Battle of the Duds
Issued to the troops in the last months of the war the Fokker EV looked full of promise and was enthusiastically received by the hard pressed German pilots. Lt Emil Rolff scored a kill in one on August 17th but was killed three days later when his wing failed in flight. Other accidents followed, and after shoddy workmanship was discovered, the planes were taken out of service while the wings were rebuilt. Coming back into service a couple of weeks before the Armistice they were re-designated Fokker D.VIII but did not score any further kills during the conflict.
Like the Hanriiot HD1, the Nieuport 28 was a plane the French did not want. Having no planes of their own, the Americans bought many of them pending the availability of better ones. Although fast and manoeuvrable, the upper wing was sometimes prone to shed fabric and the engines were not particularly reliable and threw oil all over the pilots. They were later replaced by the Spad, but some pilots preferred them for their dogfighting abilities. Once their problems were fixed they were quite a good fighter.
In this scenario, our "dud" planes are fighting over the trenches. Explosion cards count for half damage and we are using Wayne Starick bases for all planes. Windy Jack is flying the O.Neill N28 and Baxter the Rickenbacker. On the dark side we have Wayne flying the Osterkamp model and Mark flying the Lowenhardt one. It is expected that all planes will attack at once and continue to be aggressive until all enemy planes are downed. Will the tired but expert Germans triumph or will the fresh and confident Americans prevail?
Rickenbacker and Lowenhardt exchange pleasantries.
Showing off his lightning fast reflexes, Rickenbacker then fastens onto the tail of Osterkamp.
Osterkamp is down! One for the Americans.
Rickenbacker has taken damage though and continues to do so.
Alas poor Eddie ......
The battle continues with O'Neill gradually getting the better of Lowenhardt.
Until....
O'Neill returns home alone. The battle was hard fought and these few pictures do not cover all the action that took place. The F deck is a pretty good dogfighting deck and the planes were well matched. A good fight.
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Always good to see match ups with late War aircraft that were not that popular.
Originally Posted by Naharaht
Nice furball, guys!
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