This is actually the second time I've done this. Once in an F6 prior to any achievements. The f6 suffered a bit more damage than this f4-1d. I was missing at least one flap on the F6 if I recall correctly. Both times it was dive bombing Aa cv. In the f6 I took additional hits from the puffy ack or a gunner, not sure.
Set my salvo 2 to dispense with the rockets. Dove in from 12k which is my favorite dive bombing alt for the f4. Scoring some hits with my rockets I backspaced to my bombs and let them go. As soon as they were gone I started pulling back on the stick just praying I make it out cleanly but I didn't. I took a hit but wasn't sure of the damage. But then the plane nosed up severely. I thought "oh no" the tail is gone. Looking back it looked like I had a tail and I was going up out of control. Checking damage I was missing my elevators and something else. Not sure what. Missing my elevators the plane shot up to about 7k and was tending to loop. I had to get it level immediately. A loop may have caused me to auger since I wouldn't be able to pull out.
Finally I gained a semblance of control by lowering my landing gear. From my experience the f6 I knew lowering the gear would bring the nose down. Unlike the F6 I had my flaps. So when the nose started lowering I hit the flaps for lift. Then there was throttle control. I couldn't go over 120 IAS without the nose lifting excessively. Now there was enemy in the area. I saw 2 f4s on the deck. Then I had to go to Furball Island and I was a ways from the radar circle. In fact I was still in A84s radar. Once some kind of control was gained I was going the wrong way, parallel to furball Island, base 85. So I had to maneuver from south to east with out lowering the nose to much.
Once in the right direction I had to combat the tediousness of the flight. For one, as mentioned I was only doing about 120. I cured this by alternating between flaps and no flaps and all the while leaving my gear down. That gave me a speed of near 200. Then I had to carefully lose altitude so I could come in for a smooth landing. Knights radar was down and my intended landing base was flashing. Thoughts of landing at another base were consumed me for a time. Finally I just committed to the closest base flashing or not. At any moment someone could knock me out of the sky and it wouldn't take much. After what seemed a millennium I made it to sight of the base and I only was about 2k in alt. Then thank goodness I made a smooth landing.
One trivia tidbit is the 2 kills were on the same guy from the same JABO attack. I killed him with rockets and then with the bombs. Amazing. Not sure if I got the cv but I think I did and that is what killed him the second time.
