'The Baltimore Whore' in CFS3+ETO

[33LIMA 972]

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!

[+Stary 2,427]

Ankor Ankor Ankor!

Guy did amazing thing to CFS3/WOFF I never had so much fun with CFS3 before, going back to classics like MAW or ETO -with his shaders it's one of the biggest dogfighting funs

[33LIMA 972]

A rude interruption!

 

 

As we neared the target area, I checked my position on the in-flight 'mini-map', as you can see below. This map has to be one of the worst in any flight sim ever, low resolution and particularly indecipherable if zoomed in, with airfields and your target being the only things marked on it with any clarity. You can also see the mission briefing, on the right. These being generated, not scripted, campaign missions, this briefing is pretty canned. It also hasn't caught up with the fact we have changed planes, as it still shows us as allocated B25H Mitchells. The land visible at the top of the map is Land's End in Cornwall; to the right edge of the map is the tip of Brittany. You can see why the principal occupation of squadrons based at the real RAF St Eval was patrolling to catch U-boats, as they transitted to and fom their bases around St Nazaire and Brest.

 

 

Nearing the target area, it was time to get down from the 14,000 feet default transit altitude. Now then, how does it go, for a descent? Power, attitude, trim. I chopped the throttle and let the speed decay, then pushed the nose down. Formation-keeping in CFS3 is not brilliant and it invariably takes a while before the boys recognise your move and follow; I tend to tap the 'R' key to order 'rejoin!' but am not sure if it actually makes a difference. I didn't bother with the trim, I must confess.

 

 

CFS3's virtual cockpits were notably poor for the period, well behind those in IL-2. The Marauder being a stock CFS3 model is typical, but though not visible below, at least it now benefits from the dynamic shadows that come with Ankor's DX9 mod, which as Stary has observed, really transforms the visuals of CFS3 (stock or modded) and is now built-in to Wings over Flanders Fields (working fine with predecessor Over Flanders Fields, too).

 

 

The squadron had by now begun to descend with me and was closing formation again - 'closing' being a relative term, CFS3's bomber formations being too wide - IIRC they are liable to break up more often, if a modder tries to tighten them up. By now, the sun was just clearing the watery horizon to the east.

 

 

Suddenly and without any warning, this pretty picture was rudely interrupted. Tracer fire whizzed down past my bomber, some of it hitting me somewhere astern. At about the same time, my mid-upper and tail gunners started shooting back. I didn't really need to look behind, to confirm that we were under air attack - from FW 190s, by the look of them.

 

 

'Where's our escort?', flashed through my head as I jinked to throw off the enemy's aim. 'On the job' was the answer. A Focke-Wulf overshot my B-26 and turned hard left, pursued by a silver P-51. 'Go get 'em!' I thought, exultantly.

 

 

Much relieved, I settled back into my dive towards the target area, but opened out the throttles, easing off the angle of descent a little. The P-51s and FWs seemed now to be mixing it up behind us, so it was time to get clear, find those ships and hit them hard.

 

 

It wasn't going to be quite so simple, however.

 

To be continued!

[33LIMA 972]

Back on target...

 

 

I turned on the Tactical Display, a.k.a. TAC, to orient myself, and immediately became disoriented. The blue line to the twelve o'clock position indicated that my next waypoint - which should have been the target itself - lay almost directly ahead, with the range read-out indicating seven miles. But where was the little purple triangle which I remembered should highlight the direction of my mission target? Instead, I could see a group of ships to my right rear - enemies, as they showed as redon the TAC. It seemed most unlikely there would be two groups of enemy ships in this vicinity. Hmmm...ok then, a shipping target in the hand is worth two shipping targets in the bush, I quickly decided. I would attack the one I could see, even though I wasn't sure it was the one we had been sent out here to clobber. I pulled up and turned right. Now then, how was it that one goes about organising a squadron attack in CFS3? Let me see, now...

 

 

Ah yes, I remember. I selected a ship target. Then issued the 'Attack!' order. This sent one - or was it a pair? - of the others in against the target. A radio acknowledgement confirmed the command was being complied with. Select another target, then rinse and repeat, until all the aircraft had been allocated a target. It was all coming back to me. But this is where things started to unravel.

 

The first indication of trouble came suddenly. There was the crash of an explosion and the B-26 to my left rear disintegrated into a shower of falling aircraft parts. At the same time, he reported on the radio that he was taking heavy damage, which was something of an understatement.

 

 

Our assailant was one of the FW 190s, of course. Well, nothing else for it - we were committed to the attack. I carried on, swinging down and around in a wide sweep to the right, calculated to being me onto the starboard bows of the oncoming enemy ships. As the range wound down, I could see that one of the enemies was a lot bigger than the others - he looked to me like a Hipper class heavy cruiser. OK, you'll do, I told myself.

 

 

I continued my approach. As I got closer still, the flak started. Lines of red tracers snaked up towards me and shells started bursting nearby, on the sea and in the air - the ETO Expansion flak effects are positively scary, compared to stock CFS3! I could see by now that my target was not merely a heavy cruiser, but the battlecruiser Scharnhorst. Sudddenly but much too late, I remembered that in previous CFS3 gameplay, I had learned to be a bit more clever about my atttacks - not issuing attack orders in quick succession as I had just done, but doing so at intervals, as my formation circled the target. Finally, having allowed enough time for the others to start making their attacks from different points of the compass - and they could be quite slow to do this - then I would make my own run-in. Instead, here I was, attacking a bloody great battlecruiser with destroyer escort, all on my own. All of a sudden, I felt a lot less clever.

 

 

...to be continued!

[33LIMA 972]

The moment of truth arrives...

 

 

I levelled off and settled onto my torpedo run. CFS3 is a bit more forgiving than it shoud be, in terms of how high and how fast you can be for a successful torpedo launch, but I still made some effort not to over-stretch this - I aimed for about 100 feet and under 200 knots. As for the others, whom I'd already ordered in to make their own attacks, I still hadn't heard the stock 'Beginning my attack!' radio messages, so it looked like I was definitely going in first.

 

As if that wasn't bad enough, I was conscious even before the flak opened up that my B-26 was responding somewhat sluggishly to the controls, evidently from damage sustained in the earlier fighter attack. I fly with the 'simulation messages and warnings' text display turned off, so apart from seeing a hole in my fin, I had no reall idea how bad it was.

 

I was seriously tempted to turn away and make another run once the others had started their attacks, but I was so close now that it seemed just as risky to turn away, as go on. So I bored on in - if I was about to get wiped out, as seemed more than likely, I might at least try to be sure of getting a hit with my single torpedo.

 

After what seemed like ages but was only seconds, I hit the release. Nothing happened. I hit the key again. Same result. Realised I must be hitting the wrong key. Tried another. Away went the torpedo, splashing into the water much too close to the target. I pulled the stick hard left to roll my wingtip away from Scharnhorst's main mast, cursing the sluggish response. I waited for the double crash as wingtip met mast then plane met sea. Instead, we scraped past with what looked like inches to spare.

 

 

I reversed my roll and tried to get away, pushing the throttles fully forward. Everything seemed to be moving painfully slowly, like one of those nightmares when you want to move but can't.

 

Behind me, there was an explosion as my torpedo hit the German battlecruiser, well aft on her starboard quarter.

 

 

I tried to shove the nose down, to get away at wave-top height. Instead, the extra power seemed to be forcing her up, increasing the angle of attack. Contrails streaming back from my wingtips indicated a power stall was near. Behind me, fires were burning on Scharnhorst...

 

 

...but all the while, flak from the battlecruiser and her escorts filled the air around me. If the stall didn't get me, it seemed the German gunners would.

 

 

It didn't seem like it could get any worse, but now it did. Ahead and just left, I saw that an air fight was going on, obviously the one between the Focke Wulfs and our Mustang escort. I banked right to steer away from this, even as a trio flak bursts went off just to port, under my wing and beside my tail.

 

 

Somehow, my empennage didn't fall off, and at last, the flak began to die away. They were still firing at me but now, the shells were consistently bursting astern. Looking back, I could see that the sky behind me was stained with its dark bursts. How I had got through all that, goodness only knew.

 

 

Not only had I somehow survived, but my single torpedo hit seemed to have done Scharnhorst quite a bit of harm. Ships in CFS3 don't seem to take any evasive action but just plough on regardless, which doubtless helped, as did the liklihood that the sim doesn't seem to model realistically the distance a torpedo would have to travel in the water to arm. Mine had run for a hundred feet at most. Still, I wasn't complaining.

 

The complaining started instead when I realised one of the Focke Wulfs - probably the beggar who had shot down my number two - was now coming in behind me.

 

 

I made some sluggish changes of course to try to throw off his passes. This seemed to work, to the extent that instead of firing, he banked and rolled around behind me, as if to avoid an overshoot.

 

I checked the map and made sure I was headed home. I could perhaps have tried to reach the dogfight and tried to wipe him off on that, but reckoned that could just as easily backfire and provide me with double trouble instead. I held the trottles wide open and nosed down towards the sea. Perhaps his aerobatics would cause him to fly into it. And I had four .50 Cal. machine guns to cover behind and above, ready to give him a hot reception. My tail and mid-upper gunners were already snapping out short bursts, which seemed to be deterring the 190 from making a sustained attack.

 

Just as I was beginning to feel once again that I might get away with this, the best laid plans of mice, men and Marauders went t*ts up. The roar of my engines faded. Speed dropped off, and in a second or two, my engines fell silent, their props spinning to a complete halt. This, I now remembered, happens a lot in CFS3. If I recall right, it's fuel system damage that somehow causes two engines to fail simultaneously, in the sim's twin-engined aircraft. I suspect the chance of this happening in real life is as close to nil as makes little difference, but there it is. I had no chance to find out how well the CFS3 B-26 flew on one engine. Maybe just as well...

 

 

Down we went. Not that there was much 'down' left, maybe a couple of hundred feet. At this point, the Focke Wulf overshot. My gunners seemed to be too surprised - or perhaps it was, too depressed - to do anything about it.

 

 

You can't feather props in CFS3, though this had happened automatically. I don't know if their remaining drag - they weren't windmilling - made any difference. But my stubby-winged Marauder seemed to make a very poor glider. She just seemed to want to head belly-first for the water; my instinctive but misguided efforts to raise her nose probably just made it worse.

 

 

I should have pushed the stick forward to reduce the angle of attack, built up speed, then flattened out at the last moment, to ditch. Instead, we belly-flopped, hard, into the water. There was a big spash, and that was it.

 

 

That was indeed it. Mission over. Campaign over. Pilot (and crew) killed on their first operation. Scharnhorst didn't sink, unsurprisingly, and if there were any attacks made by the rest of the squadron, I saw no successes recorded for them.

 

Serves me right for attacking on my own, instead of remembering to make my own attack only after having set up concentric attacks by the rest of the squadron, and then waiting for these to begin. I suppose I was distracted by that unexpected fighter attack at the start. In the end, I'm miffed that I fell victim to the dreaded CFS3 twin-engine double whammy, but realise that I was lucky to get that far!

 

If I recall right, ship attacks are one type of mission you cannot set up, to get some practice, in the usual CFS3 single mission generator. Whis is a pity, because they can be (a) fun (b) challenging and © are a common assignment at the start of the dynamic campaign. There are some user-made single missions which feature such targets, though perhaps not in the Marauder. Which is a pity. But with Ankor's DX9 mod making such a big difference to the appearance of the sim, on top of those delivered by the ETO Expansion, I'm definitely going to be flying some more CFS3 soon!

 

[thedogfighter 0]

 

 

Link to mod download?

[33LIMA 972]

Link to the ETO expansion is at 'ETO Expansion' in post 1, para 4 above, click on the blue underlined text, or the link below:

 

http://aussiex.org/forum/index.php?/files/category/10-eto-pto-sim-outhouse/

 

Scroll down a bit till you see the downloads listed individually; for ETO Expansion it's the base mod, the 1.20 update and a good bit further down, the 1.40 update & separate hotfix, and the 1.50 update which is on page 2.

 

There is a very good guide (in the base mod zip?) to the rather complex installation drill, which goes through it in full step-by-step & foolproof detail.

 

The latest version of Ankor's DX9 mod, which is a must-have for any CFS3 installation, Over Flanders Fields and pre-WOFF3 versions of Wings over Flanders Fields, is here:

 

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/local_links.php?catid=161&linkid=21670

 

And in case the lore of old has been lost, this CFS3config setup pictorial guide by Olham...

 

http://combatace.com/topic/60374-graphics-setup-an-easy-pictorial-guide/

 

...tho intended for OFF users, is equally appropriate to get the best from CFS3, including the 2048 'Composite Aircraft Texture Max Dimension' that I needed to avoid blurred markings, panel lines etc on aircraft skins at my monitor's 1600x900 native resolution.

 

Good hunting! Here's a few more of the Expansion's distinctive aircraft...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[jeanba 1,920]

Thank you 33Lima

 

Actually, I read articles on the Breguet 693 french attack plane, and I seem to remember that it is in ETO, so it will be an occasion to reinstall CFS3

[33LIMA 972]

Yeah, there's a decent range of Armée de l'Air/Aeronavale types in the ETO Expansion, which include these...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[thedogfighter 0]

Thanks a lot  Lima. i´ve been playing CFS3 for the last...13 years. ETO and MAW turned a so  so  sim  into an awesome game.

Edited August 12, 2016 by thedogfighter