Herlin le Sec, No 22 RFC

[Voyager]

Wanted to do a mission log thing of the PWCG campaign I've just started. "Bob" is the name of the AI gunner. Not sure if this is the right forum for that, or if it goes in general, but here goes:

 

August 1, 1917

 

Bob and I had our first combat mission today. Something’s going on at the front near Lens. Brass needed someone to get them pictures of what are boys were doing, and we got the tap.

The mission was straight forward enough. Get up to around 1700 ft, link up with some Spads from Esc 3, and start taking pictures of the front from Noeux-les-Mines to Lens, head a bit south along the front to see what Jerry was up to, then get home with the photos.

 

Can’t say I’m a fan of our aerodrome. It’s boxed in by trees and building on all sides, and trucks seem to be just everywhere, but we made it up without hitting anything, or anyone so, that was nice. The weather was gusty too, so it was a fight all the way in and all the way out.

 

Our escort flight went in high and fast, ahead of us. I kind of lost track of where they went, but we could see planes fighting it out over no man’s land. Our job was to get photos, so we just kept it straight and fast, to get in/get out as quick as we could. I think I even saw an observation balloon going down in flames too. Not sure who’s side it was.

 

We got a good lot of photos, of our troops, and the state of the front. Looked like Jerry had his own offensive going too.

 

When we turned around for home, I got one hell of a shock, to see an Albatross just casually lining up behind us. I hadn’t seen it, and Bob had been so focused on the photos he hadn’t been paying attention either. I broke hard into him and was pretty quickly on his tail. I’m not sure he was a very good pilot. I think he must have just lost sight of us and decided to keep going, because after the first turn, he just leveled out and let us come up on him. Wasn’t until I game him a good rake that he woke back up, but by that point it was to late. A couple more turns and he went in streaming steam.

 

In all that, I’d managed to get all turned around. We were over a city, and I was thinking we must have gotten south and been Arras, but there wasn’t the river running through it, and I couldn’t figure out where we were. Took me forever to realize, I’d been going east. We were on the wrong side of the front. This wasn’t Arras, we were back over Lens! I pointed our crate west (finally) and started heading for home.

 

Started hearing some things whizzing past us. Took me a moment to realize it was a machine gunner on the ground trying to knock us down. Broke off north to put some distance between us. Wasn’t our job to get tangled up in that, we were supposed to drop these off back and home. No man’s land is huge when all you want to do is get to the other side of it.

 

Unfortunately this time, I go so focused on flying that I was startled when Bob opened up on something. Another Albatross was coming up on us. This guy knew his stuff. Fortunately for us, the Biff’s a good plane in a fight, so we were able to turn the tables, and get some good shots on him. We must have hit something important because his engine quit, and he had to make a deadstick landing. We didn’t have time to follow up on it, because Bob’d seen another plane coming in, so we turned to meet that one. That was a messy fight. We got some good hit in again, but I kept losing sight of him in the scrum, until finally one point I turned back to see a wing flying at me. I yanked hard to avoid smacking into it, but didn’t see what happened to the rest of the plane. I assumed he crashed somewhere, so I pointed the nose home and gunned it. I later heard the pilot survived. No idea how, but that’s what I heard. Don’t grudge him for that either. Hope I don’t need to cross paths with him again.

 

The rest of the flight home was pretty uneventful. Got it home and back down in one piece, though while we were getting it to the hanger, managed to catch a bump or a gust and broke off part of the wing. Not really an auspicious end for the flight, to be honest. But we made it home in one piece and got the job done, so I’ll take what I can get.

 

Harry Voyager