Thanks Slip, <S>G3-MF,
Was a fun night around that carrier for the blue guys
. Was a lonely night for me for a big part. I saw 4 bogies pass below our squad and I dove in to investigate with two squaddies in long trail, the rest stayed high. found that they were 4 zeros and decided to blow through at that point as I nosed down as my one wildcat had no business with 4 zeros. Stumbles into 3 B5N's on the deck and engaged. Rayl49 and Sik1, engaged with me shortly after. I have to give credit to the B5N pilots as they dodged our attacks well as we B&Z'd down on top of them. I just happened to look up as I was getting ready to make another pass and saw those 4 zero's found me and my 2 squaddies low and turning with those B5N's. I called them out but they were already on top of us with all the position in the world. I called scatter as it was everyone for themselves at that point. Fortunately for me my squaddies looked more like bacon then I did. I ran for the boat and re-perched above it. I could see those B5N's reforming and the zeros perching above and starting to head back for the boat. No friendlies in range, just me vs them. The B5N's started to make their run and I flew over the top of them and dove in from behind. One broke early so I concentrated on the other two, I engaged the one in front and managed to get it and then climbed back up to launch my attack on the second. Surprisingly the zeros were staying out of it at this point, think the ack was a bigger deterrence then me. Managed to get the second, the third pulled out a bit and seemed to be resetting, so I did the same over the boat. The third started to make a run in so I did the same setup of passing over and diving in behind. The zekes seemed a bit closer to this one this time as I can remember an A6M icon appear as I made my run. Fortunately I made a good pass and got it while heading toward the boat, which the A6M's did not chase me into. The low zekes looked to climb back out west of the boat so I kept an eye that way. Not sure of those B5N's actually had ordnance or not, they may have been a decoy to draw down a larger force. So far about 5 minutes after I was circling the boat with not much going on except communications between G3 and 17 as they were communicating enemy positions heading my way. Suddenly I see about 12 dots at about 20-25k fly over the boat, my first thought was that it was G3-MF, but as they got closer nothing came up on range channel. This was a very bad feeling for me at this time as, since they were not diving in, I suspected that was a squad of zeros over my head. Fortunately one single Wildcat wasn't enough bait for them to blow all their alt to come and get me. This went on for about 2-3 minutes, then I started to get some of the G3-MF guys on range and warned them about the high zero's. Well evidently they were enough bait because they came down then. Pretty soon the bulk of VF-17 and G3-MF showed up, along with the Japanese Vals and Kates. We were able to engage most of the Japaneses aircraft far enough outside the carrier group, as much of VF-17 started the engagement at the radar ring. So we basically had G3-MF pushing from the carrier out and VF-17 pushing from the radar ring in. Somebody must of told Branch that the Japanese Kates and Vals were full of candy or something, as he tied a VF-17 record for 10 kills in an FSO sortie
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BigRat
PS The Navy has determined victory rolls should be done at heights over 1k feet
