PRODIGY(R) interactive personal service         07/24/92         1:26 PM
 
         PC CLUB
TOPIC:   OTHER GAMES
TIME:    07/23  7:35 PM
 
TO:      TRENT MANESS   (NXWR99A)
FROM:    KEITH HEITMANN   (GVXV90A)
SUBJECT: SWOTL GROUP
 
Most of the historical and other missions that come with    
SWOTL will involve each mission starting in the air, so the 
version doesn't have much to with it. However, if you start 
to fly some of the custom missions like mine, you will      
actually have to take off from the home airfield and        
technique is important there or you will stall and crash.   
Your best defense is a good offense. You will just have to  
better at defending your B-17 with your guns. Pilots of a   
rank of Major and up with some decent scores won't do the   
job alone. You must deal with the enemy fighters personally 
and not rely on the auto-gunners.                           
If you observe carefully, the enemy will have a tendency to 
attack from the direction that you are facing in your gun   
position about 90% of the time. So if you find yourself     
taking damage on one side too much, switch to the other side
of the plane and make most of the attacks come from that    
direction.                                                  
You don't always have to shoot down the enemy planes. You   
can disrupt their gunnery and rocket runs and spoil their   
aim. Make the break off and go around. Conserve your ammo.  
There isn't much you can do to protect the other bombers so 
don't worry much about them. They are more or less cannon   
fodder that take the punishment early and allow you to get  
closer to the target.                                       
As for the relative fragility of the B-17 in SWOTL, you have
to remember that you are only facing anywhere between 1 to  
15 enemy planes at one time instead of the hundreds that the
real B-17s faced. Also, you normally cannot fly from England
to Berlin in 10-20 minutes as in SWOTL, so there is an      
aspect of time compression involved here even in the normal 
mode. Given this reality, you have to remember that the     
damage you suffer in a B-17 by enemy fire is also           
"compressed" and multiplied as to its effect as a result to 
compensate for the time and the number of enemy planes you  
face. So damage seems to destroy more than you would expect 
on each attack. Sometimes you are lucky and sometimes you   
aren't. The B-17 can fly on 2 engines when empty. You may   
have to rev the good engines individually upto as much as   
85% and feather the two badly damaged ones.                 
Also, one trick to avoid flak is to go down on the deck.    
Once you get under 200 feet flak no longer fires at you.    
This can help you avoid further damage on the way to or from
the target, but it doesn't give you much time to recover if 
you stall. More than likely if you lose it at that altitude 


PRODIGY(R) interactive personal service         07/24/92         1:26 PM
 
you will crash.                                             
Mastering a full mission in a B-17 takes some practice. Keep
after it and you'll get the hang of it. Basically, you need 
to be a better gunner to survive.                           
When you have the historical missions under your belt you   
will be ready to take on a real challenge with my custom    
missions. <Grin>                   Keith Heitmann, GVXV90A  


