33LIMA

Yes come on chaps, get posting! Doesn't have to be a different type of Fokker each time, there are plenty of different colour schemes available, especially now that the skin pack is free...here's Josef Mai's Fokker D.VIIf

Death of a sausage Coming out the other side, the cloud is more broken and I find myself over the enemy’s trench lines. From my map, I know that my target is somewhere ahead and to the right. And there he is, an indistinct pale grey spot which I can see is not attached to the scenery, but hovering above it. He’s quite low down, perhaps to give him a view below the clouds, and maybe a couple of miles off. I fly a little further west. The enemy AA seems not to have seen or identified me and there are no other aircraft about. So far, so good. I swing around to the right in a wide turn which is calculated to bring me in above my target. Just one pass, I tell myself, then it’s back across the Lines and home. This is no safe place for a solitary Albatros. You can just about see the balloon, a little grey splodge in the V-shaped area of green between the 'ears' of a cats-head-shaped cornfield, directly above the foremost cylinder of my aircraft's motor. I roll right and dive on the observation balloon. He doesn’t look as big a target as I expected and I wish I’d switched to the gunsight view, rather than aiming as I usually do, along the line of the cylinders of my inline engine. I’ve throttled back so I’m not diving too fast, but I’m still worried that I’m not going to get enough hits to knock him down in just one pass. But I needn’t have worried. A sudden flame bursts on top of the balloon and he lurches perceptibly. Then he’s gone in a gout of dark smoke and flying embers. An oily-looking trail of smoke follows what remains of him to the ground. I pull up and away, headed for the safety of our nearest front line positions. So far, even at the lowest point of my dive, I haven’t seen any of the MG fire from the ground that I’ve been expecting. And it is only after I have come off the target that I notice the grey bursts of enemy flak, appearing suddenly nearby. I continue to climb for home, throwing in an occasional jink to put off the enemy’s aim. This seems to have the desired effect, and the flak soon gives up. By now, I’m at the level of the lower clouds, ready to fly into one if an enemy patrol tries to cut me off. But I seem to have caught them all napping! I’ve just crossed our foremost trenches when I get a bit of a shock as an aircraft curves in towards me from my left rear. But I quickly identify him as another Albatros, one of my lost flight-mates rejoining in fact. Aircraft rendering in WoFF is much improved compared its predecessor, Over Flanders Fields, to the extent that it’s much easier, without zoom, to identify aircraft at a decent range. Together, we fly home. This time I decide to fly all the way back to Proville, which is almost due east of our target and not too far off. When we get there, I see three more of my flight have landed ahead of us. I overfly the airfield and land. Looking over at the other machines rather than where I’m going, I blot my copybook by running into a fence I didn’t see. Drat! The results screen shows me with claims for the triplane and a balloon, with my own machine wrecked by that darn fence in return! Happily, all the others have returned, with one machine lightly damaged and no casualties, though with no successes to show for it. For some reason, as other players have reported, despite knocking down what I’m convinced was my target balloon, the boss has decided that it wasn’t the one he wanted knocked down. Still, I’m quite pleased with my performance, and with the fact that the rest of the flight didn’t come to any harm in the absence of their leader. I decide that I do not wish to specialise in balloon attacks, and hope that the Staffelfuhrer is sufficiently unimpressed with my performance on this mission, that he will not come to a different conclusion! Hopefully I will soon be back to scrapping with the enemy in the air. And perhaps this awful weather will improve, too. At any rate, WoFF has succeeded nicely in easing me back into the role of a virtual First World War fighter pilot and flight leader; it's as if I've never been away!

Altogether, now...not... With my five flight-mates tucked in beside and behind me, I set course for the front, ignoring the recommended dog-leg route and slowly climbing to just below the briefed 3,000 metre altitude. If this meant I arrived in the target area ahead of the other flight of three Albatrosses, that was fine – they could cover us on the way back. As usual, I’m flying in the external view, and looking around. Not that there’s much to see, with rain and clouds hampering visibility. Also as usual, I have the Tactical Display turned off. Flying in this fashion, I’m still short of the front when a look behind at my formation reveals it’s no longer there. They have in fact turned right and are climbing hard, obviously towards something they have spotted. I feel like the Staffelfuher in The Blue Max who finds that contrary to orders to avoid air combat, everyone else has joined Bruno Stachel in attacking some SE5s. Except they didn’t even warn me first. I turn after them and scan the skies up ahead, trying to make out what it is they are hunting. To digress, this sort of situation is one that WW1 combat flight sims don’t handle especially well. With no radios, a flight-mate spotting another aircraft would typically dive alongside the leader, waggle his wings, then point out the sighting. Not something readily programmed or ever attempted, AFAIK. A sudden red glare from a warning flare, or the rattle of a warning MG burst, are perhaps things that a sim could use for this purpose. Instead, what we get is that either your wingmen will ignore the enemy unless/until attacked, or attack without warning the leader. The solution to this in WoFF is to leave the Tactical Display turned on, but set to a range that is a reasonable representation of the ‘warning zone’ you would expect to get from the extra eyes of your flight. I have this set to 2,000 yards, so as to be well within my chosen 6,000 yard ‘dot mode’ range at which planes show as specks. This allows for the fact that as leader I’m the flight’s main spotter, the others having to attend to keeping formation as well as scanning the skies. And as RFC ace Albert Ball found, larger formations can tend to relax their alertness due to the ‘safety in numbers’ effect. Of course, none of this is much good if you leave the ‘TAC’ turned off, nearly all the time…as I do. I turn it on now, of course. It shows two grey unidentified aircraft icons, in different directions. WoFF’s ‘rejoin’ command for some reason only works as a recall after ground attacks so I don’t have my preferred option of keeping the flight together. So I let the others go for their chosen target, and turn towards the other potential one, which seems to be trying to come in behind us. Sausages are definitely off the menu, for now. I very quickly discover that I have broken the rule I set myself after my first operational mission – to avoid combat with Sopwith Triplanes. For the second unidentified aircraft – a ‘bogey’, in WW2 terms – turns out to be one of these fast-climbing and agile opponents. He’s coming straight at me and I make a determined head-on firing pass, his single gun against my two – using my firepower advantage in the hope of doing some damage before we get into a fight where he will hold most of the aces. And it works! The triplane breaks to my right and dives away. I turn too, to keep him in sight, but take care to stay above him. But the Englishman is no longer in the mood for a fight; he comes around until he’s heading west had then makes a run for it. I come in behind him and cut loose as the range winds down. He breaks hard and I pull up and above him, wary of getting into a turning fight with a much more agile foe. But he’s losing altitude, and now, flying erratically to boot. I see that part of a tailplane is missing. I watch him level out, wobble, lose more height, then recover again. The skies around me seem to be clear now, as far as I can see…which isn’t very far, admittedly. I have no idea where the others have gone; there is just me, and the triplane. Nevertheless I hesitate to lose height. But the enemy is just as hesitant to oblige me by crashing. So down I must go. One firing pass gets some hits, and I pull up and come around for a second one. But it’s not necessary. The Sopwith slips between some trees and crashes in a field. Banking left as I fly over, I see that our business together is concluded. But not the business of my mission, which is hunting an observation balloon. I’m naturally well pleased to have vanquished one of the accursed triplanes which nearly made my first mission my last. But there’s still that balloon. I have no particular interest in such targets but they probably have more military value than an enemy scout. Hoping for company before I set off again, I circle around, but none of my flight appears. I’m tempted to call it quits and go home, rather than now tackle a mission with one aircraft that was allocated to six. But I decide to make a go of it. My original plan still seems valid – use cloud cover the sneak over the Lines, come around in a wide sweep and attack the balloon from behind as it were, while headed back east. I turn around and set course directly into a large cloudbank over the front, climbing once again. ...to be continued!

Not a lot of people know this, but Anthony Fokker used up so many wings building triplanes, that by the war's end he had a serious shortage. In fact the next design on his drawing board after the Fokker E.V/D.VIII illustrated below was for very fast, rotary-engined, propeller-driven tricycle...

LoL! Fair enough, Hauksbee, there's nothing in the rules against fictional markings...but please tell me no real pilot flew that kite!!! It does look rather good, though, even if I almost hate to admit it! As if the Red Baron/le Petit Rouge wasn't bad enough...the RFC/RAF now has to contend with the Yellow Kid!!! The Dustin Flugzeug Werke C.V?

A mission from my latest pilot career in Wings over Flanders Fields! Having played little but Atlantic Fleet for four solid months since the PC version was released in late February, I recently decided to make a bit of room for some combat flight sim and tanksim action. For the latter, it's back to Steel Fury's indispensible STA mod, and with a bit of luck, I'll soon re-start work on the STA-Britpak sub-mod, having got my hand back in, playing the only mission yet available in the current beta (or maybe it's an alpha) version, featuring the 23rd Hussars in Operation Bluecoat... Doubtless I'll find some time for Steel Armor - Blaze of War also. Its featured theaters of war are more off the beaten tank track that Steel Fury's, but its tanksim-wargame combo really works quite well and it improves on many of the features of the earlier Graviteam tank simulator, specifically in terms of AI, platoon command & control, radio net and target indications. For an air combat fix, I fancy trying out the excellent Blinding Sun campaign in the Combined User Patch mod for Il-2 '46, flying a sleek MiG-3 to defend Mother Russia against the fascist invaders... But before that, it's back to the First Great War in the Air, with the incomparable Wings over Flanders Fields. And what better way to start with a new pilot career in an elite fighter squadron, the illustrious Jasta Boelcke. Formed in the autumn of 1916 as the first fighter unit in the modern sense as Jasta 2, it was re-named for its first commander, pioneer air fighter Oswald Boelcke, after he died following a collision with a fellow pilot's aircraft. Despite this and other setbacks, Jasta Boelcke remained one of the premier German fighter squadrons of the First World War. Naturally, you can sign up with Jasta 2/Jasta Boelcke in Wings over Flanders Fields, at pretty well any time during its wartime service. For me, the most interesting period of WW1 in the air has always been from early to autumn 1917, spanning Bloody April and the subsequent resurgence of the Royal Flying Corps, with the arrival of new fighters like the SE5 and Camel. So I opted to start my career in late March 1917, flying the superb 'V-strutter' Albatros D.III from Proville in Flanders. Even if you haven't upgraded to the latest version of WoFF, with the 'skins' pack now free and the latest version of Ankor's DX9 mod for CFS3 at last enabling us to see off the awful 'fisheye lens' external view, WoFF, its aircraft and its scenery have never, ever looked better. And that includes the white-tailed Albatri of the flight i'm now leading in Jasta Boelcke, as we set out to do battle with the English, over Flanders fields. ...to be continued!

From a view, to a kill... Looking around as we approach the Lines, I see some more flak bursts. Once again they are a dark shade, indicating German gunners engaging an enemy target. This time, I can see the latter, just a small speck a little left of the flak. What I hadn't noticed was that for some reason, my two flight-mates had left formation - you can see what I presume is one of them, visible below my machine's tailskid in the picture above. What prompted this, I'm not sure. If you fancy a more informative, AWACS-style picture of what's going on around you, WoFF enables you to cycle through labels which not only identify the aircraft, its unit, and if an ace the pilot, but also what the plane is actually doing at any point. I don't know about you, but I find that cycling through labels during virtual combat is a good way to get virtually killed, while pausing the action to avoid that eventuality can still mean a potentially-fatal interruption of your control inputs; so I tend to forgo even a quick glance at such things, informative though they are. The enemy aircaft - a SPAD, again - attacks, but breaks off, down and away, after I manage to get in a burst during the merge. The SPAD levels out below and is now attacked by one of my Albatrosses. Rather than lose height needlessly, I watch from above, ready to intervene only if necessary. It becomes so when the Frenchman first evades his attacker then gets in behind him. Having positioned myself to anticipate this very possibility, I gratefully accept the opportunity thus presented and shoot the SPAD off my comrade’s tail. I'm firing at long range, but it's enough. The Albatros turns one way, and the SPAD the other, with me after him. Now, it's my turn again. I cut inside the SPAD's turn and a few more hits cause him to dive out. I roll in after him, firing as I come, short bursts so as not to get a stoppage. Then I zoom climb. An Albatros 'booming and zooming' a SPAD: now, there's a turn-up for the books, not that the former term was current in the First World War. The Frenchman has been hit hard enough, it seems; he tries to escape west at full speed, but makes the mistake of climbing rather than continuing to dive. I have conserved my height and slip in behind him. He pulls up and right as my first burst whacks into him. The move is somehow half-hearted, as if lacking in conviction. I follow him easily, continuing to fire short bursts. Cutting the corner of his lazy turn, I hold my fire. I forget to look behind, as I know I should, even though I have two comrades nearby. But I am pre-occupied with my victim in front, whom I now know is completely at my mercy. The next burst is enough. There is a flash of flame, the SPAD's nose and left wing drop suddenly, and it is all over. A long dark trail of smoke marks his fall to earth. No doubt about that one! Now, I nearly pay the price for my target fixation. I'm startled by the sound of MG fire from astern, and the even more unwelcome noise of rounds hitting my machine. Looking around as I break down and left, I am horrified to see a second enemy scout - a Nieuport - close behind me and shooting. In that instant, my composure completely evaporates and I shove my nose right down and try to roll around hard, more to get out of the line of fire than to get behind the new foe. I now find myself in a turning fight with two enemies snapping at my heels. One is the silver French Nieuport. The other is quite a different bird, a brown Sopwith Pup with a black nose, probably from an RNAS squadron. Of my two flight-mates, I can see no sign, and don’t have the time to look. Amidst all the wheeling and diving, and with the ground now rather too close for comfort, I somehow manage to get off a burst at the Nieuport, causing him to bank away. I immediately switch my attention to the Pup, leaving the Nieuport to the others, who must be somewhere close at hand. For all I know, they may be engaged with other enemies I have not seen in the confusion. There follows a low-level turning fight with the Sopwith. More than once I nearly fly into the ground, the last time causing the Englishman to break up and away after a firing pass. Seizing what might be my last chance, I turn after him, resisting the urge to bank the other way and run for it, to the east. My more powerful motor pulls me in behind him and I get off a good burst. Down he goes! Have I finished him? I'm not certain and I have no time to look, for I am immediately attacked from head-on by another Pup which I had not seen before. I have just enough height left to resume the low yo-yo tactics that I believe are my only hope in this knife fight with the more agile Sopwith, unless I put some distance between us. Again I narrowly avoid running into the ground. I will soon be out of energy and out of options. But somehow I manage to get into a firing position, if only because he is loath to follow me into the mud. I make the most of it, as I know I must! I think I must have landed a hit or two, because suddenly, his aggression seems to be spent. He levels off and flies homeward, to the west. My faster bird closes the range, and this time a look around confirms my own tail is now clear. I fire from close range, a no-deflection shot from dead astern, and down he goes! The Englishman pulls up just above the ground, levels off, and makes a heavy forced landing, which ends in what looks like a bad crash. He's just behind our trenches, so like the SPAD which fell nearby, this should be another confirmed kill! I begin another spiral climb but this time there is no sign of any comrades. Nor any more enemies, thank goodness. Time to go home, I tell myself, suddenly feeling the tension draining away, and the energy with it. The skies remain clear of aircraft as far as my eye can see, so after circling briefly to see if any comrades show up and finding none do, I take the chance to get out of it while I still can. I steer back east to Proville, but decide instead to give myself a break by stopping off at the same field at which I’d force-landed at the end of the previous mission. It's a short hop and I'm soon turning onto my final approach. As I come in, I notice, in addition to the usual machines parked in front of the canvas hangars, another two aircraft sitting near the far side of the landing ground. I take care to land so as not to run into them, which is just as well because they turn out to be two of my boys, including Lt Frommherz! The detailed debriefing reveals that I am able to make no less than three claims, which must be the second SPAD and the two Pups. There are no other claims from my flight, only one of whom had fired his guns. Two aircraft have been damaged and one was lost, with its pilot lightly wounded and another being reported as 'shook up'. I know the feeling! Anyhow, it looks like after a shaky start, I have now staked my claim to be a flight leader in Jasta Boelcke, in suitably dramatic fashion! However, it could just as easily have been my last flight and I entertain no illusions about my prospects. But whatever the future may bring, I will meet it having earned the white tail that marks my machine as belonging to the Luftstreitkrafe’s most famous fighter squadron! Having always hated the CFS3 'fisheye' lens's wide-angle external view, I find it hard to over-emphasise how much improved the more natural viewpoint that's now available adds to my appreciation of WoFF's planes, landscapes and skyscapes. If a more absorbing and immersive combat simulation experience exists anywhere, I for one have yet to find it. Continued development of Wings over Flanders Fields having kept it in the forefront, I think another, up-to-date accolade is called for, beyond those from the original CombatAce review:

Postscript - the 'make or break' mission... Never mind making ‘ace’, as in real life, sheer survival can be enough of a challenge in the dangerous virtual skies of Wings over Flanders Fields. By that measure at least, I hadn’t done too badly, from my first three missions. I was still in the Land of the Living and despite having each time brought back a plane that was slightly the worse for wear, I had a confirmed kill to balance the account. However, I was a flight leader in a staffel with a reputation to live up to, and knew that I must improve upon this rather indifferent showing. And soon. As it happened, the very next mission was to provide me with a chance to do just that. My number two was still missing but I find muyself placed at the head of a full flight of six Albatros D.IIIs, including a couple of actual or budding aces – notably Hermann Frommherz, famous for his pale blue machine, known as 'der Blau Maus'. Thanks to the now-free WoFF skinpack, you can see his machine clearly, in the line-out below. Also lined up with us on the grass at Proville are three machines in a separate flight which the briefing has told me will fly top cover for us. As doubtless in real life, such co-operation doesn’t always seem to work out too well in WoFF and today, the cloudy weather looks like it will make this less likely. Still, with six sleek scouts at my disposal, each armed with two MGs at a time the enemy fighters usually carry only one, I’m feeling confident that we can look after ourselves, as need be. Soon, I am on the way. Below and behind us, a frieght train chugs along, as the inevitable rain showers impersonally lash aircraft, train and landscape, all alike. A check of the in-game map - I use Nibbio's version, which improves the correspondence between map and 3-D world - reminds me that our assigned route is a short leg to the north-north-east, then nearly due east to the front, then south-west down the line of trenches, and fianlly back north-east to base. Assigned patrol altitude is just under 3,000 metres. Some folks navigate in WoFF using printed maps designed to replicate closely the 3-D world, but I just use the on-screen map, complete with aircraft icon to show your current position as well as the patrol route. I can do without the added realism of getting lost! So I rationalise this #magic map' as the result of my pilot having thoroughly familiarised himself with the unit's area of operations beforehand…and having an exceptional sense of direction. Before long, my flight has caught up. Because we were supposed to have another flight in support, I take care not to cut corners, but to fly the route as indicated in the Tactical Display, which I turn on at intervals to navigate. As usual this means lingering at an early waypoint to gain height. Then it’s off to the front. I prefer flying in real time to using time compression or the air start option, which can be a pain if, after all that, you don’t encounter any opposition. On previous careers – especially flying for the British – I have flown many such uneventful missions, with nary a Hun to be seen, even in what should behistorically busy sectors. This was not to be one of those missions. The second flight's three Albatrosses are slower to gain height. About half-way along the leg to the front, I see them turn right and disappear off into the clouds. I have no idea why. Perhaps they have seen something I cant. No matter. On we go. At our assigned height, we reach the front, turn left, and start tracking down the Lines. Grey-white clouds are still stacked up on every side, at, above and below our level. The muddy brown shelled ground of No-Man’s Land and the trenches can be seen only intermittently, through gaps in the cloud and murk below. On we rumble, in a diamond formation, two machines on either side, one bringing up the rear. The first sign that this is not going to be an uneventful sortie comes in the form of several dark bursts of German flak, at about two o’clock and just below our level. I start a turn towards these fading dark smudges; hesitantly, because I can see no sign of the enemy aircraft which must be their target. There are in fact two reasons I don’t see the enemy. The first is that – understandably in the prevailing weather conditions – the AA fire isn’t terribly accurate and is lagging well behind the enemy, and firing somewhat low. The second reason is that the enemy is presenting the smallest possible visual target – they are head-on, coming straight at us. Crikey! Just in time to turn into them but not soon enough to get off a shot, I see two aircraft, which I immediately identify as SPADs – fast French-built single-seaters with two closely-spaced wings without dihedral and with two sets of interplane struts each side, readily recognised from the front. They whizz past and I turn after them, at the same time turning on and off the TAC, in the meantime tagging a target and ordering the attack. Looking behind me, I can see the SPADS are turning after us, evidently unimpressed by our superior numbers. I see too that they are a light tan, spashes of colour against the harsh, monochrome, steely greys of the clouds. They bear the cockades of France, with the red ring outermost. The two SPADs are pretty hot stuff but at first, they make the mistake of staying to turn with the somewhat more nimble Albatrosses. Even so, I have to use the vertical to cut inside one of the speedy enemy fighters, who seems to be well able to keep up a good rate of turn, even if the radius is a bit greater than mine. As if realising this mistake, my target wings over into a dive before I can fire my first burst. He pulls rapidly away, then begins to zoom. At this point, though the range is rather too long, I cut loose with a short burst with about 30 degrees deflection and am quite surprised to see fragments fly from one or more hits. No doubt equally surprised, the Frenchman rolls over and dives away again. Another Albatross cut in close behind him and, rather than lose altitude to continue the chase, I look around for the other SPAD. As I come around, I get a bit of a shock as a group of aircraft in perfect V formation flashes past overhead. I quickly realise they are Albatrosses like my own, possibly our other flight (after the mission I realise they are from a different staffel; if I’d had time to turn on labels, I’d have been able positively to identify them ). WoFF’s AI won’t attack everything on sight and in this case, with six of us against two, the other flight was quite right, not to hang about or intervene. They would only have got in the way, so carrying on with their own mission was the right thing to do. Looking down again, I see a SPAD that looks to be slipping into and out of control, recovering momentarily only to lose it again. He levels his wings one last time, only for the nose to drop. He smashes into the ground in a lighter-brown spray of mud and dirt, next to a road. I turn away and begin a shallow, wide spiral climb to the right at full power, to recover altitude, make myself a less easy target and give myself a chance to re-assess the situation. There are, at first, no other aircraft in sight. But after several seconds, two machine appear behind, one a little lower, the other a little higher, both trailing me. I can soon make out that they are not SPADs. I identify them as Albatrosses and as I suspect, they are members of my flight, rejoining after the combat. I throttle back and let them close up; one of them is Frommherz in his distinctive bird. Realistically, the AI in WoFF doesn’t always manage to re-form after a fight so I have reason to hope the others might be ok, too. I haven’t fired off too much ammo so decide to resume the patrol. Up we climb, heading back to our last waypoint over the Lines. So far, the mission isn't going as well as I'd hoped. I'll need to do better than this if I'm to keep my place in Jasta Boelcke, I feel sure. ...to be continued!