Nash 3, Granger 1.
The fights were much closer than any score could indicate. I'm not one for writing detailed AARs... I have difficulty remembering, then putting what happened into words. The fights consisted mostly of immediate immels at the merge, followed by the innevitable rolling scissors fight on the deck. They were *very* close.
Er, except for one fight... which I wanna bring up. The first one... I remember it well. We pull into immels, loop back and engage inna sketchy inverted HO. My hands are shaking at this point (they always do with these tourney fights for some reason) and I sent a stream of bullets right over his undercarriage, missing wildly. He was a bit more fortunate.
One of his rounds lodged itself in my engine, knocking it out.
He extends away, and I start plummeting to earth, followed by a stream of white smoke. Toast. But wait... what's this? He's.... he's coming back! Yup, ok, a safe fly-by, no doubt to check my engine status.. my prop clearly not movin'. Well, that's it for me...he extends away leaving me to glide helplessly to terra firma.
But hang on... what's this? He's comin' back again... he's trying to saddle up! I bring my nose around and manage to duck the tracers as they whiz by. Three, maybe four more times this happens. I'm getting desperate as the ground is determined to rise up and smack into my plane... And he still wants to fight! Then it happens.
I get my nose around just in time to blindly fire at his incomming plane, holding the trigger down and spraying for all its worth. This is my last chance.
When I open my eyes, I look back. His wing is severed, and he plummets into the ground. "Nice fight, you win, 1-0" he says.
But wait a minute... "Granger - you knew my engine was out, why did you do that?"
His reply? "Yah, I could have extended, but I don't want to win like that." I talked him into calling it a draw, and we wipe the slate clean and begin the rest of the matches.
I tell ya... It made it just a little bit more difficult to pull the trigger on him after this.
<S!> Granger, and it was a great pleasure getting to know you.
