Extremely hard recon mission this time. Three newbie Aviatiks from FFA 33 departed Menen (or Menin) airfield in North Flanders´dawn, June 10th. Skies were cloudy, with rain menacing...



It was an apparently easy mission, when, after 12 minutes over No Man's Land taking the valuable photos of British positions, 2 DH2 scouts climbed ,slowly towards us, it was then when Aviatiks main drawback was painfully apparent. "What?", you may ask, well, simply put, it CAN´T defend itself from attackers coming from strict 6 or 5 o´clock, from under the tail, a single Lewis can make an Aviatik impossible to handle after some hits. The observer is in front of the pilot but can´t look over the wings, to sum up, I was a sitting duck, I was dead ....

Soon after, tracers were all around me, my engime got some hits, my petrol tank was praying for mercy, my pilot was shocked, my observer injured,...my screen full of blood spots,...


Pilot the plane or shoot? F6 or F10? For me it was, in a 5 seconds reaction,...shoot them down!! So I spent the majority of my Parabellum ammunition trying to stop those DH2s,...and eventually, miraculously,..the lead DH2, caught fire and spiralled, crazily towards mother Earth.

I managed to dive, desperately, towards the nearest airfield, whichever it was, and,....after some very scary , radical manouevers, landed the Aviatik beautifully, with my pilot bleeding almost to death,...but...ALIVE.

Once on ground, on my way to hospital, sharing the stifling space of the truck, in another stretcher with my observer, we realized that we may have downed that damned DH2 after all...



7 days in hospital and 2 more after recovery with observers NOT available in the squadron,...all in all, 10 days without flying,...SIGH...

We had our claim confirmed after all,...it was nice to know our effort wasn´t fruitless, it was a British ace!!!





And, after SO MUCH suffering,...a gauntlet,...Thanks,....I should say...




See you on the skies on the 20th of June,....(:( )



Last edited by ArisFuser; 06/10/14 08:45 PM.