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I decided to take a break from skinning and actually fly something. Naturally, I wanted to give my new random hex DFW a spin so I started a pilot in FFA 289b way over at the E end of the Western Front, where I've never flown before. 1st mission was boring, flying around in crappy weather, so I did another. Got something exciting, bombing an airfield! Yay! So there I was at 11000' crossing the lines. The weather was total crap, all snow and clouds with a solid layer of nasty about 13000' so my plan was to fly right under it, but the French had the same idea. Suddenly, a whole French squadron loomed out of the mirk directly ahead, going the other way. Our formations flew through each other before either of us could react but, fortunately, they were Sopwith B1s and weren't interested in us, so we went our separate ways. Shortly thereafter we turned on the Initial Point and started the 8-mile bomb run. From this point, we started taking continuous but light and inaccurate flak, almost all low. Only 1 was close enough to shake my plane but no harm done. Finally, the target airfield at Belfort came into the sight and down went the bombs. My flight managed to destroy 5 hangars, a truck, and an airplane on the ground, with several other planes probably damaged, and then we went home, climbing even closer to the cloudbase, which had risen a bit by now to about 13500'. We recrossed the lines just below that level and started our descent to our base at Sierwitz. When down to about 9000' a few miles short of the field, we saw flak bursting ahead at about our level. Soon we saw another enemy squadron, again single-seater Strutters, again coming at us head-on, apparently just through bombing our field. I signalled the attack and made a pass through the formation with all our gunners taking potshots in passing, then cranked around and gave chase to trailing flight of 3. I attacked the one on the right while my gunner blazed away at the one on the left. My shots struck home and my target started diving for the lines. I kept after him firing many bursts and getting many hits, but this pursuit took my gunner out of range of his target. My target was shedding pieces and trailing a thin stream of smoke. However, I'm not the best shot with the DFW's mearly blind gun, especially as the iron sights don't even line up on the target. Thus, I expended all 500 rounds and still the target kept flying, although getting lower and lower. By now we were about 500' up right over the front lines. Desperately, I flogged my machine as fast as it would go and eventually overhauled my quarry, allowing my gunner to get some broadside-on shots into him. The Sopwith turned away from me to avoid this fire and ended up heading back toward the German side of the lines. I did a pathetically weak high yo-yo to cut inside his turn again for another broadside gunner shot and finally the Strutter crashed in No-Man's-Land. Woohoo! So, back towards Sierwitz, gathering up my wingmen. And once again flak appeared, this time slightly higher at 4 o'clock. However, we never saw the planes and reached our base without further incident. It appeared undamaged although there were a few craters scattered about, too far apart to be a problem for landing. So, I was all set to fill in my claim form but NOOOOOOOO...... Instead, I got a brief glimpse of a CFS3 error message. Thus, while I had the replay of the mission and could see what all had happened, I never got a claim form and as far as the game is concerned, the mission never happened. My pilot still officially has only flown 1 mission, still has the same amount of hours from it, and no expenditures of ammo or bombs. AARRGGHH!!!! That was about my best DFW sortie ever and nothing to show for it except a couple of screenshots Here's one of them. This shows the cloud of dust kicked up as the Strutter finally hit the ground and broke to pieces. Nice-looking DFW, though...