Red Sun Setting - CFS2

[33LIMA]

Flying for the Imperial Japanese Army in Yoshi's 'Battle of Chishima' campaign!

 

 

Having recently had a lot of fun spending more time with CFS2, one campaign I was keen to revisit was 'The Battle of Chishima' by Yoshitsugu 'Yoshi' Nagata, which I'd last enjoyed maybe 10 years ago. My original interest in this campaign sprang from an interest in Japanese WW2 warplanes. One of my favourite 1/72 kits 'back in the day' was Revell's Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa (Peregrine Falcon). I had my model painted up just like the box art, silver overall with wavy green camo on top and yellow leading-edge prop warning panels. By pulling off the two-bladed prop you could remove the engine cowling to reveal the radial engine, the cockpit canopy could slide back and I even managed to make the undercart retractable (albeit they didn't pivot, but could be manually pushed in place, either up or down. My kind of kit!

 

 

The real Hayabusa was very popular with its pilots despite being rather underpowered, under-protected and under-armed by the standards of the time, even it first entered service in 1941. According to Osprey's 'Dogfight - P-40 Warhawk -vs- Ki-43 'Oscar' ' only 40 were in service by the date of the attack on Pearl Harbour and the first models had a two-blade fixed-pitch prop and just two rifle-calibre machine guns. However, its superb handling and manoeuvrability reportedly endeared the US-dubbed 'Oscar' to its pilots and it was certainly more modern that the even more manoeuvrable but slower, spatted-undercart Ki-27 that it supplemented then replaced as the IJA's premier single-seat fighter. Vulnerable to enemy fire it may have been, but it was no pushover.

 

CFS2's Hayabusa is, I believe, the Ki-43IIb model with more powerful engine, stronger, shorter-span wings, some protection for pilot and fuel tanks and two heavy MGs, in full production by October 1942. Although it's one of the Artificial Intelligence-flown planes in CFS2, this is one sim that has no shortage of freeware and payware mods, including ones to make the AI planes flyable. The only catch is that some of these come with no cockpit so you just have external and 'gunsight' views (with the reticle hanging in a clear sky, not what I'm used to but great for gunnery and a good view!)

 

This time around I wanted to fly the Hayabusa in both CFS2 and IL-2. The former is first up for a mission report here at CombatAce and features Yoshi's Chishima campaign. Chishima is better known to Westerners as the Kurile Islands, which stretch in an arc from the north-east tip of the Japanese mainland all the way to Russia's Camchatka Peninsula, just across the northern Pacific from Alaska. In mid-1943, US air raids began to probe the Japanese defences in this region and it's these relatively small-scale tussles that this mini-campaign represents. There's a set of five single missions designed to be flown in sequence, which is fine by me as I can live without the rather excessively goal-oriented CFS2 approach to campaigns. The Chishima missions aren't all intercepttions: for example the third mission has you providing air cover for a submarine whose engines have failed. Here's the link for the campaign:

 

http://simviation.com/1/browse-Missions+%26+Campaigns-85-2

 

And here's the brief for mission number one. It's short and sweet but you get the picture! There's no indication of the enemy's strength, but I was leading a flight of no less than eight Hayabusas so, sensibly or otherwise, I was feeling fairly relaxed about the odds. Given that the local air defence set-up was liable to be a tad primitive, I suppose the limited 'int' is perhaps realistic! We were operating from Kitanodai airfield, which was on the island of Paramushiro (see pic of the real airfield here: http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/P/a/Paramushiro.htm ) and was apparently used as a base by the 54th Sentai.

 

 

The sim crashed if I tried to open the map (it's on the 'Advanced Info' tab) in the briefing screen so without further ado, I kicked the tires and lit the fires, and consulted the map once the mission had loaded. Here it is. The enemy bombers - as in, the red plane icon - are evidently targeting installations on another island just across a narrow channel from our sea-side base. Sensibly, you can see that the only mission goal is to survive; there's no silly requirement to destroy at least a fixed number of enemies.

 

 

And here we are, good to go. I've always liked this camouflaged natural metal finish on the 'Oscar' and the CFS2 version, though designed for the AI, is fully up the the high standard of the CFS2 player planeset, complete with animated parts like extending flaps and wheels which bounce on their oleo legs as you roll on the ground. Bring on the Yanquis!

 

 

...to be continued!

[33LIMA]

Up and at 'em!

 

I started up, checked the controls and set flaps for takeoff. With incoming fast bombers to catch, there was clearly no time to hang around. I opened her up and roared off down the runway, correcting the swing with a touch of rudder. My squadron wasted no time and was soon doing the same, right behind me, an impressive spectacle. My morale rose accordingly as I climbed up and away from Kitanodai, leaving behind the large hangars, the parked planes and all the other paraphanalia of a secondary but well-appointed island airbase.

 

 

I cleaner her up, turned on the Tactical Display and began a climbing turn to the left, to pick up the displayed blue route indicator line.

 

 

This was a short leg and I was soon turning again, this time onto a course which seemed calculated to intercept the US bombers in the vicinity of their likely target. I'm not sure why the leg ran so far to the north-east, unless it was intended to take us along the enemy's line of retreat. Hopefully we would make contact long before coming to the end of the leg.

 

 

This gave me the opportunity to admire my mount. CFS2 may be rather long in the tooth but though lacking modern graphic features like bump mapping or self-shadowing, its aircraft still look good in both outline and in finish, with realistic and sharp nicely-weathered textures. To my eye, they have stood the test of time pretty well, a fitting tribute to their builders. And while the exterior view zooms in fixed steps, there's none of the horrible CFS3-style 'wide angle lens effect' to distort the image.

 

 

Back to business! From the map I was expecting to meet bombers over the next island, perhaps catching them on their way out as they crossed from right to left ahead of us. But instead, scanning an arc of sky ahead, I spotted a 'vic' of three aircraft coming in from the sea to my left, at about 10 o'clock, and fortunately not above us. They looked too big to be fighters, so I took them for an incoming enemy raid, targetting our forces on the island across the channel.

 

 

They were moving fast and if I wanted to have any chance of catching them before they bombed - if they hadn't, already! - I could not afford to get dragged into a long tail chase. So I turned so as to set up the 'Tizzy Angle', named for the Polish RAF pilot who realised that the easiest way to set an optimal interception course on a bandit crossing your flight path was to adjust your course so that the enemy just grew as you closed, without seeming to drift either ahead or astern as the range wound down. With my squadron at my heels, I slowly edged closer.

 

 

...to be continued!

[33LIMA]

First blood!

 

Slowly, we closed in on the three presumed enemy bombers. As they neared landfall, I thought they had the look of twin-engined aircraft with twin tail fins - B-25 Mitchells!

 

 

We continued to gain ground and I nosed down slightly, both to gain a bit of speed and to bring myself in below the rear gunner's field of fire. The excitement mounted as the enemy flight, to start with just a group of indistinct specks in the sky, assumed the shape of a vee formation of Mitchells running at full tilt but armed to the teeth with heavy machine guns.

 

 

Time to get busy! I switched to the cockpit view - well, ok, the no-cockpit, gunsight reticle view - and prepared to make my attack. So far, this seemed to be working. There was no return fire - yet. I hadn't realised that these early B-25's lacked the tail turret later fitted. So I was still more than a bit anxious, waiting for the moment the enemy gunners would decide to do something about my approach.

 

 

I decided to attack the right-hand bomber but underestimated my closing speed. I had to break away below him without firing more than a few rounds, jinking to avoid return fire and nosing down again to pick up speed and get out of danger. At this point I remembered to give my squadron the order to attack, too.

 

 

I seemed to have escaped this rather ropey performance without sustaining any damage. That was not my only piece of good fortune. I found that my speed had carried me past the two rearmost bombers and into a decent position from which to have a crack at the leader. So that's what I did.

 

 

I got some hits on his left wing then, levelling out, fired again. His starboard engine burst into flames and he curved away, trailing a long streamer of dark smoke.

 

 

So far, so good - one down, two to go!

 

...to be continued!

[33LIMA]

The falcon strikes again!

 

Leaving my lagging squadron-mates to deal with the last bomber - and finish off my victim, if necessary - I went for another Mitchell. With the leader on fire, the other two had split and turned left. Picking my target, I cut across his turn, noticing for the first time the yellow pencil lines of his tracers streaking back towards me. I stayed low and this seemed to help, for his rounds went wide.

 

 

But in matching his curve to stay under his tail, I ended up in a tail chase when he straightened out. Closing only slowly and reluctant to take too much of a chance with his heavy defensive weapons, I started snapping out short bursts from my twin heavy MGs, observing the fall of shot and correcting my aim till I started getting some hits. After a few of these, a fire started in his rear fuselage and then he suddenly flipped forward into a steep nosedive. It looked like my rounds had severed his elevator control cables. Two bombers down! That would do nicely!

 

 

Back in the external, 'spot' view - which I generally fly in, pre- and post-combat, for better appearances and better preipheral vision - I banked left and looked around, wondering what my squadron mates had been up to. I turned on the TAC, to help. While I prefer to avoid such on-screen aids, in fast-moving WW2 or later air combat, it's actually a good way of simulating the results of a few seconds of rapid scanning. No amount of panning or head-tracking can really compensate for the limits of sitting at a monitor and using hardware to perform what the human mind and eye can do so much better and so much more naturally. Likely the TAC over-compensates but I'm not one of those people who equate difficulty with either realism or fun. Fine if that's your thing - each to his own - de gustibus non est disputandum.

 

 

With the TAC's help, I soon saw what was what. My squadron was to my rear, some of them milling about for some reason; pehaps they were settling the hash of the bomber I had set afire. Other Hayabusas were closing in behind me.

 

 

But the really interesting thing was that little white arrowhead on the TAC, off to my left, signifying an unidentified aircraft. Looking in the direction indicated, I could see it was a large aeroplane, likely the third Mitchell. I would almost certainly have spotted him without the TAC and so felt no compunction in altering to an intercepting course. My squadron was now again behind me and in view of their apparent lack of application so far this mission, I resolved to show them how it was done. After a short chase, I rolled in behind the Mitchell and blasted him, with spectacular results.

 

 

I broke up and away, leaving the bomber diving to its destruction in the sea below. Perhaps he'd already been damaged by my comrades but I saw no evidence of it. In fact as far as I was concerned, all three victories were mine, and mine alone. At best I could possibly thank my squadron for dividing the enemy return fire, such as there was of it.

 

 

Anyway, the skies were clear and it was back to base. Clearly I'd survived, and we'd taken no losses as a squadron, while knocking down three bombers. This seemed a pretty good return for a day's work. I doubted it would be so easy, next time, and resolved to make better use of my team in future. In CFS2 you can do this - within the limitations of the AI's abilities - by selecting each target in turn then issuing an 'attack' command, so as to send off a pair of wingmen after each one. With eight of us on the mission, I could and should have done this before piling in myself. But three kills and a lesson or two learned can't be all bad, I told myself as I came in to land back at Kitanodai.

 

 

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this mission from Yoshi's 'The Battle of Chishima'; as much as I recall doing first time around, many moons ago. To my mind, CFS2's still a pretty good air combat sim, a good choice for anyone wanting to make a start in the genre and a great platform for a Pacific air war fix for old and new players alike.

 

It's not the only one though. By way of comparison, the next report will feature the Ki-43 Hayabusa again, this time in IL-2 '46.