One of my fave memories is of SF2V Rolling Thunder in a Skyhawk with gun damage and a MiG-17 chasing me at NoE all the way back to the fleet shield and having to do my first ever carrier landing in a sim. Not that difficult in SF2 but fun when you’ve never done it before.
4 Likes
I love that kind of stuff too, I so wanted to stick with it all the way to England; it was a real struggle just to keep it upright and claw some altitude.
My plan was to bail right over the coast if fuel held out (no way I could have landed it).
Real life had other plans however, it was late enough as it was so had to settle for half way.
4 Likes
Did you call for air sea rescue? I think that you score 100 if you are at least half way back across the Channel and call for rescue via the F10 menu.
3 Likes
No I forgot! It’s a nice touch that you can do that, I did it in one of my earlier missions on the way home just to try it.
Coincidentally last night I was reading an account of a 352 fighter group pilot who had to bail, and how when he got close to having to jump air sea rescue had him stay on the line and keep talking till the very last second so they could have the most up to date fix on him.
Obviously horrible for the pilots who had to bail, but must have been haunting for the operators to have to be on the line with people about to go in the water.
By late war your odds were better than not you’d get picked up, but at the beginning they were terrible (I can’t remember the exact percentage now but it was bleak, like 15 percent you’d be found?)
3 Likes
If by “at the beginning” you mean 1939/1940 then yeah - the RAF had the high speed launches but organisation still had a way to go.
Of course, most of the cross-channel work during 1940 was being done by the Luftwaffe and they were much better organised, using aircraft (He-59 if memory serves?) as well as impressed civilian ships.
15% sounds right, I recall “one in five” which is in the same ballpark and maybe rounding errors are coming into this… I do recall the RAF lost over 200 airmen in the channel during 1939/1940 (not sure if that includes those rescued by the Germans and taken PoW?)
2 Likes
Mission 10 of the Big Show, we’re in France now so must be nearing the end of the campaign unfortunately!
No long climb outs over the channel here, we were in the thick of it long before I had a chance to say ‘now where is that little fuel pump switch?’ or my other common refrain ‘oh nuts how do you switch tanks again?’
A low level armed recon mission, very similar to the “Epsom” campaign ones.
B-11, our new beach front property
Battles in the distance
Lots of action, we’d see some trucks so get ready to strafe, only to have a bandit call right after.
This was #3 and #4 pulling off after a pass on the trucks
Colleague going down
Swift revenge by someone from the flight
Went on like this for a while, we’d see a ground target but had to be on the lookout for single bandits popping up when it was least convenient.
The aaa was getting pretty intense around our last waypoint, I had just sent the flight to rtb when something impossible to resist rolled right on by
A quick chase and success!
Fun mission, first one so far that I noticed a bit of choppiness with the frames, the others were all smooth (which surprised me with so many planes in the air on missions 1-9. I’m guessing it was all the low level aaa? Nothing terrible, just first time I’ve noticed anything like it on my new build).
12 Likes
Oh my tha’s pretty that is .
4 Likes
Yeah, that is a gorgeous shot.
3 Likes
The spit is very photogenic. Be sure 
1 Like
The Big Show mission 11, Scramble!
My first crack at this mission was a bust (so was my second try, but in a different way). Must have missed a trigger somewhere, as no bandits were to be found anywhere in the sky.
Close shave for our guy at the airfield at mission start, not sure what this was about
A nice trip through the clouds, but no bad guys to be found
First time I ran into anything like this in the campaign, which is a pretty great reflection on Reflected ™ as this came out in 2018! Imagine there were just a few mission breaking things that have needed fixing since then.
After a restart things worked as intended - quick form up over the base, then rushing eastward to Caen as reports of 40+ come in.
This was no joke! A huge dogfight ensued, twisting and turning all over the place.
Just when I’d decide to commit I’d see tracers flying past the cockpit. Several times I turned so hard I almost stalled out; the last tight turn I made right into someone someone else and that was the end of the road.
A few different views of the fight featuring our sudden demise.
Hope it wasn’t a wingman I smashed into but everything happened too fast so I have no idea.
11 Likes
I do wish ED would give these mobile units some cam screening when they set up. - and have it available for modders to use as well.
1 Like
Beautiful shot sir.
“Which sort do you ride then?”
“Who, me? I ride the big fokkers me!”
7 Likes
That cracked me up!!! Now I need to clean up the coffee I spit up 
2 Likes
“So there I was with a f–ker to my right and a f–ker to my left…”
“Sir, do you mean Fokkers?”
“Oh there certainly were Fokkers, but these two were Messerschmitts!”
8 Likes
Buddy took a screenshot of my Tomcat as I was topping off at the recovery tanker. The Tomcat looks enormous next to the S3 and I whish they’d update the 3D model
Tomcat 3-Ship:
The tanker will always find a cloud to fly into
10 Likes
