A Quick and Dirty Normandy Conversion

[pagsab]

As described in https://combatace.com/forums/topic/100072-following-your-leader-through-the-low-european-clouds and in my popular recent video at https://www.youtube.com/@philipsabin1653, I like to use SF2 to fly entire short missions in real time as a wingman.  I usually model fighter vs. fighter combat in slow motion and tactical detail using my various manual designs, while using SF2 instead to simulate the equally common experiences of ground attacks or interceptions of unescorted bombers, in which the actual combats against flak or enemy air gunners are fleeting enough for our planes to reform easily for the satisfying and atmospheric formation flight back to base.

The reduced scale of most SF2 terrains helps to shorten missions, but full scale alternatives like Gepard’s MiG Alley and Battle of Britain terrains include much richer detail.  The price of longer flight times is compounded in the latter case by the need to cross the Channel twice during complete ground attack missions, but I realised that I could tweak this to tap a rich vein of short and unopposed ground attack sorties, namely those conducted by the Allies from forward airfields during the Normandy campaign in summer 1944.

All I needed to do to permit Allied single missions from Normandy was to edit a copied version of the Battle of Britain 2_targets.ini to change a few target areas from enemy to friendly (and from Airfield_LW_Fighters to Airfield_for_Fighters just in case).  You can start with 065 Crepon to simulate the earliest forward missions in June, and then add areas 066, 063, 064, 227 and 299 as the front line advances through June and July.  I also found a quick and dirty way to simulate front line German flak, namely by copying the 114 Hyde Park flak zone and adding a dozen or so enemy clones as new target areas at short intervals along the front, with gun headings tweaked if desired.  You can select appropriate locations with reference to the locations of the airfields and towns you have tweaked.  223 Le Havre could do with flak copied from 227 Cherbourg and re-numbered in sequence, and you may do the same at other German-held towns if you wish.  As a finishing touch, you may copy the 16 cargo ships from 225 Calais, and add re-numbered versions as two new friendly target areas at 610/410 and 670/402 to represent the Mulberry harbours, doubling the visibility distances in the CargoShip4.ini to make them easier to spot.

The picture below shows me returning to the beachhead with my colleagues after too close an encounter with flak and my own bomb bursts during a 25 minute sortie from Caen to and from the railway bridge NE of Le Havre.  Once you have learnt to make these simple targets.ini tweaks, you may easily customise any terrain for a single mission, using your ingenuity to find simple short cuts and focusing only on the few locations involved rather than needing to convert all the target areas across the map to reflect the front line at your chosen date.  Thanks to the cornucopia of aircraft and terrain mods available, SF2 offers a wonderfully accessible sandbox to create endlessly variable vicarious air missions.