takiwa's Hans-Joachim Marseilles BF109

but seven of those within an intense eighteen month period in the desert. All but four of his victories were against fighter aircraft, and all were against pilots of the western nations. No other pilot destroyed as many aircraft on the Western Front as did Marseille. In the words of the General of the German Fighter Arm, Adolf Galland, Marseille was "the unrivaled virtuoso of fighter pilots." His ability to sometimes destroy entire squadrons of enemy aircraft in a single sortie is the substance legends are made of. Marseille is still regarded by most German Luftwaffe pilots to have been the best of the best; excelling as a marksman, an acrobatic pilots, as well as one of the best combat tacticians in the Luftwaffe. Together, the synergy created by the accumulation of these talents forged one of the most lethal fighter pilots of his era. - On Sept. 30, 1942, scheduled to fly a new Messerschmitt Bf-109 G-2 fighter, W.Nr. 14256, Marseille was called upon to once again escort the now painfully obsolete Stuka dive bombers against ground targets in Egypt. At 1047, Hans-Joachim Marseille took off for his final sortie. After the escort mission was complete, Marseille and his squadron were directed to intercept a flight of enemy aircraft sighted south of Imayid, Egypt. No contact with the enemy fighters was made and the flight of Messerschmitts set a course for home. At 1135, Marseille indicated that he had smoke pouring into his cockpit and it was becoming difficult to either breathe or see. Other members in the flight urged Marseille to remain with his aircraft for another couple minutes since they were still over enemy-held territory. By 1139, smoke in the cockpit was now unbearable and Marseille was forced to leave his airplane. Marseille's last radio transmission was, "I've got to get out now. I can't stand it any more". Now over German territory, at approximately 10000 feet, Marseille rolled his aircraft inverted in a standard maneuver to prepare for bailout. Suffering from probable spatial disorientation, possible toxic hypoxia, as well as being blinded by the smoke in the cockpit, Marseille's aircraft entered an inverted dive with an approximate dive angle of 70 to 80 degrees. At a speed of approximately 400 knots, Marseille jumped out of his damaged aircraft. Unfortunately, the left side of Marseille's chest struck the tail of his airplane, either killing him instantly or incapacitating him to the point where he was unable to open his parachute. As the other members of Marseille's squadron watched in horror, Jochen's body landed face down 7 km South of Sidi Abd el Rahman, an unfitting end to the "Der Stern Von Afrika" (The Star of Africa) and a foreshadowing of things to come for the Luftwaffe. - This was a special request skin for SFenix...it ain't much, but I hope you like it. Maps: - El Alamein, Gazala, Operation Battleaxe Installation: - You should have Merciless Creations TexturePack installed to use this file. - Drag and drop the .dds files to your El Alamein, Gazala and/or Operation Battleaxe map folders, and play the game! takiwa [/quote]
[quote]- This skin represents an a/c flown by Hans-Joachim Marseille in the North African desert, 1942. - Jochen (as his friends called him) was credited with destroying 158 Allied aircraft, all