Bullethead

I've had to dodge such bombs more than once ;).

Ah yes, "The Great Race" ! Once of my all-time favorite movies.

The numbers I've seen show that in WW1, WW2, and Korea, 20% of the pilots scored 80% of the kills in a standard Pareto distribution. However, IMHO it's equally important to remember that about 80% of all kills were shots that the victim never saw coming. Most of these were surprise bounces against non-maneuvering targets. Even in dogfights, most kills were scored against victims who were fixated on other friendly planes and not checking their 6s often enough. Thus, the overwhelmingly significant attribute that separated the aces from the cannonfodder was situational awareness. Mad skills at flying and shooting, while naturally the stuff of legend, were only really useful in the small minority of historical cases. Those who checked their 6 every few seconds, spotted the enemy first, and were able to keep the enemy from seeing them, usually emerged victorious while the others usually died. If you can do these things, then you don't have to be a particularly good pilot or marksman. In this regard, no flightsim ever made is very accurate. All such things are for entertainment purposes, and it's MUCH more entertaining to win through superior skill than to snipe sitting ducks. Therefore, in games the importance of situational awareness is minimized by giving the AI and the players much more SA than their real-life counterparts had, so that there are much fewer cases of surprise and many more duels. So, I really don't think that exposure to OFF would have made that much difference to WW1 pilot survival. But back on topic..... I agree. I often take less than 100% ammo myself.

Upon reading this, Bullet Mac Haid spews whiskey all over his monitor, coughs a few times, takes another dram, then commences to orate as follows: Ach! "Sokes", as ye Sassenachs calls 'em! Thae apperrrtenances of thae gairrrrlie-mahn they be! Whoot honest mahn whaers osain? Gae bairrrefoot ass Gode intendaed! A' most, aif ye'rrrre knee-deep in a pig-sty, whaer honest brrrrogs. Boot osain?!?!?!? Ne'er!!

I think Bill Hicks said it best in this song: Chicks Dig Jerks

I seriously doubt any WW2 ship (and there aren't many left) in Puget Sound's collection can be ready in a few days, but in Baton Rouge, LA, there's USS Kidd (DD-661), a Fletcher-class destroyer from WW2. She came from Puget Sound in 1984 and, as a destroyerman myself and son of a WW2 destroyerman, I spent my weekends that summer helping restore her to fighting trim. That took months, but today she is regarded as the most historically accurate WW2 ship in the US. She's still owned by the USN and technically is still on the roll of ready reserve ships. And she really IS ready. The enignes, weapons, and electronics all work. All the USN has to do is man her and cast off, provided the Mississippi River is high enough. Of course, she's only equipped to fight WW2 again, but in a post-nuclear world that might count for something. Her main guns fire blank rounds on various war-related holidays. Kidd is moored in a unique way. Between her and the levee are big vertical pilings, to which she's shackled. Thus, she's free to rise and fall with the River and you only need cut the shackles to set her free. Underneath her are a bunch of blocks upon which she sits at low water, high and dry, like a model ship on a stand. While immobile at such times, at least she gets her belly cleaned. Otherwise, you can walk beneath her and admire her fine lines. Here's the ship's site: http://www.usskidd.com/ But I prefer "Sealab 2021"

PIma, AZ has a huge boneyard. It might well be the one pictured above, I don't know. But anyway, there's a museum there where they've preserved quite a few interesting planes from the boneyard. Also, you can take a bus tour out through the acres and acres of old planes. Well worth the trip. I saw a couple old friends in the Pima museum. One as a C-141 that I poured a lot of effort into. This plane had been involved in an horrific accident in the early 90s. 2 F-16s collided right over the ramp their wreckage landed on a C-141 which, unfortunately, was full of paratroopers doing some practice drill. Killed a bunch of them. "My" C-141 was next in line to this and a river of burning fuel went under it. Somebody towed it out of the fire, but not before the whole bottom of the rear fuselage and part of the lower sides had burned/melted away. The USAF decided to keep it flying so ran some steel I-beams across the hole and bolted them to the longerons, then flew the thing (on a 1-time clearance) to Waco, Texas, where I worked. We rebuilt the fuselage, leaving a very noticeable collection of doublers back there, which is how I recognized the plane. Took us a couple of months and we charged a lot for it. And from what I could tell at he museum, the plane was only in service about 6 months after that. The other thing I recognized was a B-36. This used to be at the gate of Carswell AFB in Fort Worth, Texas, but disappeared when they turned that place into a joint reserve base. When I went to Pima several years ago, the pieces of the B-36 were stacked up awaiting assembly and repair. Apparently it had orginally be bought by some other museum, but they couldn't get the funds to fix it up, so it sat in a warehouse for about a decade before Pima acquired it. Now I see on Google Earth that they've put it back together and it's now the centerpiece of their display.

But they have such a huge backlog of claims to reject that they had to hire a 2nd secretary: Miss Ann Thrope

I suppose the Americans would want their own board of claims-deniers, to go with their own army and air force. I figure they'd give the contract to the infamous firm of Dewey, Cheatum, & Howe.

Yeah, shotgun powders is in flakes while rifle powder is in tubes. Plus, they have different formulae. However, there was still smokeless shotgun powder in WW1. In fact, the US issued shotguns to the infantry during the war--quite popular with the Marines. This was the pump-action Winchester Model 12 sporting shotgun modified with a sling, a perforated barrel jacket, and a bayonet. This shotgun had the useful property that if you held the trigger back, it fired each time you worked the pump . It was due to be replaced by the Tommygun but that was just too late for the war. Anyway, I agree that a shotgun doesn't seem like a good air weapon due to the limited effective range of buckshot. The lethal range against deer is only about 50m. The stuff will travel about 400m at 45^ elevation, but accuracy is totally gone as is most of the energy. Besides this, I'd think synchronization would be rather chancy. Sure, you could fire it at the right time, but the shot spread would complicate matters. So for forward-firing guns, I'd only use slugs. This picture seems to be some sort of observer's mounting, however, so maybe it fired buckshot. But think about this.... Suppose the airplane was a dedicated trench strafer, buzzing along at 50 feet or so. In that case, a belt-fed shotgun full of buckshot might be quite useful. Everybody was designing armored strafers late in the war. You'd think it would be more effective than a conventional MG. Of course, if enemy fighters showed up, you'd be out of luck.

First thing is to save the picture to your hard drive somewhere. Your email program should have a paperclip icon somewhere above or beside the message. Right-click on that and select "Save Attachments". This brings up the typical window where you can decided what folder on your HD to save the picture. Once done, you have several options for making it appear in a post: 1. Attach the File to the Post This is the simplest. Below the box where you type in your text, there's a blue button that says "Click to Attach Files". Click that and the typical window pops up letting you find the folder the picture is in, the select the picture from within that folder. Click the button to upload the picture. Then type in your text and his the "Add Reply" or "Submit Post" button, and voila. When done this way, the picture will appear below all your text as a thumbnail. Folks can then click on this and see the picture full-size in a pop-up. This is the preferred method but it doesn't always work, like if the picture is larger than the allowed attachment size. In which case, see the next options. 2. Link the Picture Directly or Give Its Link First, you have to upload the file to your webspace somewhere. Most ISPs give you some storage space for such things, but there are also places like Flickr, Image Bin, etc. Follow the proceedures of the website you're using to upload the picture. Once it's there, you should see a button to get the link for the picture at that sight, which will be http://whatever...... Copy that URL by highlighting it with your mouse and then hitting CTRL-C. While all this has been going on, you've had a 2nd browser window open in this forum at the point where you want to make the post with the picture. Make that window active. At this point, you have 2 options: 2A: Linking the Picture Directly Look up on the toolbar at the top of the text input area and you'll see a square green icon about 2/3 of the way to the right. Hold the cursor over that button and you'll see "Insert Picture' pop up, which will confirm you're at the correct button. When you do this, a box pops up asking for the picture's URL. Put the cursor in that and hit CTRL-V to paste the URL you copied beforehand into the box, and hit OK. This will insert the proper codes into the text of your post at the current position of the flashing input cursor, so text can be above and below it. When you submit this post, the picture will appear full-size at that point in the text, with no thumbnail. This is generally considered impolite unless the picture is narrower than the normal text space people have their browser set for. Sometimes this method doesn't work, in which case use the fallback position below. 2B: Providing a Link to the Picture The difference here is that all that shows up in your post is a clickable link, no picture or thumbnail. This is best used for really large pictures. To make this happen, put the flashing cursor where you want it in the text input area, then click on the button just to the left of the "Insert Picture" button. This is the "Insert Link" button. Same thing as before--paste the picture's URL into the pop-up box and you're done.

But have you had any denied? Whether confirmed or denied, it's a ruling either way. If you're getting no rulings, you're having bad luck. If you're getting only denials, then you need to improve your claim reporting.

I find the time it takes to get a ruling is highly variable, regardless of nationality. Sometimes I get confirmation or denial within a few days, sometimes as long as 7 weeks later, and meanwhile more recent claims have been ruled on before some of the older ones. I don't quite agree with Creaghorn about the number of missions flown between filing and ruling. That has something to do with it, but I really think it has to do with how often time advances, whether you fly or not. I think the campaign does all its bookkeeping while time is advancing., and only does 1 update to the books (wingmen dying, ruling on your claims, etc.) once per time advancement. So, if you're flying multiple sorties per day, you get multiple checks for a claim ruling each day. If bad weather keeps you grounded for several days, you only get 1 check for a ruling in all that time. The way I think it works, each time advancement has a percent chance of causing a ruling on your claim. If a ruling happens, then there's a subsequent check against the claim's chance of being confirmed, and you're told the rusults. If no ruling happens, then the claim remains pending and goes through another check for a ruling at the next time advancement. I also think there's a built-in delay that makes it take at least 24 hours to get a ruling, regardless of how many checks happen during that time. Because each claim seems to be independent of your others, you can have later claims confirmed or denied before earlier claims. And it's possible to NEVER get a ruling on a claim, because each time advancement, it might get a bad "roll" on the ruling check. That seems perfectly fair to me, because there's no telling how many motorcycles full of claims reports got caught in bombardments of the roads behind the front

We :rofl:a total rampage guy (he'd shot cops and civilians, spraying bullets into crowds and such) go down in a shootout not far from here a few years ago. He got shot 72 times, a real Bonnie and Clyde type thing. When asked why they shot the guy that much, the police chief said, "That was all the ammo we had". As Murphy's Laws of Combat clearly state: "Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice", and "When in doubt, empty the magazine". Words to live by:ok: .

Before I fell into the run outlined above (which makes it easier to keep track of pilots), I used a few daft names myself. For instance, I once I had an Indochinese pilot flying for France, named Hung-Wei Lo. There were also Brits named Wescott Fitz-Pourley, Myles Longcrank, Reuben Redpole, and Dick Lovelady.

I love Austro-Hungarian hex camo, especially because there seem to have been no real rules for the pattern or colors. Problem is, there's no KuK in OFF, and the KuK never quite got any D.VII's before the war ended anyway. But WTF? Maybe an Austrian pilot went to the Western Front to learn about the D.VII and decided to paint his plane in the style of his own country? Anyway, I've always thought the KuK hex camo looked like a harlequin suit, which made me think of Mardi Gras, so I chose KuK colors that had a Mardi Gras look. But this is a war machine with a certain sinister appearance, so it had to be an Evil harlequin. Thus, "Hell's Jester".

Thanks to everybody for their kind words. I'm encouraged to try another KuK pattern someday. But my efforts to promote the Alpine Front fall far short of Stumpjumper's.

Sir, I salute you for achieving something that's so far eluded me ! Thanks for the info, too. BTW, I hope your significant other doesn't read this forum

Sir, coming from you, that's the highest compliment I believe I've ever been paid. When I 1st read it, then reread it several times to make sure I wasn't halucinating, I levitated (not walked, but levitated) down the stairs to the bar, where I poured myself 2 full fingers of Lagavulin 16. I only buy 1 bottle of that per year and drink it in wee drams on very special occasions, such as surviving a close call, or the birth, marriage, or death of a close relative. But this called for a splurge. Damn, that's GOOD stuff. Thanks for the props, and to your very good health . Yup, the Aviatik D.I had the best hex camo, but it came in many different forms. This scheme was inspired by that on Linke-Crawford's machine. The horizontal tail and the lighter areas of the fuselage are copied directly from his plane. The darker areas on the fuselage are close cousins of what he had, modified to make the lighter and darker areas of the fuselage more distinct. On the other side of the fuselage, the slope between light and dark is towards the nose instead of way from it, as was usual on KuK planes, so you can see dark areas better if you download the skin. The wing pattern I invented myself using the fuselage colors arranged to make alternatining sloping bands of light and dark areas, with 1 color in each area that was either light or dark compared to its surroundings, which seems to have been a common practice. I did this because I didn't like Linke-Crawford's wing pattern--the colors clashed IMHO. I feel like I'm teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, but here goes.... First off, there are 5 different patterns on this plane, which was common with KuK hex., The wings have 2x 4-color patterns modified with a 9th color as needed (see below), the horizontal tail has a 4-color pattern, and the fuselage has 2 distinct patterns: 3 colors in the light areas and 6 colors in the dark areas, which together are the same 9 colors found on the wings. Making any given pattern is 4-step process. First, you determine hex size. Second, you determine how many colors you want in the given pattern, which is a function of hex size because X number of hexes cover a given area of airplane. Do you want colors to repeat in the area or not? Third, you assemble the pattern out of individual hexes of the chosen number of colors. And finally, as an optional step, you change the color of certain hexes in the base pattern as needed to produce the desired overall effect. I only did this on the wing and dark fuselage areas. KuK hexes were USUALLY pretty large, and USUALLY regular hexes. I decided I'd make a pattern of this type, so my 1st step was to determine the proper hex size. Fortunately, on the D.VII skin, all the important pieces are to the same scale (as in the same number of skin pixels to units of real length; kudos to the model-maker) so you can use the same size hex for for everything except the wheel hubs. So, the 1st step is to determine what size hex to use. Because I was basing this on an Aviatik D.I, I chose a hex size that make about 3 hexes over the widest part of the side of the fuselage. I use Paintshop Pro, and in that, hexes with anti-aliased sloped lines nest only if both their dimensions are odd numbers of pixels. If either dimension is an even number, you'll get a "lip" of overlapping anti-aliased pixels that makes the pattern look bad. Problem is, with regular hexes, in PSP getting odd numbers of both overall height and overall width of the hex only happens occasionally. Most times, you get 1 odd and 1 even. Thus, your hexes will probably be a few pixels larger or smaller than you want, but that won't matter all that much. In this case, I used hexes of 87x75. Once you determine the hex size, make hexes of that size in each color you'll be using on the whole plane. Put these off in a corner somewhere so you can copy and paste them into the patterns. Then start making the patterns yoiu need (4 in this case). The general process is to start in the upper left and work to the right to make a complete row (or work down to make a column if the hexes are flat-side up), joining the straight edges of hexes. Put the 2nd hex so that there's no "lip" on the flat sides of the joint and the anti-aliased row just above, where the angled sides slope away, is 3 pixels wide. This is because hexes with odd-numbered dimensions come to a 3-pixel point, which will nest into this place. So, you make the repeating part of the 1st row. Then you make the repeating part of the 2nd row in the same manner, and so on until you've made all the rows which together make up the repeating pattern from the top to the bottom edges of the fuselage, or from the leading to trailing edges of the wing, or whatever. Keep these row segments off in a corner so you can copy and paste them. Now start fitting the rows together. Start with the top / front row, then put the 2nd row up against it. Line the 3-pixel points of the 2nd row up with the 3-pixel "gap" between the diverging points of the 1st row. Move the 2nd row up until there's no "lip" between the rows. Then do the same with the other rows in the pattern. and repeat for the other patterns you're making. Now, the wings and fuselage have alternating bands of light and dark patterns. So, you have to join the completed patterns together. Again, the process is the same as making a single pattern. Start at the upper left and work right to make full-length rows containing both the light and dark areas, then add rows below this. Doing things this way makes the joints look neater, at least when using PSP where the anti-aliased edges are different shades on the left, right, top, and bottom of the individual hex. In Photoshop, it might work the other way around--I don't know. On the wing pattern, the objective was to give the appearance of slightly sloping bands of equal-width light and dark across the wing span. This started as 2x 4-color patterns each composed of 3 dark and 1 light colors, and vice versa. Each of these patterns had 4 rows with their colors in different orders. Then I put these together and decided the arrangement of colors hid and/or distorted the desired angled joints between the light and dark areas. So then I changed the colors of individual hexes, introducing the 9th color in the process. On the dark fuselage areas, I started by copying Linke-Crawford's pattern, but it had enough light hexes mixed into the dark areas that the divisions were indistinct, so I put darker colors into the problem areas. And that's about it. Again, thanks for the props.

Very nice, Lou! You're obviously an experienced Camel pilot, what with being able to keep the wings so level during a loop. BTW, where do you find all the old WW1-vintage songs? Are they available online or do you actually have a stack of 78s?

File Name: Fokker D.VII "Hell's Jester" File Submitter: Bullethead File Submitted: 04 July 2010 File Category: Aircraft Skins I've always liked the Austro-Hungarian hexagonal camouflage--it reminds me of a Mardi Gras harlequin. The best part is, there was no standard to it, so artistic expression comes into play. Sadly, OFF doesn't include the KuK, and the KuK never had any operational Fokker D.VIIs anyway. But no matter. Pretend you're an Austrian pilot flying with the Germans to learn about the D.VII and decided to paint your ride in the style of your home country. Click here to download this file

I hope you're not thinking of taking a knife to a gunfight..... Anyway, sad situation. Just another reason to be armed and ready.

CAVEAT: This is actually quite difficult to measure because AI gunners seem to have a wider field of fire than human gunners, at least sometimes. That is, I THINK I've occasionally taken fire from rear gunners at angles I know for a fact that I can't duplicate when I'm the gunner in the same type of 2-seater. However, this doesn't happen very often, so either I'm imagining things or the AI rarely exploits its extra field of fire. So, for purproses of this post, assume that the AI is limited to the same arc as a human, which seems to be the case at least most of the time. Anyway, all OFF 2-seaters suffer from their rear guns having an unrealistically restricted field of fire. In the vertical plane, they're limited to about -5^ to +45^. In the horizontal plane, they're limited to about 80^ on either side of the tail. In real life, however, the vertical motion was about -70^ to +80^, and they could be traversed at least 150^ on either side of the tail (early planes) or a full 360^ (later planes). As a result, there was a narrow blind spot under the fuselage, but the gunner could shoot down steeply close to the fuselage sides. Also, gunners could shoot forward at an angle between their wings and often also up and forward over the pilot. It's this lack of realistic firing arcs that make 2-seaters in OFF such easy meat. Because they can't shoot downwards to their sides as they could in real life, their formations offer no mutual support. In real life, a fighter under the tail of one 2-seater would be engaged by the gunners of the other planes in the formation, but not in OFF. Thus, you can park below an OFF 2-seater formation and wipe it out quite easily. In addition, the lack of elevation and forward arcs for the guns allows fighters to make diving passes, or angled front passes, completely immune to return fire. The whole idea of having 2-seaters lumber along seemingly oblivious to attacking fighters only makes sense in the context of interlocking, mutually supporting fields of fire. That's the whole reason for having a formation in the 1st place. And you read time after time that as long as formations remained intact, the 2-seaters were able to hold off the fighters, but once the formation broke up, it wsa a massacre, at least for the strays. So it seems to me that there are 2 options to fix the problem: 1. Current non-maneuvering AI + realistic gunner arcs or 2. Current unrealistic gun arcs + maneuvering AI. (By "maneuvering AI", I mean just having the 2-seaters remain in formation and on the same base course as before, but each plane weaves side-to-side individually. As they do so, their bank angle allows their gunners to fire down, thus providing some mutual support, plus they're not such easy targets).

Amaizing. When I fly in that part of 1918, I usually meet 15-20 RE8s at once accompanied by several dozen fighters either with them or close enough that I can't just butcher the Harry Tates at leisure. 2-seaters in OFF are pretty much always easy, unless they're Brisfits. They have next to no self-preservation instinct, let alone the idea of working together with others in their flight. The most I've ever seen 2-seaters do under attack is a periodic "Indian run" where one of the front planes in the gaggle circles around to become the last plane, coming in behind you if you're behind the previous rear plane. But even this isn't a threat because the 2-seater behind you never shoots his front gun at you, and whether or not 1 circles back like this, the others just sit there and take it. I'd really like to see them weave like the 2-seaters in the FCJ remake of RB2, so you could never settle in under the tail of 1 because it wouldn't hold still, and at least 1 of the others would always be shooting a rear gun at you. 59 Sqd was one of the 1st RE8 squadrons, having them in Bloody April when most RFC 2-seater squadrons were stil in Quirks and Fees. However, this didn't seem to have helped them any as they sufffered losses as bad as the Quirk outfits (and these were Quirks with at least some semblance of a rear gun). So I'd imagine they didn't have much chance to build up an experienced cadre. In general, it seems that the Quirk were just too slow and stable for air combat. OTOH, the RE8 didnn't have the performace much better and was pure evil to fly, so killed a lot of aircrew in accidents on top of getting cut to bits in air combat. In OFF, the RE8 is totally benign (if you don't mind an obstructed forward view, but at least it's better than in a DFW). It's a great barnstorming machine, easily able to do things that would have killed you graveyard dead in the real thing. However, it's very flimsy, burns easily, and can't fly at all with part of the structure shot off, unlike other 2-seaters. Thus, if you land a good burst on it, it goes down. I've done several careers as an RE8 gunner in 59 Squadron. Most missions result in 60-90% losses.

All my English-speaking pilots have the surname Bullethead. All my German pilots have the surname Geschosskopf. All my French pilots have a Cajun surname like Boudreaux, Thibodeaux, Hebert, Landry, etc., because I see them going to France and then being confounded because the Cajun and Parisian French are mutually unintelligible. Every new pilot's 1st name starts with the next letter of the alphabet. US pilots have cowboy names like Abiliene, Brazos, and Cody. My Brit pilots are mostly Borderers so have 1st names like Dumfries, Teviot, etc. My German pilots have ironic, fatalistic names like Massengrab, Nachgeschmack, Opfertodt, etc. My French pilots have common French 1st names but all have the middle name Joseph, as was the Cajun tradition of the time.