4Q - The "Blood Pig"
Another tale from the Dawn of Flight Sims, and guess which squad was causing trouble again.
This was going to be great: two gunned F/A-26’s attacking A3.
TANGO CIRCUS (aka TC) was piloting the first ship, with DoK as his gunner. Flush Garden was piloting the second, with Cap’n Trips gunning.
They launched from C2 and set course around the Westward mountain and a shallow climb. They wanted to be at about 3000 feet when they came around the mountain and the A’s saw them. All went according to plan - they turned the corner and enterred the Valley of Death at exactly 3000 feet. The could see that the A’s were just about off of radar to the North. They were starting a large raid on B-land. A3 was practically undefended.
“Lets go,” TC said … and started the F/A-26 down. Both ships quickly gathered speed and A3 was coming up fast.
“I’ll take the West ack, you take the East,” TC called over the radio to Flush. Flush responded with a quick “rgr.”
A3 was now in sight, they could make out the dots where the acks were. “All guns forward,” DoK called. TC and Flush were on their bomb runs and it would be up to the gunners to suppress planes taking off until the ack was killed. Trips and DoK jumped to their lower turrets and tracked the A3 take-off spot.
Both ships were now just about at the release point when a Zero appeared at A3. “FIRE,” DoK yelled. Trips and DoK opened up at the edge of their range at the Zeke which had just started to taxi. They saw hits on the plane just as TC and Flush both called “Bombs away” and pulled up into chandelles to avoid the AAA.
In quick succession the kill messages for the two ack-acks and the lone Zeke appeared on the screen. A set of “HAR!”’s errupted on the radio as the F/A-26’s cranked around to land. This was the tricky part. The pilots had to land in direct line about 150 yards behind the take-off spot. They were vulnerable during this stage because they were going too slow to manouever much.TC and Flush dropped flaps and gear and executed break turns to get into the right pattern. TC touched down first and hit the brakes, Flush was down seconds later. As they inched their way up to the “sweet spot” behind the runway, that same Zero appeared again. The gunners openned up first and killed him in seconds.
By now both planes were side-by-side behind the A3 take-off spot. All turrets were aimed forward, plus the pilot’s guns. That made 24 .50 calibre machine guns bore-sighted down the runway.
The A’s were starting to die up at B1, so soon they would be trying to take off. The crews of the F/A-26’s waited impatiently. But not for long. Soon A’s started popping up from the take-off spot. They must have been deciding on a plan inside the field. All guns openned up and the A’s dropped like turds out the back of a galloping horse.
Being A’s, they kept trying to take off. And they kept getting shot down. Usually before getting 100 yards down the runway. A few started trying to turn off the tarmac the instant they got on the field. This got them out from in front of the main guns, but the turrets then followed them and they were soon quickly killed.
The A’s tried taking up a B17 with a tail gunner, but it was no match for the firepower of 2 A26’s. The A’s now started screaming on the radio about what was happening at their base. This just made the folks in the F/A-26’s break out into hysterical laughter. A3 was now in complete turmoil. Planes were dying on the runway almost as fast as they appeared, the few that managed to escape the runway were struggling to stay aloft long enough to get a shot at the two F/A-26’s before the gunners did them in.
The A’s did eventually hit on the idea of taking off from some field other than A3 and attacking the parked bombers from above. But decades of inbreeding caused them to auger in during their firing runs before being able to register a fatal hit. And, of course, it never occured to them to bring bombs.
Ammunition was now running low, and it looked like a good time to try to break for home. So TC and Flush cranked up their engines. As they sped along gathering speed, they noticed that the planes would not get off the ground. The wings had taken so much damage, that they were now useless.
“Damn, wings shot to shit,” TC said.
“Looks like we drive home,” DoK replied.
So the two F/A-26’s reduced throttle and started driving back to C2. It was a long drive, but they had plenty of fuel and many, many scalps to get back to base with. A few A’s tried to follow, but most fell to either the top turret gunners or to their own galactic stupidity.
It took almost 20 minutes, but eventually the two newly christened “Blood Pigs” made it back to base. The four pilots and gunners were all laughing so hard over the devestation and chaos they had caused, they had to log off for half an hour to collect themselves.
Once tanks and FlakPanzers came onto the scene, BloodPigging became far less prevalent. Once in a while you’ll still see one - usually parked on a carrier, waiting for an unsuspecting dweeb in a Zeke to take off.