Waldemar Kurtz

my last Fokker pilot lodged 18 claims in 6 days. 11 of which were confirmed before he was killed in action. all of these victories were against Bristol Scouts and BE2c. I had the good fortune of having numerical equality in most of these fights. but some aircraft no longer frighten me: the Bristol Scout and the BE12c are pretty much destined to die by my hand if I encounter them. their woefully inadequate armament leaves them no choice. the Bristol Scout is alarmingly easy to neutralize once you know how the machine-gun is installed. it's off-set to fire 45 degrees left of the line-of-flight. this means that if you're in a tight spot with a Bristol Scout on your tail you always go into a right-hand turn. it doesn't even have to be a tight turn where you bleed off a lot of energy. no, if anything you need only go into a slight bank, bleeding off as little speed as possible. if things get bed go into a slight climb or dive. the ONLY way that Bristol Scout can get a lethal shot on you is by over-pressing his turn and stalling out below you. once this happens you can start climbing and make an escape OR if the odds are favorable you can turn around and make a quick slashing attack. I've found myself one-vs-six against Bristol Scouts on at least four occassions and I've always managed to make it back home alive. it's not the Bristol Scout on your tail that kills you. not if you're flying in a straight line. they always kill you when you're in a left-hand turn. this sort of thing favors them! against the BE12c the greatest asset is patience. it takes forever to chase them down. usually you can't even reach them unless you have an altitude advantage. but once you get in close, don't let up. they have no observer to defend themselves with-- so if you can get within 150 ft, hammer them mercilessly (in short burst, of course) and watch them burn. one thing to remember about the BE12c is that you don't want them on your tail. because they DO have a forward-firing machine gun. they'll make short work of you if you give them the chance. against the Nieuport 11 you have to avoid them if at all possible. the best bet is to go at them head-on and hose-pipe them. you have about at least twice as much ammo as they do. so it doesn't hurt to "waste" bullets at long ranges if you're not badly out-numbered. it is, however, MUCH easier to see what you're aiming at with the E.III-- the Nieuport 11's weapon is so vastly inferior to the Fokker Eindecker that you must play up this advantage at every possible opportunity. if at all possible, try to aim for the lower wing root and the cockpit if you can catch them in a turn. the Nieuport doesn't like taking damage there and is prone to shedding wings. if you find a Nieuport coming after you always turn against him. if he flies in a clock-wise circle make certain that you're flying in a counter-clockwise circle. you may get fleeting chances at head-on shots which favor you in every possible way. it's easier for you to aim AND you've got a lot more ammunition. don't break out of a counter-circle unless there is an enemy on your tail OR another friendly engages him. if possible use the environment to assist you-- fly low towards friendly infantry positions. this has saved me at least twice. Nieports are almost impossible to defeat in 1-on-1 combat. so you have to use team tactics. I always fly as "flight leader" because the AI just doesn't not take the initiative often enough. against the Airco DH.2 the same holds true. although I find that the Fokker E.III is more forgiving when it comes to stalls. play that to your advantage as much as possible. the Airco DH.2 did get christened "the Spinning Incinerator" for a reason! ;) the same "counter-circle" method will probably work against the DH.2 as well. these are not guarantees of success, but they can help even out the odds. regarding the Sopwith Strutter-- I avoid them. they're superior in every way AND they have an observer's station. there's no real reason to attack these things in a Fokker E.III. your best bet is, if you have no choice, to linger back about 600 ft and just pepper them at long range. don't expect to shoot them down-- but you're odds of making it home are much better. back when I flew the RB3D Western Front Patch I probably put more hours in the Fokker E.III than any other machine. when JG1 (RB3d) had their online wars called "Flanders in Flames" I got very familiar with this machine. the OFF flight-model is actually pretty similar. the key is good energy management. don't give up energy unless you can do one of two things: A. stay alive.... or B. kill something. use team work. protect your wingmen. you will NEED them. I always use the TAC display and command my wingmen to attack specific opponents before entering combat. wingmen should always be directed towards the biggest threat. you should always favor saving a wingman instead of taking a kill. since the E.III can't outperform anything you need to find "safety in numbers". I've taken the trouble to save AI wingmen only to find them save me twice over on the very next mission! additionally, keep an eye out for approaching enemy machines. the British seem to fall on you like rain. I always use the zoom-feature to get a better look at them. my computer makes it impossible to positively identify a machine until I am well within killing range.

File Name: Albatros D.Va 'Man of Letters' File Submitter: Waldemar Kurtz File Submitted: 13 Feb 2010 File Category: Aircraft Skins the original Albatros D.Va skin was created by Paarma. I thought it would be cool to have an Albatros covered in letters. although I had tried using text overlays I didn't like the way it looked. last year I hand-stamped a white coat with black letters as part of a Halloween costume-- and it occurred to me that I could photograph this coat for more satisfying results. the hand-stamped inconsistencies feel more 'believable' on the curving surfaces of the Albatros. Click here to download this file

I turned on the "kill labels" and noticed that your wingmen ALWAYS have "0 kills" listed for every sortie. even if they've just shot down two planes inside the last 15 minutes! and since the AI wingmen still seem to have the same sort of problem that we have. I may be mistaken-- but it seems like if I mention seeing a wingmen shoot down an enemy in flames that they get their victories confirmed faster. but I don't know if that's something the developers intentionally incorporated into the game or if it was just a lucky coincidence. somebody has created an external program for CFS3 which keeps track of wingman activities... I can't for the life of me remember where to find it right now-- but I've been meaning to see if that would work for OFF... since the in-game action theoretically happens with CFS3.

very nice. too bad the Belgians didn't use them in large numbers. I seem to remember reading somewhere that Fernand Jacquet, the leading Belgian two-seater ace really, REALLY wanted a Bristol Fighter-- but had the idea shot down by the Belgian government! however, this looks very nice.

File Name: Alsace File Submitter: Waldemar Kurtz File Submitted: 14 Feb 2010 File Category: Maps, Missions, and Campaigns volume 6, map supplement, from the 1921 edition of "the Times History of the War" Click here to download this file

File Name: the Vosges File Submitter: Waldemar Kurtz File Submitted: 13 Feb 2010 File Category: Maps, Missions, and Campaigns this is scanned from the Times History of the War 1921 edition, volume 6, map supplement. Click here to download this file

ANY French two-seater. I don't mind. but if I could pick, I would go with the Voisin L.III because the Voisin family of machines served from the beginning until the end. so the Voisin III could be a nice stop-gap measure (much like the BE2c at present). since it's a pusher-type it could also fill in for some of the Farman flights early in the war.

well, except when you're flying a DFW C.V campaign and you get SIX of them in a row!

File Name: Nieuport 17 "Mathilde File Submitter: Waldemar Kurtz File Submitted: 07 Feb 2010 File Category: Aircraft Skins the original Nieuport 17 skin was made by Rabu. it's the Escadrille 65 stock skin. the heart was borrowed from OBD skin for Werner Voss (D.III), which I believe was done by Paarma. I had to distort it quite a bit to get the face to fit over it. the face was rendered free hand on a piece of paper and then scanned. I made up a new bogus serial number to replace the original. finally, I picked the name "Mathilde" because it's based on an old Germanic name that means "mighty in battle", or some such thing. Click here to download this file

so I started this pilot, Harald Beyer, with FA.62 flying Fokkers in June of 1915. our first mission is an arty-spot with 7 machines. I figured this should be a milk run. I usually use warp because time is something I don't have a lot of-- but the game wouldn't let me do it. when I put on the TAC display the sky was literally full of machines. there had to have been at least three large clusters of aircraft in the air at any given time. I was surprised. we're talking June of 1915! it's like I could have thrown a dart in the air randomly and hit a British plane! in less than 15 minutes we got attacked by four Bristol Scouts. we started shooting them down because we outnumbered them. just when it looked like we had them all mopped up ANOTHER four Bristol scouts dive in and attack us. then, after a mix of anti-aircraft fire and dogfighting drives them away. I find a Bristol on my tail. my wingmen all promptly abandon me. I can't shake this guy. so I decide to keep putting my crate into tight right-hand turns. eventually I see a balloon about a mile away and fly towards it. this last Bristol finally gets turned into shrapnel after a direct hit. so I start climbing towards the lines and see a solitary Fokker chasing three BE2c and decide... this is the first time I've seen a friendly in ages, so I better stick with him. this guy chases those BE2c forever and does absolutely nothing. I got frustrated. I close up and send one of the BE2 down in flames. then I shot down another one that was forced to land. then damaged the other with all of my remaining ammo. I'm out of ammo. so I figure, time to get out of there. I hit the warp button hoping it would send me back to our assigned recon point because I'd still like to complete the mission objective. but, no, my wingman (it turns out he was one of my wingmen because EVERY time I warped it would put me back next to this guy). so, I figure, I'm stuck, let's just fly back home in real time. and THEN we bump into a flight of 4 Bristol Scouts escorting 4 BE2c. of course the scouts jump on us. I dive away as fast as I can and two guys go after me. the other two go after my wingman. I spend a 10 minute escape scraping over tree tops and flying right through a massive artillery barrage at 200 ft off the ground before those bums gave up. then, I warp... silly me, because I had hopes that after 60 minutes of the sky raining angry British aircraft that I could be done! no such luck. it warped me right back with my wingman, 12 miles behind enemy lines and in the middle of an enemy formation. by this time I'd been playing a long time. I'd already done a bunch of music writing at the computer and my eyes were getting tired. I just said "screw it! I'm going quit right here... in the air, over enemy lines" and it said I got capture-- fine. but then it said I escaped. apparently my pilot escaped in a short period of time. because as of June 3rd, 1915 I was able to rejoin my squadron. I put in a claim for 4 Bristol Scouts and 2 BE2s and we'll just have to wait and see if they got confirmed or not. I really, really wanted a milk run mission-- I haven't put a lot of hours in on OFF since before the holidays. I don't play Dead is Dead rules. even if I fly invisible cockpit with nearly all of the graphics set on their lowest possible setting I'm still getting frame rates as low as 8-12 fps in combat during campaign play (especially on this mission). I can't afford to upgrade this machine so it'll have to do. my only rule is that if the pilot dies he's as good as dead. and I keep all of the highest difficulty settings on. besides which, having the flak on it's deadliest settings makes it easier for me to spot enemy machines. whew! I hope the next mission is easier. I'm glad I made it out alive.

I figured since I got 11 victories I'd pick the Nieuport 11.

finally resumed this Fokker career. it was a non-stop roller coaster of violence and death. it also lasted a mere 6 days! I met at least four or five machines on every mission. by the time I died I had ended up with 19 enemy machines shot down. (the last were made just prior to my Fokker being blown apart by a direct hit from some sort of artillery shell. I just heard a loud crunching noise and my Fokker nosed down with no response to the flight controls. I cut the engine and tried pulling up, but it was useless. it slowed me down to a mere 55 mph, but when you're at 2000 ft, and heading straight into a forest-- the odds are against you surviving! which is funny because my flight members nearly killed me twice! I was about ready to finish off an advesary when I suddenly felt bullets striking my plane. I began losing fuel and the plane was responding poorly. I dove away and saw two Fokkers hammering my previous victim while I had to ditch my plane! the second time it happened in much the same way, but I was able to dive away without too much damage and make it home safely. by the time I died 11 claims had been confirmed while 5 had been rejected for lack of evidence (these were scored WAAY behind enemy lines near Chocques and at Armentierres, so that only made sense) there were still 3 claims pending confirmation when the pilot died. I also made 2 "posthumous" claims which were naturally rejected. surprisingly, I found that it was pretty easy to shoot down enemy machines. of course, I've already spent hours in both the BE2c and the Bristol Scout so I know exactly what their weak points are. 18 claims in 6 sorties is pretty spectacular for June of 1915. I also managed to help several of my wingman to score a couple of victories as well. I'd fly straight and level to lure a Bristol on my tail. then go into a high right-hand yo-yo. then level out at a lower altitude. the Bristol would then turn on my tail, and I'd go into a slight climb and "lean" to the right. this would force him to slow down and stay on my left side to make any sort of attack. he'd bled off considerable speed by this point, so it was child's play for my wingman to get on his tail and send him down in flames. three of my wingmen scored 2 victories in 6 days with this technique. it's not something I'd try with any other British machine-- but with the Bristol they can sit right on your tail at 50 ft and as long as they're directly behind you there's nothing they can do! Nieuports are a whole different kettle of fish, though! he was decorated with the Iron Cross 1rst and 2nd Class. although since my pilot died, I believe they don't show up on his flight-log in the pilots menu. I suppose it's terribly unhistorical, but many of the kills were gained from high-deflection gunnery from above or below my adversaries. deflection shots are your friend! the advice of always leading the flight helped out tremendously! it improved the overall efficiency of my flight by something like 300 percent! so thanks.

I wonder a few things about this War we are fighting over Flanders Fields. When I am debriefed and I am told that we "must keep up the pressure", is that a subtle British way of saying that HQ is disappointed with my performance and I am cruising for a court martial?it means nothing, to put it bluntly. it gets said after every mission in which you are not shot down, killed, taken prisoner, what-have-you. it's just another way of saying "hey, hey, don't you want to go up and fly again, lad?" it's nothing to worry about. I'm not entirely sure if court-martials are possible in this game. perhaps I shall go out and unceremoniously kill a half-dozen of my wingmen and find out! :p What does the R:-20 or R:-30 message mean at the end of some of my logged missions? Have I upset someone in intelligence there?good question. it's the number that represents the "realism multiplyer". the more difficult you make the realism settings the higher this factor will be. if you change any of the realism settings this final number will be changed in your logbooks. to test this theory out, try making your pilot invincible or give him unlimited ammo and then compare it to a mission flown with all of the highest difficulty settings. I've found that this R-score is no longer posted in my campaigns now that I use "Hat in the Ring" patch. Are the first two or three way-points around my home airfield critical too keep Head-Quarters satisfied with my performance. My flight around the aerodrome to allow my squadmates to form up is a much smaller radius than set by the way-points. Usually I fly around the airfield only about half a time, and then I am offered to use X to warp to the next waypoint.I believe these waypoints are probably required by the AI to navigate safely. some games (like RB3D) have an orbit or loiter function where the AI is able to circle about a single point for a specified period of time. CFS3 seems to be more specific in it's needs. so I guess they need those numerous little waypoints on take-off to make sure that the AI don't start stooging along the deck immediately. How do I find these bloody balloons I am supposed to protect or destroy. I can fly to the location as quickly as possible and find no balloon, no troops, no nothing - although there can be strings of balloons two to five miles away all waving happily away.as Ironhat said, it will be the one closest to your designated waypoint. in fact, you'll have to fly directly over the balloon to have the TAC prompt your next waypoint. Do balloons show up as "vehicles" on the TAC map? yes What to troops marching or dug in show up as: also "vehicles"? (They can be VERY difficult to find in the mountains and forests in Alsace. One needs very keen eyes or even a little radar to help find them. :o)yes, troops do show up as vehicles. it's odd, but you CAN find them with the TAC display by switching to vehicles. When we have to patrol the front, are we supposed to circle the designated waypoint, or patrol between the two waypoints near the front - all in order to keep the Brass happy?when you patrol the front you can do whatever you want, I suppose. I've found that if I follow the mission waypoints TOO closely the game will decide "job well done, chaps!" and give me that dreaded purple 'MISSION COMPLETE' text. so now I avoid finishing all of my mission objectives until as late as possible during the sortie-- sometimes I outright ignore them. the reason being is that the second the game manager figures out your "mission is complete" it no longer logs ANYTHING of your flight. no elapsed time, no victories, no injuries, no deaths. this became painfully obvious when I flew a recon sortie. after finishing the prescribed 20 minutes over the target I stumbled onto a flight of some 8 enemy fighters, shot down two before getting sent down in flames and having my machine fly into hundreds of little pieces. when I got home it congratulated me on a job well done-- and that I had to keep the pressure on. why did it do that, you might ask? because I had completed the primary mission objective intact! so, there are times where I would advise people to NOT complete the mission objectives too early!

I don't think the awards are based on what happened in your mission. that is to say, you could fly a mission and come back and get a medal you something you did several missions ago. medals are in direct relationship to victory confirmations. although, historically speaking, it was possible to get a medal for distinguished service even if you never shot down an enemy machine. since OFF is still a work-in-progress we can expect many changes in the decorations of future versions. you probably got a Congressional Medal of Honor for some notable performance earlier in your career. it's not that you got a CMH for bailing out-- it's that you lived long enough to learn about getting the award from your previous exploits. just a case in point, there was one German pilot who scored over 30 victories but never received the expected Pour Le Merite that so many German aviators might have expected by the end of the war. OFF actually has some lag-time between victories and medals. unlike RB3d where you'd get the medal pinned on you as soon as you landed on the ground! and, as many have said, the only air service to issue parachutes to their aviators would be the German Air Service in the last half of 1918. (although I think it started in small numbers between April and July). I don't remember the details too clearly just now.

I can't think of "the other side" at all. not in the way described in the original post. the "other side" is the one that's trying to kill you and survive. to take the issue further, it's really hard for me to see World War One in black-and-white terms. yes, I KNOW about German atrocities. I KNOW how they bombed civilians. but the British and the French bombed German civilians too-- when the French started massive night-bombing raids there was no alternative BUT to kill civilians. the difference being that Allied propaganda was better and more easily remembered. even "poor, innocent little Belgium" doesn't look that great when I consider their colonial history. look at Rwanda, Congo, and it's hard to be TOO sympathetic. Germany was evil enough to attack her neighbors. France, Great Britain, Belgium ALL had plenty of colonies that were obtained through military expansion. Germany was like that brash and obnoxious little brother who wanted to be better than his siblings. for the record, I'm American-- my ethnic break down is something like 25% French 25% English and 50% Native American. (I've had friends joke "you must be secretly Canadian!") and we can't really think of Germany as the only war-mongering state since the French general staff had submitted their own plans to attack Germany by invading through Belgium! the big difference being that the French government shot that idea down for being the political suicide that it was! can you imagine how different things would have been in the French had attacked first like some of the generals had wanted?

Olham: regarding Voss, I've read that he advocated attacking the FE2b from below and in front. he said that while they're flying in a defensive circle that the best way of breaking them out is to attack them from below and in front. I think... the idea being is that they're already in the middle of a turn. that attacking them from behind left you exposed to machine gun fire as you made your approach. attacking them head-on and from below while they were in a circle made it harder for them to aim, as they're already in the middle of a turn away from you as you make your approach. so, if memory serves, that's what he meant. I'll have to double-check my sources again later. work has been nightmarishly busy, so sorry for not responding earlier.

Werner Voss advised that pilots attack the FE2b head-on. the pilot and observer had absolutely no protection against a head-on attack. the pusher types had that engine in the back, which meant that they could sometimes take hundreds of rounds and keep on going. I've never tried that in OFF. however, given that Voss managed to a fair number of Fees, I'd be willing to try out his advice. regarding all other types of two-seaters. the BE2c, as currently modelled, is pretty easy to destroy. just line-up on the tail and start hammering away at close range. for the others, I've found a couple of different methods (I've used all 5 of these methods successfully since I first started playing Red Baron in the 1990s, RB3d after that, and they work in OFF about as well as they did in the older games). some can be used on all types (like 1 and 2) while others should be used with caution, taking into account how the enemy plane stacks up against yours. 1. attack from behind at long range. use dozens of small bursts at a range of some 500 to 700 ft. it's tricky, time-consuming, and means you won't be able to shoot down more than one two-seater during any given mission. the trade-off is that you're more likely to survive 2. fly about 500-1000 ft below the two seater. (ideally you'll want to be about 100 ft or so behind them as well). then zoom climb into their belly and aim for the engine. then when the two seater evades break hard in the opposite direction. gain some altitude and repeat this manuever until the enemy machine is destroyed 3. a high-speed overhead pass. this is VERY hard to do. you're not going to get a lot of victories this way. in fact, I mostly use this to force a machine out of formation so my flight can pick it off later. however, against most of the tractor-type two-seaters this method is very effective. by the time you're in danger from the observer's machine gun we're talking about closing speeds of hundreds of miles an hour. additionally, you won't stay in range of their machine guns very long. this technique obviously can't be used if you're trying to attack a two-seater that's faster than you. so I wouldn't advise using this method with a Nieuport 11 while trying to attack Roland C.IIs for a variety of reasons! 4. head-on pass. this is really only sensible if you've got more firepower. if you're flying a Camel and going up against a DFW C.V it's not such a crazy idea. if you're flying an Airco DH.2 against a Roland C.II I'm going to advise against this method! 5. beam attack: that is to say attacking them from 3 o'clock or 9 o'clock. most two-seaters can't shoot directly to the side. although the Roland C.II can shoot pretty much anywhere. if the enemy two-seater starts turning away from you to let the observer take a shot at you-- don't bother getting any closer. this sort of attack really only works when they're already involved in something else (like dropping bombs) or getting attacked from another direction and can't react to you quickly enough. all of these suggestions, of course, are being made by a fellow that flies two-seaters more often than fighters. that's REALLY the best way to learn how to shoot down two-seaters. fly them in Quick Combat and in Campaigns and you'll remember how you got killed!

for early war two-seaters it was EVERYTHING and the kitchen sink thrown at a single squadron. yes, it is true that there is more specialization later in the war-- but in order for that to happen they have to create even more types of squadron IDs to build missions around. most people, to put it bluntly, aren't going to fly a photo-recon squadron because all they would ever do is fly over the trenches and pretend that they're taking pictures. a casual review of "The Wind in the Wires", "Flying Section 17", "Notes from a Lost Pilot" or "the Flying Fury: Five Years in the RFC" reveal that two-seater flights tackled a huge variety of missions for the first half of the war. most of which aren't getting represented in OFF at present. highly specialized two-seater work didn't become wide-spread until late 1916. even with that said specialization, there was still some room for variety. bombing squadrons rarely just dropped bombs on one type of target. Schlastas would alternate between escort duties and ground attack missions with some frequency. ideally, when we start getting more two-seaters they should have historically changing deployments. I believe that the historically changing mission assignments of two-seaters is quite possibly to attain in Phase 4.

1. replace scramble sorties for two-seaters with something else. ground forces attack. anything else would be better 2. more mission variety. based on my readings thus far two-seaters at various stages of the war did AT LEAST the following: photo recon work visual recon work escort (for other two-seaters) strategic bombing tactical bombing contact patrols artillery spotting barrage patrols combat air patrols balloon protection balloon destruction 3. I agree that bomb sights for all of the bombers (which historically had them) would be awesome. 4. it would be nice if some of the wider varieties of historical ordnance could be represented in the game. the BE2c was used extensively for anti-zeppelin sorties early in the war-- so it might be nice to have some "comic" versions of aircraft where the guns face up at a 45 degree angle. the DFW C.V, for instance, actually had an internal bomb bay (which is depicted accurately on the existing OFF model) it would be kinda cool if we could use it. many French pusher types were equipped with cannons. stuff like that. 5. French two-seaters: like the Caudron G.IV, Farman 40, Voison L.III, Dorand AR.1, the Salmson 2a2, and Breguet XIV. France had the largest air force in the world for the entirety of the Great War. most of these would be two-seaters, so it would be nice to see them get some reperesentation. 6. American two-seaters. I put this one last for a reason-- because compared to all of the aforementioned this would be like icing on the cake.

not yet. but it sounds like I should! thanks for the advice.

I could be wrong-- but I think that's the Nieuport 10. a real BE2c (not our current BE12 hybrid) would be very nice. the current "BE2" is not bad... but I'd almost rather have this machine done "proper" than have another completely new machine.

I realized that the original Red Baron flight-sim is now nearly 20 years old. I played this game for hours on end back in high-school. so much so that I developed near god-like powers. (how else could one Morane Bullet pilot take on 12 Fokker D.VIIs and shoot them all down in flames inside of 5 minutes?) so I went back and played a couple of campaigns last night. even though the campaign play could produce different missions for every pilot-- they still felt pretty predictable. you also had that severe memory restriction of never being allowed to encounter more than 12 aircraft per mission. I don't remember ever seeing more than 8 enemy fixed wing aircraft on any given campaign mission. this means that if you had two recons, and three other planes on escort. you were pretty much only going to see 6 enemy machines try to intercept. (if memory serves) bomber flights were also never larger than two or three planes! heh, pretty unhistorical. the closing speeds were astonishingly slow. even after having been away from the game for years, I found that after a cpuple of missions or so I could hit my old stride. the damage models were pretty basic. and the hit boxes were enormous! I could find that it was just as easy to shoot down two enemy planes from a head-on pass as it was 10 or 15 years ago. and, depending on formation sizes (like attacking a two-seater with escort in trail) it was even possible to kill two enemy machines in an over-head pass with closing speeds of 240 mph! (I'm diving at 160, and they're plugging away at 80 in the opposite direction). I could never pull off something like that in Red Baron 3d let alone in Over Flanders Fields! the other hilarious detail is that the velocity of your bullets depends on your airspeed! I forgot about this: when I'm on the brink of stalling at the top of a zoom climb, barely 100 ft away from Charles Nungesser and my bullets fall away before they can hit his plane... that's the sign of a BIG game-play flaw! even so, it's still a fun game.