Couple of things to throw in the pot......
I was in the Navy back in the early 80's (81 to 89) and on the A/C I worked on (S-3A Viking) we had a feature called "weight on gear" and it had an accompanying light on the master panel, well this light had to be lit to do things like fold the wings and tail, and had to be OFF to do things like raise the gear or fire ordanace, this of course is the equivalant of an "idiot light" to prevent the pilot from folding his wings in flight or sparking off a harpoon while he's sitting on the deck.
Speaking of which BTW, when HTC gets around to modeling the F4U it'd be cool to have folding wings and a tail hook that lowers and raises....especially if they add water and aircraft carriers, as it is now, both WB and AW allow NO HOOK type planes to land on carriers. (being an old bird farm sailor it kinda tweeks my noggin to see a B-17 land on a carrier)
Next as many of you know, in AW they had the FLAKPANZER, which people used to retailate against the VULCHER.
Now personally, I have been know to vulch (not just strafe the field), once a couple years ago when I was in AW, I got a 15,000 point flight cuz some guy was SO PISSED about being shot down at his base, he kept replaning and launching at the same field.....the smart move woulda been to takeoff from one field next door, but hey we all have been known to get a little "worked up" about the flight sims we play. but as we also all know, getting vulched SUCKS!
I usally refrain from vulching (I usually call it field suppression btw), because it doesn't take alot of skill, it isn't mano-a-mano fighting, it's target practice.
Guess it kinda depends on if your the vulcher or the vulchee huh?
So I guess until we get FLAKPANZERs to protect us on takeoff we gotta kinda live with B-17's as ACKSTARS and would be Flakpanzers.
Just my two cents.
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