homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Wings: Over Flanders Fields The "DiD Campaign Revival" - Intro, Rules, Reports & Records Chart

PILOTENBUCH
Offzstv. Bernhard Harms, Kasta 18, Pronville, 20. Juni 1916

At 07:20 h I took off to lead a flight of three Roland C.II and 2 Aviatik to reconnoitre enemy
positions east-southeast of Arras. I led them the lake "Les Anciennes Tourbiéres" southeast of
Arleux, which we just call "Lake Teardrop". This was the first time I had to lead a flight of
5 aircraft, and so I picked this great landmark, to climb to 2500 meters here, before we went
on towards the front lines.

Flying west, we just passed our next landmark, the "Marais de Saudemont", when we sighted Flak
puffs south of the lake. Five Nieuport 11 appeared, and they were higher up, and they had already
seen us. I turned round and waved to the others to form a defensive circle.
And it worked! After only three or four minutes, two of the nimble French fighters went down,
badly smoking! The others prefered to drive off, but we had received hits on our aircraft, and
so I broke the tour off.

Unfortunately, Messmer and Landmann collided, while both were approaching the field low.
Their Aviatiks crashed right outside Pronville and caught fire. Messmer, Landmann and observer
Bauer died in the accident; the other observer - Heinemann - survived badly injured, and was
brought to the hospital at Cambrai. My other Rolands - Foerster/Klein and Lubau/Schmidt - each
had a victory today. But we didn't feel like celebrating that after the terrible incident.



JFM, thanks again for the Roland skin! And RAF_Louvert, thanks a lot for the Flanders map!
Although flying LEVEL B, I used it for this last sortie, to fly after only your map, which was
on a second monitor. And it worked won'fully pretty!