8 Staffel of III./JG 27 was tasked with CAP'ing the northern strats. the Allies met us at 109, and an epic fight ensued.

some 8 Staffel 109s turning into contact reports of P-38s over A109
we find the mini furball, stay high for a bit, and start mixing it up. shortly after, though not because of us, the 38s were for the most part down, or low on the deck. we climbed back up to 25k to see what else we could find. someone told us there were some P-47s near...

oh dear... there
are a few P-47s. this should be fun
there you see 4 or 5 of them chasing poor hornis, my squaddie. we try to thin them out a bit, and we get some initiative.

here's me trying to save hornis from impending doom. I wasn't much help.
all of a sudden, i see tracers zoom past, and i dive. look back, and...

AAHH!!! how did i miss the sound of that massive engine?!
I bank hard left to avoid him, but not before he gives me a fuel leak in the 109K-4's only fuel tank. not good, seeing as our home base A26 is over fifty miles away. i decide to stay a bit longer, but gained nothing but a few more holes from it, so bravely i decided to run away.
seeing as i can't make it to 26 on one tank, i devise a rather clever plan. I'm going to land at 102, which is just on the east side of the Rhine, rearm to pick up my external tank, and fly comfortably to 26 to replane.

ah, Rhine sweet Rhine... (these last few screens have a portion of the last screenshot in them, due to either an odd film viewer bug, or my inability to use microsoft paint. naturally, i blame mir...)

and look, there's 102! looks like this might work!

my engine conks out on short final, not entirely unexpected, but just means i'll have to dump all my speed now and aim directly for the rearm pad.
flaps down, gear down, glideslope looks good, plane is very stable, what could possibly go wrong now?

........ Bother.....
apparently the over-zealous P-47 got more than just my fuel tank. of course I didn't remember very clearly seeing "right gear" on the damage list after he hit me.


oh yeah... now i remember... scheisse.

the good news is, most of that will polish out
the logs say "skillfully ditched". I think ROC was trying to be nice.
after that, my gruppe re-upped en masse and proceeded to kill 14 bad guys, 7 air, 6 ground, and one storch (BigRat you dog

)
it was fun!
