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    Hunting HMS Edinburgh
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    Another Atlantic Fleet battle in Arctic waters!       I have always been something of a fan of the big German destroyers of World War 2, ever since assembling tiny 1/1200 plastic kits of some of them in the early 1960s. These were made by Eagle, part a themed series representing the ships involved in the First and Second Battles of Narvik in April and June 1940. Like this one, of a Leberecht Maas class...or is it Erich Giese?     Maas wasn't actually at Narvik, having been sunk in a disatrous 'friendly fire' incident in the North Sea, bombed at night by an He111 of KG 26 which didn't know the navy had laid on a mine-laying operation in the same area. Another destroyer from the force, Max Schulze, was lost with all hands immediately afterwards, some say from another bomb, others by a mine in the same area.   Atlantic Fleet’s comprehensive set of historical battles doesn’t include the quite well-known actions at Narvik, the reason I believe being that the game’s 3D environments don’t include land – and these battles were fought in the confines of the fjords at Narvik. Which is quite something, especially considering that the second battle involved the Royal Navy hunting down and destroying the German shipping left from the first battle with nine destroyers and a battleship, no less. The photo below shows the battleship, HMS Warspite, in action during the battle, well into Ofotfjord.     Big and powerful as they were, the German destroyers had rather less reliable machinery and being somewhat top-heavy, were less sea-worthy than their British counterparts, though all this seems to have gradually improved as the design was developed. At any rate, these are disadvantages which I don’t think affect them in Atlantic Fleet and having conquered Convoy PQ13 in my previous outing, I looked around for another historical battle featuring these ships. There are several more on offer and from these, I picked another Arctic encounter, one which came just over a month after the earlier battle. This was the German effort to sink HMS Edinburgh, in May 1942.

     
    The historical battle

    In late April 1942, Edinburgh left Murmansk as part of the force covering return Convoy QP11. The cruiser was carrying a substantial consignment of gold bullion, payment towards the war material then being convoyed to the Soviet Union.  Edinburgh was the sister-ship of the preserved HMS Belfast, a modified Town (or Southampton) Class cruiser, with twelve 6-inch guns. Belfast is seen below on the River Thames in London, before she was repainted in wartime camouflage.     On this outing, Edinburgh was crippled by hits from two torpedoes fired by U-456, and forced to turn back to Murmansk, escorted by destroyers Foresight, Forester and some minelayers. One of the torpedoes had basically demolished Edinburgh's stern, as you can see from this contemporary photograph.     Air attacks by torpedo bombers failed to sink Edinburgh. But on 2 May, she was found and attacked by three destroyers – Z 7 Herman Schoemann and the un-named Z 24 and Z 25, which had earlier sunk a merchantman in an inconclusive tussle with the convoy, before resuming their hunt for Edinburgh.

    In the action which followed, the crippled cruiser fought back and severely damaged Schoemann, which was abandoned and scuttled with 8 dead, the rest rescued by her consorts and a U-boat which arrived later. However, Edinburgh was torpedoed again by Z 24 or Z 25 and was abandoned and scuttled in turn, with 58 men lost in all.   Edinburgh's gold bullion was recovered in the early 1980s in a salvage operation as dramatic as many a battle, but that's another story.
      How did I get on re-fighting the battle in Atlantic Fleet? It's time to find out!   ...to be continued!

    Arctic Convoy Action
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    Re-fighting the battle for Convoy PQ13 in Atlantic Fleet   Of all the many dramatic photographs taken of the war at sea, some of the most haunting are of the last moments of what maybe minutes before was a fine warship in fighting trim. Pictures like this well-known shot of a Japanese escort sunk by skip-bombing. The crew cling to the capsizing vessel as what appears to be another bomb, dropped by the aircraft from which the photo was taken, splashes across the water towards the stricken ship like a stone skipped on a pond.     Back in the 1990s I coveted but never obtained a rather expensive book from the alas long-departed Military Book Club, War at Sea 1939-45 by Kreigsmarine veteran Jurgen Rohwer. This was a large-format book with a short narrative account written around an excellent series of photographs, many of which I haven't seen before. When, just recently, I picked up this book second-hand, I was just as struck as I had been many years ago by its cover photo, one of a series a wrecked and apparently abandoned German destroyer.       At the time I realised the pictures were indeed of a German destroyer, taken from an enemy ship. But what ship was she, what happened to her crew, and how did she come to be one of the very few ships photographed so very closely by those who had sunk her?     The historical battle   Long before I got the book, I had discovered that the sinking German destroyer was the Z 26, lost during a confused battle in Arctic waters on 29th March 1942. By that time, Royal Navy was running a series of convoys - the PQ series, later changed to JW - to help keep the Soviet Union in the battle against Nazi Germany. The most famous Arctic convoy action is PQ17, which scattered after inaccurate reports that it was about to be intercepted by a force including the battleship Tirpitz and was then devastated by air and U-Boat attack. Other famous Arctic convoy-related actions were the Battle of the Barents Sea in December 1942, where the failure of the German force to get to grips with the convoy had Hitler pushing for the scrapping of the surface fleet; and the Battle of the North Cape a year later, when Scharnhorst was lost in action during an abortive sortie against Convoy JW55B. Throughout, the merchant, naval and aircrews of all sides had to endure exposure to some of the worst weather in any theatre of war, with frequent heavy, freezing seas in which survival time was low indeed.     By the time in early 1942 that Convoy PQ13 sailed for Murmansk, the Kriegsmarine was still in the middle of redeploying its remaining seaworthy heavy units to northern waters, primarily to interdict the Arctic convoys, in co-operation with U-boats and bombers. Just three destroyers participated in the attack on PQ13 - Z 24, Z 25 and Z 26. They were all from a class which had begun to be laid down before the battle by whose name the class was commonly known - Narvik. Not an auspicious name - as one author put it, " 'Lost at Narvik' was the epitath of the Leberecht Mass and Deither von Roeder classes", ten of the big destroyers having been smashed in two fights in Narvik Fjord with the Royal Navy during 1940, like Bernd von Arnim, below.     The Narvik class were big and with 5.9 inch guns, very heavily armed for destroyers, though not all shipped the twin forward turret intended for the class - they all do, in Atlantic Fleet.   PQ13's nineteen merchant ships - most of them US and British Merchant Navy vessels - had already suffered some losses from aircraft. And severe weather had dispersed the ships, two groups re-forming and the rest proceeding independently. At this point, the German destroyers arrived, and after sinking a merchantman, ran into the convoy's close escort, headed by the cruiser HMS Trinidad, supported by RN destroyers and later by one of the Soviet destroyers which had sortied to meet the convoy. Z 26 was hit hard, mainly byTrinidad;  Z 24 and Z 25 disengaged after rescuing around 90 of her crew, but about 240 never made it.     The PQ13 action in Atlantic Fleet   You don't need to use Atlantic Fleet's custom battle generator fo fight this one - it's included with the large set of historical battles that come with the game. Here's the intro screen. As usual, there's no 'fog of war' - less relevant anyway, in an historical mission - so you can see exactly who's on each side. You can choose to play for either navy - or to take the turns for both sides, by setting the 'Player 2' option to 'ON'.     I have opted to play for the Kriegsmarine, and we have the initiative (= first turn). As well as the 6-inch gun Fiji (or Crown Colony) Class cruiser Trinidad, we are up against three Royal Navy destroyers - the inter-war types Eclipse and Fury, and the War Emergency Programme Oribi, the latter distinguisable by having just the one funnel, compared to two for the others. Six merchantmen are in the part of the convoy that we have come upon. The weather is poor, cloudy and with rain or snow.   Here's the position at the moment the battle begins. Our three destrovers are, realistically, line abreast, in the sort of formation that would be used to sweep for the enemy. Trinidad herself is the only ship we have been able to identify visually at this stage; the others are just radar contacts.     Clearly, it's time to get busy!     ...to be continued!

    'The Baltimore Whore' in CFS3+ETO
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    Back to CFS3...in the Martin B-26 Marauder     I was - and suppose I still am - a fan of Microsoft's last fling in the Combat Flight Simulator series, CFS3. I didn't especially like the air-to-air combat - AI planes flying at empty weight meant that even heavier, more sluggish enemies could often prove frustrating foes. And there was the unfortunate fact that CFS3 ignored the strategic bomber component (even decent add-ons like Firepower, which added 4-engined bombers, just tended to expose CFS3's limitations as a bomber sim). European Air War, this wasn't.   Neverthess, CFS3 was billed primarily as a simulator of tactical air power, 1943-45, and that, I felt, it did reasonably well. The radio and intercomm chatter and the wingman commands were very limited, of course. And I didn't particularly like it's 'alternative history' version of WW2, as presented in the dynamic campaign, with German shipping flowing freely in the English Channel in daylight and the Germans having the possibility of invading England even late in the war. It's World War Two, Jim, but not as we know it. A dynamic campaign that's...well, a bit too dynamic.   But unlike IL-2 at the time - I mean, as in, over ten years ago - CFS3 provided rather good coverage of the European Theatre of Operations, which was and remains my main interest, by a wide margin. So I played CFS3 a lot, and downloaded many user-made aircraft, like those of the 1% and GroundCrew teams.   I also ended up buying many of the CFS3 add-ons, my favourite being the D-Day one, which improved quite a bit on the historical accuracy of the dynamic campaign. This expansion I could never get to install correctly in Vista. But salvation was at hand - in the shape of the ETO Expansion, a massive user mod which features improved terrain, a huge increase in the planeset (including many of the aforementioned user-made models) and an 'era switcher' which enables the player- as in the recent CUP mod for IL-2 '46 - to configure the sim to cover different eras, in this case from the Spanish Civil War to the end of WW2.   Just recently, I have been prompted to fire up CFS3+ETO Expansion once more, by the arrival of the latest version of Ankor's DX9 mod. To the dynamic shadows and sea reflections of previous versions, this adds ground object and cloud shadows...and, joy of joys, enables players to lose at long last the dreadful 'fisheye (wide-angle) lens' external view that always gave CFS3 aircraft a distorted appearance, which I for one loathed.   As an illustration of this, here is a picture of the rather unattractive Whitley bomber, one of the ETO Expansion's planes, without Ankor's mod...     ...and here is a pic of the Expansion's Coastal Command version of the Whitley, with the latest DX9 mod. Note that despite the camera being zoomed in more closely, the perspective is much more natural. You can also see the shadows cast on the aircraft itself, and also the ground shadows, cast here by trees, clouds and folds in the ground. I'm not saying it makes the poor old Whitley pretty, mind, but the natural perspective is a big improvement.     Having fired up CFS3+ETO Expansion with the DX9 mod installed, I naturally took several virtual aircraft up for a virtual spin. It was soon apparent that some of the planes which benefit most are those USAAF machines in natural metal finish, like this P-47 Thunderbolt (this is the stock CFS3 one, with the latest DX9 mod applied)...     ...and here's the P-38 Lightning - again, this is the stock CFS3 version:     So I thought I'd go for a campaign with one of these nice silver birds, in the ETO Expansion. I chose the B-26 Marauder - this is how the Expansion's natural metal version looks (unlike IL-2- the 'skin' supplied is used for all planes of that type, in game). Note how the reflections on the fuselage nicely pick up on the terrain below. I''ll have one of those, I decided, for my first CFS3 campaign for some time.     Having selected the D-Day era, I started by creating a new pilot, chose a bomber career for him, then used the 'Change aircraft' option to switch from the allocated B-25 Mitchell to my nice shiny B-26G. I was undeterred by the real Marauder's bad reputation. Being a 'hot' machine for a bomber, she had at first a bad name for crashes, earning unsavoury nicknames like the one in this mission report's title, also 'The Widowmaker'. By 1944 things had improved and I expected I'd appreciate advantages such as the good defensive and offensive armament, high speed and tricycle undercarriage. 'Baltimore Whore' or not, she's not just a pretty face.   I kicked off the campaign and began to remember how CFS3's dynamic campaign handles these things. I was started in May 1944, about a month before the real D-Day, although I knew that my unit's performance could influence this. I was placed at the lead of the squadron operation, flying from RAF St Eval in Cornwall. I can't recall which Bomb Squadron we were flying with, but CFS3 isn't particularly strong on creating a strong sense of unit, and any resemblance between that and the markings on your aircraft is co-incidental.   On campaign, CFS3 offers you one of a set range of mission types, which you can opt to change. I never worked out whether there were any campaign advantages to be had, between which missions you chose and when. Commonly, you start with an anti-shipping missions, whichever side you are playing for. And that's what I got. I was placed at the head of two flights of four B-26s - bombers in CFS3 fly fighter-style 'finger four' formations, widely-spaced to boot.   Our target was enemy shipping down to the south-west. Not quite in the English Channel, but still, it was rather silly of the Germans to expose whatever ships it was to overwhemling air power in daylight.   Well, it wasn't quite daylight yet. It was just before dawn as we formed up for take-off. But it would be daylight, by the time we got to the target area. I had accepted a torpedo armament - bombs being the alternative, naturally - so we started with these rather short, fat airborne tin fish slung under our silver bellies. If I'd known they'd be external - and if I knew if CFS3 replicated their drag, which I didn't - I might have gone for bombs.     A fat lot of good it likely would have done me, as it turned out.   The second flight of four B-26s was already in the air so I wasted no time in taking off to the north, passing over St Eval again as I began a wide turn to the left, to come around to our assigned track out to the target, which lay to the south-south-west.     I kept throttled back to let the others catch up, and it wasn't long before all eight bombers were stacked up behind and either side of me, sadly in their wide fighter formations. At least the risk of mid-air collisions should be low!     The 'warp/move to next event' feature in CFS3 has evolved to a very fast form of time acceleration, instead of the CFS1 and CFS2 'teleport' equivalent. It remains a very convenient way of flying what would otherwise be longish, uneventful legs in the typical CFS3 campaign mission. The trick is not to leave it too late to interrupt this 'very fast forward' process. This is especially important in torpedo or other low level attacks, for you 'warp' at a fixed altitude, about 14,000 feet in this case, which is much too high an attack profile fo most CFS3 missions. And if enemies were spawned based on radar detection, which I suspect they may not be, well at that sort of height they would have seen you coming from many miles away.   So while I flew a direct course to the target, I took care to break the 'warp' at intervals, which not only made sure I could lose altitude in good time, but also gave me a chance to admire the sunrise and the reflective effects on my aircraft.     I forgot to check if the briefing advised if we had a fighter escort - you often have on a CFS3 campaign mission, and in this case it was a flight of Mustangs, four I think. They were soon to make themselves useful.   ...to be continued!

    Balloon busting in WoFF
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    Taking on one of WW1's more dangerous jobs in Wings over Flanders Fields     One of the features of the often-static trench warfare during 1914-18 was the widespread use, by both sides, of tethered observation balloons, both to monitor movements and developments on the enemy side of the Lines, and to direct artillery fire. Naturally, the air forces regularly made efforts to inhibit the effectiveness of these balloons by attacking them. This could be a dangerous occupation, for both balloon busters and those being busted. The latter were probably the first airmen routinely issued with parachutes, but they didn't always work. And aircraft attacking a tethered balloon were relatively easy targets for guns deployed to defend them. On the German side, this included an auto-cannon that fired bursts of big tracers which the British airmen knew as 'flaming onions'.   A few WW1 fighter pilots actually specialised in shooting down balloons. One of these was ace Rudolf von Eschwege, the 'Eagle of the Aegean', whose career was vividly described between the wars in 'German War Birds' written by Claude W Sykes under the pseudonym 'Vigilant'.  Von Eschwege developed a taste for attacking the 'sausages' but In the end, fell victim to a trap sometimes sprung upon balloon-busters, whereby the balloon was crewed with dummies and loaded with a large explosive charge in the basket. This was fired by an electrical wire from the ground, when the attacker was close to the target, with results that can readily be imagined.   Balloon-busting is prominently featured in my favourite WW1 air war movie, The Blue Max. Although the target looks a bit too much like an aluminium-coloured weather balloon, the scene is all the better for the absence of the sort of CGI used for the rather contrived balloon attack sequence in the more recent The Red Baron. A plus for the earlier movie is that the aircraft used by our hero, George Peppard alias Leutnant Bruno Stachel, was a nice flying replica of a Pfalz D.III, a type reportedly favoured for balloon-busting due to its strength in a fast dive.       You may recall that a realistically-dangerous balloon attack is a major feature of another much-superior old war film, Aces High, using Stampe SV.4s converted to resemble SE5a's     Getting on to combat flight sims, these missions are of course a regular feature in the classic Red Baron 3D. Invariably, a flight of enemy fighters is circling over the balloon, ready to pounce, but realism is the better because the target balloon is winched down as you approach. If I recall right, this also happens in Rise of Flight...     ...though not in First Eagles/FE2...     ...or in Wings over Flanders Fields. Fortunately, in none of them are you liable to be blown up by a TNT-loaded balloon basket, although the exploding gasbag itself could perhaps be a hazard, as illustrated in the FE2 screenshot above!   As luck would have it, I wasn't too far into my current WoFF Jasta Boelcke campaign before I drew a balloon-busting mission. I was given a flight of no less than six machines for the task, plus another flight of three in general support, so with the Staffelfuhrer's exhortations ringing in my virtual ears and undaunted by the typically abysmal spring weather, off we go.     Nothing much to it, I think to myself. I would cross the Lines near my target, taking full advantage of the extensive cloud cover, swing around and then clobber the sausage headed for home and safety. Still dangerous, very possibly, but complicated...well, not especially. Little did I know...   ...to be continued!

    CombatACE Saitex X-56 H.O.T.A.S. Review by 531Ghost
    Skyviper
    By Skyviper,

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Over the front with Jasta Boelcke
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    A mission from my latest pilot career in Wings over Flanders Fields!     Having played little but Atlantic Fleet for four solid months since the PC version was released in late February, I recently decided to make a bit of room for some combat flight sim and tanksim action. For the latter, it's back to Steel Fury's indispensible STA mod, and with a bit of luck, I'll soon re-start work on the STA-Britpak sub-mod, having got my hand back in, playing the only mission yet available in the current beta (or maybe it's an alpha) version, featuring the 23rd Hussars in Operation Bluecoat...     Doubtless I'll find some time for Steel Armor - Blaze of War also. Its featured theaters of war are more off the beaten tank track that Steel Fury's, but its tanksim-wargame combo really works quite well and it improves on many of the features of the earlier Graviteam tank simulator, specifically in terms of AI, platoon command & control, radio net and target indications.     For an air combat fix, I fancy trying out the excellent Blinding Sun campaign in the Combined User Patch mod for Il-2 '46, flying a sleek MiG-3 to defend Mother Russia against the fascist invaders...     But before that, it's back to the First Great War in the Air, with the incomparable Wings over Flanders Fields. And what better way to start with a new pilot career in an elite fighter squadron, the illustrious Jasta Boelcke. Formed in the autumn of 1916 as the first fighter unit in the modern sense as Jasta 2, it was re-named for its first commander, pioneer air fighter Oswald Boelcke, after he died following a collision with a fellow pilot's aircraft. Despite this and other setbacks, Jasta Boelcke remained one of the premier German fighter squadrons of the First World War.   Naturally, you can sign up with Jasta 2/Jasta Boelcke in Wings over Flanders Fields, at pretty well any time during its wartime service. For me, the most interesting period of WW1 in the air has always been from early to autumn 1917, spanning Bloody April and the subsequent resurgence of the Royal Flying Corps, with the arrival of new fighters like the SE5 and Camel. So I opted to start my career in late March 1917, flying the superb 'V-strutter' Albatros D.III from Proville in Flanders. Even if you haven't upgraded to the latest version of WoFF, with the 'skins' pack now free and the latest version of Ankor's DX9 mod for CFS3 at last enabling us to see off the awful 'fisheye lens' external view, WoFF, its aircraft and its scenery have never, ever looked better. And that includes the white-tailed Albatri of the flight i'm now leading in Jasta Boelcke, as we set out to do battle with the English, over Flanders fields.     ...to be continued!

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


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