Saturday evening, field A48
MrPluto, Beefcake, Chris3, and Krusty1 rolled on a daring and dangerous mission. Loaded with 500lb bombs in B-17Gs, we rolled up the W coast of the map (the 0 sector column) on a mission to hit ack factory, city strat, and then troop factory. We lost Chris3 on the way to the first target, but caught him again after that. By the time we got to the ack factory at 16.5k, we had attracted a few cons. We dropped with little problem, and shot down several fighters. Unfortunately, I lost a drone and 1 eng not long after on my lead. This made the rest of the mission slow down to let me catch up.
We moved north further still, dropping on the city strat (4 bombs last target, 4 bombs this, 4 bombs next, total 12x 500lb bombs per plane). We encountered yet more and more opposition. We weren't too shabby with our gunning, and sent a few back down to Earth, courtesy of Mr Browning. Doras, 109s, quite a few La7s, and even a couple of 110Gs hit us.
Due to a fowl up on my part I was unable to drop on the final target (troop factory) so I followed the group back S and dropped on the city strat again on the way South.
We encountered many more fighters on the way South, this time they were starting to play it safe. On the one hand, many had been shot down, on the other hand we had lost 6 of our 12 total numbers. This made the fighters press the attack more (especially with most of us missing an engine), but made them cautious not to attack from dead 6.
We had a running firefight at 16k for 3 sectors with 109s and las and 110s. MrPluto leading us through the thick of it, Beefcake more than once dropping back to save my skin (and losing a drone 2x for the selfless act of heroism!). We ended up with almost no ammo and a high la7 attacking me (tail end charlie). I was out of ammo in the rear, so I switched to my only drone and it had a mere 300 rounds in the dorsal gun. The La made several attacks and I wasted all of this ammo just to ping him. I tried (futilely) to weave, but this did not work. In the end, the la7 rammed my bomber and went down.
We all limped home, not even remotely safe until we passed the longitude of A53. We still had one con following us for a while, and we lost sight of him, thinking he had turned back. He later turned up over our field moments after we landed, having followed us all the way from the North. After reporting to the tower I saw a lone La7 tangling with base defense fighters. I hoped to heaven he was out of gas.
So, we had gone North, hit the infrastructure of the enemy, returned, always in the group, always supporting each other during the enemy attacks, and landed all as a unit. At least one craft from every player made it back. I myself landed 4 kills, and forgive me for forgetting which pilots scored which numbers (no screenshot) but the others in the group landed 4, 3, and 2 kills, for a total of 13 enemy fighters kills, 3 strat objects bombed, and we only lost 6 of 12 bombers.
After a hearty celebration in the tower we all returned to our barracks for a little after-mission relaxation.
Great work MrPluto, Chris3, and Beefcake!
