Just started playing IL-2 for xb360 yesterday, but have been a flight sim freak for quite some time.
Forgetting for now my glory days of battle formation when Combat Flight Sim 2 allowed me to control my wingmen only by pressing
A, AA, or R...
I had a pretty sweet nose-off with a BF109 (most likely late entry version) in my dirty little hurricane with 12 .30 calibre machine guns. I thought - hell yeah 12 MG would tear the wing off of anything. But the reality is that it almost tears the wings off the hurricane as the yaw takes you left and right and all around your target during sustained fire.
With little training in IL2 and a less than acceptable television for the game (not HD... so basically I shoot at pixels instead of airplanes) I quickly learned that engaging the enemy on my television is impossible in a furball. The reason is because you really have to swing in on the right path so that you obtain a firing angle for 1 or 2 seconds before (if you're trained) peeling off. Well I cant tell which way anything is turning until its too late, so I opted for head-on games of chicken with my 12 MG.
I found this BF109 playing scissors with me and so I dedided my hurricane might be able to out wing him. Luckily for me we matched turns and found each other in a windscreen vs windscreen battle to see who had the thicker glass.
My wingmate was coming in on top of me from behind. We were both talking about this BF109 as I pulled nose first into the 109's sights. He was heading slightly down angle so he had the speed advantage on me. I however, had the sky as backdrop and quickly lined him up.
It looked for a second he was pulling too low and that he was going to shave my cockpit clean off. I tried a quick yank of the elevator and my 12 MG took his undercarraige right off and he flew over my head in a burning fireball. My wingman said "Nice shot!" as we continued the hunt.
No time to look back at the glory, though - the fight was on.
DBQ
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