So I’m flying the Korea campaign in a 4-ship strike mission on a factory and three warehouses. My three wing men are AI. I start the mission on the ramp, get fired-up, and take off. We get past a few SAM launches on the way. I drop all four of my bombs and nail each target spot-on. We turn and head for home. Half-way there, we are ambushed by a four-ship flight of 21s. It turns into a pretty intense dog fight. My wing man ends up splashing one of them, and I get the other three (two Fox 3s, and one guns kill). Because this is turning out to be one of the best missions I’ve flown, all I can hear in my head is this song:
Coming into home plate, I can tell I’m about to have one of my best-ever landings. I’m cleared in, “number one in line to land”, given final clearance…yes, sir, I’m about to finish off this sweet mission with a perfect landing…I’m about 5 seconds from touch down…
ALL OF A SUDDEN MY WING MAN COMES FLYING OVER MY CANOPY AND HE TOUCHES DOWN ON THE RUNWAY ABOUT 50 FEET IN FRONT OF ME! I touch down and immediately throttle back to idle and slam on the brakes and open the air brake, desperate to avoid hitting him. BOOM! I run into the back of him and we both blow up.
In addition to racking up a death on my pilot profile and a frat kill, I’m found guilty of dereliction of duty and my total score is reset from 250+ to “-5”. All because of this worthless piece of garbage known as “AI WING MAN”.
What the heck?!?!?!?!