Shillelagh upped 12 pilots in 190 A5s.
We flew to our stagging point, but when we got there it was apparent that the buffs were avoiding this corridor. We noticed that they were sitting in the SW corner of th map, and figured it was an attempt to run us out of fuel.
We heading out to intercept this raid (after saying as much on channel 2... Someone accused us of being "lost" if I recall lol) but it looked like we were not going to have the fuel to even make a pass at the formation, so we landed refueled and relaunched and reformed without incident. Well there was one "Incident" My rudder fell out of calibration (my joystick porks at the most inopportune times lol) so I had to try to recall it in flight, but the problem was that I couldn't get the autopilot to stay engaged because the plane kept changing attitude.. I was able to get everything fixed, but I had to turn command over to -RY- for the refueling, as I had become .seperated during my adventures in hardware. luckily I was able to catch up with the squad on the ground.
We couldn't reach the buff before they hit the target (sorry Jordi, it was not for lack of trying). But we hit them after the attack. We hit them in two waves, the first flight making a pretty good slash across the lead plane. I believe that we hit the formation without taking any pings from the bombers. As we were lining up to make a second pass our secont flight dove in on them. Then, as everything was going so well... I can't believe this happened... I was typing a sit-rep for the allied CO, when all of a sudden I started taking pings. I thought for sure that a Jug had caught up to us and jumped me. As I looked back though, I had wandered into the path of another B-17. I was jumped by a buff! He got my engine, but I was able to make two more passes, and keep the gunners attention for a while.
My engine died at 25k, and I had to start thinking about where I was going to eat lunch. I was southeast of Bonn, and there were mountains EVERYWHERE. I made for the City figureing that any road or farm will do, and lined up with a flat area near the port. I spiraled down, killing alt and keeping some speed, then leveled out on approach. As I got closer and closer to the field, I noticed those little dots were getting bigger and bigger.... the whole field was strewn with BOULDERS! I had deceided to land in some sort of rock quarry lol. It was harry, I'm not sure how I managed, but I slid to a stop in between the chunchs of granit, and sat for a while listening to the radio.
The escorts did catch up, and heard the frantic death calls of some of my squadmates as they engaged some P-51s. This was one of the best performances by a voice actor on AH Voice, as -04- struggled to survive a low alt engagement in a 190a5. It really added to the immersion. I think we got one of the escorts, but between the escorts and the gunners, we were a total loss. 10 planes shot down, 2 planes ditched.
We confirmed two B-17 kills, with several others damaged. I absolutely plastered one, so hopefully he died sooner or later lol.
to everyone, that was a total blast! And people, Watch the Movie "12 O'Clock High" before friday. It will give you a whole new prespective on this TOD.
Oh, and Big to the Damned who took one for the team with those escorts. Without them we wouldn't have been able to hit the buffs at all.
-Sikboy
[edit] I just checked the scores, we got 3 B-17s and one P-51b
