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Paul F. Baer in front of his SPAD S.VII

As members of the forum may know, I have some great interest in the Escadraille Americaine/Lafayette Escadrille/103rd Aero. I have a few planes to represent the various stages of this squadron, ranging from two Nieuport N.11 repaints, to the Thaw/Lufbery Nieuport N.17, to four SPAD S.VIIs for the 103rd Aero. Also, one of the interesting American pilots of the war, and one who was the American Ace of Aces ...

Originally Posted by predhead

Looking through various aircraft ratings and seeing that perhaps the Ponnier's climb rate (according to the good work the unofficial stats committee does for the rest of us) is on the low side. Comparing rates of climb using the Wings of Linen site, and averaging when applicable if the is a variation of climb time. The numbers in parenthesis are the game climb rates):

Nieuport N.11 - 3000 meters in 17.33 minutes - 568 feet per minute (4)
Nieuport N.16 - 3000 meters in 10.17

...

One of the smallest of Great War fighters, which might have led to its perceived poor performance as being nose heavy. Nungesser disliked the plane, and unknown (at the time) Willi Coppens did not want to fly it either. But Coppens would have had no "clout" in 1916, and Nungesser was performing acrobatics at 200 meters in an unfamiliar plane was led to him being injured.

However, I feel that the Ponnier has been unfairly represented. ...

Fast it is, and fits the tactics of boom and zoom. Don't dogfight with this deck, use it to dive down on an opponent then climb back to altitude.



There are a few planes that use this deck, and really most players avoid these planes because they do not perform sexy turns and sideslips, but speed is the key here, and used with a fast climber this deck can cause issues for those more maneuverable birds. The offerings for this deck are the ...

Campaign Thoughts I - The Wright Flight have been talking for some time about doing a campaign, allowing players to develop a pilot persona that would carry over from gaming session to gaming session. One of the members suggested using the American 94th Aero and picking a German Jasta as their counterparts. If we do a campaign based on the 94th Aero, some factors to be considered before even delving into how would we track kills, earn Ace skills, set up scenarios ...