Rick Rawlings

It's also interesting to note that of the people you mentioned, only Rickenbacker survived the war. (Unless you were referring to Lothar von Richtofen!) Maybe Eddie's race car experience put him in the right frame of mind to be a survivor or maybe his ear infection took him out long enough to where his luck didn't have time to run out. Even in the cases where you had individuals of great skill, such as Ball or Voss or Boelcke, the odds eventually caught up to them. Richtofen, who, even by his own admission, was not a spectacular pilot, seemed to survive as long as he did mostly due to his iron-fisted determintaion to follow the hard lessons learned in the early days of Jasta 2. When he did fail to follow them, target fixing on a hapless Camel to become #81, what happened? Shot down. Even for the aces that survived the war, many didn't live to see the next one. It seems that their experiences changed them and they had a hard time adapting to life after the war, most likely due to what is now know as post traumatic stress. Wow, thanks for bumming me out guys. RR

On a mission last night, I dropped 3 DII's with my N17. Each time I caught them at the top of a zoom climb when they had no energy and were basically stationary relative to me. I gave each a good long burst into the cockpit area from no more than 150 feet away and... each went down! That has NEVER happened before. Usually, I would have to rinse and repeat twice. So that, if nothing else, is a good thing :) We may now be being rewarded for the good gunnery skills we have developed over the last month and a half. I did notice that in a QC using a Camel against some DV's that they went down with a couple of not-too-spectacular looking deflection bursts, but when I looked at the accuracy stats, they were still in the 30's. Things seem pretty good right about now. We'll keep playing and reporting. I have also been pummeled to the ground by ground forces on my last two ground attack missions, though, so it seems to cut both ways. There will probably be a new learning curve for the next ten missions or so. The spinning deaths are very nice and I actually saw a wing fall off a DII in the above flight in the N17. That's a first for me! Nice Winder! RR

Arrrgh!!!!!!!! Ze Germans are here! Hey Olham, good to have you back at the table! Guess I need to start checking my six again :) RR

Well, as usual with a "I know a guy who knows a guy" type story, YMMV but a friend of mine went to an airshow where they were fying a Dr.I rebuild and he talked to the pilot and the guy said that you had to constantly fly it, it wasn't really a plane that you could ever just take your hands off the stick with. RR

Hey Siggi, looks good! You may want to edit your Origins text, though. Red Baron 2 came out in 1997, which is hardly the "early nineties" RR

Winder, why are you reading the boards? You are supposed to be taking a much needed BREAK!!!!! RR

Wow! I barely believed they really caught on fire until I started flying some Albatross missions! I have only seen one plane explode... sitting on the aerodrome strip right before takeoff, very weird! What were you flying/he flying? I am gonna guess and say that it was a twin gun plane, right? RR

Ouch! Serves me right for not Clicking On To View Larger Image! RR

Once more, just for fun and improved for the new boards! Rabu, is that a phase 2 shot? Usually when the guys bail the pilot model is still in the cockpit and "another" one spawns "the prestige" style above it and takes the fall. Or did you paint him out? Or is the Eindecker different? Cool picture though! RR

Over the front:

C'mon, you know the snipe isn't in yet. But if you do go hunting it, you may want to make sure Barker isn't at the controls! RR

Well, from the inside view of the N17, using the snap views, the front left snap view does not show the rockets on the wing strut. This actually caused me some consternation for a few minutes, wondering why I was short 4 rockets compared to my wingmen. Maybe they just knew how good a shot I was . Then I noticed that they render properly using the scroll view and from the outside. Weird! RR