Most of the complaints center not so much on bombing per se, but on the fact that it makes staging dogfights more inconvenient for the fighter pilots because they have to launch from farther away from the combat area. For the most part fighter pilots are looking to improve their skills by dog fighting as much as they can and so they want to spend as little time getting to their opponents as possible. When their bases start going up in smoke, they tend to get a little irritated. As a former AW fighter pilot I can understand their point of view.

However, there is another side.

The bomber pilots usually reply to the fighter pilots' complaints by saying "Part of your job is to shoot us bombers down!" to which the typical response is usually something along the lines of "There's too many of you for me to kill." And then the yelling starts.

My opinion is this: the FR arenas are war zones, with the objective being to defeat your enemy any way you can. Dog fighting skills can be honed in a place called the "FR Training Arena", where you can shoot Az, Bz, and Cz as many times as you like. Of course, you won't get points for it but then the scores are reset periodically which makes point-mongering a wasted effort anyway.

Another thing that irritates fighter pilots is the "kamikaze" bomber, the guy that takes a heavy fighter or bomber to a target, unloads, and then augers on purpose. I do NOT endorse this tactic. I believe that it cheapens the game and damages our reputation for sportsmanship. If I'm going to spend the effort to take a bomber to a target and hit my objective, then I'm going to bring my baby home and land it. I fly Air Warrior, and FR, because I'm living the dream of being John Wayne in "Flying Tigers" or Gregory Peck in "Twelve O'clock High" or any of the real-life pilots that took their planes through the flak fields. If the "Memphis Belle" can land her missions, so can I. I expect Skull pilots to land their kills too or otherwise die fighting.

Some of you may remember the <CENSORED> in RR Europe and some of you may remember ex-Skull <CENSORED> (now the CO of an Az squad called the <CENSORED> ). Both the pilots of the <CENSORED> and <CENSORED> were good sticks. They could really work their aircraft and more often than not they splashed me. Do I respect them? No. They may have been excellent pilots but they had no character, no integrity. Ultimately, that's the same criteria by which we'll be judged.

Think about this the next time you're flying.

Now go pop somebody.

Pancake ^Skull^
CPID: Cakes