A proud (offline) moment...

[Pizzicato]

Last night I was playing the scripted IL-2 campaign that came with the Pe-2 add-on (Blinding Sun. Burning Ridge, Flaming Cliffs... something like that ).

Anyway, on the third mission I was tasked to fly a recon mission along a road somewhere in Czechoslovakia. Deep into enemy territory, I found a small convoy of about 7 vehicles and ripped them up in a couple of passes. As I pulled out from the second pass, however, I noticed a couple of German fighters at about 4km and closing. I immediately called for assistance and started making some evasive maneuvers (being jumped in an Il-2 whilst on the deck didn't seem like a good recipe for a successful dogfight).

My wingman quickly succumbed to what I think were two FW-190s, but I took no hits. I could hear my rear-gunner constantly blazing away, though, so I was reasonably sure that I was being engaged. Suddenly, out of the blue, a pair of VVS fighters turned up and dived on the Germans. The guy on my tail broke off and I found myself able to gently climb and turn so that I could actually watch the battle develop and react early to any attacks on me.

A few moments later, one of FW-190s - chased by a Russian fighter - began an hard, gently descending right-hand turn... that was going to put him pretty much straight across my nose at maybe 300m below me. I put my Sturmovik into a gentle dive, opened the throttle and began a right turn in anticipation of a high-angle deflection shot...

I waited for the right moment and then squeezed both triggers. A couple of bright flashes - one on the nose and one on the right-hand wing-root and the FW-190 turned slowly onto its back before slamming into the ground!!!

An aerial kill against an FW-190 in a Sturmovik! Could it get any better?

Why yes. Yes it could...

[Pizzicato]

My VVS friends chased away the second FW-190 and I was once more alone above the road. As I followed it, I found two more convoys. One consisted primarily of motorcycles and I couldn't help but smile as I took out all of them in a single raking pass from their 5 o' clock.

The second convoy appeared to be a bit more heavily armed. Certainly, a lot of fire came up at me on my first pass and I saw some at least 5 or 6 tank-like vehicles.

I decided to push my luck and make a second pass. Stupidly, I made a hard turn to pull my nose back onto the target and lost a lot of speed in the process. This made it fairly easy for me to line up the shot, but also gave my German friends a slow, wallowing target. In the race for the trigger, the Germans won and I took a number of hits...

I slammed the throttle forward and climbed away in an arcing left-hand turn. It was only then that I noticed the 'Elevators Damaged' and 'Rudder Damaged' messages. I moved the controllers and - sure enough - I got no response from either the elevators or the rudders.

Crap.

I then started playing around with the throttle settings and discovered that I could reasonably level out my pitch at a setting of about 75% power. Lower settings and I descended. Higher and I climbed.

I then found that I could use the prop pitch to slightly modify my speed during a descent.

Hmm... after taking the hits, my plan was to ease the stricken Sturmovik back over allied lines at a reasonable height and then bail. Now, however, I was starting to wonder if I dared to try a landing using only throttle and prop pitch...

[Pizzicato]

Arriving back in the vicinity of the airfield, I headed several kilometers to the west, giving myself a good long approach to the runway and plenty of opportunity to change my plan if things looked bad.

Between about 4km and 2km, everything was looking good. My approach speed was high (around 290kph) but I was nicely lined-up in all axes. At the 2km mark, I dropped combat flaps then, as the speed dropped through 250kph, lowered the take-off and landing flaps. I then found myself having to pull back on the throttle to prevent an unwanted zoom-climb. Somehow, I managed to keep on a pretty decent-looking glideslope and, as I crossed the threshold, I eased back on the throttle again in order to gently ease the Il-2 to the ground...

Perfect!

With nary a bounce, I was on the ground and headed straight down the runway... at about 230kph. However, with no rudder (and no tail-wheel, apparently) I had no ability to steer. Thankfully, though, I was almost exactly on the centreline and some gentle use of the brakes brought me to a stop just on the border twixt runways and grass!

I couldn't believe it - NO rudder and NO elevators and I still managed to bring her home!!!

Sorry for the extended tale, but that was just a fantastic experience and it felt like an incredible accomplishment.

[:FI:Falcon]

Should we expect anything less from the mate who brought this in last Sunday?





Good tale, like my wounded one-engine 110 that I nursed back to base. I made it to the field with about three feet of altitude left. I thought that I had done fairly well, until a saw that the RW was at the top of a ten foot rise.

SPLAT!

Thanks Pizz!


F

[Pizzicato]

Should we expect anything less from the mate who brought this in last Sunday?

It seems my publicist is doing a wonderful job.

In truth, I brought home a pristine aircraft. Having landed it delicately on the deck, I retracted the flaps, folded the wings, taxied forward, slotted the chocks...

...just in time to see someone bounce their bird off the ramp, smash into the bridge and wreak foul and brutal violence down upon my hitherto beautiful F-6


Oh, the humanity!!!

[:FI:Murph]

Getting a Sturmovick back with no rudder or elevators beats my return to Midway and landing an SBD without rudder- good flying!

[:FI:Nellip]

Great story Pizzi - I must get back and do some offline missions myself.

All my offline time on PF now is writing and testing missions and whilst that is great fun, you don't get any surprises if you wrote the script for the mission

I have now started a new lot of missions for June 41 using the Lvov map - early Barbarossa campaign. Planes are early Sturmoviks for the bomber boys and I16's for the fighters. I test flew it last night in an I16 and saw 5 of my 7 AI comrades taken out by 8 109's - 5 of the 8 were "Ace" setting whilst my "mates" were all "average" so not a big surprise. Managed to take out a couple of 109's and then took hits to left wing and engine - the left wing lost about 50% of it's covering and the engine was smoking. Managed to head back to base and disengage from the dogfight with no further damage but had a great deal of trouble holding any altitude. Managed to get to within sight of the runway but had to make a left turn with too little altitude, lost lift and fell about 10m into a river. A case of almost made it!

If and when we start the Eastern front grand campaign this will be the opening mission - you have been warned........

[Nightcat]

So did Pizzi disappear on us? I liked his stories

[:FI:Heloego]

That's one of the nice things about the Il-2! It's very tough, forgiving, and responds well to throttle input. Good job!