33LIMA

Third time lucky? So far, I have bent two aircraft, lost one wingman, and shot down a two-seater - an enemy one, fortunately. At this rate, I can see myself being posted out of my elite Jasta, before too much longer! Or maybe I should accept that I'm out of practice, and need a spell flying behind someone else as flight leader. Of one thing I feel sure - I need to make a better show in this, my third mission. At least this time, the Jasta is out in force - nine of us, five in my flight and rest in the other one. We make a fine show, as we begin rolling across the grass at Proville. You may recognise the machine with the red heart on the fuselage side - yes, it's no less than the young Verner Voss, an exceptional pilot surely bound for great things. How can we lose, this time? The mission is another patrol, up to then down the Lines. And the weather is a bit better, this time, fewer showers and a certain amount of blue sky visible. A good omen, surely. As I wait for the others to form up around me, I have time to admire the view. The new ground shading effects and cloud shadows are thankfully subtle but really lift the landscape, giving it new depth and interest. Soon, my flight-mates are in a neat V-formation, two either side of me... ...and I open her up and begin to climb, with the other flight doing the same, in front and lower down. As usual, there's a certain amount of climbing around waypoints to do, but after following the other flight throught several climbing turns, I decide to strike out for the front with my own flight. Five of us should be able to look after ourselves, I feel sure. Although this time, if I can, I will avoid combat with those accursed triplanes. Before too long, we are over No-Man's Land, at a respectable height for the conditions. At this point, we run into a shower, but I pay the rain no attention, because I see something much more interesting. Ahead and to the right, slightly lower, I see a dark burst of German AA fire, then another. I wheel towards the flak, keeping my height. Out ahead of the bursts, I spot two aircraft moving away. I can see that they have dark, brownish wings with a spidery fuselage behind. Pushers, I realise, possibly Vickers 2-seaters [as the Germans called the RAF FE2] - if they were DH2 fighters, I think they would be reacting more aggressively. I want us to get them before they escape into the clouds or over their own territory, so after a quick look around to check for other enemies and finding none, I dive after the pushers. I select my own target and give the order for a flight attack. As I close in, I can see that yes, they are definitely two seaters. I line up for an attack on the rearmost aircraft. But my haste is now my undoing. FE2s have a poor field of fire directly to the rear. The obsever sits at the front of a nacelle with the engine blocking the view behind, but as well as firing forward, he can stand up and fire up and backwards, using a Lewis Gun on a sort of pole mount, firing back over the top wing. In my dive, I have presented him with an excellent target. I get some hits, but am hit in return and almost immediately, I realise that my engine is losing power. I carry on my dive and try to come in behind and below the enemy, but already, my airspeed is falling off and the range, instead of closing, is opening out. About all I can do now is rattle off some long range bursts, as the big pusher draws slowly away, chased by one of my comrades. From the fragements which come off, I can see that I am getting some hits. Just as my motor dies and the prop whirls to a stop, the enemy aircraft noses down to the right, still pursued my my flight mate. If he grabs the victory, so be it, for as our staffel's late mentor said, it is the staffel that must fight and win the battle, not the individuals. I turn and dive for the friendly side of the Lines, tightening my turn as I realise I am going to pass close to the diving 'Fee' and fearful he will get a last crack at me. But nothing nasty comes my way, and the enemy packing-case slips harmlessly beneath my tail. I get another fright as he comes around behind me again. But he is evidently more concerned with shaking off the Albatros which is snapping at his heels, and again, I escape without further damage. Enough is enough! I bank around again and dive away for safety. This is no place for an overweight glider! Fortunately, this time it looks like I'll have enough height, to touch down outside the shelled area; though only just. Better still, if I can make it to a friendly airfield. There is one to my right, just beyond a German observation balloon, but the landing area seems to have been churned up by shellfire, so I decide an open field would be preferable. My luck holds. There is another airfield nearby, and this one is in clear ground. I gently adjust my course for it, careful to conserve what height I have left. For a few long seconds, I think I'm not going to make the airfield. But my luck continues to hold, and I manage to sail sweetly across some fences, which would certainly have made a bit of a mess of my machine, had I landed short and run into them But all is well, and I drift onto the field for a decent dead stick landing. I'm going to be giving the fitters back at Proville a bit more work, but this time we have something better to show for it, I feel sure - some kills for the flight, even if one of them isn't mine. And it wasn't - my kill, that is. The two 'Fees' were credited to flight-mates. But the flight won its battle, that was the main thing. Two more enemy planes and their crews won't be flying any more missions against us. Maybe I might get to stay in Jasta Boelcke as a flight leader, after all...

Triple trouble...times two... The next mission was a patrol up to the Lines. This time, there were four of us, flying as two pairs. In the pic above, you can see how the now-free skin pack adds realistic personal markings to what might otherwise be planes with only the 'white tail' jasta marking. We took off more or less together but I let the other pair draw out in front. The briefing said they would be flying top cover, which sounded re-assuring. The weather was less so; there were some gaps in the cloud but the rain was lashing down as we left Proville behind us. Happily, we quickly came out from under the squall. In the picture below, you can see that WoFF's railway lines (which feature moving trains) still have some angular bends but overall, the landscape is first class and the new tree, cloud and terrain shadows improve the view considerably. My own wingman was soon in formation to my left rear, and I opened up the throttle to begin the long climb up to the front. The WoFF mission waypoints, perhaps realistically but somewhat frustratingly, often send you off in the 'wrong' direction to gain altitude over a waypoint, before heading towards your patrol area. I could have cut that out and gone direct, but with just the two of us, I didn't want to get separated from the other pair, who were patiently climbing out along the planned track, up ahead. As we climbed up, the combination of broken cloud all around us and murky conditions below hampered visibility in all directions. You really get the feeling in WoFF of the importance of the weather, and that you are just a rather small, puny human being in a rather fragile little flying machine, pitted as much against the vagaries of Mother Nature as the wiles of a foe-man who might pounce at any moment. To my right, the banks of clouds looked pretty solid. If there was anything out there, we wouldn't see it until it was uncomfortably close...which worked both ways, of course, but it was still a somewhat scary proposition. Up ahead, at least, I still had the consolation of the other pair of Albatrosses. I was quite pleased not to have lost them, in these conditions. By now, I was practically at their level. They were supposed to be top cover, so I decided to put my nose down a bit, and use the increased speed to slip down below and slightly ahead of them, where they would be nicely-placed to cover our tails from above. At about this time, we reached our patrol waypoint, and the other two turned around. To re-orient myself, I turned on the Tactical Display...and there they were. Behind me, in a red box indicating an occupied zone on the ground, were, as expected, the two blue aircraft icons representing the other flight. But it wasn't they who now occupied my attention. Ahead, at around one o'clock, was a group of similar but dark grey icons, whirling around. Unidentified aircraft, lower down. What could they be? It didn't take me long to find out. What I should have done was keep my height and stay with the other flight. Even if they hadn't spotted the enemies, if that's what they were. Safety in mumbers. But I thought, well, I'll take a look, first, see what they are and what they're up to. I rolled right and put the nose down. And this is what I saw. There were four or five little midge-like aircraft, with narrow-chord, plank-like wings, and they were spiralling up, clearly determined to get us. I identified them at once, and knew I was in trouble. They were Sopwith Triplanes, armed only with a single Vickers Gun but fast-climbing and agile machines, the one RFC aircraft that was more than a match for the Albatros, at this point in the war. And there were at least four of them. In no time at all they were up at our level, my attempt to roll in behind one from above having been thwarted as they turned in underneath me, before continuing their upward spiral. In another few seconds, two of them were turning in behind me. Their speed and agility was frightening, and I knew at once that this had become a matter of simple survival. And that it would be chacun pour soi, or every man for himself as they say. Get the heck out of it and hope my flight-mate does the same. No time to work out whether the other flight might help, if they had even seen this. I pushed the nose down and dived away, hoping I was headed towards friendly territory. I couldn't out-climb them, I couldn't out-run them, but maybe I could out-dive them. Not a great plan to be sure, but it was all I could manage, in the circumstances. I gained a bit of ground, it seemed, and was able to confirm that I was headed east, into German-held territory. Down below, the sight of trenches and a motor transport column trundling along a road raised the hope that ground gunners might come to my rescue. It didn't work. Bullets whacked into my aeroplane, and I jinked to avoid the fire, pulling up at the same time as the ground came up towards me. One of the Sopwiths darn nearly collided with me as he pulled up from a firing pass. My motor now packed in, but by that time, I was practically on the deck anyway. Without further ado, I plonked my kite onto the ground, and was fortunate to do no more damage than burying a wingtip in the mud. Fortunately, the Englishmen displayed impeccable manners, in now leaving me alone. Possibly, the risk of ground fire encouraged them not to hang around. Anyway, my second campaign mission had ended in defeat, though not in personal disaster. Unfortunately, my wingman was posted missing. Not a good result. My overconfidence in losing altitude to identify the enemy had been a major factor; I should have kept my height - and kept close to the other flight. Instead, we had paid the price for tangling with superior numbers of superior aircraft. Things can only get better, I told myself. They certainly couldn't get much worse, short of a fatal outcome...which seemed a distinct possibility. ...to be continued!

A shaky start... My first mission with Jasta 2 was an escort job, covering two elderly Aviatiks on a reconnaisance mission. As is my wont, I had selected the 'Always lead' option, as I can do without the formation flying, thanks very much, and besides, I much prefer the challenges of being the flight leader. The mission didn't go exactly to plan, though. We picked up our charges all right, but I was beginning to get just a little bored, by the time we reached the front. I tend to fly WoFF missions in real time. This is partly because the sense of 'being there' in WW1's troubled skies as you traverse WoFF's tremendous landscapes and skyscapes I find head and shoulders above any other sim I've flown. But also because the WoFF air activity generation system means CFS3's rather messy 'hyper-fast forward' version of the CFS 'warp to next event' function doesn't work right for WoFF. We do have 'normal' time compression in WoFF but though this is reminiscent of my 'good old days' in that earlier classic Red Baron 3D, I somewhat dislike this feature in any sim. I'm hard to please, I know, but I do rather prefer First Eagles's reliable and effecient 'next encounter' key, as a counter to boredom, should I feel the need to avail of it. To digress a little, until recently, I had sometimes found that WoFF flights could end without seeing an enemy, even on active parts of the front, at medium settings and with no 'AWACS' aids; which, though realistic, can be a bit disappointing. Of late, I think that switching on the 'dot mode' label setting and fixing this at 6 Km range has considerably improved matters, enabling me to spot enemies I might have missed, and without stretching realism or resorting to fancy visual aids. And on this mission, the opportunity to relieve the possibility of boredom on a long flight was soon to be offered - in a different, more exciting form, without the need for warp or time compression. Visibility was not great, with lots of broken cloud and intermittent rain squalls (I have the 'historical weather' option turned on, so I get a lot of this, WW1 being a wet period, generally). Still, with the 'fisheye lens' external view gone at last and cloud, terrrain & ground object shadows now present, there was still a lot to see and admire. As usual, I had the 'tactical display' or TAC mostly turned off, using it just for occasional nav checks to avioid the 'AWACS/radar' effect. And at any event, I keep the TAC's range set to only 2,000 metres, so even when on, it acts as no more than a representation of what myself and my flight-mates should usually be able to see with our naked eyes. This compensates for your flight-mates not otherwise being able to tell that they have spotted something (in the pre-radio WW1 days, typically by diving ahead and waggling their wings to attract your attention, then pointing). Being over 2,000 meters up at the point we reached the muddy lines of trenches and shelled ground at the front, we were too high for the TAC to pick up low-flying targets. It was fortunate therefore that, happening to look down, I spotted two tan coloured aircraft, one well behind the other, really low down and crossing our track from right to left. Had I not been flying in the external view, I might have missed them, but I generally 'go virtual cockpit' only for combat as (not being a head tracker user) I find this not only looks better, but compensates for the limitations of 'monitor vision'. Decisions, decisions! The right thing to do was stick with the Aviatiks, no question about that. Those planes down there looked like BE2s, harmless recce types, and even if they were enemy scouts, they were low and headed away and thus no particular threat. But our staffel's second flight was in the vicinity to care for the reconnaisance machines; and heck, this was my first serious virtual combat flight for months! If I stayed with the Aviatiks, I feared this might turn into another one of those sightseeing missions. So down I went, at the head of my flight, turning on the TAC briefly to give the 'general attack' order to the others. Unfortunately, I got no screenshots of the very short combat which followed. In my haste to get at the enemy, I dived straight at the hindmost aircraft - they were indeed BE2c's - instead of pulling up under his blind spot, below and behind. I got hits on my target but from that angle, even a front-seated BE2 observer can get you in his sights, and this one got me. First major sign of this was that my engine was losing power, and the range to my target gradually opened out. I got some more hits and last saw him going down in a wide right-hand turn. Confident that my flight would finsh the fight just fine without me, I turned east so as to avoid a forced landing on the enemy side of the Lines. That attended to, I checked my map and looked for the nearest friendly airfield. No point in risking damaging my kite landing on some field trying to make it home; better land at the nearest aerodrome while my motor was still turning, I thought to myself. So that's what I did. At this point, I remembered to take another picture, so here it is. I really vastly prefer the less wide-angle effect that comes with the latest DX9 mod, which is built into WoFF2 and later. Yes, you have a narrower field of view, depending on the setting (mine is 60 degrees I believe) but the external view of aircraft looks vastly more natural. Here's a pic of an Albatros D.II with the previous, 'fisheye lens' effect, so you can see what I am rabbiting on about. I didn't need to fill in a claim form for the BE2 I had attacked (in case he actually went down!) as I had the 'Manual claims' option turned off. As it happened, the automatically-submitted claim was confirmed, a few days latter. So the damage to my machine was not in vain. Little did I know it, but if that was a somewhat shaky start, the next mission was to be a whole lot shakier still! ...to be continued!

'Get that gun going, before it's hanging up in a Hun mess!' - yelled to an observer of an Aussie BE2 in Palestine; here, a similar situation has developed 'somewhere in France'...