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18 January 2005
Down and Dirty
Squad Night Report for
18-January-2005
Fields of Departure:
A5
Target:
A7
Pilots in Attendance:
Duel
Lees2
Luft
Plus
RTS
Skeksis
SKu
I - “Where did *they* all come
from?”
The first stage of squad
operations was an ambitious plan
to leave A5 and go over to A7 in
heavy craft to try to cripple the
base and then come back and take
the field. All pilots took off in
P51Ds, heavy with the exception of
myself who took at P47D heavy.
Heading out we took a course along
150 degrees and later changed to
180 degrees before visual contact
with the field. During the flight
to the target I found that instead
of the two 1,000 pound bombs I had
2 drop tanks (which explained the
239 extra gallons of av gas). One
of the 51 drivers also found that
an error had occurred and they did
not have their bombs. Pilot
error? Server error? A brief
fly-through the Twilight Zone?
Your guess is as good as mine.
As we approached the field, after
the last course correction, we
started to spot enemy opposition
and after the third Spit was
sighted we realized that we were
up against a lot more enemies than
I had expected. The reason for
this is that I mis-read the map,
plain and simple. When we started
out we were engaged in fighter ops
over a field a full sector over
and while the dar-bar in the
sector we were now in was very
clearly stating that the odds were
not in our favor I was still
thinking about the previous field.
The good news is that we all made
it to the target and we started to
drop our ordinance but the bad
news is that most of us did not
make it back out. As for myself I
dropped my lone 500 pounder to no
effect and very quickly lost my
oil either to a flak hit or
someone on my six. I fired off my
rockets and tried to grab alt on
WEP but by then had been saddled
up and was taken out very
quickly. Looking back I might
have fared better if I had just
kept on going deeper into enemy
territory and tried to work my way
back rather than turning and
trying to bug out right away.
Some day I might get the hang of
how to do this. Before too long
most of us were down and the plan
was to try another run on the same
field and if it was still too
tough to take, reevaluate and
select a different field. That
was before the damned tanks…
II - “What is it going to take
to kill that damned tank?”
When ‘phase two’ started someone,
I think it was Luft, spotted
incoming enemy GVs including a
Ostwind and a Koenigstiger and we
decided to take them out on out
way back to our target. After
all, how hard could that be? There
were other Knights working them
over, this was going to be a
momentary diversion. Right… I
think that goes under the heading
of ‘famous last words’ as the rest
of squad night was spent trying to
deal with this incursion....Down
and Dirty!
We took fighters, ground attack
craft, tanks, and heavy bombers.
We fired off thousands of rounds
and scores of rockets, and dropped
thousands of pounds of bombs and
the Tiger kept on coming. Either
Herechi (I think that was the
name) was the best Tiger-jockey in
the game or had a charmed life or
a bit of both. During the action
I lost one plane to pilot error (I
turned and suddenly just sort of
floated down and pancaked at too
high a speed to walk away), one
plane to a one-shot hit by a Ostie,
yet another plane to a one-shot MG
hit from the blasted Tiger (and
*that* IMO is an insult), and then
later lost a Panzer to a one shot
hit from the same damned Tiger too
far away for me to spot him. As a
side note, using the lean forward
to zoom feature of the TiR is
great in the cockpit but it does
not let me zoom in enough to use
the reticule on the GVs.
After that, thoroughly annoyed and
sick of looking like a total chump
I started to do better after I
stopped using the P38 and started
playing around with the 109 G
which while it does not have the
air to ground payload of the 38,
the 47, or the 51 can carry a
respectable amount of cannon
rounds with the under-wing
gondolas and seemed to me to be
easier to handle. While I did not
get any kills I started to get
assists which was an improvement
that I can live with.
;-)
At one point Luft took off in a
formation of Lancasters and made
at least one pass but I do not
recall the outcome. I also recall
Lees hunting the GVs in a tank of
his own while Luft was on the
ground standing in the enemy tanks
as a beacon for us to home in on
but they found him and dealt with
him which was a bummer but a
creative way by Luft to help us
find this guy. Eventually that
Tiger-driver was stopped but the
enemy kept spawning GVs giving us
a nice, target-rich environment in
which to play.
;-) Eventually, before
Luft and I called it a night, they
had an Ostie, a M3, and two T34s
in the area.
While we were working to stop
their ground advance other Knights
were heading SE to try and attack
A7 which from the sound of it was
still heavily defended. I don’t
know if the Knights made any
progress in taking the field but
from what I heard they were doing
a good job of keeping the aerial
assault against A5 from making any
headway. At one point the enemy
did get a LA7 into our airspace
but he was quickly driven off.
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