This has happened to me several times in the last few days. First time was the worst.
Here's the first story....
A flight of DWEEBSTER high (I mean HIGH) B17s are spotted heading toward our radar near F9. They are more than 50 miles out, so I decide to give them something to think about, so I plane a P38 and start my long climb. After what seems like an eternity, I am approaching 30K ft and think to myself "They can't be higher than this." Welp, I'm wrong. I see the dots heading my way and see they are STILL higher than me. Auto-climb back on....wait wait wait. I am unable to stop the bombers from dropping their eggs, but since I'm already up here I decide to get a bit of revenge. The bombers split up after their drop, so I pick out a single bomber and setup on a parallel heading East to try to get in front of the now running bomber. Still climbing, the Altimeter reads 36.5K ft. I finally get co-altitude (38.4K) to make a run, but on my turn I loose more altitude than I expect and the run turns dry. I didn't even get to take a shot. So I line up parallel to try again. I now notice that the bomber is loosing some altitude. "Good", I think, "I might actually have a chance at downing this bomber." Another 5 minutes of climbing and I finally decide to try another run. I turn Head-On to the bomber and I'm now closing fast at 8.0K yds in front of the bomber. Then out of the blue at around 5.0K yds, the bomber pilot bails! No kill is awarded. Now, of course, this causes me to let out a couple of four letter words. So I shoot the only thing left for me to shoot: A free falling body with the words "CHUTE" above it. The pilot promptly broadcasts "Nice chute kill". Which starts a common channel debate on who was dweebier, the bailing pilot or the chute killer. The pilot does state that he was out of fuel, but I reply to him that from 35K+ ft, a B17 could have glided anywhere on the map. (We were directly over the "Crater".) Now what is the call here? Should I have let him bail un-molested? Should I have given up at 33K ft? Am I a SUPERDWEEB...(I believe I have admitted to this elsewhere)?
On to the second story...
This one is easy. I spot a low unescorted C47 and dive for a run on him. Before I get close enough the pilot promptly bails...no shots fired. What I have to say to this is.."Get some balls. If you are gonna fly a C47, be man enough to die in a C47."
Ok enough of this %@*$ long post...
Aaron "Terror" Edwards
PS. These are just two of many similar stories...
[This message has been edited by Terror (edited 03-20-2000).]