Campaign Stories: No 48 Squadron, RAF

[Voyager]

6-2-1917: Newly assigned to No 48 Squadron in the RAF at Beauvalt, my first mission was a recon patrol on February 6th, 1917. There was some big push across the lines, and higherups wanted to see how it was going. 10,000ft view too. Ingress over no-man's-land was a smidge north of Bapaume, the south along the enemy side of the front, and turn back just north of the Somme and do a big sweep across the trenches. 

 

Overall, not that eventful, though my head certainly was on a swivel the entire way in, and through. Lot's of things blowing up on the ground. Quite happy not to be in that particular mess. Oddly enough, it was after we got back on our side of the fence that things happened.

 

Started seeing a good bit of flack popping up in the direction we were heading. Didn't really like that, but kept an eye on things there. Spotted a couple of planes, but wasn't sure what they were. Now, my job was to get photos and get home, so I just kept an eye on them and kept my speed up. Unfortunately, one of them decided to come over and investigate. Still wasn't sure what it was, but my gunner decided he didn't like it very much and opened up. As we started  turning, I finally got a good look at it. Some sort of Albatross pursuit plane, painted all black. I figured, anyone who had lasted long enough to paint their plane like that was probably pretty good, so one of us was going down. We got into a big turn fight, but the Bristol really loves to be thrown around, and I think he came up slow, so I was able to get behind him and hose him down until he finally started spiraling down.

 

I knew I'd seen another plane, and didn't know  where or what it was, so after the black plane was definitely not going to be able to chase me, I pointed the nose home and gunned it. Got away clean too, though I did land a bit fast and broke the prop. Ground crew was not happy.

 

Later heard the pilot of the black plane was from Jasta 7 all the way up in the north part of the sector. I have no idea what he was doing so far south along the lines, but that's someone else's problem now.

 

Addendum: For the record, it was Pfaltz D.IIIa but I didn't realize that at the time. 

[Cybermat47]

Hope you do another one of these, that was a good read!

[Voyager]

2 hours ago, Cybermat47 said:

Hope you do another one of these, that was a good read!

That's the plan. Now that I've got everything set up so I've got a comfortable VR rig getting 60fps+ that never hangs, I'm going to be doing a full dynamic campaign of these.