S! Frenchy
Apparently there were TBM's to the North of us which these F4U's were covering. Too bad we didn't have enough time to chase them down too.
Had fun winging with u all night. Even the first 1 and 1/2 hours when absolutely zilch was happening. Enjoyed trying to stay on your wing while you danced through cloud layers against a gorgeous sunset. Man it's hard to see anything when you are below a low cloud layer with the ground in heavy shadow!
The fight:
I was behind and a little above you when you engaged the F4U. I saw him break into you, and anticipated he'd do a headon with you so I went high, rolled on my back, cut throttle and split S'ed down on his six after you guys merged. Was almost perfect, I was D .500 with E advantage almost right away.
Meanwhile the two other dots we spotted were coming down off the headland, with the F4U we were chasing on an intercept course.
The F4U in my sights was rolling like crazy but I figured I could hang with him for a second since the two incoming would be at a high deflection angle. He shoulda turned away from his buddies to give them our sixes if we followed. But he didn't.
Instead he decided to break high to the right and I hit him with a deflection. Man those twin 20mm's in the nose of the Ki61 with almost zero convergence are bad news for anyone who gets in front of them.
He blew up midair, like, right now.
This did not make me popular with his buddies.
I had to sweat for a while as they took turns taking runs at me, (almost collided with one) with you doing your best to cover my tail. I owe you one.
Then the other two Ki's got into the act and gave me a breather. One of the F4U's reacted by turning away from me to go after someone else.
I took a calculated risk at that point and came out of my defensive circle long enough to take a shot at him as he rolled into me. Saw multiple cannon hits on his right wing as he went out of sight below my wing, but didn't have a chance to see if the wing came off or he hit the sea, or someone else finished him off. (we were 100ft off the deck) I was already into a defensive maneuver against the one on my tail.
A few seconds later you solved that problem for me.
Pretty intense.
I came into this my first TOD with the preference of flying an F6F, (kind of a mini-Jug
) but the Tony's are fun, even if they are a little slow.
