Hasse Wind

Actually I've experienced exactly that in a Dr.1, although only once and in quick combat. I don't remember the altitude, but I wasn't very close to ground and could do nothing to escape from that tail-first spin. It looks and feels very strange to see such a light weight fighter keeping the heaviest part of her structure, the engine, on top and spinning wildly tail-first down to earth.

It is true our modern metal-built aircraft do have certain advantages over their ancient predecessors. But they lack a lot of the old crates' charm. And no matter how dangerous the life of a WW1 pilot was, at least he had it easy most of the time compared to what the poor bloody infantry had to endure in the trenches.

It's very interesting to see just how much contradictory data is available on the E.V/D.VIII. One book says one thing, another says something else and a third one has yet another opinion. I wonder whether there are some old forgotten documents gathering dust in some archive that could solve the dilemma of the E.V/D.VIII for good, ie. did they see combat, how much, when and where. I just don't know what to believe. But I guess that gives you a lot of artistic license when adding the plane(s) to OFF - your guess is probably as good as anybody's!

Most of my pilots are shot down by gunfire from enemy aircraft, but occasionally I lose pilots because of collisions (should know better when to break off and stop chasing!), stalls and spins, and sometimes from enemy flak, but only rarely.

Bad luck, Olham. The secret of staying alive long is to be EXTREMELY careful every time you take off from your home field. But that is so much more easier said than done! You are an aggressive pilot not afraid of dangerous situations, so it would definitely help not to use labels and TAC - then you are less likely to spot all the enemies and be drawn into impossible situations, but even that doesn't help always - I know that from personal experience! I try hard to act like a hunter, but I guess I can't help myself as I always eventually end up taking stupid risks and flying too aggressively. I've noticed this is very deadly in 1918 German campaigns, when there are so many enemies everywhere. And I just can't leave my AI comrades alone when I see they are being attacked by numerically superior Entente flights somewhere over the front - I have to intervene, and often this gets me killed when the wisest thing to do would be to stay away if the odds are very unfavourable. I suppose you (and many others) have similar experiences.

Excellent post, Bullethead. However, I disagree with one thing: The French air force didn't become an independent component of French military until the 1930's. They were under army jurisdiction during WW1. But if you meant to say they were the first real air force in the world with proper training, units and everything, then I agree completely.

I was once very close to 50 hours, but after that guy died, I haven't gotten even close to such hours again. The same pilot had already 20 claims (16 confirmed), so I guess I was very close to receiving Blauer Max. I suspect I've been flying too much in 1918, when it's practically impossible to live long and try to be so careful that no enemy ever surprises you or succeeds in shooting your plane to pieces. 200 hours is utterly beyond my skills to achieve.

I took a quick look at those replica prices and found out most of them aren't at all expensive. Quality of the work seems to vary a lot. But if you want the Real Thing, you'll have to pay a lot for it. And that's what real collectors of medals would want, I suppose. Medals and awards of states that have ceased to be (Austria-Hungary, Imperial Russia, Imperial Germany etc.) are often very rare and so you won't get them cheaply. Try to find an original Frederick the Great era Pour le Mérite and see what it costs. Probably more than a little expensive...

The DH2 sucks. Avoid it like the plague. It was criminal incompetence on the part of British officials that they couldn't replace that abomination in all squadrons with something better until mid 1917. Imagine having to fight against Alb D.III's in the DH2... Edit: I can confirm what's been said about Germany and 1918 campaigns. It's pure madness trying to stay alive against hordes of Entente fighters, even if you do have the great Fokker D.VII.

I'm no German, so I have no idea how they feel when called Huns (or Krauts), but I know I never use the words "dark side" when talking about the Germany of WW1. Kaiser Wilhelm's Empire was basically nothing extraordinary in early 20th century Europe, just one of the many old monarchies (of course Germany was unified relatively lately, but the same royal families were still in power there just like centuries earlier) that dominated the continent. Hitler's Third Reich is another matter and shouldn't be confused with the Second Reich.

The problem with the early air war (1914-1915) is that not much of interest happens compared to the later war years. Air combat was very rare and mostly ineffective before machine guns became common. So it would be mostly flying recon missions, which are very boring without enemy activity. If we really had cameras in OFF and actually had to take photos of various targets, things would be different, but now recon missions are nothing but flying from one waypoint to another. I don't mind having peaceful, uneventful missions every now and then, but if I must fly for weeks and months without ever spotting enemy aircraft and never having to fight against them, I'll lose interest. It's not my idea of fun in a combat flight simulator. What we really need in OFF is more two-seaters. Now there are too few of them compared to single-seaters - we shouldn't forget that two-seaters were always more common in the air than the scouts designed to hunt them. The French for example currently have no two-seaters at all (except for some Strutters in service for a short time), which is a problem when you fly as a German fighter pilot in a sector with only French squadrons on the Entente side. I understand that OBD has very limited resources, but I hope we'll get also new two-seaters in the future and not only fighters. I'd rather get new bombers and reconnaissance planes which were produced in large numbers and had a major role to play in the war than some obscure late war fighters which saw very limited service in the final weeks of the war. Of course I won't turn down any new plane add-on packs, but the two-seaters should be a top priority for historical reasons, and for giving us fighter jockeys more crates to shoot down.

You'll get used to it - except when you lose a top pilot with a lot of kills and flight hours, then it REALLY hurts. I should have saved the names and other data of all the pilots I've had in OFF. I've lost so many of them over the months that I can't possible keep all of them in the OFF pilot dossier. Haig and other generals of the Great War have been called butchers and murderers and whatnot, but I'm the real Grim Reaper - for my own pilots...

I'm probably not the only OFFer here who has spent most of his time flying (and dying) in the northern part of the Western Front, where most of the squadrons are stationed and the action is the fiercest. Well, I decided it's time for a change and started looking for suitable Jastas and Escadrilles based on as far away as possible from the northern front. I decided to join Jasta 75, stationed in Habsheim close to the Franco-German border in February 1918. It's an average quality Jasta flying the Albatros D.III (OAW), an old plane for the period, but in my opinion better than the D.V or D.Va. The fighting doesn't seem to be as fierce down there in Alsace compared to what's going on in the north at the same time. Airfields are fewer and there aren't nearly as many squadrons around either. The quality of the units seems to be generally worse than in the north, with plenty of poor or average squadrons, and also the best new planes seem to have gone to the better units in the north. I've mostly encountered some old French Nupes and SPAD's and only once have had to fight against the deadly SPAD XIII's when our Jasta was assigned on a mission that took them to a more northern sector of the front. The biggest difference must be the terrain. In the north most of the ground is very low and flat. In Alsace (or Elsass as I call it) there are plenty of high hills and deep valleys, and it's really exciting to see the front twisting over the mountains and fly through the valleys chasing Nupes. But you have to really careful with low altitude dogfights, if you don't want to smash into a hill! I think I'm going to spend some time in Alsace before returning to the witch's cauldron in the north.

Damn, that book is expensive! You could buy a bottle of real quality rum or whisky at that price. Olham, as far as I know, the OAW Albatros had the same wing problems as the other German Albs. The only difference was in the rudder, which was somewhat larger and of different shape in the OAW version.

Well, the Austrians did build better Albs than the Germans - their Oeffag (Oesterreichische Flugzeugfabrik AG) Albatrosses were much improved over the German versions. Brumowski was the leading Austrian ace of the war, with 35 confirmed kills.

Nice skin and quite fitting for Jasta 10. (I really like their Pfalz skins!) Your men would certainly spot you easily from the sky... and so would the enemy. But I suspect that's what you want - to go down fighting hordes of Entente fighters.

If you feel like you're having it too easy, I recommend you start a career flying the DH2. Pretty soon you'll start having deadly spins for no good reason at all. Willkommen, Herr Wolpertinger. Der Kaiser braucht uns alle! (Though I have to wonder how on earth you're going to fit into the cockpit with all those horns and duck feet...)

Nothing here either... I'm using F-Secure 2010. Avira may not be the best anti-virus programme - if you don't want to get a commercial product (which are the most reliable in my experience - except Norton which sucks on so many levels), I've heard Avast is one of the best free ones available. Of course there's always the possibility that you really have a virus, but I had often such false positives when I was using free anti-virus products.

Having flown the P3 Pfalz quite a lot before its flight model was changed in the latest patch, I could instantly feel how much better it is now than it used to be. The controls feel much more natural and I can do quite well using almost the same tactics as I do with the Albatrosses, except that the Pfalz excels as a diver, unlike the Alb D.III and D.V/D.Va. Surviving in the slow and clumsy pre-1.32g Pfalz was VERY difficult - but now it feels like it isn't any more difficult than flying the D.Va in the same period of war. I always felt the real Pfalz couldn't have been really as bad as the OFF P3 version, otherwise we'd know the plane as one of the worst fighters of WW1, and that isn't the case. Most German pilots liked the Albatrosses more, but this doesn't mean the Pfalz was a bad fighter - it was just different than what most German fighter pilots were used to flying. Now I really hope we'll get the Pfalz D.XII in some add-on pack. It was in many ways a better fighter than the D.IIIa, being fast and tough (much like a German SPAD!). By the way, the best Pfalz skins (IMO) can be found from Jasta 10 and Jasta 18. And developers, thanks for constantly spending time improving OFF. It's really appreciated.

I'd also like to see both of those planes in OFF, but first there should be more two-seaters.

I like what you've done to the Pfalz! It doesn't feel like I'm trying to fly a heavy truck with an underpowered engine anymore, now I can actually do some manoeuvers like the Albatros. I think the Pfalz is now going to be a much more enjoyable fighter to fly in campaign mode.

As always, excellent support! I'm going to give that new Pfalz a try immediately.

Speaking of losing pilots, I've had three different guys killed this evening. Okay, only two - one survived the crash and became a POW. I think it's about time I stopped flying today... frustrating as hell. Maybe I'll have better luck tomorrow. Probably not.

This week I've been flying mostly for French S.VII Escadrilles in early to mid 1917, trying to develop my skills with that flying French brick. I like the plane - it's fast, can dive like the wind, and is able to keep going after taking some heavy damage. But as it always happens when I fly the S.VII, I find it extremely hard to shoot down anybody. Using energy tactics, that one Vickers with only 400 rounds feels very inadequate every time I go into battle. It's not very difficult to stay alive in the S.VII - you can fly away from any Alb D.II or D.III (or even D.V) most of time, even though the AI planes have those special speed and durability advantages we don't. But trying to shoot somebody down - now that's challenging. I usually manage to hit my target a few times and then I have to move on if I want to avoid being drawn into a turn fight. It takes many, many passes to shoot anybody down when flying the S.VII - compared to this, the Pfalz D.IIIa is a killer with its two quick firing Spandaus, even though the plane otherwise pretty much sucks as an energy fighter (or any fighter!). Has any OFFer here managed to become an ace with the S.VII?

The more I fly the SPAD VII, the more I begin to understand how it really is a hunter's scout. Today I managed to shoot down one Albatros D.II near Verdun (I'm flying there in the spring of 1917) by calmly observing a furball below me and then picking one unlucky Albatros as my potential victim. I dived down, shot a few bursts into him and then followed him in a turn taking advantage of the considerable energy I had gathered during the dive. I got a few lucky shots into the Alb's engine and saw how it started to belch black smoke, and soon it burst into flames. But usually this tactic ends with me getting some hits on the enemy plane and then having to break off, because I don't want to go completely wasting my energy at such a low altitude. At this rate, it's going to take some time before I become an ace, IF my pilot stays alive. I'm very tempted to go back to der Kaiser's side and start blasting the skies clear of weak Entente scouts with my two quick-firing Spandaus!