Inspired by this- https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/right-jumped-out-of-his-crippled-b-24-shot-down-a-zero-with-his-m1911-whilst-in-his-parachute.html

So your Legendary Ace Pilot gets his fighter shot out from under him in a Dogfight (It was five to one, he got four.) and refusing to give up opens fire with his hand Phaser at the enemy fighter from his rescue bubble. What are the odds of him doing any damage? 0? Three ones in a row on a d6? Five ones?

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Saturday, October 17, 2015 - 05:44 pm: Edit

Shawn Hantke:

No matter how legendary, this would be impossible. Hand phasers do not come with targeting assists to enable a merely mortal (however legendary) eye to track a target moving at multiples of the speed of light. The condition is completely outside of the realm of the game universe. Also, the fighters in SFB are nowhere near as fragile as a Japanese Zero fighter, wherein a lucky hit would penetrate the cockpit and kill the pilot, or possibly spark a fatal fire in the non-self-sealing fuel tanks the Zero used (why they flame so magnificently in the gun camera footage from World War II).

The most you can propose is that it might (might) be possible IN AN ATMOSPHERE where even the fastest shuttle or fighter or bomber, or even ship, is held to a Speed of 1. But in a dogfight in space, it is just not going to happen.

Legendary pilots are legendary because of their skill, not obscene luck (admittedly, the most incompetent pilot in the world getting off a lucky shot causing such an incident would become a "legend," but he would not otherwise be a legendary pilot).

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Saturday, October 17, 2015 - 07:34 pm: Edit

I regret to say that I suspect the story is BS anyway. It's not impossible in the sense that it would violate the laws of physics. But if you actually read the article Shawn linked to, you will find some problems. For one thing, the article contains several hedges like

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Quote:

While there is no direct evidence that Lt. Owen Baggett did in fact take down a Japanese fighter plane with a handgun, many believe it to be true.

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By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Saturday, October 17, 2015 - 08:20 pm: Edit

In the SFU is there some equivalent to a modern Stinger Missile? Could one be smuggled into a SFU cockpit?

By Mark Steven Hoyle (Markshoyle) on Saturday, October 17, 2015 - 09:51 pm: Edit

By the description of Legendary Officers,
my imagination would go more, to the pilot carrying a miniature short range teleporter.
When an enemy fighter came close enough, he would teleport the pilot out and himself in.
That would be much more heroic and believable.

By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Sunday, October 18, 2015 - 05:16 am: Edit

If such miniaturized transporters existed in the SFU, why wouldn't they be standard issue to all the various people that would have use of them? Or at least to Prime Teams and similar elite troops?

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Something like a Stinger missile is outside the scope of SFB, but they must exist in the universe. Marines allows shuttles in the air to be fired at at up to 15 hexes range on the ground map, which is much longer than the range for ground vs. ground fire. When Marines was first discussed, there was talk of Shoulder-Launched Antishuttle Weapons (SLAWs) which prompted me to propose they be called "Cole's SLAWs," but no specific name of the weapon is in the rulebook.

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandor) on Sunday, October 18, 2015 - 11:53 am: Edit

Well the rules for a legendary pilot state that he may return in his damaged fighter are in a captured enemy fighter. How this is done is well a legend.

It is simple the enemy pilot picks up the legendary pilots pod. He then some how enters the enemy fighter and takes over.

By Howard Bampton (Bampton) on Sunday, October 18, 2015 - 03:19 pm: Edit

Well, there is that one BSG episode where Starbuck returns in a captured Cylon Raider...

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Sunday, October 18, 2015 - 05:40 pm: Edit

Wait a minute, a leg. Captain can bluff and take over a ship, but a leg. Pilot can't shoot a fighter out of the sky?

?:-)

By Mark Steven Hoyle (Markshoyle) on Sunday, October 18, 2015 - 07:27 pm: Edit

Well, to be fair, the Cylon Fighter had already crashed and the pilot was dead IIRC.

By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Monday, October 19, 2015 - 05:55 am: Edit

Seems like that would fall under the "returns in a captured enemy fighter" outcome that's already on the chart. The legendary ace doesn't have to capture it in the middle of the battle, but instead will steal it while the enemy pilot has gotten out to go to the bathroom or something.

By Dal Downing (Rambler) on Monday, October 19, 2015 - 06:06 am: Edit

There is also a old Baa Baa Black Sheep Episode where Pappy got shot down (By his own wingman iirc) over a Japanese held island and he rebuilds a old Jap Torpedo Bomber with Odos help. (And gets shot down by the same guy again iirc)

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Monday, October 19, 2015 - 06:57 am: Edit

I read someplace about the last "dog fight" over Germany during WW-2. An unarmed Piper observation plane won against a similar Germany plane that had an aft-facing machine gun. The Piper flew along side, and the pilot and observer both took their Colt-45 sidearms and emptied them into the German plane.

And going totally off-topic: I came up with a campaign rule for Star Wars X-Wing miniatures to see if a pilot survives being shot down. Take the Pilot Skill value and subtract it from ten, and roll that many attack dice. If any come up as a Critical Hit, the pilot is dead. If any come up as a non-critical Hit, the pilot is wounded and must sit out one campaign round for each such hit.


Garth L. Getgen

By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Monday, October 19, 2015 - 07:33 am: Edit

"Dogfights" with pistols were actually the first ever dogfights. In the early part of WW1, airplanes were used for reconnaissance, but these recon planes would inevitably cross paths and the pilots would shoot at each other with their pistols. I think a couple of planes were shot down this way, but it was, of course, not easy to do.

Later they started fitting the airplanes with machineguns, but they had to fire at an angle to avoid hitting the propeller. This was very difficult to aim. Then a mechanism to synchronize the machinegun with the propeller was invented, but it was not reliable, so some planes were built with armored propellers to deflect their own bullets, but this was every bit as dodgy as it sounds. Others were built with the machineguns mounted up on top of the high wing to fire over the propeller, but this resulted in unreliable triggers and the pilot could not reach the gun if something went wrong. Eventually they managed to build reliable synchronizers and finally pilots could have what we would recognize as real dogfights.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Monday, October 19, 2015 - 11:28 am: Edit

William T. Wilson:

Not an expert, but from my reading the observation planes at first just waved at each other. Then someone "broke the rules" (I do not remember which side that individual was on) and shot at the other side and things started escalating.

The "armored propellor" appeared first and was an idea developed by an Entente pilot. One of the planes with this mod went down behind German lines and was captured by the Germans before the pilot could destroy it. The Germans directed that the same system be used, but someone on their side thought it stupid (because of the "ricochet into the engine" problem) and developed the interrupter system.

Legendary Ace in the Real World.

A German pilot imprisoned in England managed to escape and make his way to an R.A.F. facility where he posed as a Polish pilot and talked his way into the cockpit of a Spitfire (maybe it was a Hurricane, but my memory says Spitfire). He was moments away from getting the engine started and taxiing out when he found himself looking down the barrel of a pistol. The only reason he did not make it literally came down to his unfamiliarity with the control panel of a British fighter.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, October 19, 2015 - 11:46 am: Edit

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Quote:

The only reason he did not make it literally came down to his unfamiliarity with the control panel of a British fighter.

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By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Monday, October 19, 2015 - 01:24 pm: Edit

The French pilot was Roland Garros, the guy who invented the interrupter gear was Anthony Fokker.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Monday, October 19, 2015 - 01:48 pm: Edit

Alan Trevor:

The only reasons I give any chance of credulity to the story is that the target was a Zero, and the "golden BB" rule applies to those rather heavily. The lack of armor around the cockpit and the lack of self-sealing fuel tanks makes it more possible that a random bullet, even one fired from a M1911 by a guy hanging in a parachute, might hit something important.

Sure, it could happen with almost any aircraft in that period (why it is called the "golden BB" after all). It is just (at that point of the war) far more likely to occur with the Zero fighter (one relatively low velocity bullet hitting something absolutely critical).

By Mark Steven Hoyle (Markshoyle) on Monday, October 19, 2015 - 03:00 pm: Edit

Would have to be a "Golden BB", considering in his book Samauri, the Japanese Ace took a .50 to the back of his head.
Through the blackouts and barely having any eyesight, he returned to his base 1,000 or so miles.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Monday, October 19, 2015 - 04:30 pm: Edit

Mark Steven Hoyle:

Sakai's situation was more a "golden BB" in reverse. He survived a critical .50 caliber hit, had it hit virtually any place else by a millimeter or two, he would have been killed outright.

There are lots of recorded cases where an aircraft took a hit that should have brought it down, but did not. One famous example is a B-17 that survived a collision with a German fighter that took out most of its horizontal stabilizers and left the remains of the tail section connected by a relatively meager piece of metal. The bomber made it back to England and landed (rear landing gear was ahead of the damage).

Collisions between bombers and fighters did occur in the air battles, but were not "common" (although they were more so as the war progressed, mostly due to the increasing inexperience of the newer German pilots who had so little training they were not able to accurately judge their closure rates). The scene in the movie "Memphis Bell" was not necessarily inaccurate, although I could not say if such actually happened on the last mission. [The Memphis Bell's last mission actually included a cameraman aboard the plane to film it, but unlike the 1990s movie, the Memphis Bell's last mission was actually a milk run and nothing happened to the plane or any member of the crew. The camera man did catch a B-17 going down (out of control) during the mission, I remember they were counting the parachutes, but do not remember how many were seen. It is possible that some other bomber on the mission not in view of the Memphis Bell crew suffered such a fate.]

I will note that the Germans did run a few "Wild Boar" missions near the end of the war where fighters did deliberately ram a few bombers.

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Monday, October 19, 2015 - 07:11 pm: Edit

The Zero fighter that was in the old Balboa Park museum in San Diego that burned down in the early 80s had a single .30 cal bullet hole through the back of the cockpit. Zeros were delicate. Amazing aircraft, but still fragile.

As I recall, the terms "Tame Boar" and "Wild Boar" had to do with radar equipped night fighters vs. single seat day fighters given minimal changes used in night defense of the Reich starting in 1943 in response to chaff deployment by the Allies.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Monday, October 19, 2015 - 08:04 pm: Edit

A. David Merritt:

As noted, I can not claim my memory is perfect. I do know the Germans used some fighters in ramming attacks, and thought it was code named Wild Boar. It might well have had some other code name that I am drawing a blank on.

As to the fragility of the Zero, there are recorded instances all through the war of Zero trying to follow American aircraft in dives and tearing their own wings off because they were not built to take that kind of stress.

By Mark Steven Hoyle (Markshoyle) on Monday, October 19, 2015 - 08:59 pm: Edit

The German Group was called "Sonderkommando Elbe".
They had minor success, but did very few missions.
The aircraft were stripped of most every essential equipment (left one MG with 30 rds of ammo).
The point wasn't to kill themselves, ram and bailout.

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Monday, October 19, 2015 - 09:26 pm: Edit

Thank you Mark, I had forgotten the name, and should have said so up thread.

By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - 05:59 am: Edit

Another real-world legendary ace, Chuck Yeager, was shot down over France and managed to escape with the help of the French Resistance. In this case his return was ordinary (as ordinary as such things can be) but the legendary part was convincing the bureaucracy to let him fly again, as returning to combat status after being shot down was prohibited.