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    CFS2: Training with the Dambusters
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    Flying the Lancaster in Just Flight's venerable 'Dambusters' add-on for CFS2   There can't be many missions more famous than that flown in May 1943 by RAF Bomber Command's 617 Squadron to attack dams in the Ruhr, Germany. And justly so, for the mission was a triumph of technical ingenuity and airmanship, immortalised in the film named after the Dambusters. Flown with real Lancasters, some of the most impressive footage in the film was shot in daylight and recreated the squadron's low-flying practice over Derwent reservoir, with the mighty Lancs seen from above wheeling over the water as they made their practice runs.     The Just Flight CFS2 add on 'The Dam Busters' was officially licensed by the RAF and like most of the company's add-ons, comes in a nice, solid little box with a decent printed manual. It's far from a one-horse wonder. Subtitled '617 Squadron's Greatest Raids', as well as Operation Chastise, the dams mission, it provides many others, including raids on the Tirpitz, the Dortmund-Ems canal, the Bielefeld railway viaduct and the attack on Hitler's mountain-top lair at the Berchtesgaden. There's a variety of Lancaster variants, including the basic bomber and types adapted to carry the dam-busting 'Upkeep' mine and the Tallboy and ten-ton Grand Slam bombs; plus a pathfinder Mosquito, a late-model BXVI. There's even a Wellington bomber, included so you can fly one of the trial missions flown at Chesil Beach to try out the 'bouncing bomb' in daylight. I believe the add-on is still available:   http://www.justflight.com/product/the-dam-busters   Despite CFS2 not being built to handle bombers, the package does a rather good job, featuring such neat touches as the twin spotlights used for over-water height-finding and the 'wood and nails' rangefinder sight, both as developed for the dams raid. I believe the add-on was used as the basis for a TV documentary a few years back, which featured a crew drawn from current RAF personnel who were trained up and then attempted to re-fly the mission in a specially-made Lanc simulator.   As for the real thing, while we're lucky (in the UK anyway) to be able to see (and hear!) a real Lanc flying with the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, you can get no better than this documentary, which features superb authentic wartime footage in colour:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqQAA2rcBno   Having recently once again watched and enjoyed the Dambusters movie, I thought I'd spool up Just Flight's add-on and fly one of the training missions, followed by at least some of the others. While the Dams raid and some others are in darkness, the package lets you fly them in daylight, if you wish. As I plan on doing it in the dark, there's little point in a screenshot-illustrated mission report on the dams raid itself so I thought I'd provide this short one of the training mission, as a little taster.   Here's the brief, using some of the custom screens that come with the add-on:       There's also a 'recce photograph, which shows the 'scenery' Derwent Dam that comes with the package, along with various RAF bases including Scampton and Woodhall Spa. The dam is crude but effective, and is neatly dressed up to look like a real-life RAF oblique recce picture.     For me, the star of this show is the Lancaster itself. The Just Flight version is nicely rendered by the standards of the time. And it has one outstanding feature - the engine sound. The roar and din of four Merlins at full throttle is an absolute joy and by far the best I've heard in any sim for any plane. And here she is, sitting at the end of the runway at RAF Scampton. She's a standard BI bomber, not the modified version cut away below to hold the drum-like dams weapon.       From the caption to the first screenie, you can see another of the add-on's nice touches - the pilot's injunction to the ground crew to remove the chocks. Neither can be seen but the accompanying audio is neat.   Looking right, I could see the airfield's buildings, a good selection including hangars and Nissen huts. Beside me was a tractor with some bomb tailers. Without further ado, I checked the controls, set the flaps down three notches, and started up. The engines fired up from left to right, bursting into life with a very satsfactory though muted roar.  Ahead to the left you can see the controller's trailer, and beyond that a pair of parked Lancs. To the right, there's another parked aircraft, this time an RAF Dakota.     Now, came the mission's highlight - opening the throttles, and soaking up the din as the Merlins responded in full song. A bit of differential braking was needed to keep her on or near the centre line as we gathered speed, the rudders seeming ineffective, possibly as they are masked by that mighty Lancaster wing. Taking off in a crosswind is an even more interesting experience! Past the parked Lancs we went. As the speed increased I got the tail up and held her there until takeoff speed was reached. A gentle tug on the stick and we were airborne. I quickly retracted the undercart - the animation is a bit fast - and we were on our way!       ...to be continued!

    CFS2 revisited: Mosquito Squadron
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    Low-level precision raids in the 'Wooden Wonder', CFS2-style
     

     
    Why a mission report on a sim released way back in 2000, you may ask? Well, there are three reasons for this, which go beyond a mere trip down memory lane.
     
    Firstly, there's the relative dearth (in number, sometimes also in quality) of sim releases since then; such that many older sims still compare favourably, in features, if not graphically. IL-2 was released the year after CFS2 and it remains well worth playing. CFS2's graphics may be noticeably more dated but they're still quite serviceable and the sim itself benefited from a tremendous amount of additional freeware and payware content, extending its scope from the Pacific to Europe, Korea and even Vietnam.
     
    Secondly, this report was intended to be first in a series comparing the 'Mossie' in different sims - at least, in CFS2, CFS3 and IL-2. I say 'was'...which leads me onto the third reason for a CFS2 mission report...
     
    …which is that my dated but effective 8800GT graphics card gave up the ghost at the weekend, leaving me having to make do with the budget card it replaced (a 9300GS!). So for the next few months or so, it looks like I'll be dusting off some older sims…which is not entirely a bad thing. Or so I'm telling myself!
     
     
    The add-on, the mission and the plane
     
    A little while ago on another forum, Hauksbee posted about some famous Mosquito precision bombing missions, which included Operation Jericho, the raid on Amiens Prison designed to aid the escape of French Resistance captives believed to be facing execution. This brought to mind the Just Flight add-on for CFS2 called 'Mosquito Squadron' which I recalled featured this very mission, as well as the Gestapo HQ raids which had prompted Hauksbee's original post. You can find out more about the package, which I believe is still available, here:
     
    http://www.justflight.com/product/mosquito-squadron
     
    …and here:
     
    http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/content.php?1180-Mosquito-Squadron
     
    I already had CFS2 installed on my (Vista 64) PC - I still enjoy firing up some of the historical missions for a rattle in a Zero or a Corsair - so I installed the add-on, spooled her up, created a new British pilot and kicked off the Mosquito campaign.
     
    Sure enough, the campaign mission set included Op Jericho, along with many other representative or historical Mosquito raids. And though these are arranged in date order, to create the semblance of an operational tour or career, you can start the sequence with any mission you choose.
     
    So it was that I found myself at the planning screens for Operation Jericho, on 18 February 1944, leading a strike force of eight aircraft. All were Mosquito FBVIs, the fighter-bomber version packing four .303' machine guns and a similar number of 20mm cannon. Despite the latter taking up a good bit of space including the front half of the internal bomb bay, the FBVI still had a room in the rear half for a couple of 500lb bombs, less than the contemporary BIV glass-nosed bomber but capable of being supplemented by bombs or rockets carried under the outer wings. The famous 'Mossie' will need no introduction to anyone with any interest in WW2 aviation; she had a blistering performance for her day and was the envy of her enemies, excelling as day bomber, fighter-bomber, night fighter, anti-shipping and photo-recce aircraft. The 1960s film '633 Squadron' may (or may not!) be rather clichéd by modern standards but it was a feast of roaring Merlins and low-flying Wooden Wonders, with the odd bit of wooden special effects to match but totally free of the contrived Star Wars-style CGI which seems to blot most flying films nowadays. 
     

    Anyhow, back to our raid on Amiens Prison...the CFS2 planning screens, as usual, allowed me to switch crews between flight positions, inspect a map, check mission goals...and view a 'recce photo' of the target. This latter was most useful - it was a render of the target building, annotated to highlight the guard towers, walls and barracks that wanted bombing, as well as the jail block itself, which did not. This was useful, both to help me get 'eyes on' the target during the run in, and to make sure we attacked the right bits of it, only!
     

     
    The default armament for my machine was rockets and I stuck with these as more accurate weapons (in my unpracticed hands, anyway!) than the HE bombs which I think were actually used on the real raid. Having quickly run through the planning phase - too quickly to take a screenshot, but you'lll be able to see the map at the debriefing stage, later - I kicked off the mission. And here we are, lined up on the runway at RAF Methwold:
     

     
    Experienced CFS2 players will understand that this sim dates from the time when Microsoft flight sim landscapes were basically barren, apart from placed sets of 'scenery' objects, like the RAF airfield provided with 'Mosquito Squadron'. Despite being Pacific-based, CFS2 does at least include reasonably topographically accurate terrain for much of NW Europe and (as far as I know) the rest of the world, even if it is covered with nothing more than bland (but reasonably effective) textures and odd spots of scenery objects created and placed for specific missions.
     
    Looking at our mounts, the Just Flight Mossie is a nice representation. The canopy framing looks a little slender but the machine's outline looks quite accurate; unlike the CFS3 Mossie, which was a BIV bomber with distinctive split (instead of flat-fronted) windscreen and glass nose painted over for the FBVI and FBXVIII variants, and had a rather poorly-shaped fin.
     
    One negative about this CFS2 version is that the upper surface camouflage pattern is mirrored, whereas in real life the green 'shadow shading' on the upper surfaces was different on left and right sides. Otherwise, it is a reasonable representation of the mid-war Mossie scheme, which used the RAF fighter Command scheme of the day, later modified to use the same, lighter shade of grey above and below.
     

     
    Inside, you get the old-fashioned fixed cockpit graphic and the less detailed virtual cockpit, the former only supporting snap view, the latter panning as well. Neither are up to IL-2 standards but CFS2 virtual cockpits are not bad, some considering them generally better than the CFS3 versions, though the Just Flight Mossie's is rather dark.
     


     
    In the external view, I set the flaps to down one notch, checked the controls worked, and started engines, my two Merlins firing up one after the other. One of the highlights of this package - as with the Just Flight 'Dambusters' add-on - is the engine sounds, which are noisy, dramatic and effective, worthy of any current sim.
     

    Brakes off and throttle briskly up to the limit, and I was on my way. Rudder was needed to keep her straight; with the rapid acceleration from my fast application of full throttle, it was easy to overcorrect and some care had to be taken to prevent my kite ground-looping. The CFS2 Mossie's wheels are not animated in rotation but they and the undercart look the part, unlike the undernourished articles on the CFS3 version. I was soon off the ground and retracting my gear.

     


     

    Flaps up, I called up the 'radar'/Tactical Display/TAC - retained in CFS3, but changed from rectangular to an even more radar-like circular display - and checked the orientation of my first leg with the blue track line to the next waypoint. I climbed slowly and turned gently onto my course, at which point the track line turned green. Throttling back for a bit to enable my squadron to catch up, I looked around. Apart from the scenery objects representing RAF Methwold and the nearby village of that name, there was not much to be seen - open country with summer-like field textures, the odd beige-grey patch denoting an urban area, the flat landscape reasonably appropriate for the low-lying county of Norfolk in eastern England.

     


     

    Settled on course and into formation, I set the TAC to display ground targets and used the 'warp' feature to avoid the long flight over Norfolk, across the Thames Estuary, over SE England then the English Channel and overland to Amiens in north-western France.
     
    CFS2 campaign missions being scripted rather than 'dynamic', I was confident that unlike CFS3, warp would bring me out at a sensiblly low level, appropriate for this mission, not the 'one-size-fits-all' tens of thousands of feet of the later sim. And so it came to pass.
     
    ...to be continued!

    Armée de l'Air 1940: CFS3 ETO Expansion
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    '...le jour de gloire est arrivé!' - blocking the Blitzkrieg with the French air force...in a US fighter!   Having enjoyed flying for the Luftwaffe in the 1940 German offensive in the west, courtesy of the CFS3 ETO Expansion, I thought I would swap sides and see if I could stop the enemy tide. None of this comes with stock CFS3, which focuses on the later-war period. But 'Attack in the West 1940' is one of the additional 'eras' that the freeware expansion bolts on, and firing it up, I saw that I had the choice of flying with the Belgians, French or RAF (which latter had an 'Air Component' to the Army's British Expeditionary Force on the continent when the balloon went up in May 1940).   I've always been a fan of the Hawker Hurricane and lapped up the initial scenes of the film 'the Battle of Britain' which have some great footage of Hurris, culminating with their 'lame ducks' being clobbered by a low-level strafing attack by Bf109s. When I say 'low-level', that doesn't do justice to the flying of the Spanish air force pilots operating the Hispano 'Buchons' in Bf109E colours - one of them almost clips a perimeter fence with his prop - totally mad, and no Star Wars CGI anywhere in sight, just great planes and great flying! But I digress...   Despite being a fan of the Hurricane, I decided to fly for the Armee de l'Air, as the French air force was officially called. As a kid I'd built the neat little FROG 1/72 Morane Saulnier 406 and the Revell Curtiss P-36/Hawk 75. Plus I was keen to fly a French fighter of some sort, to add a bit of immersion by giving me some sense of defending hearth and home against the invading enemy hordes.   So I created a French pilot, naming him Clostermann after the famous Free French/RAF fighter ace whose great book, 'The Big Show', is much the most vivid and powerful fighter pilot auobiography I've ever read. Likely because that's how the inbuilt 'Nationality Expansion' pack works, the ETO Expansion actually does describe the 1940 French side as 'Free French'. This didn't become a reality till later, after de Gaulle had rallied the defeated nation from England with his stirring call to arms 'La France a perdu une bataille, mais la France n'a pas perdu la guerre' - a battle is lost but not the war!   My assigned unit - which I don't think was actually named - was allocated the Curtiss Hawk (French designation H75C1). This was one of several US planes the French purchasing commission had obtained from America just before war broke out.   The swift German victories in the west tend to create the impression of overwhelming Luftwaffe superiority but it was a hard fought battle and the Curtiss Hawk was no pushover. In 'WW2 Fighter Conflict' Alfred Price says ''Although its general performance [like the Hurricane's] fell somewhat below those of the British and German fighters mentioned [spitfire I and Bf109E] the American fighter, with its finely harmonised controls and large mechanical advantage between stick and ailerons, was superior to both of them in its high speed handling'.   There are some nice clips of a preserved P-36 in Armée de l'Air colours on the net, including this one on Youtube, where you can soak up the sight and sound of this gutsy little warplane in flight:     I was shortly to experience my own first flight in the Curtiss, albeit a virtual one. I kicked off the campaign, and was started early on the morning of 10th May, 1940, the day the German western Blitzkrieg kicked off. As usual with CFS3's dynamic campaign, I was offered a campaign map - which showed the front lines as yet aligned with the national borders - and a drop-down list of alternative missions. The first item was an interception, and I accepted this as more appropriate and possibly more fun that a close support sortie. We were based at Etain-Rouvres in NW France, up near the border with Belgium and Luxembourg, where the main weight of the German offensive would fall. In real life anyway: perhaps not so in this more open-ended and simulated campaign, where our target lay well to the south-east.   As usual, I was allocated a flight of eight - this would be effectively a squadron operation, with the player leading in the usual CFS3 style. Here we are, lined up and ready to go in the early morning light. Below that are the orders for the mission.     As you can see, I got much the same weather as in my previous Blitzkrieg mission, flown in the German Bf110: cloudy and failrly steady precipitation. Undeterred, I turned on the 'radar'/Tactical Display/TAC, left its range at the maximum of 8 miles, and - bearing in mind this mission was air-to-air - cycled its displayed target type from 'all' to 'aircraft'.   In the external view,  I checked the movement of all flying controls, started up, and lowered my flaps, one notch. Behind me, my squadron was already started up and good to go. Opening her up, I accelerated down the runway, correcting swing with rudder and a touch of differential braking. My men wasted no time and were quickly roaring after me. The ETO Expansion aircraft generally model wingtip vortices and navigation lights at low airspeed and these were visible as I took off. Soon it was 'gear up' and off we went, leaving the rising sun behind us as we formed up and began the climb for height.     The Boche were going to pay for setting foot on the sacred soil of France! Or at least, that was the plan...   ...to be continied!

    Blitzkreig 1940: CFS3 ETO Expansion
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    A Luftwaffe Messerschmitt Bf110 Campaign in the ultimate CFS3 expansion     CFS3 - so far anyway - marks a controversial end to the Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator series. In returning from CFS2's Pacific to the European Theatre of Operations, CFS3 had many new features. On the positive side, there was a modest but intriguing range of flyable aircraft, including the 'usual suspects' like the Spitfire, FW190 and P-51 but also medium bombers like the Ju-88 and B-25 Mitchell and some late-war prototypes like the Dornier 335 'push-pull' heavy fighter and the P-80 and Vampire jets. There were 'autogen' scenery objects to populate the terrain; and most of the ETO was covered, in a single 'map'. Less positively, graphics were questionable, with many rather poor cockpits and odd, mostly unrealistic coloured bands and other markings the player could apply to personalise his flight. Wingman commands were still the same limited set from CFS2, with no ground control interaction, a major gap. AI, damage models and flight models were dubious. Wingman radio traffic sounded canned and cheesy. And while there was a dynamic campaign at last, it was a rather odd beast, a sort of parallel universe 1942-45 ETO where the Germans could have invaded England and their shipping plied the English Channel in daylight.   But at least CFS3 covered the ETO, and while the air-to-air experience wasn't great (and completely left out battles with the heavy bombers) it made a passable job of simulating its declared subject: tactical fighter-bomber and medium bomber operations in the latter part of WW2 in Europe. For those of us whose fancy wasn't really caught by the Eastern Front, it was worth playing. Especially as the modders got to work, with groups like the Ground Crew and the AVHistory team developing many new planes. Commercial add-ons helped too; Firepower was widely praised, my other favourites being D-Day and Just Flight's Memphis Belle.   Nowadays, much of the modder's good work on CFS3 is available as a great package, under the title of the ETO Expansion. Others are still around, including Mediterranean Air War (MAW) and a Pacific Expansion. This mission report features the ETO expansion, which adds a real host of aircraft starting with those from the Spanish Civil War, along with much-improved airbases, scenery, ground and aircraft textures, period menu music and improved effects. Details of the package and download links are available here:   http://www.mrjmaint.com/CFS3/ETOHome.html   Installation is fairly complicated and involves creating a second CFS3 install; but there is an excellent .pdf guide which takes you through the process step by step and is pretty foolproof if followed.  The job's well worth while; it's still CFS3 at its core but on the outside, it's pretty well a whole new animal - CFS3, Jim, but not as we know it.   One of ETO Expansion's features is the addition of extra campaigns. You can now start your World War 2 in 1940, either during the 'Phoney War' when the two sides faced off at the Franco-German border immediately after the Polish Campaign; or as I chose, in the Blitzkrieg, when in May 1940 the Germans attacked in the West in one of the most successful and decisive campaigns of the war.   Having run the front-end ETO Expansion process which sets up the sim's spawns for this earlier period, I used the ETO Start 'selector' desktop proggie to choose the 1940 era. Pilot and campaign creation was next; both done in conventional CFS3 style. I chose to fly as a Luftwaffe fighter pilot. Unlike European Air War, CFS3 doesn't make it easy for you to fly your plane of choice. You select the role - fighter or bomber - and CFS3 picks the unit and the aircraft. There is a facility to transfer or change planes but it's limited. For this mission, I was allocated to a 'Zerstoerer' (destroyer) unit - as the Luftwaffe called its heavy fighters. Flying the sleek twin-engined Messerschmitt Bf110 and also known as 'Goering's Ironsides', these units were something of an elite. Disillusionment was to follow, when the Battle of Britain ruthlessly spotlighted the limitations of such aircraft in an environment dominated by more agile single-engined fighters. But that was all in the future. This was May 1940, and my Gruppe was about to play its part in the great Blitzkrieg in the west which, in a few weeks, would bring France to her knees and Britain to the verge of defeat.     ...to be continued!

    First Eagles: Fokker Scourge
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    Recreating the dawn of the fighter aircraft in First Eagles 2
     
    "Hundreds, nay thousands of machines have been ordered which have been referred to by our pilots as "Fokker Fodder" ... I would suggest that quite a number of our gallant officers in the Royal Flying Corps have been rather murdered than killed" Noel Pemberton-Billing MP, campaigning in 1916 against the dominance of the Royal Aircraft Factory in the design of RFC aircraft
     
    "...McCudden gave him another burst, and the Fokker broke off the attack. For the rest of the flight, the Fokker merely accompanied them, more like an escort than anything else. 'We live and we learn' was McCudden's comment on the deflation of the Fokker Menace story"  Alexander McKee in 'The Friendless Sky'
     
    The deployment of small numbers of a rather inferior monoplane armed with a fixed machine gun synchronised to fire forward through the airscrew was just one of a series of swings in the fortunes of the main combatants in the WW1 air war. Shortly beforehand, French pilots like Garros and Pégoud had sent shock-waves through German ranks with similar weapons, unsynchronised but with deflector wedges to protect their props. And within months, the Fokkers themselves had been eclipsed by superior enemies in the form of the Nieuport 11 and DH2, which in turn were outclassed by the Albatros.
     
    But it's the Fokker 'Eindekker' which gave its name to a whole chapter in air warfare, even if this owes as much to its exploitation in a British politician's campaign to secure a bigger role for private enterprise in British military aircraft design, as it does to the plane's own qualities. For despite its gun, the Fokker was a rather mediocre aeroplane, low-powered, with wing-warping rather than ailerons. And while its principal RFC prey the BE2c certainly suffered from a badly-placed observer with a limited field of fire, there are accounts which confirm the BE was not just the 'Fokker fodder' of legend and could defend itself ably enough if well-handled and not caught by surprise.
     
    Anyway, enough potted history! Having recently flown Stephen1918's superb new BE2c in the hostile skies of Spring 1917, I wanted to step back nearly two years and see the BE (and/or its fellow RFC machines) from a different perspective - through the gunsight of a predatory Fokker pilot, hunting his two-seater quarry in the period which truly pioneered the concept of the fighter aircraft.
     
    I decided to kick off a campaign in Ojcar's 'Armchair Aces' month-by-month campaign, starting in August 1915. At this time, Immleman and Boelcke were on the threshold of making names for themselves flying their new Eindekkers. Keen to do likewise, I created a new pilot and opted to fly with Kampfeinsitzer Kommando (KEK) Douai, based at nearby La Brayelle and flying against the RFC.
     
    Thanks to the modders, no other modern WW1 sim comes close to First Eagles in its flyable planeset, just as Red Baron 3d set that standard, before it. FE benefits from an excellent series of Eindekkers by modders Laton and BortdaFarm. Versions available are the EI, EII, EIII (which look much the same but have progressively more powerful engines) and even the twin-gunned but overweight EIV. And there are some look-alike Pfalz equivalents. For this campaign, our mount was the Fokker EI, with only an 80hp engine and a single 'Spandau' 7.92mm LMG 08/15. Ojcar's 'Armchair Aces' campaign integrates modder aircraft like these (and many more) into the FE campaign system and was therefore a natural choice to try my hand with an Eindekker in campaign mode.
     
    At this time, it was common for a flying unit on any side to operate more than one type of aircraft. Fokker monoplanes were initially allocated in ones and twos to ordinary two-seater units. While I believe you can do this sort of thing in single missions in FE, in campaign mode you have one plane type per squadron. As a staffel's Fokkers seem generally to have operated independently of the unit's two-seaters, it's easy enough to handle this by using the squadron roster, pre-mission, to ensure you fly either on your own or with one or maybe two companions. No need for missions with eight or twelve Fokkers lined up on the flight line, impressive though that may look! Operations in (slightly) greater strength become more realistic later, by which time Fokkers were often concentrated into Kampfeinsitzer Kommandos. I believe KEK Douai was associated with two-seater unit Flieger Abteilung 62 and actually formed in late 1915.
     
    Our first mission was in effect a 'scramble', to intercept an incoming enemy flight headed for Aniche airfield nearby. Although air defence/air raid warning systems were rudimentary at this time, it is clear from many accounts that Eindekkers were 'scrambled' in this fashion and did not always just fly patrols.
     
    To accompany me, I'd selected one other pilot, a senior NCO by the name of Rall, and here we are on the grass at La Brayelle. Assuming you haven't opted for an air start, FE starts you off in this fashion, with your prop just starting to turn, which gets around the issue of invisible ground crew in other sims (although I quite liked the invisible mechanic's cry of 'Good hunting, sir!' or 'Hals und beinbruch!' as you started up in CFS2 WW1 expansion 'Combat Aces').
     

     
    As we took off, I noticed flak bursts quite low in the sky, ahead of us. Snatching a glance at the in-flight map, it seemed clear that this must be the flight we were intended to intercept. Peering into the sky near the tip of the trail of busts, I could make out a pair of specks. These looked to be heading towards a friendly airfield which I could see as I gained height, a few miles distant. Today, I would not have to look far; trouble was coming to me!
     

    ...to be continued!

    'In the Nay-vee...' - WW1 seaplane action in First Eagles
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    Life and virtual death on and above the ocean waves in Ojcar's 'Unsung Heroes' seaplane campaign     Rise of Flight is not the only WW1 flightsim to feature seaplanes. Thanks to modder Stephen1918, First Eagles/FE2 also got its feet wet, with a series of floatplanes suitable for the Channel coast and a 'terrain' package, complete with some shipping. Fellow-modder Ojcar then provided us with a campaign to complete the scene.   The aircraft are available here...   http://combatace.com/files/category/360-first-eagles-add-on-aircraft/   ...the terrain is here...   http://combatace.com/files/file/14129-north-sea-terrain/   ...and the campaign is here:   http://combatace.com/files/file/14164-unsung-heroes/   The campaign needs a separate install of FE, which for FE2 is just a matter of copying the game executable, renaming and running it. This creates the 'mods' folder where you install the new items. The drill for FE(1) is slightly different but equally simple. You can combine the seaplanes in a normal install, but this campaign really needs a separate one, to avoid oddities like vehicles or landplanes moving on the sea surface. This limits the campaign to aero-naval action but it's nicely done and makes a fun and interesting challenge, nevertheless.   The campaign is set in 1917 and the briefing sets the scene nicely, with some short but interesting historical background to help you get 'in character'. The Germans, having occupied a stretch of coastline running from the eastern end of the English Channel to the southern end of the North Sea, are contesting the British and allied blockade and running some naval operations of their own. Both sides have the support - for this campaign - of seaplane tenders and their aircraft. Which is where the player comes in, of course.   I elected to fly for the German side, in a late-model Albatros W4. This was a fighter, basically a scaled-up Albatros DII with two large floats. For our first mssion, dated 1 November 1917, two of us were detailed to fly a defensive partol around our tender, the SMS Answald. I could have increased our strength by selecting more pilots from the squadron roster, but I thought we'd stick to a twosome. That was my first mistake.   Anyway here we are, ready for the 'off'. If you don't have an air start selected, FE, logically enough, starts you on the ground. Also logically enough, if there's no ground - as in, the middle of the North Sea - you're started on the water. Like so.     The ship in the background isn't our tender - which vessels were the progenitors of proper aircraft carriers - it's our surface escort. WW1 warship identification's not my speciality and it may be a representative type rather than a model of a real vessel but it looks suitably Victorian. I suspect FE doesn't model sea states which is just as well as I had enough trouble with all that water, in the 'dead calm' we got.   Getting off the ground - sorry, water - was the first challenge. Basically I opened her up and when it felt right, pulled back on the stick to increase the angle of attack and get a bit more lift in an effort to unstick. This worked...eventually. But my W4, once airborne, soon confirmed my suspicion that she was going to be rather less tractable than the scouts I was used to flying. She felt somewhere in between one of those, and a two-seater. Slow in the climb, ready to buffet in an impending stall if I increased the AoA too much, but reasonably willing to turn without behaving badly.   As you can see, you don't get a wake effect (unless I've not installed something somewhere, must check...) but the sea surface and our little flotilla made a nice backdrop for Stephen1918's beautiful plane, as myself and my wingman - the AI manage water takeoffs just fine -  climbed slowly away.     In a nice touch, our ships fly the correct Imperial German ensigns at stem and stern (the former being the pointy end, I believe). Behind us in the pic below, you can see both our escort and our seaplane tender.     As I orbited, slowly gaining height and getting a feel for my machine, the gunners on both our ships decided to give me a little surprise by commencing some brisk shooting. Fire and smoke bellowed from every barrel and tracer fire sped up and past us, directed at a target or targets which I had not yet seen. Obviously, our patrol was going to be no mere sight-seeing trip...     ...to be continued!

Portal by DevFuse · Based on IP.Board Portal by IPS


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