Volume 38 Number 5
Camels Dominate Red Baron Fight XXXVII
Stephen Wins 12th Career Classic
The thirty-seventh running of the Red Baron Fight saw Stephen (Capt. Bretton Pyle, 14/5) claim the honors, and his fifth confirmed kill along with them, in a tournament that also produced a hard-fought supporting engagement between Rick's Albatros (Uffz. Axel Rathmann, 16/3) and the guns of Ethan's 10-mission Camel pilot.
As is tradition, one flier took the seat of the Red Baron himself: Bob drew the honor this time, going up in the all-red Fokker Dr.I that the role calls for. It was a quiet outing by the usual standard — Bob came through entirely unhurt, but also left the fight without a kill to his name, missing on two long-range attempts: a head-on shot at Ethan's pilot, and a fifty-foot deflection shot on Stephen that needed a six to miss and got exactly that. Bob later jokingly complained that the Germans "weren't able to come together as a team, because my wingman wouldn't fly back to me."
That wingman trouble told. Rick had, by his own account, a fairly ordinary tournament — one long shot landed for five points on Stephen, nothing more — until Ethan's pilot caught him with a critical strut hit that cost him fifty feet of climb rate and four hundred feet of dive, more than enough to explain why, in his own words, "I couldn't keep up with everybody else." He brought the Albatros home safely regardless, closing the tournament at sixteen missions and three kills.
The decisive moment came late, in the engagement between Stephen's Camel and Dory's Albatros. Stephen latched onto her tail and held it for three turns, and rather than take a conservative shot he elected, in his words, "to go for broke and use up my long bursts and just risk a jam" rather than let the position slip away. The gamble paid off: he shot her left wing clean off, ending the fight and, with it, her aircraft's flight. The kill was Pyle's fifth confirmed of his career, and it made him an ace — his record advancing to fourteen missions and five kills. He came through the tournament himself with five hits taken in the left wing and no criticals, still fully flyable.
Stephen Wins 12th Career Classic
The thirty-seventh running of the Red Baron Fight saw Stephen (Capt. Bretton Pyle, 14/5) claim the honors, and his fifth confirmed kill along with them, in a tournament that also produced a hard-fought supporting engagement between Rick's Albatros (Uffz. Axel Rathmann, 16/3) and the guns of Ethan's 10-mission Camel pilot.
As is tradition, one flier took the seat of the Red Baron himself: Bob drew the honor this time, going up in the all-red Fokker Dr.I that the role calls for. It was a quiet outing by the usual standard — Bob came through entirely unhurt, but also left the fight without a kill to his name, missing on two long-range attempts: a head-on shot at Ethan's pilot, and a fifty-foot deflection shot on Stephen that needed a six to miss and got exactly that. Bob later jokingly complained that the Germans "weren't able to come together as a team, because my wingman wouldn't fly back to me."
That wingman trouble told. Rick had, by his own account, a fairly ordinary tournament — one long shot landed for five points on Stephen, nothing more — until Ethan's pilot caught him with a critical strut hit that cost him fifty feet of climb rate and four hundred feet of dive, more than enough to explain why, in his own words, "I couldn't keep up with everybody else." He brought the Albatros home safely regardless, closing the tournament at sixteen missions and three kills.
The decisive moment came late, in the engagement between Stephen's Camel and Dory's Albatros. Stephen latched onto her tail and held it for three turns, and rather than take a conservative shot he elected, in his words, "to go for broke and use up my long bursts and just risk a jam" rather than let the position slip away. The gamble paid off: he shot her left wing clean off, ending the fight and, with it, her aircraft's flight. The kill was Pyle's fifth confirmed of his career, and it made him an ace — his record advancing to fourteen missions and five kills. He came through the tournament himself with five hits taken in the left wing and no criticals, still fully flyable.
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