First Fight!

Eyes always on the bandit!

Stomach : "Please? Would you fly straight and level for a minute?"

Art Kill : "This is a single circle fight. First plane to fly straight, dies."

Hellcats : "He's right. Gotta keep turning. Turn hard enough, long enough, we'll get a shot."

Stomach : "We must have done a half dozen circles already! Gotta ease off. I said ease off now!"

Grumpy : "Nice move! Nice move! He almost had us, and you flew us out of trouble."

Hellcats : "So much for the hard turn as the ideal defensive maneuver, followed by an ease off to regain speed. Dead Meat knows the counter for that, the High Yo Yo. Slow steady pressure is better."

Art Kill : "Yep. Stay with it. If you do start losing speed though, we've got lots of altitude available. Just drop the nose to regain speed in a dive instead of easing off the turn. Now would be a good time."

Hellcats : "More bank then... Going down..."

Body and head are twisted around to the left and rear, keeping track of the enemy rather than watching where the plane is going. In the rear seat, Grumpy's head is on a pivot, watching for other aircraft as well as tracking the fight. Both planes are running counter clockwise in a circle, with Dead Meat a few thousand feet behind. The T34's engine is running all out, generating it's full 300 horses.

Stomach : "Owww!"

Grumpy : "Pull up! Pull up! You've got too much speed!"

Ear : "Isn't the propeller making an awful lot of noise?"

Eyes : "Where is the horizon? (Body and head turn forward. Expletive deleted.) Too much dive!"

Sky Warriors : "Level the wings. Pull back on the stick. Wow! So that's what the books mean when they say the controls get stiff when the plane gets moving fast. This stick just does not want to move. Pull hard anyway, and we've got lots of Gs. Better take it a bit easy coming up."

Stomach : "That's right!"

Engine : "ROAR! ROAR! Roar! Rumble!"

Art Kill : "That was definitely much faster than our best turning speed. We can't let the nose drop that low. Let's keep things slower."

Sky Warriors : "Lose sight! Lose the fight! You've spent too much time looking forward at the horizon and getting back into your turn. Find the bandit, now!"

Eyes : (Expletive Deleted!)

Voice : "I've lost him!"

Hellcats, Sky Warriors : "Keep turning!"

Stomach : "No!"

Grumpy : "He's at your Seven O'clock, right behind you."

Eyes : "Uh oh."

Voice : "I've got him!"

Hellcats, Art Kill, Sky Warriors : "Right on our tail, and far too close! Time for a last ditch panic maneuver."

Stomach. "Time for a what?"

Art Kill : "Do a hard out of plane maneuver. The circle we're going around defines a two dimensional plane where all the action is. Get out of that plane! Roll at least eighty degrees in either direction, then pull back on the stick as hard as you can. Don't bother to conserve speed! St. Peter won't be impressed by how fast you were going when you died."

Stomach : "No! Absolutely, positively, no!"

Sky Warriors : "Pull back briefly on the stick in a hard turn. When he goes up in his Yo Yo, relax the turn to conserve speed."

Art Kill : "That isn't working. He'll just finish the High Yo Yo, and we'll be right back where we started from. Change your bank at least 80 degrees, and pull hard enough to cause an overshoot!"

Stomach : "No. Hellcat's steady turn has been working. Stay with it."

Hellcats : "No joy. With Stomach's complaints, my bank is down to 20 degrees, which means we must be pulling an awesome one point zero zero two Gs. It's just a matter of time before he gets us."

Computer : "Beeeeep!"

Grumpy : "Knock it off! Knock it off!"

Stomach : "We're dead? We can level off now? O joy! O rapture!"