Well, I decided to give it a go today with mission 6.

June 22, 1916 (mission 6)



I led my flight of 6 BE2.C's to the front lines fine then I spotted 7 black dots coming right at us near the front. I high-tailed it back over our lines and they pursued and quickly made ground. I climbed a bit to keep our noses up, and to put our observers in a good position to fire. My observer Peirce lit one of those Einies up and I watched him smoke and fall to the ground.



With bullets whizzing by my head I dropped out of formation with 2 Einies following me down. I swerved and throttled up and down and I realized I was losing fuel. Then my prop went dead. Despite the challenges, I was able to lose them both before landing in a field slightly wounded near one of our observation balloons. I caught a truck back to Chocques and learned that Evans and his observer were lost but it wasn't a bad show considering we had 7 Einies on our tails.



I put a claim in when we got back and I found out that my transfer to RNAS-1 came through and tomorrow I will fly up to Furnes to take the seat in my new Nieuport 11 'Bebe' scout. Finally, a chance to fire a gun and fly at faster than 75 MPH.

~ Sergeant Abel Wainright, RFC 10

Alive and wounded is better than 6 feet under Aris...nice photo. Thanks MFair and Rick for the encouragement...I was about to lose it if I had to fly that big clunker again.