14th February 2012 -> Friendly match against 5./JG11

*!*

Today we flew 5 friendly dogfight sorties against 5./JG11 squadron,it was a very nice evening hanging out with them as well us our great pilots,thanks Drew,Magpie,Daerdor & Sully for defending the honor of our gruppe.

So there is a short report on what happened:

-All 5 were flown like this: bf109g2s of II./JG77 against La5s of 5./JG11.

Flight 1,2 and 3: we won all 3 with all of our pilots claiming at least 1 enemy aircraft shot down.

Flight 4: we lost due to few mistakes made by the pairs,JG11 flew that one well.

Flight 5: Us 3 (Deardor,Sully & Jack) flown against 4 of them and we managed to win it without losing a single machine...

----> Great teamwork and morale.We have still a lot of things to learn and practice.

----> This performance shows how hard we worked and we got better both as a team and as individual.

I am proud of you gents *!*

Flieger Daerdor's Diary, 14 feb.1943

Our Kameraden of 5./JG11 had been given an important task by OKL: they needed to test the combat capabilities of some recently captured La-5's. From what I heard the Ruski's had just left them on the outskirts of the Ostfront! HA! I guess only a red commi would understand the logic of that ...

Now the part where our Geschwader comes in! OKL wanted us to fly against these La-5's and report our findings! Finally some real practice! At the Front these planes are manned by Ruski's which are no match for us, but now the La-5's are flown by Luftwaffe politen, that's a whole different league!

For the start of the flight, the first Rotte in our Schwarm was led by the Gruppenkommandeur with Magpie guarding his tail. The second Rotte consisted of myself and Drew. Later on Herr Sully joined in to strengthen our Schwarm.

There was however one thing on which I hadn't counted ... I had terrible Kopfschmerzen from the evening before ... we had been drinking large pints of beer with the 5./JG11 until the early morning ...
So, with a head like a brick and a hazy sight I stumbled into my cockpit. Something didn't feel right, the cockpit of my sweet Gustav felt different but I couldn't point out what it was.
The Gruppenkommandeur was already barking orders through the radio so I stopped wondering and hastily took off.

The Kommandeur instructed us with some very useful tactics: one Rotte would fly at a lower altitude and draw attention of the enemy flight while the second Rotte would fly at a higher altitude, slightly behind. As soon as the first Rotte initiated combat, the second Rotte would dive in and bag the hun!
These tactics worked extremely well, in many occasions the enemy had no idea what happened when the second Rotte just popped up out of nowhere. Especially the Kommandeur racked up an impressive amount of downed planes!

During one of those encounters I was trying to let my 20 mm cannon have a taste of an La5's rudder when I suddenly realized what had been bothering me during take-off ... I was not in my own plane !!! I was in the Gruppenadjudant's plane!!!
I panicked and broke off the attack. I needed to get this plane back in one piece or the Adjudant would skin me alive ... but just as I was turning back disaster struck ... tracers flew by me and the next thing I knew the left wing came off !!! Scheize! Why didn't they shoot up another plane, why did it have to be this one ?!

I quickly bashed open the canopy and bailed out. Luckily I was relatively close to our Flugplatz so in no time I was back at the hangar.

The only way to get out of this mess without being castrated by the Adjudant will be to ... screw with the flight numbers. I can persuade Helmut the mechanic to change the numbers in the logbook ... so it would seem that Drew took off with the Adjudant's plane ... yes, that will definitely work!

14th February 2012 -> Friendly match against 5./JG11

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