Regarding the interesting question of whether two-seaters in OFF are "unrealistically" hard to shoot down, I went back to the literature to see if it provided any clues. Hope this is of some interest, though I am sure many of you know far more about this than me.
First of all here is VM Yeates in the classic and highly recommended Winged Victory (my edition pub. Ashford, Buchan & Enwright 1990] which although a novel is undoubtedly autobiographical, as Yeates was a highly experienced Camel pilot who survived the war. A typical experience was:
"He went up at eleven o'clock, but they did not see any Huns except two separate two-seaters which they chased but did not get near" [p.310]
They never flew alone if they could help it:
"They were diving from the clouds. They had surprised two aeroplanes flying West over Carvin, apparently in company. They were two-seaters of the type known as LVG. Mac went straight down on one of them. Tom, on his left, was in position to attack the other, and he veered to get it in his Aldis. He opened fire and the observer replied. He found himself in the unenviable position of fighting a two-seater single-handed, as all the others had followed Mac. The observer was doing some good shooting, and Tom had to side-slip away. He dived, still side-slipping, for position under the LVG's tail. The pilot saw him, and turned steeply to keep him in the observer's field of fire. He could out-fly the two-seater, but it was extremely difficult to do so with the observer's tracer coming so near. He had to sideslip and twist so much that he could not make effective reply, but he fired whenever his nose was pointing near the enemy, to put the wind up the pilot. After one of these bursts the LVG reversed bank as quickly as it could and in doing so put Tom in the observer's blind spot, and he was able to fire a more dangerous burst, and this was more than the pilot could stand. He put his nose down to dive away. At the same moment two other Camels came up and fired, and all four aeroplanes went careering earthwards. But the LVG was hit vitally. Smoke poured from it, and it hit the earth a blazing pyre. [pp 251-252]
In sharp contrast is the account of the RFC's greatest ace Major McCudden VC, from his autobiography Flying Fury: Five Years in the Royal Flying Corps (my edition published 2000 by Greenhill Books). He preferred to hunt alone, and had his own engine fitted with "high-compression pistons" in order to increase his rate of climb so he could "wait" at high altitude (exactly how he survived this, with no oxygen or heated clothing I cannot imagine). The majority of his 57 victories were two-seaters:
"I used to go up day after day waiting at 17,000 upto 20,000 feet for the German two-seaters, who were always over our lines during the clear visibility. I expect some of those Huns got a shock when they came over at 18,000 feet and were dived on by an SE from above, for in the winter it was an exception to see an SE above 17,000 feet, which was the ceiling of the average 200 h.p. SE with its war load" [pp. 227-8].
The skills of two-seaters varied:
"I shot down a DFW that was doing artillery work over Vitry at 12,000 feet. This DFW crew deserved to die, because they had no notion whatever of how to defend themselves, which showed that during their training they must have been slack, and lazy, and probably liked going to Berlin too often instead of sticking to their training and learning as much as they could while they had the opportunity. I had no sympathy for those fellows.." [p.242]
From this I conclude:
- just chasing off two-seaters is a success, even if you don't shoot them down, since at least that stops them doing what they came for;
- unless you're an ace, never attack them alone;
- if you are an ace with exceptional flying and shooting skills, you can use surprise by coming down fast from higher altitude more or less vertically, out of the sun, and down them with a few shots;
- in good two-seaters (ie those which survived) the pilot is skilled in positioning the aircraft to avoid the gunner being put in a blind spot;
- the skills of two-seaters vary greatly.
So I think there is a case maybe for having some (random?) variation in two-seater "deadliness", and for them to manoeuvre rather than flying on in a straight line. However I don't have enough experience to know what is the range of two-seater behaviour modelled in OFF,since my experience is limited to Quick Combat and I'm willing to bet this isn't completely representative of the campaigns. Given the general wondrousness of everything I've seen to date, they probably will manoeuvre if they need to, but my own "flying" ability is so woeful at present they probably think it's hardly worth the effort. My own flying is more reminiscent of this wonderful account:
"I got up to 16,500 feet when a beastly two-seater Hun insisted on coming in my direction. I simply had to see him, much as I was dying not to. Of course I made a mess of things as usual. I had to wait to see his markings before I fired, and by that time his nose had begun to go down. I made a mighty lunge round and pushed at everything I could in a wild frenzy of excitement. Unfortunately I left my engine full on during my headlong flight, and it soon ceased to function in an orderly manner. By that time I had blazed off a drum from my Lewis gun, but to my great annoyance my Vickers refused to 'marche'. This was later accounted for owing to my not having loaded it! (Don't you dare to tell anyone else!) Anyway the Hun would not stop one of my bullets and went home." [2nd Lieutenant Gwilym Lewis, 40 Squadron RFC, in Wings Over the Somme, p99, quoted in Steel & Hart: Tumult in the Clouds, Hodder & Stoughton 1999, p 312]
Thanks again for a wonderful sim.
