One of my squaddies, BnZs, wrote this up last night after FSO. I thought it was worth sharing
After Action Report:
We few, we happy few, we band of "buggered" took off in that 1975 Pinto of the warbird realm, the Ki-61 Tei.
Our orders were to climb to 20K and defend a funny looking green square that produces "flak", which I understand is alot like flan except more appetizing. I figured we ought to defend the local geisha district, as its services are a heck of alot more important, but Lambo vetoed the idea of going AWOL. We winged up. Clevman gave a fantastic demonstration of his ability to tail-gate, only slightly interupted by my tendency to fly like I have Tourettes.
It soon became apparent that our engines were insufficiently supercharged for any altitude above 18" MSL. In any case, almost as soon as we reached patrol alt, we were bounced by 25,000 or so Corsairs and Hellcats. It was a bad scene. Lambo, bored by the fact that there were only 3 cons on his six, was disinterested and fell asleep, at which point he was lost to us. I survived by throwing the stick into one forward corner or the other everytime I heard the words "check six". (I told you it was Pavlovian, Lambo.) Friendlies were going down everywhere, at this point I became enraged and decided shoot/ho/ram anything that came into reach. After flying so close to the six of several that I could nearly cut their tails off with my prop and spraying innefectually, I managed to make the wing of one Corsair fall off. At precisely this point, my guns ran dry, so I put the balls to the wall and high-tailed it for the base as fast as a Ki-61 will go. On the way, an albatross passed me without signaling and then gave me a dirty gesture for holding up traffic.
I got my flaps down (remember this part, it will be important later), landed, and became lost looking for the re-arm pad. After consulting Lambo, , an atlas, and using a divining rod, I managed to find the completely unmarked re-arm pad. At this point I learned that there were no Air Raiders left except me. Well, it's up to me I thought. After I re-armed I decided I would climb to a ridiculously high alt and free-hunt by myself, as is my wont, and take vengeance by bouncing those cons so arrogant as to think Surely There is no Greater Dweeb Alt Monkey Than Myself. As I throttled up, I noticed my plane seemed to jump of the runway at low speed, but being unused to Japanese kites with a lighter wingloading than an Origami goose, I took this in stride. However, when I hit alt-x to enter auto climb, I realized that my flaps were out and this was why the airplane was trying to stand on it's nose, unfortunately I didn't move fast enough to keep the whole thing from ker-plopping onto the runway like a blue whale dropped from a 10 story building.
