For the last mission of my time online a couple of days ago I decided I'd up an Arado. The plan was to strike barracks at Knit bases on the front to try and slow them up a bit, as they were stomping hard into Bishland...what followed was a truely blunderful perk flight.
First, I take off from A29 to give myself a little starting alt (it's at 6k). After holding her level a little while, I kick in level auto pilot (there's an incline so plenty of space if the nose dips a little)...well, I didn't have a lot of speed, I didn't raise my flaps up and I wasn't paying that much attention to my monitor (cat was bugging me). Needless to say, I perked up after the hard nose dive toward the earth and was able to get her righted again & pay more attention to the screen.
After climbing to 20k for what seemed like forever, I got myself headed to target, and am getting lined up now. Salvo 1. Go external, look for cons. Line up more. Look for cons. Line up precisely. Look for cons one last time! Line up . . . Dro...WTF? Instead of the 'drop' sound I expected I was presented with the sound of my RATOs kicking in. DAMN! I keep 'em on to get me out of harms way quickly, and I had forgotten to switch to bombs! Turned her around, lined up and dropped, and immediately headed South to the next base.
Now that I'm headed South, I can go external and look for cons again. Great...a dot with a little alt on me coming in from the North. Check map...it's not a friendly, boy I wish I had those RATOs. Next base, same deal, but I can't screw up the ORD selection, and I make damn sure the con out on my far 6 isn't in icon range. Drop goes good, but the next base is NW.
I head West for a bit, and do a long half circle to get myself headed NW at the next base, hoping that con isn't getting any closer. As luck would have it, he follows my wide turn just a little, and then loses interest. It's about that time that I notice the sound that hits you like nails on a chalkboard...the sound of flak exploding. I haven't seen it yet, but I know I'm over water and a Flak burst can mean only one thing...I'm over an enemy CV Group.
I keep her level and floored and manage to make it through the flak barrage without taking a single hit. My 20k of alt probably had a lot to do with this.
I proceed to target, noting 2 cons ahead of me. One almost co-alt and another slightly below the first one. They're far enough north of the base that I'm able to drop before getting close to them, but the barracks at that field are already out. I drop my last 250k bomb on the bomber hangar meaninglessly since I'm low on fuel, the cockpit is getting stinky from an "incident" that occured shortly after hearing the Flak exploding around me, and I'm about to meet the 2 cons ahead of me. The one closest to me is a F4U, and he's the low one, but he's zooming up at me pretty fast...the other is a spit and isn't coming directly at me (kind of working his way around me, as if I had guns I could train on him). The F4 get's within 1.1, but no closer and fired off some rounds in vain...the Spit just kind of dawdled off into never never land and didn't seem to make any serious attemt to engage me. I pointed the nose toward home, dove to pick up a bit of speed and I was quickly headed out of danger.
I landed, glad to be alive, and glad that the Arado doesn't have bomb bay doors to open which would surely have complicated my mission even further
SOB
...LuftWaffle Jet Dweeb, when I ain't a RunStang Dweeb, when I ain't a Niki Dweeb.
[This message has been edited by SOB (edited 03-30-2001).]
