Bullethead

Amen to that. It rather buggers the mind (not "boggles", but definitely buggers). I remember in Desert Storm we came across acres of abandoned SA-7s and SA-14s, and had to leave them there for the taking, except for a few we shot for entertainment. I'm quite surprised so few airliners have been knocked out of the sky since then. But all that rather pales in comparison to the stockpiles of gas shells just sitting there, rusting away, in heavily populated parts of Europe.

As some Frenchman who'd seen both said a while back, "The choice is always Dachau or Verdun." That's not an over-simplification, it's the honest truth. If you agree that Dachau is a symbol of all the worst that Man is capable of, then anything, even a Verdun, which is symbolic of ultimate national suffering, is justified to stave it off.

I had no influence on how things played, being just a passenger. While I was saying, feeling, and thinking something rather worse than "OH CRAP!", my buddy was doing the same AND steering us clear. What I felt as I watched the collision within spitting distance was, "better them than us", and "I hope we're still not caught up in this mess when they bounce off each other".

I have to disagree.... I saw SPR in the theater when it came out, and about 50% of the audience were wearing hats saying they were veterans of wars from WW2 to Desert Storm. When the movie ended, not one swinging Richard, vet or otherwise, got up. We all sat there staring unseeing at the credits until the usher came to clear us out for the next show. The vets were all thinking of the long ago and far away, and friends not present, having been sent right back There by the realism of the movie. The civies were realizing, probably for the 1st time, just what sort of sacrifices were necessary for them to live their carefree lives. SPR is, IMHO, the single most-realistic war movie ever made, regardless of how you measure it, and even if the whole story is no more than a retelling of the King Arthur legends in a WW2 format. The sounds and graphics of combat were far and away more realistic than anything before, and what's come since has at best duplicated it. On top of that, the charaters were quite realistic, and so were their missions, actions, and attitudes. They were just ordinary guys following their typically assinine orders, and FAR stranger things have happened in real life than happend to the guys in this movie. If you've never been there, then I can of course I can see folks considering SPR as "cack". But I about gagged on the "Band of Brothers" series. Understand, I have nothing but respect for paratroopers of whatever nationality. However, the line troops usually had it far worse, what with frontal assaults on prepared positions, day after day. They're the real heroes, again regardless of nationality. And besides, all those special forces types in the US army then and now are just imitation Marines from my POV, and more battles have been fought in bars over that point than have been for national interest in foreign fields. And let them continue! Any takers? Anyway, BoB was realistic, but it struck me as undue attention to a glamorous few to the neglect of the great multitudes. And seriously, nothing in BoB was any less realistic than what happened in SPR, except that the BoB series didn't have as many stupid, pointless, suicide missions as most troops have to face at the whim of the higher-ups. You could argue convincingly that the whole Market Basket thing was a WW1-style pointless sacrifice, but that ignores the daily wastage of small groups for even less-justified reasons, such as in SPR.

Cars are more dangerous only because they can go faster so it hurts more when things go wrong. Also, back in the day, it took more net worth and innate intelligence to acquire and keep a horse functional than it does a 21st Century car, so as a result far less people are condemned to walking everywhere today than back then. It took the North Vietnamese 10 years to kill as many Americans as we kill ourselves in 1 year on our own highways. And despite this, I'd rather have cars than horses. Any time you make control responsiveness a committee decision, things cannot possibly hope to end well . I have no friggin' idea. I'm now nearly 46.5 years old and nearly 30 of those years were "on the firing line" in 1 capacity or another. I've got the scars to prove it, physically and psychologically. But I daresay anybody in the US who has not been as "adventurous" can still match me on the number of close shaves. After all, we routinely kill as many Americans on our own highways in 1 year as it took the North Vietnamese to equal in 10 years. The Taliban and Al Qeda combined, including 9/11, aren't quite on pace to match the North Vietnamese, and they all fall far short of what the Germans (either time) or Japanese individually accomplished in far less time. Granted, there are lies, then damn lies, and finally statistics, in order of veracity. But the last I heard, if the US had the same per capita death toll on its highways as the Germans, we'd be killing 2x to 4x as many people per year as we do now. Thus, I imagine the average German can easily exceed the average American in the number of narrow escapes.

Well, the driver WAS a blonde chick . But I agree, given that it was 2300 on a Friday night, you'd automatically suspect some intoxicant was involved. However, when she came to, she didn't act drunk, she acted panicked and was all wired with adrenaline, so didn't appear drunk to me at all, nor did she have the telltale "Faces of Meth" going, so who knows? She was a local, not a Brit tourist. Besides, I think everybody, even the Canadians, drives on the right side of the road in this hemisphere. Well, it depends. Yes, airbags will often save your life, or at least allow you to have an open-casket funeral even if you're pulped from the chest down. I could tell you some gruesome stories in that regard . However, they can also kill you in several insidious ways. That's pretty rare in comparison to them being helpful, but the risk always makes me uneasy because they include occasions when you're not in a situation where the airbag would be helpful. On the balance, however, it's probably better to have them than not. I've found most folks prefer the taste of "airbag pie" to "windshield brittle". However, let's talk about the potential problems, just to make you all aware of them. First off, airbags are usually counterproductive unless you're wearing your seatbelt complete with shoulder strap. Besides the airbag, cars have seatbelt pretensioners that go off a split second before the airbags, snatching you back into your seat. This makes sure you're the correct distance from the airbag when it deploys. Airbags move as fast as bullets when they're deploying, and have to come to a stop in the inflated positoin before your face touches them, or they could easily break your neck. And, of course, they're designed for adults so can still break the necks of children below a certain size even if they're wearing the seatbelt. In fireman training I once saw a demonstration of the power of an expanding airbag. This guy took the whole steering column out of a car, from the wheel to the U-join on the far side of the firewall. He set it vertically on the ground, standing on the steering wheel, then fired the airbag. That entire steering column, weighing about 50 pounds, was blown about 15 feet vertically into the air. Another demonstration put a crashtest dummy sitting unrestrained within the deployment zone of an airbag. When we fired it, that 150-pound dummy was blown back a good 4 feet. So you do NOT want to be slapped by the airbag while it's still moving toward you. Second, the explosive charges that fire dashboard airbags (side bags are usually fired by compressed gas) produces a huge amount of heat that lingers in the assembly for several minutes. The passenger's bag is usually mounted directly above the glove compartment, which most folks have crammed full of flammable things like maps, receipts for car repairs, etc. If the pile is big enough that this junk touches the top of the compartment, or the angle of the car after the wreck makes that happen, then the residual airbag heat can set it on fire. The fire will then spread to the plastic dashboard, producing highly toxic fumes as well as growing to involve the rest of the interior of the vehicle. If you're in a wreck where airbags deploy, there's a good chance you'll be unable to get out of your car due to it being all bent up and/or you being injured. And if you're out in the boonies, it might take 10-15 minutes for the guys with the Jaws of Life to arrive. That's not a good situation in which to have a fire inside your vehicle. Third, airbags are man-made devices so sometimes malfunction. Sometimes they go off for insufficient reason, such as running over a dog or hitting a chuckhole. Being stunned, surprised, and/or having your vision blocked by the airbag can then cause you to wreck your car. And when that happens, the airbags have already fired so MOST of them won't offer any protection from the real impact. Airbags can also malfunction in NOT firing when the should. Then they're just sitting there like a dud bomb and can easily be triggered if slightly jostled, blowing a fireman and/or his heavy Jaws of Life into your face at high velocity. Such jostling can happen from the stress of the Jaws of Life prying the wreckage open. While firemen can cut battery cables, most airbag systems have capacitors in them in case the initial collision tears out the battery. Thus, it's recommended that firemen cut the battery cable and wait 15 minutes or more to let the capacitors bleed down before extricating somebody from a car with dud (or multi-firing) airbags. This never happens in real life, of course, because no fireman can watch a guy bleed to death or writhe in pain as the timer ticks down. Plus all firemen know of documented cases of airbags firing in cars sitting in junkyards for 6 months after their batteries have been removed, so don't put any faith in the 15 minutes anyway. But none of that changes the fact that you've got a live bomb sitting there that can and has killed both victim and rescuer. And fourth, as mentioned, the side airbags are usually fired by compressed gas. The cars that have side bags almost always have a computer that only fires specific bags as needed, so in a frontal wreck the side bags usually don't fire. This means that charged gas cylinders are hidden away, somewhere in the roof or door posts. Unfortunately, all makes and models of cars have them in different places, NONE of which are marked. In fact, even the markings that the side airbags themselves exist are as unobstrusive as possible so as not to detract from the beauty of the car, and thus are easily missed. The problem is, cutting into one of these gas cylinders is about the same as setting off a hand grenade, in both blast power and shrapnel, and all the hiding places for them are just where firemen would like to cut the car to get you out. So there's nothing for it except to strip away all the interior finish and paneling to find the cylinders prior to making a cut. So just hope that you're not bleeding or burning to death during this delay....

I look forward to seeing it and will let you know. But unless that was a very old trailer, the movie won't be out for a few months.

Aristotle couldn't have said it better in his lost book on comedy . It's good to laugh a Hitler, especially as that's our only way now to get back at the bastid. The Soviets ran off with his bones and destroyed them, after all, so we can't piss on his grave. But as funny as I found this parody, it was doubly so because a few weeks before I'd seen the exact same clip but with different subtitles about Michael Jackson's death. So to me, this clip was not only poking fun at Hitler and us OFFers, but also on MJ and all those who obcessed about him

Bah! You MUST crow about your accomplishments, even if they're merely surviving, wounded, after some horrific battle in which all of your friends died. Trust me, as a PTSD-sufferer of long standing, talking about it is the only way to sleep at night . You can get around the jinx quite easily. Instead of posting in the main forum area, post it in the "Reports from the Front" sticky. Change the names, dates, and places if you feel that's necessary to throw the jinx off the scent. But I find that this isn't necessary, provided you write the story in 1st person and in a tone like you're very glad still to be alive. Acting like a pennetant, knocking on wood, and drinking heavily between massive cigarette binges--that's how to wins favor from the Dark Gods. Once they know you're dedicated to poisoning yourself, they concentrate on fresh meat and let you live on until your lungs and/or liver fail :yes: . For inspiration, I particularly recommend Ohlam's reports in that sticky from his 1918 Albatros campaign, before he knew about player altitude and flight density settings . DAMN, each one of them stirred up the real ghosts of my past, so that I had to stay up all night drinking with them. I wish I could capture that sort of "All Quiet on the Western Front" angst in my own reports. I find that I die a lot even when I'm at the top of my game. It doesn't require a loss of concentration; when the Dark Gods decide it's your turn, a stray bullet from half a mile away will hit you between the eyes. If you're lucky, that is. Most times, it hits your fuel tank .

From my POV, I consider the D.II to be badly outclassed by the Fee. Most of our opponents are D.IIIs and we break slightly better than even against them, even when flown by Bloody April's German aces. When we meet any of the last few D.IIs still around, therefore, we kick their butts. Obviously, the difference in opinion here is the AI. The AI flies the Fee like a conventional 2-seater instead of a fighter, even if the squadron is listed as a fighter squadron. Thus, AI Fee pilots are highly prone to run away. On top of this, the AI makes no allowance for the fact that Fee gunners in a formation can't cover under each others' tails. Thus, to a German human, Fees are even easier to kill than Quirks, because not only do you not have to worry about tailgunners, but the engine is exposed from a rear attack. When you're flying the Fee, it takes skillful leadership to work around this problem. OTOH, I find the AI of the Albatros D.II to be too quick to trade energy for angles. Granted, it must to some extent because it's slower and less zoomy than the D.III, but the problem is, the AI does this against a plane that can out-turn it with ease and isn't any slower once it becomes a turnfight. The result is a that I often find D.IIs that can't shake me or run away from me. I almost feel sorry for them. D.IIIs are a different kettle of fish; it's hard to get them to slow down and play the Fee's game while living long enough to make that happen. But because they are our main opponent, I've gotten fairly proficient at it, or at least making them go away and pick on A Flight instead :yes: . I suppose the only way to settle this is in an MP duel. I'm sure we'd both be surprised . Problem is, I have satellite internet, which precludes realtime MP gaming. I hear Hamachi might solve that, but it poses security problems I'm not willing to accept for such a test (no offense). So, maybe some other person proficient with the Fee, who has landline broadband, will act as my second?

Me like OBD

Don't you read my reports from the front? Almost all of them are by Fee pilots. That was the 1st thing I picked to fly and I'd say about 60% of my time in OFF has been on Fees now. I've done tours in many other types, scouts and 2-seaters, on both sides, and especially like Camels. But I keep going back to the old sow, my "big leg woman", and she keeps taking me back no matter how many hot young things I've been with since I put her down last time. You really should give her a try. She doesn't get many men, so she'll cook, clean, and pay the bills for you as long as you take her for a ride once in a while . Bravo! The Fee seems grossly underappreciated in this forum. The more converts I can make, the better. You're a better man than I am, then. While I agree the Roland is a sexy ride and rather formidable in her time, I can't fly that thing without puking. It's the complete inability to see down at all except for that little notch at the wing root. You can't even see the horizon once you get above 500 feet, and that tends to make me queasy when using TIR. And if somehow I get through that, I always crash on landing due to a complete inability to see the ground coming . So pilot's notes on this beast would be most appreciated.

Here in 20 Squadron, we fly Fees as fighters. Most of our missions are offensive patrols to places like Douai, looking for trouble from the likes of MvR and his lads. We also do some defensive patrols behind our lines, escort the odd Quirk, and occasionally go after ground targets. Now that we've introduced the Lufbery Circle tactic, we do rather well. When I started here (and restarted many times), the squadron would go to pieces on the initial Hun rush and the scattered fugitives would be hunted down individually. It wasn't fun at all, but I kept at it because I know the Fee did much better in real life, so I viewed it as a challenge to solve and am now happy with my solution. The defensive circle (usually) sees at least my flight through until the Huns either go away or blow all their energy trying to get at us. If they do the latter, then the old Fee can hold her own tangling with them. In fact, over the long run, we usually get more of them than they do of us, although we do have our bad days. I find flying the Fee to be a good change of pace for me. After all, I've been flying conventional fighters in MMOFS games for many years so it's been a long time since I've had to start a new learning curve. I feel that getting the hang of the Fee has made me a more well-rounded fighter pilot. True, in the Fee you don't have to aim your own guns. However, the ACM involved in living long enough amidst a swarm of Albatri to achieve a good position for your observer is nothing to be ashamed of, given the relative performance of the planes. Another thing I like about Fee fights is that they're usually (at least since starting to circle) not battles of annihilation. Often only 1 or 2 planes per side go down and everybody else goes home. I find this more realistic than scout dogfights, where 1 side is usually wiped out. And anyway, if you live long enough, you get to fly Brisfits

Cherrypicker When are you going to join me in 20 Squadron in April 1917? If you want action, you'll find it there :yes:

Ohlam, it looks like you need to do some recruiting. There don't appear to be many Germans. Tell your friends and neighbors :) I'd do the same, but I don't have any neighbors.

It takes 2 people to make a head-on collision happen. Thus, regardless of what the AI does or does not do, it's always a minimum of 1/2 your own damn fault . Personally, I never go straight head-on at anybody, because that's mutual destruction from MG fire before we come close enough to collide. Always approach the enemy slightly off-center, side-slipping to hose him and forcing him to side-slip to hit you. If you see him starting to do this, just forget about shooting on this pass. Straighten out and blow by out of his side-slipping field of fire, then early-turn and get on his butt. No offense, but seriously, head-on passes are definitely not things you should be doing. If you had any angles at all prior to this pass, you automatically lose them and go back to an even situation doing a head-on pass. The only good reason, EVER, for doing a head-on pass is if you've got a significant energy advantage over the enemy, or can accelerate (say in a dive) much faster than he can, etc., and you use the head-on pass to disengage. You blow by the enemy and just keep on going, accelerating as much as you can. Hopefully, by the time he turns around to chase you, you're already out of his range or will be within seconds, and are pulling away from him with no chance of him catching up. So if you're not trying to disengage, never do head-on passes. Instead, do something constructive towards gaining angles on the enemy.

C'est la guerre. Many times I've thought I've killed a bunch of enemies, and haven't gotten a claim form. Watching the replay, it's usually been obvious that the enemies I shot at were really killed by somebody else. Oh well, I guess I need to make better use of my opportunities. I don't think it's the "last bullet syndrome". I think that it's quite possible to pump a bunch of lead into an enemy and not hit a vital spot, and then 1 bullet from somebody else kills the pilot, starts a fire, ruins the flight controls, etc. When I kill somebody, it's because I inflicted fatal damage, even if somebody else hits him on the way down.

From what I've seen, the success of your squaddies depends not only on the squadron quality but also relative plane performance compared to the enemy, and also on what orders you give. In general, if you're in an elite squadron, your buddies are highly aggressive. Unless you can kill with your 1st burst, you're not likely to get many kills because your wingmen will kill them all with or without your help, and often collide with you trying to steal your kills. If you're in a poor squadron, OTOH, your squaddies are completely useless and you're forced to be the ubermensch. So to me, the best thing is being in a good squadron, and let nature take it's course. This is where relative plane performance and your orders come in. If your planes are better, so that you usually have an E advantage, you can tell your troops to attack and just ride herd on them. You'll have to bail them out sometimes, and thus will get a fair number of kills, but you don't have to worry about them being massacred. If your planes are inferior and/or usually outnumbered, OTOH, your orders have to be issued carefully and you have to be more of the ubermensch. However, given your inferior plane, the enemy will be breathing down your neck the whole time, which limits what help you can give. I find this the most enjoyable.

Bah! If they did, the Valkyries would have taken me; they've certainly had their chances over the years . But as any good NCO, I learned how to snow REMF office pogues while still a boot .

I disagree. Innovation is NOT a strong human traits. It's just hard for us, who lived through the latter part of the 20th Century, to realize this. The 20th Century was a huge abberation in human history, because never before have some many changes in so many peoples' daily lives happened in so short a time. I think, therefore, that it's somewhat unrealistic to expect that sort of change to continue from here on out. Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but I doubt it's guaranteed. I expect a wide plateau or 2 somewhere along the line. Consider history. My grandfathers, born in 1898 and both WW1 vets, were Iron Age men. When they were young, except that their mothers didn't have to spin thread and weave cloth very often because the train brought store-bought clothes from the textile mills, their daily lives were little different from those of peasants in Roman Gaul. No electricity, no plumbing, and everything being moved by the muscles of humans and animals. They lived long enough to watch the 1st few space shuttles fly (and everything in between)and went to their graves amazed to have seen it happen, because it sure didn't look that way when they started. The Iron Age of my grandfathers started about 1000 BC more or less. The various Bronze Ages lasted thousands of years before that, blending into the Chalcolithic, which itself blended into the Neolithic. Before the Neolithic, our ancestors had spent the 20-25,000 years since the "Great Leap Forward" living little different from all previous hominids, except now they had jewelry, music, and painted the walls of their caves. Prior to that, Homo sapiens chipped his rocks just like everybody else for about 100,000 years (or rather longer, depending on whom you believe). Homo neanderthal chipped his rocks the same from start to finish, at least 250,000 years, and Homo erectus made no real advance at all in over 1,000,000 years. So IMHO, it all comes down to supply and demand. The 20th Century changed everybody's lives so much, and gave us the expectation of continued changes, because all sorts of new consumer products came along, new types of jobs opened up, etc. People wanted these things because they made them more comfortable, richer, etc. If the 21st Century wants to continue the trend, it has to do the same thing, and as long as it can do so, people will remain rooted to Earth, although there will still be great progress. Space exploration has so far done nothing towards the supply/demand thing except to create the ability to launch commercially viable satellites. Apollo didn't do it, and a near-term Mars trip won't do it, either. Assuming we can solve the physical problems of getting millions of people into space, we still have to convince them to leave here. Maybe Red China can force people onto spaceships at bayonet-point, but the rest will need carrots instead of sticks. There have to be good jobs out there, the prospect of a better life than on Earth, and that children born out there can have at least the same benefits as the initial colonists. And this, IMHO, is only going to come from private space enterprise, because that's the only thing going into space for economically driven reasons.

Not in the least. I am all for putting millions of people permanently in space and on other planets. That's certainly way more costly, and puts far more people at risk, than doing a Mars mission at present. I want to see this happen because, as you say, we can't live here forever, and it would be nice to have our eggs in several baskets. I want to see this happen so much, in fact, that I begrudge every cent spent on what are no more than publicity stunts, such as sending a few people to Mars any time soon. Put the money instead into ways of getting the equivalents of entire cities off the ground cheaply and easily, and into ways of keeping people alive and healthy long-term in space stations or on low-gravity, barren planets. Because until we can do these things, the whole idea of space colonization is physically impossible, and the stated purposes for doing it are at best misrepresentations spread to get funding for useless publicity stunts.

Why not use nuclear subs to build undersea cities? Like Bioshock only without the eugenic weirdness. We occupy only a tiny fraction of the Earth, but we can spread out to a much wider range with far less effort than it takes to go to space. Plus, if you decide you don't like living under water, you can come back to the surface very quickly, without the loss of bone and the radiation poisoning of space travel. The ocean floor is effectively another planet, for how alien it is compared to where we live. But it's a lot more habitable, it's WAY closer, and doing a mass migration to there could happen a lot quicker than doing the same in space. Moving lots of people into self-sufficient, sustainable undersea colonies would actually help things on Earth proper. And if nothing else, it would be good practice for setting up a space colony. So why doesn't anybody consider this, which is right at our feet, but instead dreams of planting a flag on Mars?

Strange. I thought Mr. Lewis was an American, same as Mr. Maxim. BTW, thanks for catching it was 1915 in the intro text. But that makes the equipment even more anachronistic :)

Quite true. Everybody involved with manned rockets, even in a ground capacity, is inducted into the honored compay of the Imperial and Royal House of Bullethead's Noble Order of the Cast Iron Balls. Those on the sharp end in the rockets, of whatever nationality or program, merit the coveted Fig Leaves to the basic Order device, the world's highest award for bravery combined with brains. Those who have actually set foot on another world are the Knights Commander of the Order. Still, I wish they'd done something of more utility for the rest of us :yes:

I very rarely have claims rejected--it's somewhat less than 10% of the time, although that's probably just luck. Still, I look at the pending number (which is in the text file even if no longer visible in the game), and the lowest I ever get these days is 85, so I figure I must be doing something right. I never put the time of a kill in my claims because I never remember to look at the clock. When I kill somebody, I pause the game and look at 2 things: 1) where I am on the map, and 2) which friendly plane is closest. Then I quickly jot down my position and his name, and go on. I guess having the kill time doesn't matter. For the position, it depends. If the kill lands on a landmark, I say so. Otherwise, I give very rough range and bearing estimates from 2 or 3 nearby landmarks. Typically, it's like "about 2 miles SW of Airfield X and 5 miles NE of Town Y", or "in the German front line trenches just W of Town Z". For the witness box, I use the name of the closest friendly, whether he was in my flight or not. This doesn't seem to make a difference. I do, however, I include the names of all my flight members in the body of the report. I model the text of my claim on the real things. This is a brief outline of the whole sortie with a detailed description of the fight in the middle. These usually start out as "Flying A/C [serial number, gained in external view before takeoff]. Morning OP to Douai, leading B Flight of [pilot names]. Flew to patrol area via ." Then comes the description of the fight, which usually starts out like this: "Near [location], while at about [my altitude], was attacked from above by approximately 6 Albatros D.IIIs. These H/A (or E/A, if it's late in the war) had [detailed description of paint scheme]." What happens next of course depends on the situation, but I usually say such things as this: Engaged one H/A in turning fight down to [altitude] Received numerous hits from several H/A attacking from multiple directions. Observer hit H/A with several short bursts and I [saw whatever damage happened] I fired several short burts at H/A and observed [whatever damage I saw] After the last burst, H/A went down out of control and was seen to crash and explode on ground approximately [X miles from whatever landmarks] If I see a friendly plane die or get a kill, I include that as well, plus any friendly shots going into the one I'm claiming. I conclude the claim with a brief description of how the sortie ended, such as "reformed my flight and returned to base", or "Made forced landing at [location] due to damage sustained from H/A." Anyway, this works very well for me. In fact, it works so well that sometimes when I get key facts wrong, I still get the kill. For instance, in many fights, all the huns look alike and things swirl around too much for me to keep track of what's really happening. So a number of times, I've thought I've been shooting at the same Hun all along, only to find out in the replay that I actually shot up several of them, and that the one I claimed was actually killed by a buddy while my real victim went down unnoticed in a different location. Or maybe I killed more than I thought, so never filed all the claims I could have. So the lesson seems to be, the accuracy of the little details you report doesn't have to be high. As long as what you say was obviously derived from the actual fight, and you tell a convincing story, the game appears to buy it .