Daiwilletti
Charter Member
With a quiet lock-down Easter, I dusted of Era 4 in ETO and flew an escort mission. Its great to have a bit of time to fly a mission properly in real time. I led a flight of Spitfire Vcs. We flew at quite a high altitude and my lack of knowledge about tuning an aircraft at altitude really showed.
The mission weather was a pain, with a cloud layer right where the spitfire's altitude was set. So the CFS3 cloud "turbulence kicked in, at times it was really bad. I spent a couple of minutes at one stage spiralling helplessly, going up and down, not really using altitude. A lot of enemy aircraft the closer we got to the target. I sent wingmen off to distract the enemy a/c, but soon discovered that with the enemy spawning above the cloud layer, and the bombers below the cloud layer, it was often best to sit tight (especially because of the difficulty of getting up through the turbulence) and the enemy spawns would go away.
The b-17s got through to the railyard successfully, and completely devastated it. On the homeward leg, however, the cloud cleared and the enemy appeared at strength. I finally got in amongst some fw190-a5s at a slightly lower altitude. The B-17s flew on largely unmolested, as my group and some other allied fighters engaged in a lengthy, sprawling dogfight over about 50km heading back towards the coast. The Mk Vcs gave a good account of themselves, but given the numbers, we got whittled down.
I only had a couple of wingmen left by the time I reached the coast, and we were still being pursued by Bf 109g6s half way across the channel. I turned and downed the last two pursuers with only MG rounds as my cannon ammunition had been depleted over France.
When we landed back at base, I was told that the mission was a failure because not all B-17s had returned safely. Well bull***p I say, we hit the target and shot down a bucketload of enemy fighters. I landed feeling totally drained.
Mission report ends
The mission weather was a pain, with a cloud layer right where the spitfire's altitude was set. So the CFS3 cloud "turbulence kicked in, at times it was really bad. I spent a couple of minutes at one stage spiralling helplessly, going up and down, not really using altitude. A lot of enemy aircraft the closer we got to the target. I sent wingmen off to distract the enemy a/c, but soon discovered that with the enemy spawning above the cloud layer, and the bombers below the cloud layer, it was often best to sit tight (especially because of the difficulty of getting up through the turbulence) and the enemy spawns would go away.
The b-17s got through to the railyard successfully, and completely devastated it. On the homeward leg, however, the cloud cleared and the enemy appeared at strength. I finally got in amongst some fw190-a5s at a slightly lower altitude. The B-17s flew on largely unmolested, as my group and some other allied fighters engaged in a lengthy, sprawling dogfight over about 50km heading back towards the coast. The Mk Vcs gave a good account of themselves, but given the numbers, we got whittled down.
I only had a couple of wingmen left by the time I reached the coast, and we were still being pursued by Bf 109g6s half way across the channel. I turned and downed the last two pursuers with only MG rounds as my cannon ammunition had been depleted over France.
When we landed back at base, I was told that the mission was a failure because not all B-17s had returned safely. Well bull***p I say, we hit the target and shot down a bucketload of enemy fighters. I landed feeling totally drained.
Mission report ends
Can't you change the mission goals?
