First of all I want to say that I know that all but the best of Aces High Pilots occasionally steal a kill without meaning to. The night this following incident happened, I did it myself. Pieper and I were shooting at an LA and his tail came off. I thought I'd shot it off. I wasn't doing too well, and wasn't in the best of moods, so I followed him down, shooting him all the way.
After he was dead, and I had the kill, Pieper told me that he'd shot the tail off. Had I realized that before hand, I wouldn't have followed him down. So I don't criticize someone when that happens to me. I know it's confusing, especially in a furball where everyone's shooting the same guy.
By the same token, I've seen situations where someone calls out that some guy's dead, just because he's smoking. The "dead" guy then continues to shoot down a couple of your comrades, because everyone's too honorable to finish him off.
In this case however, it was blatant. I had shot the entire wing off an F4u and was watching him spiral down. I noticed Jones84 heading for him and called out on the range channel to leave him alone. Tracers then streak from Jones plane to the crippled f4u. This wasn't a guy trying to make it home on half a wing, he was out of control. I called out again. More tracers. Jones stayed on him so aggressively that he collided and died.
BigBobCH saw the whole thing, from a closer vantage point than mine. I got the assist, and Jones evidently got the kill. No one else shot the f4u that I'm aware of, and he was all in one piece when we started, as you'll see in this film.
Later, Jones first tried to say that he just collided with him. He made the lame statement that he'd been flying with 3 kills to his credit, and why would he want to die? Well, indeed, why turn around, chase and collide with a crippled enemy if you're holding 3 kills etc?
When Bob and I both confronted him on the radio about seeing his tracers, he eventually, after several more denials apologized, saying he'd only been flying for 2 days. Flying around with 3 kills is pretty good for only 2 days flying, but what do I know?
If you watch the film (edited for only the part in question) with "use recorded views" you'll see what I was seeing when I yelled at him. You can't see the F4u's wing come off, because the default back view with the hood blocking everything shows up in the film. If you pause and move the view around, you'll see it.
Just wanted to post this to shame the guy, because he wouldn't admit he did it.
By the way, I threw this webpage together just to post this, and you have to change the extension when you right click the file to download. It will show up as JonesSteal.htm, just download it and change it to JonesSteal.ahf and you can watch the film.
Thanks for taking up for me Bob, I appreciate it. Here's the link:
http://sinner.clearwire.net
