The suicidal Sharoni pilot continued bearing down on the tail section of The Deep Endeavor, intent on ramming the plane with his own. Connie realized what he was doing and sprung into action. Slamming the rudder hard right while throwing the stick left, she made The Lucky-13 skid sideways and point over towards the enemy plane bearing down on her friends and hosed him down with her guns. Her tracers lit up the plane's cockpit, killing the pilot; he slumped over on the control panel and his plane dropped below Seth's, missing the tail by no more than 4 feet. She pulled back ahead of Seth and began clearing a path for him by knocking out Anti-aircraft gun towers and enemy fighters left and right. They passed the back end of the vessel and wheeled around to make a pass on the engines of the HPC. Seth lined up his plane on the main, center engine and fired off 6 60-pound rockets in rapid succesion. All of them hit their mark and blew half of the engine clear off. A giant chuck of debris fell down into the forest, setting a few trees on fire. At the same time, Connie strafed the 2 upper engines with her guns, knocking one out and damaging the other. The HPC began to lose speed and altitude, now only having 2 fully working secondary engines to keep it going. The huge craft crash-landed mostly intact, and deployed numerous troops and patrols to protect itself while repairs were made. As it fell out of the sky, the 30+ remaining fighters became enraged at the two small planes that had brought down a fully armed HPC. They came screaming down from above spraying MG and cannon rounds like mad. One 15mm round slammed into Connie's right wing, setting it partially on fire. She was forced to bank away from Seth's plane, leaving both of them exposed and without support. Connie's plane could out-fly the Sharoni's even with the damage to her wing, but Seth's was a little worse off and was a much bigger target. A number of enemy fighters lined up at 10, 12, and 2 o'clock; they were hoping to split The Deep Endeavor's defensive fire, but this plane was bristling with extra guns. The former opened fire just before they were in range of the later's guns, and this is when the Endeavor's luck began to run out. A single 20mm cannon shell from the plane directly in front hit Seth's plane right below the nose turret. The explosion knocked the nose gunner out of his seat and back 12 feet inside the plane, shattered plexiglass and metal tearing into his arms and chest. One of the other crew members tried to ask him he was okay, but he didn't respond; he simply walked back up to the nose and sat down in his turret, bleeding severely. Just then, a heavily armed Sharoni Fighter-Bomber came screaming in to make a head-on pass. Nose gunner Jim Sarnophski, his hands slick with blood, grips the trigger of his machine guns one..last..time! Jimmy saw the plane, shredded it to pieces with his heavy MG's, then colapsed on the gun controls; deep in a coma and very nearly dead...
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