MPGames RT
 Category 23,  Topic 5
 Message 38        Thu Jan 20, 1994
 T.NAUGHTON [SCAVENGER]       at 21:10 EST

"LUFTWAFFE'S HINDMOST FLIGHT LEADER FAILS SPEED TYPING EXAMS"
           Read all about it...... FL Hindmost ez von kaputten heiny...

Flight was uneventful up and into patrol are. We got on station flying the
 M,N,O beepers looking North. P-51's were sighted in sector seven noth of the
 lake on two occasions but were avoided did come down in vis.

We were seperated into individual aircraft and reassigned to fly the column
 lines south at 1,7,  2,7, 3,7, 4,7 and 5,7 This pue us at varying locations N
 and South depending on where we were at the turn and 48 miles apart as a
 flight.

We got the intercept order and due to the distance between aircraft we were
 only able to reform as Rottes. Crash and I got into the fight and I got fire
 on one P-51 and 1 B-17.  The B-17 was under fire from a FW190 and exploded.
 There were more P-51's than I had ever seen and only a very few German at
that
 moment. I drew a healthy bead, winced as my typebroken fingers squeezed the
 trigger and promptly ran out of fuel.

The problems we had with the patrol were covered in e-mail. As FL I had major
 communication and coordination problems. About 40 min. into the flight I went
 into radio shock (a unusual form of shell shock and combat fatigue) from
 which I did not recover until I reached the enemy.

I spent most of my time head down in the cockpit trying to keep up with the
 radio and wiping half typed messages off the message line as others who could
 type and/or think a bit faster than me answered for me or added thier inquiry
 to the inquirys I was already working on therby doubling the amount of
replies
 I was required to address or radioed orders to my flight that I was typing
too
 slow to countermand. (almost undetectable grin)

I failed typing 1 miserably and at one point with Antoine de Saint-Exupery's
 death in remembrance was hoping a P-51 would slide up unseen and put me out
of
 my misery as I headed to the East, out of my patrol area, on auto-pilot with
 my broken and wounded fingers still trying to defend the Reich. The best
 review of that is in my films which cover the entire patrol minus about 1
min.

I am working on some system where I can get enemy aircraft and the sector
 information as well as locations of all friendlys to appear in the typing
 buffer instead of the radar or outside as a dot.  If I am going to view this
 war in the typing buffer I should at least see the whole thing there.

I will be attending tde AWTA for the next six weeks and that should improve my
 radio comm skills. Thats the Air Waythir Typing Acadamy.

Go back to the Scavenger index