S3 Series

4th had 16 pilots for this frame and as kelly has said, I had 6 in P-38s for Homeland defence.
The remaining 10 were in P-51D for escort.
Launched the entire group at T+0 to sweep the area for early intruders. After we circled F 51 for a couple
of circuits, GCI called the Ponies to rtb and reconfigure for the long escort duty.
As the buffs were about mid-channel, we launched the P-51s to meet them. Kelly was on GCI at this
time and vectored us to a successful RV at L-19 while the buffs orbited at altitude to meet their
schedule. Once in position we kept close watch on the BG and began to hear radio calls of bandits
heading towards city 78. As we approached C78, the cat and mouse game began and kept up all the way to
Target area and on egress from 92,91 and north to 74, then west for home. As we passed 74 on the way home
the buffs decided to reverse and make a second run to close it. After they hit 74 again the BG turned for home.
The 4th was gettin low on fuel by now and I called for RTB as the 352nd started to show up for egress escort.
Many thanks to the Bluenoses for showing up when they did as we were able to make it back to France and
find friendly airfields to land at. We all recovered and stood down. Lost one early on to a 109 and maybe
one on the way home to a disco(possibly damaged). We managed to kill a couple of attackers enroute.
<S> -fooo for COing this frame and to jabo and crew for another great series.

Well done 4th!

PAPPY:
You and your boys did a great job protecting our bomber group. I saw in the buffer that we lost Wesley to enemy fire, but he could have made it home after being attacked. However, he discoed and the kill was recorded.

Thanks, again!

Darryl <S>

Two things:

1) our squad leaders have all been yapping about us needing significant improvement in our gunnery skills.
2) that bomb group was spread out everywhere and the escorts had to take on the role of being sheep dogs to encourage the stray bombers to get back into the flock.

I feel that these two factors contributed significantly to one of our bombers being killed due to friendly fire. Being the multi task kind of pilots that we are, we decided that the most efficient way to tackle items 1 & 2 would be to do them both at the same time. Find a bomber out on the fringes, use him as a gunnery target to herd him back into the flock. All in all it was a very successful night for the escorts yes?

For what it's worth, I wound up putting a few rounds into squad mate jedijc. Really, I was trying my best to hit Wesley, but missed and wound up hitting jedi instead. How much do you want to bet our CO will be assigning 2 days of offline gunnery practice before I'm allowed to participate in any more sheep dog games?

Hey DAZED:
Not sure what you're talking about exactly, but I had a good conversation with OMEGA tonight about his concerns in that last frame. I explained a few things to him and I hope you will gain a little insight into what happened in the last frame of the series.

1. We notified FOOO and PAPPY that our RP would be near C28 at T+72.
2. We delayed our take-off for 10-minutes, giving us an additional 10-minutes to climb to our target altitude of 27K feet before reaching the RP.
3. As we approached WP#1 (LAF19), we gauged our time noting that we still had about 10-minutes to burn before starting our run to the RP.
4. Once we arrived at LAF19, we were informed that our fighter escorts had arrived at WP#1, instead of at the RP near C28. So, what you found was a bomber group that was organizing and preparing to make the run to RP. We were NOT totally formed up for several good reasons. We had 2 discos and one late arrival who were playing catch up.
5. I notified FOOO that, for some unknown reason, our fighter escorts were forming up on us at LAF19 instead of the RP.
6. The red flag went up in my mind wondering whether the fighter escorts would be unnecessarily burning fuel, due to the fact of the early rendezvous at LAF19. Of course, I knew that the fighter escorts know their fuel/aircraft capabilities far better than I did, so I didn't worry about it. Although the questions from the escorts about what we, the bombers were doing orbiting around LAF19 did make me feel a bit irritated seeing that it wasn't the RP and we still had another 20-minutes before we were due to arrive at the designated RP.
7. We were under the impression that FOOO was going to hold all the fighters over our ground assets as long as possible, hence the late RP time. It was a good plan because I think a large number of enemy a/c were downed before we even arrived on radar. Well-done to all of our fighters!
8. Once we started to ingress to the RP and the first target, we did have a few fellas that were wide, but we were working with them to get the bomber box tightened. We had a couple of newbies with us and it took a little time for them to get in position, but by the time we were approaching the first target everyone except one bomber was in place.
9. For the next 30-minutes, our bombers would be tasked with destroying five large airfields, all of which, were successfully wiped out.
10. What I hope our fellow Allied friends will understand is that in real life, there was a pilot, co-pilot, navigator, bombardier, and six gunnery positions on the B24. There were 11 men doing different jobs on the real aircraft. There is only one person running all 11 positions, if you will, on the B24 in Warbirds. When you leave the pilot seat to jump to a gunner position or bombardier position, no one is flying the plane anymore, until you return to that seat. So, when the bombers spread out on a field to drop on their assigned targets, they will be going in several different headings until they regroup for the next target. It ain't easy to do all that and keep that bomber box as tight as we'd like it to be.



11. The bottom line: the bombers closed 5 fields on a mission that took 3 hours from start to finish.
12. The loss of Wesley was NOT due to enemy fire. He discoed after he had been shot up a little bit. Had he not discoed, he would have returned to his base without an issue. As a side note, Wesley has a problem getting his Team Speak to work, so we have to communicate with him using the buffer. Hopefully, we can find someone who can get that issue resolved.

DAZED, you weren't the ones getting the bombers formed up, the bomber group leaders were doing that. It wasn't perfect, but it looked pretty good to me, considering all the points above.

We are most appreciative of those who are assigned to protect us to and from the targets. Your job is vital to the success or failure of our jobs. We worked very well together in this last series.

Thanks <S>

Oops, missed that statement. I just checked my notes, and I see that JEDIC was credited with killing WESLEY. Was this because of his attempt to "herd" WESLEY? If so, please do NOT ever do that to one of my bomber jocks again.

Darryl - lighten up bud!

No, Wesley was not hit in a herding attempt. In fact, Wesley was tightly nestled in with the main group. We obviously would never intentionally fire on a friendly target for any reason at all. Wesley most likely caught a few rounds in our attempt to clear a bandit off of him (which we successfully did). Again, did you really think the 4th would intentionally fire on a friendly bomber? Bombr, Pappyb, Kelly, Jedijc, Robert Nookyb -heck, any of the seniors and especially the command personnel would most likely not wait until the end of a frame to dismiss any pilot that intentionally fired upon a friendly aircraft. Just to be clear, nobody fired upon any friendly aircraft intentionally. We do not intentionally fire upon any friendly aircraft in the S3 for any reason. Hope I've made that point clear.

As for the tightness of the formation, we had 1 trailing long most (if not all the way), 2 stuck so far off to the sides that we had considerable TS conversation about whether or not we could protect the loose guys and still provide adequate coverage for the main group (which was indeed tight for the majority of the run -S's).

I apologize to you for trying to inject a small bit of humor into my previous post. Will never happen again regarding any response I may post in direct reply to you or your group.


.dotfile -dazed disconnects from further DR related conversations or requests.

FOOO was a bit confused to get your time hacks during the frame as opposed to the pre-plan planning FOOO relayed your RP time and location to the 4th FG when you provided it to me at the beginning of the frame. The 4th successfully launched a fighter sweep prior to their escort mission... FOOO requested the 4th do the best they can to planning their 1st sortie, rtb and launch time for RV. FOOO thinks the effort put forth by 4th and the BG was extremely successful. Let's stop the bickering!

Salute!

Thank you, Foooo.

We need to have some lites fly with us and see what it takes to have a super formation. Just going thru all the tgt assignments is a bear, no matter who was supposed to show up with all the maps and tgt pics.

We buff pukes have our own problems, for sure, and it is not unusual to have a few laggers, especially after a turn or two or three.

The last three frames I flew with DR had really nice form, especially when it counted. That's when the lite escort is BZ chasing off the bandits.

The thing I really admire is the lite escort that acts like the 'Red Tails", and doesn't chase bandits down a thousand feet below our altitude.

Gums chimes in.....

Haha, YOU lighten up! I was only responding to what you said about herding straying bombers by shooting at them. I am sure that Jedic didn't mean to get credit for killing Wesley. As I said, Wesley died only because he discoed on egress after being hit. I know that friendly fire kills. Had a squaddie that killed almost the whole squad once before we even took off in a plane that didn't require opening doors. Haha

Please chalk my response up to being a little sensitive these days when it comes to my squad. Been a little rough on us, lately. I do apologize if you thought I was explaining too much about how the bomber group did/does things on our missions. We'll try harder to get those stragglers tucked in better to make your job easier. Also, will try to remember to ask probing questions before drawing any conclusions. How about using the .dotfile - dazed reconnects with DR again file, please?

Thanks again for you and all of you fighter jocks who keep the slow movers moving! <S>