S3 Series

Strike group consisted of Gums, Mt-Dew, Gundoc & myself.
Objective was to strike the port as the spitfires were busy engaging or maneuvering to intercept the bomb group.

We waited on the runway then left, but snafu got gums as his wingmen were just sitting on the ground. Gums then developed another stuck view issue so we orbited while he landed and re-upped. Gums relaunched and we headed to the target area, Gundoc made it in late and was able to join up with us just as we grabbed altitude for the bomb run.

Our timing was not good. I believe we were about 10 minutes late which put us on radar with their fighters nearby. We grabbed as fast as we could and got into the bombsite as spitfires were shooting us up. even with us jinking in the bombsite the wingmen fell quickly, these bombers are fragile and crumple under the 20mm of the spits. I lost my control surfaces just as the target came up in the bombsite and was unable to do anything to get my bombs near anything... Thinking I had a wingman still I stayed in the plane waiting to be transfered at death but I did not so I died. This is a fault in the system as I could have bailed out at a higher altitude but bailing out negates the auto move to wingman.

Gundoc lost most of his control surfaces and Gums was shot down also. Mt-dew, who usually is the first one to be hit made it back to base. I left to spend some time with my boys so any other info will have to be added by someone else.

Results... we hit several buildings and a couple docks and a static freighter... not as devastating as we had hoped for.
Jabo told us that our course had us popping up right at the spitfire's rally point. Timing was everything and in hindsight I should have pushed the attack sooner rather than gathering forces.

Thanks to Gums for the intel and DTF work, top notch as always.

Horrido!

The timing and the route we took were the deciding factors.

Coming in from the east was bad for tgt lines, so we took a south to north run. However, the RAF was using those bases just north of the tgt port and heading south to grab and then back north to hit the mass gaggle.

Apparently, RAF was launching in waves and we just happened to be spotted by one during our pop-up about 6 or 7 miles from the tgt, but on a st line from an RAF runway. Oh well. A few minutes later would have been better, but getting there early was worse.

Dew, Gums and Doc almost made it out to the east, as that 88 is fast. So we had a long tail chase and only two or three Spits ran us down. We made them work for it.

Herr Gums sends...