FINALLY.
I am a virgin no more! The fight with the Halb II was a lot of fun - we met each other at right angles and outnumbered them five-to-three. I latched onto him quickly and put a long burst through his tail. I know they all hit home because I almost followed up by hitting his tail with my face, we were that close.
I think he was at the low edge of veteran for skill, because he was tricky but I could keep up with him, whereas Ace enemy pilots just eat me alive.
The few extra holes I’d put in the back of his plane on that first pass no doubt helped and although he pulled some nice manoeuvres they were mostly to try and break contact and run for home and he kept trading altitude for speed, so I’d just sit above, let him finish his turn and then go into a shallow dive to catch up and get guns on again.
Eventually I forced him down to the deck and put another long rake through his top wing and he set his plane down, went into a long bouncing roll and then hit a fence and flipped goose over stumps.
If he’d cleared the fence he probably would have rolled onto the end of our runway at Courcelles.
The next day I didn’t have much hope for being credited with the Halberstadt as I had to chase him across the lines into German territory and so had no witnesses, but the Albatros was a cast iron kill. He pancaked on our side of the lines, so I’m going to presume the kill was given to AAA or something.
Those two, the balloon, the DFW and the Roland all felt like completely wateright claims but apparently my victims have to crash land into the Squadron Leader’s watercress sandwiches before I have a chance at credit.