Olham

What must I do to stop this??? Fortunately the devs have already decided about the name for OFF II. You guys are mad - and I'm virtually drunk from my virtual Warsteiner.

Thank you, von Paulus and Shiloh - thanks for the virtual Warsteiner - Prost! Shredder, you shouldn't have told them - better keep the nimbus you devs have so well deserved.

No fog in the head; you just made me blush a bit, but they won't see that under my lamb skin face mask. My pleasure, when it helped you and everyone who loves OFF - it was for a good reason then, wasn't it?

The sortie and forced landing near Fontaine Arthur Gould Lee described as shown above, happened between the 22nd and 24th of November 1917. Now I found this aerial photography of Anneux and Fontaine-Notre-Dame - it was taken only ten days later, on 2 December 1917. We can see Anneux in the front left corner; Fontaine-Notre-Dame in the background. Lee's second forced landing must have been more or less in the center of this photo. Note the tank tracks! About the notations on the photo: Photo Reference 12.L.O.31. Area Fontaine Notre Dame; Cambrai. Year 1917 Month 12 Day 2 Time 10:00:00 Oblique Yes Annotation on Front "U" printed in black ink. Annotation on Back "Taken for 3rd Army Attack of Bourlon wood. Dec 1917 (note tank tracks)." written in pencil; number 13 printed and circled in pencil; "3rd 3, 4th 5, ...order-100" written in blue pencil.

A very big THANK YOU indeed, to all of you working so efficiently quiet in the background of this forum!

"Terrain Detail" seems to be the resolution of the "terrain patches"; which make the texture for the ground surface. "Scenery Detail" seems to be a variety of objects added, the higher you go. Maybe Winder or Pol could clarify that.

Ah, okay, thanks, PanamaRed. My sliders are set to: Aircraft: 5 Terrain detail: 3 (anything higher I found too grainy) Scenery detail: 5 Effects quality: 5 Clouds: 5 I guess you're right - it must be the "Scenery detail" slider.

Hasse Wind, I've just revisited the website of "Jasta11", where you can see original parts and the restauration progress of a Rumpler C.IV - seems Koloman Mayrhofer is doing the job. Has anyone more info on this? See here: http://www.jasta11.co.uk/page3.htm There I also found this excellent photo of three Albatros (type?) recon aircraft in flight:

Looking rough outside, but when it was from ZEISS you can bet it was top notch hightech in those days.

I guess they came up, when I put "ground object density" on "high". In my ATI "CatalystControlCenter" I have selected the following settings: Anti-Aliasing: 16x Anisotropic Filtering: 16x Tesselation: AMD-optimised Catalyst A.I. Texture filtering quality: high quality Texture optimisation: activated Mipmap Detail Level: High Quality Wait for vertical refresh: Always on (High quality) Anti-Aliasing Mode: Super-Sampling OpenGL Setting: Triple buffering To be honest: I don't know, what "Tesselation" or "Triple buffering" really do.

Yes, there is; thank you Sid - I have also moved it fully up. It is just a question of graphic card quality, how good OFF will look, and a question of CPU speed, how well it will perform. I have finally got a very good system for both.

Nice to hear, that the DH-5 has a fan, Sid. Please send some pics in the "Screenshots" thread north from here.

Good info here; mostly new for me, who has only read about fighter squadrons - thank you guys!

Yes, shoot at the one behind the locomotive - I think they even get shot off, and roll out. Then you can destroy them one after the other. (Or did I only dream that? Not sure...)

Thank you, Si - I am glad you liked it. Since I had read the book, I always wanted to do this.

As far as I remember, you can damage at least the box cars. Not sure about the lokomotive though.

Thank you guys! And if anyone has not read the book yet - I think it is a top read among all English books about WW1 air war; together with Cecil Lewis' "Sagittarius rising".

Since I got a much better graphic card from Morris only recently (thanks again, mate!), I could raise all sliders and the "ground object density" and such. Now I saw today some green hedges, which I had never seen before. Either I always missed them, or - more likely - they came up with more "ground detail". OFF still has things to surprise me with!

Very touching, when after all this time the traces can still be found, and read - as if it was only some years ago.

You mean they really could still find the shell casings from the guns of General Custer?

La Folie Wood is east of the landing point, Carrick - it's not the Bourlon Wood, which is north of Bourlon. When you look at my GoogleMap, you'll see, that the distance between La Folie wood and the sunken road is well within range of a machine gun. (The sunken road is the one leading to Fontaine in north-south direction). The "sunken road" is only one of six roads all leading in to / out of Fontaine; plus the main road from Cambrai. The Germans would have rather used the north-easter ones, I guess, while the British must have come from west-southwestly direction. Jarhead, if you should ever buy a piece of land there after retirement, and you need help with digging...

Thank you, Shredward! Here are the other two "photos" I took in StreetView, from Lee's landing spots at Anneux (2) and Graincourt (3).

Shot down three times during the Battle of Cambrai Arthur Gould Lee described in his book "No Parachute!", how he was shot down no less but three times, during the battle of Cambrai. I was so fascinated by his descriptions, that I researched the reports. I found a map of the Bourlon area at McMaster University, which you can see an excerpt from here. Then I went into Google StreetView and took shots from the area at Fontaine, where he was shot down the first time. The excerpt from his book is also about this event. I don't know about you, but I can almost "re-live" it this way; it brings the book's reports even more to life for me. Here is the author: Shells were bursting every half-minute in the area, mostly north of the Cambrai road, and I assumed they were British. As I circled over Fontaine, I glimpsed one crash into a roadside house, which just quietly collapsed to a heap. I then realised, that a fierce fight was going on for possession of Fontaine. I saw khaki and field figures clustering close to the walls on either side of the crossroads, firing at one another round corners, but it was all mixed up and there was nothing I could do there. So I switched my attention to a group of field-greys filtering off the main road southwards into a large field flanked by a wood and a canal behind it. I dived low and began to spray them, but after one long burst, my guns jammed, first one then the other. I slid across the field and banked round the wood, keeping as low as I dared while I tried to rectify the jams. Suddenly, when I was at about thirty feet, there was a heartstopping roar below me, and the plane lifted at least twenty feet vertically. For a few seconds I couldn't see, all the blood in me seemed to shoot up in my head, and I gave myself up as a goner, but seconds later I found I was still alive. A shell had exploded directly underneath me. Chunks of shrapnell tore through the fabric of the plane, one piece going clang! somewhere in the engine, which didn't stop but vibrated horribly. I expected the machine to fall to bits, as it began to wobble violently. The joystick felt loose, with no lateral control and the fore-and-aft like lead. I closed the throttle, switched off, held her off the ground as long as I could, and flopped - I couldn't call it a landing, but at least I didn't turn over - on the large grassy fieldthat was fortunately still beneath me. Fortunately, also, there was next to no wind. She trundled along for fifty yards, while I unbuckled my belt, just in case, then she stopped halfway between the wood I'd just circled and a sunken road. (...) The third thought was, now to scrounge the watch from it's casing! There I was, sitting in this big field all alone, with nobody in sight, though fitfull rifle-fire came from Fontaine, half a mile ahead of me. Otherwise all seemed peaceful enough, and I was trying to wrench the obstinate casing loose when - crak! crak! crak! - and a sharp rattle of gunfire from my right. Startled, I turned, saw a machine-gun flashing in the trees. I was out of the cockpit like a jack-in-the-box. I ran as hard as my full flying kit would allow towards the sunken road, keeping the machine between me and the guns, though I could still hear the vicious crak-ak-ak-ak! as bullets passed fairly close to me. They were after me because they were the bunch I'd just been shooting up, and they were only 200 yards away, and I slithered down the bank into the road. I was safe - for the moment. I was gasping for breath - sprinting and flying kit don't go together. There wasn't a soul to be seen, and I just sat there, getting my wind back and wondering what to do. There was still a crackle of machine-gun and rifle fire from Fontaine. I gingerly stood up, peered over the bank, and saw khaki-clad figures moving around buildings on this side of the village. So they were being driven out. Suddenly I heard footsteps. I had no gun with me, and didn't know what to expect, so I dropped into a funk-hole by the ditch, one of a line which British or German troops had dug earlier. I kept low until they passed, then looked out - it was a wounded infantryman, arm in a sling. I caught him up and found he was a Seaforth Highlander. The bullet had gone through his shoulder. He said they were being pushed out of Fontaine, the Boche had brought up too many troops. I knew it already, I'd just been shooting some of them up. As we turned off the road along a hollow which he said led to an advanced dressing station, a Tommy appeared out of a trench on my left, and asked me to speak to his officer. I had no idea any of our troops were there, but after saying so-long to the High- lander, I followed him up the trench into breastworks dug round the curve of a rising field. Here I found myself with the 9th Royal Scots, of the 51st Division. The Company Commander, Captain Maxwell, had seen me come down, and was surprised I wasn't pipped by the Boche opposite. His men had laid quick bets on wether I'd get away with it. From the trench I had a good view of my immense field, with the Camel perched there looking pathetically abandoned , and also of the wood facing us, some 300 - 400 yards distant, which I now learned was La Folie Wood. From here, too, I could see how the ridge on which Bourlon Wood lies dominates the whole area. Within seconds of my entering the company dugout, Maxwell produced a bottle of whisky, and gave me a good nip. I needed it!

That's interesting how you modern firemen can really often trace back, where and how a fire started. Like CSI for fires. You must have got really soaked by that rainfall - is it at least warmer there in Lousy Anna, than it is here? We only have 8° Celsius - not so good for being all soaked by heavy rain.

Shiloh, if you have never flown the Fokker E.V / D.III, you should give her some time. She climbs and turns quite well. A backdrop is the very thick wing, which blocks the view very much. I wonder, if the real craft had the view blocked so much. I don't believe that the Jastas had very pinned down regulations about how a plane had to be painted. They seem to have rather followed each other with certain basics like the black tail. But when you look at Viktor Schobinger's craft, it drops out a bit. For my own kite, I interpreted the hallmark black tail a bit individually - and I'm pretty sure that would have been absolutely okay for the commanding officer.