for a while, I had never really taken the time to actually learn how to fly properly. So recently I started with MSFS 2004 and I'm working my way through the very basic flight lessons and quite enjoying them. Sneaking into OFF to crash and burn is kind of a desert course at the moment. :) However, I hope to get better.

 

Was working on setting up the control buttons for OFF last night and was a bit shocked by WW1 aircraft - which I hadn't flown in a long while. Having just discovered the DiD Krauts vs. Crumpets campaign, I thought I'd try out a bomber - which I have never considered flying before. Thinking I'd probably enlist amongst the Krauts, I fired up a DFW C V - OMG what a penance for my many flying sins!

 

First of all, there are virtually no instruments! OK, I wasn't expecting a 'glass cockpit', but not even a COMPASS! I found myself hitting the 'M' key a lot - which was totally ahistorical, but it was either the 'M' key or the 'Z' key to at least figure out what direction I was heading off toward.

 

 

Secondly, I've seen pictures of the open-topped German inline engines with the upward pointing 'saxophone' exhaust forever; however, I had never considered the problems involved in seeing around such a monstrosity. So there I am at 5000 feet with a wing right over my head, a gas tank just barely over my head in front of me, a huge THING right in front of my face blocking my forward view and a thin slice of viability around the edges of the THING and between the wings to the sides. Talk about flying blind - I needed a cane and a seeing eye dog - badly. I had though flying blind related to clouds and fog, I didn't realize it meant flying aircraft with your face pressed into the rear of your engine.

 

My admiration for the men who actually managed to fly these things, and you guys, had taken a big upward jump!