Imagine you could hunt or escort one of these!

[Olham 164]

Glowing red exhaust pipes in an artistic contrast to the blue of the night.

Found this in "Gallery" over at the Aerodrome: a Staaken R.IV, painted by Robert Karr.

There are many great paintings by various artists - if you've never been there, go and check it out.

 

 

[Slartibartfast 153]

Where's my Shotgun

 

Would be an interesting target like all heavies in WW1...

[Flyby PC 23]

I forget which book it was, and WW2 yet again unfortunately, but I think is was Martin Bormans (?) Mosquitopanik that records nightfighters identifying their target by the colour of flame from the exhaust. From memory, I think the British Bombers had a bluer tinge to their exhaust, whereas German nightfighters were a little more yellow. I think I remember one flight record confirming this in their identification protocols before opening fire. They weren't 100% sure what it was, but satisfied it was German. I might be remembering that a bit wrong, and that the exhaust prompted a closer look, until they spotted a swastika on the tail. They dropped back to avoid colliding with debris, lined up the sights, then wham! Even so, to me that's pretty scary having to risk getting that close, but also reassuring that they went to such trouble to confirm their target was indeed an enemy aircraft.

 

I cannot imagine the surge of adrenalin which must have been pumping through the veins whenever you saw anything unfamiliar in the sky, in either war. That said, I'm just a layman, and whenever real pilots talk about such things, they invariably talk as well trained professionals who simply looked upon combat as 'doing their job'. I'm not sure I'd have the same discipline myself though, which is probably why I'd only last a single mission or perhaps two if I was lucky.

 

I think there's a kind of complacency which creeps into your flying in a flight sim which you wouldn't get in real life. Complacency isn't the right word, but when you're doing something intense and dangerous, there's nothing else quite like the feeling. You don't get really scared stiff sitting in your home at a PC, but back when I flew CFS3 pretty regularly, you could fly nightfighter missions with a modified 'H2S/Serrate' TAC, with all dots friendly and enemy being the same colour. You needed to physically see what the target aircraft was before attacking it. You didn't get a sense of fear, but turn off the lights, and the tension alone got pretty intense. You also had to cheat a little and make the nightfighters 'friendly' or else they invariably reacted to your approach. There's no real darkness in CFS3, enemies will always see you coming, but it still wasn't a milk run because there were some real nightfighters out there too. You needed to be in the right frame of mind to fly the missions, because I wouldn't have called it fun.

[Olham 164]

Hmm - my "idiomatic knowledge" isn't good enough for the second one.

But hey, flying wouldn't have been invented without wishful thinking first. P2 woudn't have turned into P3 without it.

So - who knows, perhaps it helps?

Edited October 18, 2010 by Olham

[Hasse Wind 46]

Maybe with the heavy bombers in P4 we can do some night bombing. Only time will tell, but it would require some changes to how the CFS3 engine models night time.

 

The night fighters (and bombers) of WW2 would make for a really fascinating flight sim. I imagine that kind of combat would be very different from the action in broad daylight, with radars and stuff.

[Typhoon 5]

It looks as if the poor bugger has snagged a barrage balloon cable with his starbord wing.

 

Tony

[Olham 164]

Yes, indeed - he ran into a Ballonsperre (balloon barrage?)! Didn't notice that before, but you're right.