Was flying IL2 online last night & it is my habit to fly a fighter, 109F typically in any case I got the urge to fly a bomber & try to take out the Russians train depot.
I chose the 111 for no better reason then I think its a cool looking bomber & It packs a big bomb load. I took 1 2500kg & 1 1000kg bomb, its max payload & climbed to 4k which is usually a pretty safe altitude. Most of the Russian planes dont perform well at that altitude so they generally dont go up there. I was pretty pleased with myself having navigated to the target & lined up for the perfect bomb run, not easy with no map updates & in the winter. I made my drop on the depot & had good hits despite the heavy cloud cover but thats not the interesting part of the story. As I started back toward base I got jumped by a yak. My gunners pinged him up pretty good.
What he did next was unexpected.
The bastard RAMMED ME!
The force of impact threw my 111 into a spin.
I was about to bail out when I realized I was able to control the plane somewhat but the impact had severed my elevator cables. I decided to try to make it back to friendly lines & bail over it. I was steadily losing altitude but able to point the plane to the closest friendly line. The server keeps track of if you bail over enemy territory & are captured or if you bail over friendly territory & I wanted my flight to count so I decided to risk it.
As I descended & got into thicker air my engines started to over RPM so I lowered them. In doing so the nose dropped so I applied power & low & behold the nose came up. Playing it with a bit I realized I had very crude pitch control so I tried to make it back to base.
As I got close to the base I dropped the gear but did not get a locked light. Oh well nothing I can do about it.
Touchdown & the gear collapses but I am safely back to base.
As I said I am not much into flying buffs but this was a very rewarding flight. I may just have to do it more often.