Bullethead

I don't have this problem. I don't use mods and in the workshop, my gun power is set at normal. If you're using a DM mod and/or have your gun power set higher, then your results will differ.

I agree with Lou. I myself had had OFF since it came out and have never used any of the mods because I think the existing game is perfectly good as-is. No disrepect to the modders, it's just a matter of personal taste. The workshop options cover everything I've ever thought needed tweaking--modders see a need for additional tweaks. As Lou says, survival in OFF is all about flying smart. Do all in your power to fight only on terms favorable to you, always maneuver so that you achieve and maintain an energy superiority over the enemy, and always be ready to disengage the moment before it looks like the tactical situation or the energy balance will turn against you. Do these things requires that you hone your situational awareness skills, not just to where the enemy planes are, but everybody's relative energy state, and all other aspects of the situation. If you develop good SA, become skilled at energy management, and learn when to fight and when to run away, you'll well on your way to success, regardless of whether you use mods or not. If you don't have these things, then you're going to die a lot, mods or no mods, unless you go godmode in the workshop settings.

Yuppers. This is one of the points I was trying to make above but obviously didn't express very well. It was beaten into me early and often, both in training and through experience, that whenever you're in a time-sensitive situation, if what you're doing ain't working, you need to go to Plan B, C, D, or whatever you're up to by that point. This is a universal rule applicable to everything where you've only got a limited number of attempts at getting it right before you're hosed. This includes not only stressful things like combat and emergencies of all kinds, but also such things as convincing people to your POV (seduction, getting a promotion, persuading a jury, winning an argument), and artistic things like knapping flint, sculpture, etc. Reinforce success, never failure. Bonin at least never learned this lesson in all his life prior to flying and then in his 5000+ hours. He was stuck in this loop: Airplane is going down Remedy for airplane going down is pulling back on stick and full power Airplane is still going down anyway Because airplane is still going down despite me efforts, I must not have any control over it, but I'll keep pulling back on stick anyway in hopes things change, and if somebody does anything different from me pulling the stick back, I'll cut them off and keep pulling the stick back So regardless of whether the Airbus flight control system will "spill the wine" or not, to me this is still a much deeper training issue than merely learning another techique to avoid and/or recover from a stall. I have no idea. The full transcript and commentary were published in late 2011 by Jean-Pierre Otelli in Erruers de Pilotage: Tome 5. It apparently caused a great outcry in France. But given the heavy government involvement, I'm not optimistic that there will be anything more than cosmetic "feel good" changes. Anytime a government is major player in something bad, that's all you ever get.

The 1st thing to know about wingmen is that they don't follow sudden course changes, whether these are on or off the waypoint route. If you change direction by more than about 20^ at once, they won't follow at first but will keep going straight until they're a mile or 2 away, then will scramble to rejoin you. So say you're flying along and see some enemies off to the side that you want to attack. If you just peel off suddenly, most times your wingmen will keep going for a long time before following you, even if you've given the attack order. Thus, you find yourself alone. To avoid this, make only slow, gentle turns when maneuvering your whole flight around, and it also helps to spasmodically hit the rejoin command while you're turning. When I'm lucky enough to be in position to initiate the fight instead of being swooped from above, I do a 2-step proceedure. First, I carefully maneuver the whole flight until the enemy is somewhere within about 45^ of either side of my nose. Then, I signal the attack and watch to make sure my troops are actually going for the desired targets before I commit myself. In fact, I usually keep myself in reserve, circling above and watching the progress of the fight and checking for enemy reinforcements. I usually engage mostly to help one of my troops who's in trouble or to prevent an unengaged enemy from getting a free shot at one. Now, as to which commands to use and how to use them. That depends a lot on the situation. I find that the attack command is mostly useful for 1917 and before, where most fights are just your flight vs. 1 enemy flight. It basically tells your wingmen to fight until they die or all the enemy are dead. It thus tends to break up the fight into a bunch of individual duels which soon scatter out over a wide area. But this both realistic for the period and not much of a problem because it's unlikely that other enemies will show up any time soon. Thus, you can usually rally your surviving troops fairly easily after the fight, regain some energy, and continue your patrol. But note that in such a fight, the "help me" comnand usually won't work because often nobody is close enough to help you, and too busy with their own duels anyway. Using the attack command is not a good idea at all in the massive furballs of 1918, however. Your wingmen will disappear into the depths of the melee, never to be seen again. Best thing there is to use the "help me" command instead, so they stay with you while still doing some damage. If you're the rare type who likes to fly the Fee, then you need to know how to simulate a Lufbery Circle (hopefully OFF2 will have an actual command for this). What you do here is go into a fairly gentle turn while hitting "rejoin" continuously. You don't have to worry about lining up a shot because your gunner takes care of that. Finally, the split command. I actually have good results with this and use it frequently. But I only use it in situations where I'm initiating the fight from a position of advantage. What I do is split my flight, select an enemy target, and hit attack. This will cause whatever of my wingmen are in the 1st split to peel off. Then I pick another target and hit attack again. This causes the rest of my wingmen to attack that target. Then I follow along myself at a 3rd target. This is quite useful for taking out a formation of 2-seaters. Put 1/2 your wingmen against the left side, 1/2 against the right side, and you take the middle without having to worry that one of your troops will shoot you in the back.

Turning makes an airplane lose energy. You essentially have the choice of either maintaining altitude and losing speed, or losing altitude to maintain speed. At low altitude, the second option is pretty much closed off, so you're forced to get slower. If you keep on turning, eventually you'll get below flying speed for the attitude you're in, stall, and go splat. The process is the same for all planes, they just differ in the speed/turn combination that stalls them and in how they react once stalled. Some go into spins, some pitch nose down, others just fall while maintaining their bank and pitch angles. If you're in one of the latter planes, it will look like you're floating backwards. So, you need to avoid this situation. Most fights start at medium-high altitude. The longer fights go on, the lower everybody gets as all participants lose energy during their maneuvers. Fights are treetop level are thus almost always the result of the participants all running out of energy before running out of enemies. So, the ideal way to avoid fighting in the treetops is to kill all the badguys quickly, while you're still well above the ground. Problem is, they don't cooperate with this, so you usually have to be tricky. What you need to do is fight in such a way that you don't lose energy as fast as the enemy. Your #1 goal should be to achieve and then keep a higher level of energy than your opponent. THEN worry about killing him. Having more energy is critical because it means 2 things: 1, your plane will maneuver better than the enemy's, so you're more likely to get a good shot at him than he is at you. And 2, if you've got more energy, you can disengage if you need to, such as if you see more enemies about to join the fight.

OK, you've convinced me. I do feel the need to explain why I've thought otherwise, however..... I'm not smart, I just read a lot. I rely on the writings of others, who are presumably more knowledgeable than myself, to learn about all subjects outside my personal experience. I've always thought this was the purpose of the written word. Within my personal experience is a degree in industrial engineering, the majority of which is human factors. I'm also an officer in a fire department and have spent most of my working hours for the past dozen years training for, participating in, and debriefing extremely chaotic emergencies. So I do know a little about how people react and make decisions in highly stressful situations. I have developed a bias against Airbus because I have read many articles that have said the same thing as the PM article I just quoted above: that under normal law, the Airbus won't "spill the wine" regardless of what the pilot does. I have read this and heard it from a few pilot friends enough times over the years, without ever seeing it contradicted, to come to believe this is true. And given what I think I know about human behavior under stress, I have formed a very low opinion of the level of training of pilots using this system. But what else was I supposed to think? You are the 1st person in my experience to challenge this opinion. You have personal experience and firm belief in what you're saying. So you've convinced me that I'm laboring under a false impression. I will now change my opinion of Airbus and its related training levels. This begs the question, however: if none of what I believed about Airbus is really true, then where did all the misinformation out there come from? It's so widespread, at least from where I sit, that it's either a vast conspiracy (which I don't believe in) or most people who write about Airbus for the lay audience don't know any more about it than I do (which is calls all other writings on technical issues into question). Or could there be different versions of the software available, the one you're familiar with and another that really "won't spill the wine"? Anyway, you win.

Hoover was my favorite, too. He also had a yellow P-51 that he did amazing things with. Next to him, my other favorite was Art Scholl in his Chipmunk and Pitts. I was fortunate enough to go to several shows where they both performed in both their planes.

Well, you fly the things and I don't, so I bow to your superior knowledge. But I'm going by what other pilots I've known have told me, what I've read elsewhere, and what this PM article said. In fact, here's a quote from the PM article (March 2012, page 23): "The vast majority of the time, the computer operates within what's known as normal law, which means that the computer will not enact any control movements that would cause the plane to leave its flight envelope. The flight control computer, under normal law, will not allow an aircraft to stall, (my emphasis) aviation experts say. "But onces AF447's computer had lost its airspeed data, it disconnected the autopilot and switched from normal law to alternate law, a regime with far fewer restrictions on what a pilot can do. Bonin may have assumed that the stall warning was spurious because he didn't realize that the plane had removed its own restrictions against stalling." (my emphasis) So what other conclusion can one draw from this (and this isn't the only place I've read or been told this) except that the control system, when fully operating, damps out the pilot's inputs into acceptable parameters? IOW, moving the stick isn't flying the plane, it's just suggesting to it that you want to go in a given direction, so the plane will fly itself that way. I dunno. You fly the things and I don't, but I've heard the above many times before. So either there's a lot of misinformation out there, or there are different software versions available, one for actual pilots and 1 for people who can't fly. Sure. But really, why do you even need to know what your airspeed is, or even your AOA? If you've got full power (known) and full back stick (known to Bonin at least) and the airplane is still descending rapidly (known), then either you're stalled or have suffered fatal damage that you can't fix. So your only option is to treat it as a stall and worry about how it happened later, if you get the chance. To me, that's flight dynamics 101, which anybody who calls himself a pilot should know. OK, they lost ASI at the get-go so I can understand them not trusting it later, when it came back on prior to entering the fatal stall. But as I said above, I don't think knowing your airspeed is vital to the situation. And maybe they didn't have an AOA indicator (except they did, given Captain Dubois' last words "10 degrees pitch"). But they never lost VVI and the engines and their instruments always worked, and Bonin at least knew where the stick was. And Bonin knew what he was doing wasn't working, which is why he said he didn't have control. But he didn't have any other ideas. This is what bothers me. It indicatates a lack of understanding of the fundamentals of flight itself. That's a much deeper training issue than merely introducing a different way to react to a stall situation. It seems to me that this Bonin guy, despite his thousands of hours, really didn't know how to fly, or even understand basic flight theory. He was just a collection of situational reactions without any understanding of the underlying processes. Thus, I can't avoid the conclusion that he was allowed to hold down his job because somewhere along the line, the powers that be deemed that pilots didn't need to know the fundamentals, given a flight control system that took care of all that. After all, the whole idea was to capture the market amongst developing nations. I think that's how it should be. But I also think the Airbus philosophy is that the pilots exist to get the automation to 100%.

<br><br><font face="Courier New">Yup, that's the one. It wasn't in that hangar when I was last in it, though. Glad to see it's in a museum. That guy was quite a pilot and that plane is a real go-getter, even if it looks like just a puddle jumper.<br></font><br>

You need to finish the Shrike as Bob Hoover's airshow ride. I well remember him turning that thing inside out on 1 engine. He finished his routine by killing both engines, doing 3 loops down the runway, up into a hammerhead, then landing, and still having to put on the brakes to stop at show center.

I've always thought those helmets looked cool and have often wished I had one. I've also wondered why hard helmets never went mainstream until the jet age.

I'm sorry, I must not have been clear enough. The autopilot, when operating, will override crew input if that input will cause the airplane to go beyond its flight envelope. For instance, had the system been working when Bonin pulled the stick all the way back, the amount of up elevator he actually got would have decreased over time as the plane slowed, until he was getting zero elevator response despite still having the stick full back. It's my contention that such a system breeds hamfisting. When the system is on, you only get what the airplane wants to give you no matter how you move the stick or pedals. Thus, I think it would naturally habituate the crews to just move the stick fully in all directions, relying on the system to smooth things out and limit effects. So, when the system is suddenly gone, there'd be a tendency to keep moving the stick the same way as with it on. IOW, I can easily see Bonin thinking there was nothing at all extraordinary about having the stick fully back. I'm sure he did it every day, knowing he wasn't going to get anywhere near that much elevator. But he'd either forgotten that the autopilot was off at the time, or at least how to fly without it. So yes, the crew, particularly Bonin, flew the plane into the ocean, not the system. I'm not arguing that. But other than over-reliance on the system actually flying the airplane, and being trained under that principle, how else do you explain Bobin's full back stick all the time. He obviously wasn't trying to loop the plane, he just wanted to climb a little, but he pulled the stick full back anyway. Why? Because to him, pulling the stick back wasn't flying the plane, it was just asking the plane to go up and it would decide how much. So the question really is, why wasn't this crew thoroughly schooled on the "gotchas" of this plane's envelope? The only reason I can think of is that the system was supposed to prevent you from finding the "gotchas", so why spend the time and money training for something that will never happen. I don't doubt your knowledge and we're not disagreeing that lack of training was the main killer. But why was there such a lack of training? Why would a guy with thousands of hours only use full stick input in situations that clearly didn't call for it, and when he obviously didn't want full control response? I'm talking before the fatal stall, when he was just trying to climb over rough weather. To me, that speaks of a much greater training failure than merely changing a method of getting out of (or preventing) a stall. It's like the guy really didn't know how to fly at all. And that, I think, comes from knowledge that most of the time, he really wasn't flying the plane, just making suggestions to its control system.

From what I can tell, there is a button to switch between which stick "has the airplane". This is presumably how Bonin took the controls back from Robert just before the crash. As to why the sticks aren't connected to each other, that's not surprising because they're not connnected to anything physical. They're really no different than our gaming joysticks, being merely electro-mechanical input devices for a computer. IOW, the only moving part is what you see sticking up out of the armrest, so there's nothing behind the instrument panel or under the floor to link together physically. The only way to make the sticks move in unison would therefore be a type of "force feedback" mechanism. Aparently, this wasn't thought worthwhile or it would have been there from the start. I suppose it might be suggested now to prevent future accidents. But I think that instead, the flight control system will get a few tweaks to stay running under more adverse conditions and be given even more authority to disregard crew inputs. I mean, the whole Airbus philosophy is that pilots are only there because the law requires them. The almighty flight control system is supposed to do everything. This is a strategy intended to own the market of the developing world, places where there's not even an education system capable of turning out pilot-quality graduates in sufficient quantity, let alone an adeguate flight-training infrsstructure. And because Airbus is so heavily subsidized that it's effectively a branch of government, it can get away with this. Well, when the goal of the whole program is to take a guy out of a grass hut and put him in the cockpit of an airliner, what do you expect? Even in countries that have the education system and flight schools to turn out real pilots, if the main job of the crew is to tell the air traffic controllers what the airplane has decided to do for itself, then why bother training them how to fly? IIRC, in this Airbus crash, even Bonin, an employee of Air France and presumably a Frenchman, had 5000 hours. You'd think that somewhere in all that time he'd have learned that when the stall warning is going off, pulling back on the stick is a bad idea. I learned that, without benefit of a stall horn, flying models before I was 10. When I took flying lessons, I learned that before I even got in the airplane the 1st time. And once I was off the ground, all we did the 1st few lessons was demonstrate that the airplane will stall if you hold the stick back long enough, and what to do after it stalled. So from my admittedly dinosaur POV, there's absolutely zero excuse for anybody with wings on his chest to 1) get into this situation at all or 2) fail to get out of it should some inexplicable paranormal sequence of events cause such a problem. When 3 guys, each with thousands of hours of so-called flying experience, let this happen, what does that tell you?

Welcome to Skyrim. Good to see it discussed in here again . You do need to make a decision pretty soon on what your main combat skills will be, and always keep their levels rather above those of your noncombat skills like crafting. While you CAN be a jack of all trades, it pays to specialize on 2 or 3 main areas at the expense of the others. This is because your overall character level is sort of the sum of all your skill levels, whether they're combat skills or not. And it's your overall character level that determines how tough a lot (but not all) of the opposition is. So if you spread yourself out too thinly, or get too good at crafting to the neglect of swordplay, you'll eventually start getting your butt kicked on a regular basis. You CAN recover from this, but it takes a long, painful time. Anyway, as to combat skills, you need something for distance and something for up close. Magic can do both so the options are basically sword + bow, sword + magic, bow + magic, or magic alone. All work quite well, they just require different tactics and gear. For instance, getting the most out of swords and bows requires a lot of stamina, while heavy reliance on magic requires a lot of magicka, and gear that buffs it and/or reduces the cost of using certain types of spells. This all has impacts on how sneaky you need to be, what type of armor you wear, how much loot you can carry, how much damage you can take, etc. IOW, everything about how you play the character. So it's an important choice if you have a desire to play a particular type of character.

There's a lot more to it than a particular stall recovery technique. When you have a flight control system that not only does most of the flying but can override the crew, the crew become reliant on it. Eventually, you end up with aircrew who lack the basic piloting skills to perform the simple task of keeping an airplane anywhere at all above sea level given 35,000 feet to work with. I'm sure anybody reading this forum, even if they've never flown a real plane in their lives, could, if dropping into a totally unfamiliar cockpit, at least manage this feat. Maybe they'd have trouble holding a constant altitude and heading, but keeping the plane somewhere, anywhere, above the deck shouldn't be a problem at all. That's what scares me, which is why I won't fly on an Airbus. This might be old news to our European members but it's new to me, so bear with me while I outline the incident: First off, setting the stage. Besides the above flight system, the plane had 1 senior pilot (Dubois) and 2 copilots (Robert and Bonin). When the trouble started, the 2 copilots were at the controls and the captain wasn't in the cockpit. The guy in the right seat (Bonin) was "flying" the plane, as in being responsible for any deviations from the autopilot's programmed course. Finally, the sticks of the 2 seats move independently, so that the guy in the left seat couldn't tell from his own stick that the guy in the right seat had his stick all the way back. The sequence of events was as follows: 02:06:50 Plane is flying on autopilot at 35,000, in clouds. All is fine. The copilots discuss but ultimately decide not to turn on pitot tube heat. 02:08:03 Robert tells Bonin to turn a little to the left to avoid some rough weather ahead. While this is happening, the pitot tubes ice up and an alarm sounds indicating the autopilot is switching off due to a lack of airspeed data. Bonin recognizes he has control of the airplane. The PM article says neither Bonin nor Robert were trained to fly in manual without airspeed indicators, which makes me as WTF? 02:10:06 Bonin pulls back on the stick in an attempt to fly over the rough weather, going into a 6700 feet/minute climb. The plane slows to 93 knots and the stall warning sounds. Despite this, Bonin keeps pulling back on the stick. 02:10:25 Robert turns on the wing deicers and 1 pitot tube resumes working, so the crew now have airspeed data again. Robert realizes they are too slow and tells Bonin to descend. 02:10:36 Bonin keeps pulling back on his stick but not as hard, and tells Robert he's descending. Robert can't tell what Bonin's doing with the stick because his own isn't following Bonin's inputs. Airspeed goes to 223 knots and the stall warning stops. Everything is now fine and dandy: the airplane is under full control and the instruments are working. The only thing really "wrong" is that the autopilot is still off. Robert calls for Captain Dubois. 02:10:49 For no apparent reason, Bonin again pulls full back on the stick, and keeps it there for most of his remaining lifespan. Airspeed falls and the stall warning sounds again. At the same time, the remaining pitot tubes thaw out. All instruments are now working normally. 02:11:03 Bonin asks Robert to confirm that he's in TOGA (take off go around) mode. He's still trying to climb with the stick full back. The engines are at full power. 02:11:21 The plane reaches 38,000 feet and can go no higher. Bonin is still pulling full back on the stick, so the plane enters its fatal stall, nose-up 15^, IAS 100 knots, descending at 10,000 feet/minute, stall warning going full blast. Robert says he doesn't understand what's going on. Both he and Bonin might have forgotten that with the autopilot off, the flight control system will no longer prevent pilots from stalling the airplane, and thus regarded the stall warning as spurious, despite the evidence of all the other instruments. 02:11:32 Bonin says he doesn't have any control of the plane. In reality, he's the one causing the stall by continuing to hold the stick all the way back. If he'd let go, the plane would have righted itself. 02:11:43 Captain Dubois enters the cockpit and asks WTF? He does not take the controls. He can't see that Bonin is holding back on the stick (it's a small side stick) and can't figure out from the instruments why the plane is falling. It apparently never occurs to him that Bonin is holding the stick back, any more than it had to Robert. 02:11:45 Bonin says they've lost control of the plane. At this point the stall warning stops because forward speed is so low that the flight control system rejects the AOA inputs as invalid. The crew then debate whether they're climbing or descending, and eventually agree on descending. Nobody mentions the word "stall". 02:13:39 Robert says "Climb, climb, climb". Bonin says "But I've been holding the stick back the whole time!" Dubois says not to climb but to descend. Robert demands and receives control from Bonin and pushes the stick forward. The plane is now at about 2000 feet, probably too late to recover, and low-altitude alarms start sounding. But in any case, Bonin somehow takes the controls back from Robert without telling anybody and again pulls the stick all the way back. 02:14:23 The crew make various "Oh sh*t" comments 02:14:27 Splat.

I can land the Roland OK. My problem with it is the way the upper wing blocks out the horizon at high altitudes. For some reason, this nauseates me, especially on cloudy days. Hell, I'm getting queezy right now just remembering the experience. This is the only time in any game that I've ever had an adverse physical reaction, so I consider it part of OFF's realism that it can actually make me airsick. Problem is, it's a bit of realism I'd as soon do without.

Damn, that's sexy! It looks good enough for me to try flying Rolands again, which is saying a lot

Why ain't anybody still posting their adventures in the sticky Skyrim thread (that used to be in here but now's over in the Pub)? Nobody's touched that all year. I'm the only guy who's posted there since it was moved and I soon got tired of talking to myself.

ROF ain't about replicating the "being there" feeling of WW1. That's what OFF does. ROF, OTOH, has always been and always will remain a "Quake with airplanes" thing. For those too young to remember Quake, think of the FPS deathmatch game du jour. The whole point of such a game is bring the FPS deathmatch gameplay to another environment and cater to folks older than 12 who want something more cerebral than button mashing and rocket-jumping. It's a successful formula--MMO deathmatch flightsims have been around since the late 1980s. WW2 has been their main place, ROF is just a WW1 version. The formula for such games DOES NOT ever envision a complete, historical planeset. Hell, most such games allow all players to fly any plane at all, so that often fights involve the same planes on both sides. The vast bulk of the target audience, however, actually likes this. This is because they want to be fighter pilots and beat other fighter pilots and talk trash about it. If the other guy is flying an identical plane, then it's a question of skill, not equipment, and victory is worth more trashtalk. Very few players want to fly buffs and even fewer really want to shoot them down because there's no bragging rights attached. Instead, they want the latest and greatest fighters so they can be competitive with all the other guys who naturally gravitate to such planes. With this sort of constomer base (which has been typical of all MMOFS games since they 1st appeared), what you always end up with is a planeset that has just about every version of every late-war fighter even invented, no matter how obscure, and a very few late-war buffs for those few people who lack the skill to tangle with the big boys. There might also be a few planes (again, mostly fighters) from earlier in the war, which nobody ever flies unless they're segregated off in special early-war game areas, because they can't hang with the ubiquitous herds of late-war planes. And even then, nobody much flies in the early-war areas. So, recognize ROF for what it is. It's not aiming to present a realistic array of aircraft, it's aiming to provide aircraft that fit into the MMOFS deathmatch scheme that's been used for the last 25 years by such games as Air Warrior, Warbirds, and Ace High. As such, it will never have anywhere near as many 2-seaters available as fighters and most of the fighters will be of 1917-1918 vintage. Why? Because that's what its target audience wants. So if you don't see it going the direction you'd like, it's a safe bet you're not part of ROF's target audience and there's no point getting all in a huff over it, because it will never do what you want. Either accept it for what it is or play OFF.

The ideal landing spot is next to a nunnery, especially of the Flagellant Sisters

Lucky for you the field wasn't plowed in 1917 :)

Absolutely. I think the real brutalities of war are the result of civilization (one reason among many that I'm an anarchist). Our hunter-gatherer ancestors were tough bastards who took every adversity in stride or we wouldn't be here. Of course, they typicaally had blood feuds lasting centuries with the tribe across the river, but that had its rules. It was only after folks started farming that you see total massacres of rival villages. But even then, old habits took a while to disappear. For instance, all the Trojan notables attended Achilles' funeral and nobody took the opportunity to wheck thenm upside the head.

There's still some chivalry even in modern war. For example, in my little war 20 years ago, there was this big wall of sand bulldozed up for many miles to mark the border between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. We called it "the Berm". The terrain as far as you could see on either side was flat as a billiards table, so the Berm was an important tactical feature. If you were on top of it, you could see what the other guys were doing, but if you weren't, they were invisible. And in the early days of the war, it was sort of the center of No-Man's-Land. The opposing main forces were all some distance behind it so the Berm was where patrols and raids skirmished. Thus, ownership of particular sections of the Berm changed hands all the time and usually alternated every mile or so along its length. Anyway, one day I went out on another patrol to look over the Berm. As usual, there was nothing to see on the other side, because both sides kept their main forces back out of observation distance. In fact, at first there was only 1 thing to see. About 1 mile away to my left atop the berm was a party of Iraqis on the same pointless mission as us. Now, nobody went to the Berm without something that could shoot that far and/or the ability to call in arty or air. But being as we were out of smallarms range and neither of us was doing any good anyway, there was usually a live-and-let live attitude. So we waved at the Iraqis and they waved at us, and we pretended to ignore each other. But after a while, a Hummer approached the Berm from my side, about halfway between me and the Iraqis. When it got within about 500m of the Berm, it turned left and paralleled it, doing I guess about 60mph. So, its occupants had proven themselves not to be another pointless Berm patrol but were Doing Something (Lord knows what). This made them a valid target under the Rules of the Berm. And the Iraqis down the way had brought a mortar along for just such occasions. But this was a crossing target, with not only bearing changing but also range, and both rapidly. This isn't the sort of things mortars were designed to hit. However, particularly skillful mortarmen can "free tube" the mortar, holding it in their hands instead of relying on the bipod, to hit moving targets. And that's what these Iraqis proceeded to do. The 1st shot was long but on for bearing, the 2nd was short but on for bearing, and the 3rd was a direct hit. This all happened over about 15-20 seconds at most. The bomb hit the back of the Hummer and scattered cases of Stinger AAMs all over the desert. The 4 guys in the Hummer bailed out and lay there for a while, then got up and started walking back the way they'd come. The Iraqis didn't shoot at them any more. And all in my party stood up and started clapping our hands over our heads and yelling "GOOD SHOT!" Seriously, what else was there to do? We didn't have a mortar ourselves and by the time we'd whistled up air support, that Iraqi could have put a round in each of our hip pockets, he was that good. The Iraqis soon looked at us, doubtless in fear we'd retaliate, and saw us all clapping. And damn if the morterman didn't stand up and take a bow! Later on, when things got a lot more serious, I rained destruction on scores of Iraqui mortarmen. But I've always hoped that particular bastard survived and today is bouncing grandbabies on his knee.

Very interesting stuff, Olham. Thanks for sharing. Google translator did a reasonably fair job of it. That last story about having to land at night in solid fog was rather hair-raising. I wonder what type of plane he was in then? 4 men so 2 engines I'd assume.

Magnifique! Merci beaucoup!