2/17 Cavalry Vietnam Skin Pack 1.3

This is a collection of five skins representing the Second Squadron, 17th Cavalry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam (1969). The skins included represent five Troops (the cavalry name for "companies"):

• Headquarters Troop (has a guidon by the pilot's door)
  
• A Troop (Identified by the red band on the tail boom)
  
• B Troop (White band)
  
• C Troop (Blue Band)
  
• F Troop (Orange Band)
  

Note: The B Troop skin in this pack is slightly different from the 2/17 B Troop skin in my Medal of Honor Skin Pack. Be sure to get that pack as well if you want even more varied skins for the 101st Airborne Division.

All reference imagery was taken from

http://vietnam-hueys.tripod.com/2-17th%20Cav%20page.htm

Skinner's Philosophy:

Because the 3D models used for the aircrew utilize modern flight gear I have chosen to model the skins as "modern aircraft with nostalgic patterns", as opposed to actual Vietnam era skins.. The significance of this is that I have chosen to skin the aircrew in contemporary flight uniforms, including ACUs for the door gunners. I felt that this was more fitting in a setting that involves modern orders of battle, and is also less of an immersion-killer than seeing Vietnam era "uniforms" on clearly modern equipment.

A note about the Crew Chiefs & Door Gunners:

Since enlisted US troops don't wear rank/rate insignia on flightsuits, their rank/rate is displayed on their nametag. Since there are no specific nametag textures for the crew chief/door gunner texture, I have added a nametag to the velcro on the chest armor (as is standard practice).

In choosing names for the textures, I opted for US servicemembers who received the Medal of Honor. SFC Paul Smith received the Medal of Honor posthumously in the Global War on Terror, and represents the United States Army in these skins. Here is his Medal of Honor Citation:

Sergeant First Class Paul R. Smith distinguished himself by acts of gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action with an armed enemy near Baghdad International Airport, Baghdad, Iraq on April 4, 2003. On that day, Sergeant First Class Smith was engaged in the construction of a prisoner of war holding area when his Task Force was violently attacked by a company-sized enemy force. Realizing the vulnerability of over 100 soldiers, Sergeant First Class Smith quickly organized a hasty defense consisting of two platoons of soldiers, one Bradley Fighting Vehicle and three armored personnel carriers. As the fight developed, Sergeant First Class Smith braved hostile enemy fire to personally engage the enemy with hand grenades and anti-tank weapons, and organized the evacuation of three wounded soldiers from an armored personnel carrier struck by a rocket propelled grenade and a 60 mm mortar round. Fearing the enemy would overrun their defenses, Sergeant First Class Smith moved under withering enemy fire to man a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on a damaged armored personnel carrier. In total disregard for his own life, he maintained his exposed position in order to engage the attacking enemy force. During this action, he was mortally wounded. His courageous actions helped defeat the enemy attack, and resulted in as many as 50 enemy soldiers killed, while allowing the safe withdrawal of numerous wounded soldiers. Sergeant First Class Smith's extraordinary heroism and uncommon valor are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, the Third Infantry Division 'Rock of the Marne,' and the United States Army.

Updating from Version 1.01 or earlier:

DCS World 1.2.7 changes the pilot and gunner texture files, so the textures have been updated accordingly in this file. In order to clear out the obsolete files, go to the individual folders and remove the following files:

• Gunner_UH1_*.dds
  

Installation Instructions:

Copy the folders (except for TempTextures; see below) to your Liveries\uh-1h folder (either in DCS World\Bazar or Saved Games\DCS).

Optional:

I have included files that have (IMHO) improved the textures of the pilots and door gunners. They now wear the standard green and grey nomex flight gloves and have pencil pockets on their left sleeves, similar to my USN and USMC uniform textures.

To enable these textures, just copy the contents of the _Optional\TempTextures folder to your DCS World\Bazar\TempTextures folder. To disable the textures, just delete them from TempTextures and the default textures will be used instead.

Optional:

The release of DCS World 1.2.4 added the ability to add texture paths using the file "autoexec.cfg" in your Saved Games\DCS\Config folder. This will allow you to save hard drive space as long as the skin filenames are unique. My skins support this, so any DDS file with the same name will be identical.

In order to enable this feature, add the following line to autoexec.cfg (be sure to create the file if it doesn't exist):

table.insert(options.graphics.VFSTexturePaths, "C:/Users/<username>/Saved Games/DCS/Textures")

You can use any path (even a different drive), but you must use forward slashes for your path. Backslashes won't work here.

Then, you can move all of the DDS files from each of the skin folders to this new folder you've added to your path. Allowing overwrites is not a problem, as I use unique names for each file. Finally, be sure to go into each description.lua file and change all "false" entries to "true."

Special thanks to upuaut for assistance with the more "exotic" material names, as well as the assistance with custom rotor colors.

You are free to use any of the textures (e.g. 101st door gunner) in other skins or projects as long as proper credit is provided in the readme file.

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