(nostalgia) For the first time I have enough perks to fly a 262! Excellent. The ENY situation means that I can be a jet jockey. I have practised taking off and landing a couple of times, and I probably have as much experience flying the 262 as a real-life Luftwaffe pilot of 1945. I resolve to be cautious as I fly my first flight in a 262.
I am in the air, flying around at twilight in my 262, laughing at the other players as they crawl slowly through the air with their old-fashioned pistons and propellors. I see a P51 above me, and I climb to meet it, and by a fluke I land a hit and it disintegrates! He didn't see me coming. I vertically intercept a P47 that is climbing out of a dive, and miss, but I almost had him. No-one comes close to hitting me. I am king of the world! You little people in your obsolete machines, you are the past. I am drunk on power. I might not score any more kills but I am at least master of my fate.
Drunk on power I engage a B17, which in retrospect was a ridiculous decision. Its first shot gives me a pilot wound. Blood on the glass. Lots of it. Nasty. I scurry back to base as fast as I can. I make it! I am going to live. When I land I will have a big dollop of black pudding and twelve pints of Guinness. That will restore the lost blood.
I come in for landing, which is tricky in a 262. I have slowed right down. When landing a 262 I have found that there is a final approach, and after that there is a final, final approach. I don't quite reach the final, final approach when my head starts to droop and my vision blacks out. I am about a hundred feet off the ground and going at 220mph, but my engines are off and the flaps are out. I hit the autopilot and turn the engines back on. For a few moments I worry if I am going to hit the hill that is directly behind the base, or if I am going to stall.
I recover consciousness but I am past the runway. I turn around and dodge the hill, and almost line up on one of the shorter runways, but I lose consciousness again and drift over the base, again, at about a hundred feet and 220mph.
This goes on for several passes. My bouts of unconsciousness are in synch with my landing approaches. I should have taken a chance and flown away from the base for a short while, and made a better approach, but I wasn't sure how much blood I had left so I screwed the whole thing again and again.
Eventually I expire about a hundred feet above the middle of the base, travelling at about 220mph.
