OTT CYM - Mission 1 - Back To Front - July 5th 1916 by a very late Vagabond
After nearly an hour in the air I could see the cliffs of France which cheered me up no end I can tell you, I didn’t like these long open sea crossings, the planes we were flying were new to us and reliability was an unknown factor in those days. A forced landing on to Mother Earth was bad enough but ditching in the realms of Father Neptune was infinitely worse.
I was leading our section of C Flight back to France, and coming in quite low as ordered. There were three of us in the section, myself, Lt John Vagabond leading Liam O’Flynn and Bouncer Berry back into the fray, the rest of the flight was following a little way behind but I’d not seen them since we took off.
You may not remember Flynn and Berry but we joined the Squadron together on the same day, not an auspicious one I’m the first to admit. On landing Berry wrote off his plane, I ended up at the wrong end of the field and O’Flynn almost lost his plane and probably his life when a violent manoeuvre helped gravity shut down the fuel to his engine and only a bit of inspired flying or as he likes to say “the luck of the Irish” helped out and he made it down safely.
You may be wondering why our flight is so late joining the Squadron, well to cut a long story short we had been in quarantine – no not confined in choky, really quarantine. We’d had our 2 weeks of leave and caroused through all the bars in London, then taken up our post somewhere in the wilds of Norfolk, training new boobs to fly, or at least not crash every time they went up, but then some strange virus hit the station and no one knew what to do with it. The best scientific bods said to wash your hands, how that cures a virus I’ve no idea but then some bright spark decided if he washed his stomach, that would wash out the bugs. He spent 3 days in the hospital and farted bubbles every now and then but he didn’t get the virus. I’m still not sure what that means.
Anyway we are back to France, well very nearly.
The best part of it is that we are still attached the RNAS and have been tasked with ferrying some of the new scout planes they have bought from the French. Nieuport 11’s and they are a strikingly beautiful plane compared to our strange Pusher types, the French call them Bebe, I’m not sure if that’s because they are small, like a child or Bebe because they are like a beautiful woman, I prefer the latter although Berry thinks it’s the former but I think he should get out more.
I had been very lucky and was flying a very nicely painted blue Bebe and even better it’s designation was V, this must be my plane, even though it was destined to go to some chap called Savory but he could have it later.
As we were getting close to the coast I saw some black specks over to our left, for a moment I was undecided on the best course of action, we were making a delivery trip, we were unfamiliar with the Bebe and so the sensible course of action would be to avoid them, especially as there appeared to be four enemy and only three of us. Our destination was to the south west and so away from them, so many points in favour of avoiding a fight.
What the hell, I didn’t join the RFC to be sensible and so I waggled my wings, pointed to my left. We all turned towards trouble.
Trouble turned towards us.
This view gave me some encouragement, they had at least one inexperienced pilot, he continued to turn and nearly flew into the plane that looked like the leader. Maybe this would turn out better than I expected.
The die was cast as they say and we flew straight at each other. We knew that honour forbade turning away from your enemy but I was hoping the enemy took a more pragmatic view.
Opening up at quite long range, my lack of recent combat experience showed as I completely missed the cameo Fokker I was facing, luckily he was no better and missed me but I could see that Berry in the camouflaged Nieuport was taking a lot of damage from his opponent a rather nattily painted blue striped Fokker EIII.
The range closed and damage became greater, O’Flynn’s plane burst into flames as did the grey Fokker he faced. I had passed my opponent and was preparing to do an Immelmann turn and follow him through.
It’s a shame, he was as canny as I was, and Immeled as well, we were both firing like blazers at close range until his gun obviously jammed and his fire ceased, he must have hit an oil line on my plane or maybe something else because plumes of black smoke started to broil from the engine area and my first thought was, NOT THE SEA. Why didn't my parents teach me to swim was the only thought flashing through my mind.
Over my shoulder I was peripherally aware that the CDL Fokker was on Berry’s tail and blowing lumps off his plane. I believe these Nieuport's are considered to be quite fragile aircraft but we had yet to find out how fragile.
However as you can see I had my hands too full to worry about Berry's plane as I was trying to avoid the cameo Fokker coming straight at me just as much as I was trying to blow him out of the sky, a tricky situation.
Nothing to do with the story but this shows the fire damage caused at the start of the next turn.
The CDL Fokker over on the left fired a long burst into Berry and Berry’s plane starts a long glide seawards. By sheer good luck I was in position to pour fire into the EIII in front of me although I’d no idea where he had come from. O Flynn was trying to put out the fire on his plane by slipping left and right and nearly flew into the German plane in front of him.
It was total chaos and not going at all well for us.
Continuing his fire eliminating moves, O’Flynn jinked left, straight in front of the CDL Fokker who had just shot down Berry, he was either very good or very lucky but I saw O’Flynn’s plane erupt in a ball of flame. Exploding in the air, the only saving grace was that it had happened over the cliffs of France and he might not drown. Of course going down in a ball of flame he might have welcomed the embrace of the sea.
The dog fight had spread the planes over quite a large area and I can see that both my friends and fellow flight members are shot down and I am free from the attentions of my four opponents and so I decide to run. This left a pretty empty feeling in the pit of my stomach but there was no use throwing my life away on a lost cause, that sort of gallantry is only for the story books.
The drama was not over though, as the pilot of the grey EIII was still on fire and in his efforts to put this out he was flying directly into the path of the cameo Fokker.
Which way is he going to go? You can almost see the speech bubble over the pilot of the cameo Fokker. The one with the big exclamation mark at the end of it.
Pheew it’s flown in front, you can see the sigh of relief writ large even from here.
Until he turns in front of the cameo Fokker and they collide. The collision causes so much damage to the grey Fokker that it falls from the air into the sea, the cameo one takes a lot of damage ignore the special damage.
As that was the last move I seem to have forgotten to transfer the damage tokens to the plane boards. Dohh.
A last shot of me as I escaped from the debacle of the delivery trip.
The rest of C flight was not far behind and in other circumstances might have arrived in time to continue the fight but having seen 2 planes go down and me do a runner they decided it was better to deliver the 3 planes they had been ordered to, rather than risk loosing them as well.
We were unlucky, we seem to have come upon a crack flight of German pilots before we were fully proficient flying the Bebe’s and as the Bebe is supposed to outclass the Fokker EIII I’m going to have some explaining to do.
Maybe we will prove the worth of the Bebe next time.
Or maybe not
Reply With Quote
for his victories to date. 
Originally Posted by Stumptonian
Bookmarks