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eastbound and down rollin up and truckin.... we got a long way to go and a short time to get there....

As QRA at RAF Coningsby we scrambled into a typically English overcast late Autumn morning... Contact had been lost with an Austrian Airlines flight from Vienna to London, Heathrow. ATC was still tracking it and although it was on course it was in a shallow descent someway before it was due to lose altitude and commence approach. We were given permission to go supersonic and made our approach to the Airbus from the rear.. It started a turn, again keeping to it's assigned course, but still descending, and we rolled to turn with it before continuing to close.. My wingman was the first to notice. 'Something doesn't look right about the configuration Lead..' 'It's the doors!' I gasped. ' All of the doors are open..' We made a slow pass, and sure enough all of the doors, passenger and cargo, had somehow opened. But how? A bomb? A mechanical fault? And what of the crew and passengers? As we passed the cockpit I spotted a torch flashing in morse code. E-L-E-C S-T-O-R-M || M-L-T-P-L L-I-G-H-T-N-G S-T-R-K-S || L-O-S-T P-R-S-R || P-S-G-R-S C-R-W O-N O-X-Y || L-N-D-G L-H-R A-S-A-P|| I passed the message to base: They had flown through an electrical storm and had suffered multiple lightning strikes. The aircraft's electric systems had obviously been affected which had caused the doors to unlock and blow open. This had caused a decompression (hence the shallow descent, to try to minimise the effects) and crew and passengers were on oxygen. They were intending to land at London Heathrow still. ATC took moments to digest this and the response was quick - get them to another airfield, but not Heathrow. The risk that this was a ruse for a terrorist attack was too great. Before I had a chance to reply to the airliner we dropped into the clouds and I called Two in closer as we stuck grimly to the Airbus, not wanting to lose sight of it in the descent.. As we dropped through the overcast I moved up and passed on the message to the airliner crew. Their response - N-C-D || L-H-R O-N-L-Y Querying base for orders we were told to to just stick with the Airbus and while investigations into the passengers and crew continued. If this was a terrorist attack or a madman in the pilot seat, would we be cleared to shoot down the airliner? We were running out of time, the aircraft was still descending and we were now coming up on populated areas. A shootdown now could cause catastrophic damage on the ground.. And then we were out of time for a decision, as we came over Central London, with visibility still poor in the low cloud and rain squalls... The Airbus lowered it's undercarriage slowly. They must be using some emergency method.. I closed to get a better look and signalled to the crew the wheels looked to be down OK. I dropped back to watch as the airliner made it's final approach. Orders were still to remain on standby to shoot it down if necessary. What did they expect us to do at this late stage? Strafe it on the runway? And then it was down and stopped on the runway. We pulled clear as emergency vehicles swarmed around it and a fleet of air ambulances were cleared in to begin ferrying the most severely hurt to hospitals. We didn't see any of that as we headed back to base, treating Londoners to a flyby as we crossed the capital again, although whether they could see us in the murky weather is debateable.. And home to a rainy afternoon, Maybe there'll be something good to watch on the telly...

Flying between two tunnels by @costadario

Supermarine Seafire Mk.IIIC - No.2 Squadron, Royal Dhimari Air Force, 1944 The successful Dhimari counter-attack at Maqazad in the Spring of 1943 proved to be short lived and the Parani bombing of the Dhimari city of Shaqaz during May 1943 led to the deployment of Dhimari P-66 Vanguards and Hurricane IIC's to northern areas of Dhimar leading to a further weakening of the Royal Dhimari Air Force in their desperate attempts to defend the Mazadran Oil Fields and the Valley of Kerman during the summer of 1943. Paran's senior Commander, Brigadier General Abolqasem Mossadegh, followed up by launching Operation Whirlwind in September 1943 and, with Paran gaining air superiority over the Valley of Kerman, it's land forces pushed onwards towards the industrial oil center at Al'Qatan in an audacious attack on the wider Mazadran oil fields. The UK government had long promised Spitfires to modernise the Royal Dhimari Air Force and whilst a handful of war weary Spitfire VB's from Malta were received during the Autumn of 1943 many more fighter aircraft were required. Churchill ordered that 30 new Spitfires were to be transferred to the Royal Dhimari Air Force but, much to the annoyance of the Admiralty, the Ministry of Aircraft Supply ordered that they should all be from the initial batch of 30 interim Seafire IIIC's coming off the Westland production line and all built without wing-folding. Powered by the Rolls-Royce Merlin 55 series engine rated at 1,470 h.p. (with power absorbed by a new four-bladed Rotol propeller) the Seafire IIIC's also featured the slim Aero-Vee air filter and the six-stack ejector type exhausts. Entering service with No.2 Squadron in December 1943 the Seafire IIIC's immediately replaced the P-66D Vanguards and proved to be the equal of the Parani Ki-61's and Bf 109G-6's enabling the Royal Dhimari Air Force to restore air superiority over the Valley of Kerman. Skin Credit: Charles

Kawasaki Ki-61 Hien - Parani Army Air Force, 1944

Update.

Kawasaki Ki-100 Otsu - Parani Army Air Force, 1945

Vickers-Supermarine Seafire Mk.IIIC - No.2 Squadron, Royal Dhimari Air Force, 1945

Reflections from an alternative past...

Douglas F-6C Skyray - 178th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, United States Air Force, 1966

Avro Vulcan B.2 (MRR) - No.27 Squadron, RAF Strike Command, 1991

Avia S-199P - 2nd Fighter Regiment, Parani Air Force, 1947

ok, how'd you get the Airbus to fly doors open, presuming it to be AI? mandatory screenie, or just another day at the DA labs

Well, the Spanish Army has endured my shortcomings long enough that as of this morning, I made Sargeant (E6 here, it works differently than in the US) Just bragging to be honest.

Seafire IIIC

Whirlwinds Over The Ardennes

Supermarine Spitfire Mk.IIA

Buccaneers on a desert strike..

No, it's the original skin with my WW2 Parani markings pasted over the Hinomaru with stock Arabic serials and a simple squadron marking added to the nose. It's just a simple way of adding an adversary to my install.

I have absolutely no idea! I set up the mission to be a simple intercept of the Airbus (actually the 'real' mission was to intercept a Tu-95 on a recon run off the North Sea coast but I set up a couple of F-15Cs out of Lakenheath to take care of that). The story was that the airliner's navigation equipment had gone down and we would form up on it and lead it down through the clouds and onto the runway. I was as surprised as anyone when I got in visual range, and the flyby to check over the airliner was real. I re-wrote the story in my head on the fly as I tracked the Airbus down and over London until it landed. Funny thing is I've flown the mission a few more times since then because I thought I had set something wrong, maybe with the airliner dropping below stall speed, and it has been absolutely fine... Maybe TK programmed in a secret setting - RandomCatastrophicMishap=TRUE

awesome, your weathering or did the original come like that? more mandatory screenies from todays theme (now in a more appropriate setting)

The first part of your statement is correct. The Su-17 was the successor of the Su-7 and the early versions were very similar in design. Only the swing wing was the difference. But the MiG-23 had nothing in common with the MiG-21 (only the MiG-23MS used the same radar as the MiG-21bis). The MiG-23 was much bigger. A MiG-21 was a very small plane, similar with the F-104, which was small too. But the MiG-23 had a much larger scale. The radar nose, the engine, the entire fuselage, the gear system. This was completly new on MiG-23. Tomorrow more. Its to late in Germany now.

Congrats brother and God Bless

Congratulations and always aim high.

To let everyone know: The remaining TMF core members have made the decision to not allow any further use/export of Olivier's 10+ years old models to other games/platforms. Its time to let the old models "rest in peace", it was Oli's work for SFP1/WOx/SF2, and we have the opinion that its simply not right that his work is used on and on after so many years have passed. Please respect our decision. Thank you. Crusader, for The Mirage Factory

Congrats on getting your 3rd Stipe mate, dont stop there though, we want to hear about your promotion to Sgt Major ( or whatever the equivalent rank in Spain is )

Congrats! Making a career out of the Army?

Okay started working on the T-84 first step from many to come.

Fresco

BAM Cóndor (base de los Pucara), Pradera del Ganso y al norte Darwin

You can start counting. Only 300000 left to do ;-)

I love this setting, Denissoliveira great Mirages fighting each other over Libyan-Egyptian border in summer 1977... Wish this terrain had some roads! Or even better, a full revamp!

The problem with MiG-19s is that by the numbers, they were exceptional aircraft. Low drag, high power-to-weight. Then because of the swept wing (rather than a lower aspect ratio delta or trapezoidal used by Mach 2 fighters), it is inherently more agile, too. Compared to the MiG-21, it has only two weaknesses: top speed and stability/control at transonic/supersonic speeds. My question is this: if the MiG-19 was so good, why did the Soviets dump it like a hot potato in favor of the mostly inferior MiG-21? One big issue with the MiG-19 is Soviet service was that it was flat out dangerous. It could explode in mid flight. Pilots hated it. Also, the USSR, like the USA, was bitten by the speed is life bug and also needed to potentially intercept supersonic bombers, so the MiG-21 was the better short range/high altitude interceptor. Consider the fact that China kept the MiG-19 and derivatives of it operational for decades. They worked out the kinks and thought it was a great platform. But look at its combat record in Vietnam. The MiG-19 was only used in small numbers, so you can't draw very good conclusions. But I will say this, despite having fantastic performance, the Vietnamese pilots didn't care for the MiG-19 very much, or more correctly, the Chinese copies they were flying. Some Vietnamese pilots preferred the agility and guns of the MiG-17, others loved the ability to use MiG-21s to engage and disengage at will with quick Atoll shots on unsuspecting and/or overloaded F-4s and F-105s. Like the USSR, the VPAF found the MiG-19 unreliable. But it was MiG-19s that got Major Bob Lodge, who otherwise most likely would have been the first US ace of the war. They got him because of their tactics and his target fixation, not because of the MiG-19's performance. At the same time, the only supersonic gun kill in history was by an F-4 against a MiG-19. If the MiG-19 was such a fantastic fighter, why didn't it make an impact in the Arab-Israeli wars? First: Israel tended to knock out enemy fighters with pre-emptive strikes while they were sitting on the ground. Second: the one time they were caught with their pants down in 1973, SAMs were the star of the show and the first line fighters were MiG-21s. Many would argue that Arab pilots were not skilled, but if you study the records of both sides, you will find that Egypt had decent pilots, but they were hamstrung by Soviet equipment performance limitations (such as incredibly short range/endurance) and doctrine on top of the exceptionally good planning, training, skill, and luck of the IAF. In DCS World, the flight model is theoretically exceptionally accurate. The F-5E in a 1 vs 1 is essentially helpless against a properly flown MiG-19PF. The MiG-19 is able to turn better, climb better, and accelerate better. The MiG-21bis is only competitive with afterburner. But continuous use of afterburner kills the endurance of the MiG-21. As the MiG-19 is not commonly flown on multiplayer servers, people who know how to fly them can be very successful since almost no one knows how exceptional their ACM performance can be. My conclusion about MiG-19 performance is that flight sims do not properly reflect the problems that kept the MiG-19 from being a popular and successful fighter in reality. In flight sims, a MiG-19 with an accurate flight model IS supposed to be a UFO compared to its contemporaries and even much later aircraft until the advent of the US "teen" series fighters. In much the same way the MiG-17 was a problem in Vietnam, the MiG-19 should have been a problem for "teen" fighters until AMRAAM and the AIM-9L/M/X missiles become common. So, maybe China had the right idea to continue using it in parallel with MiG-21 derivatives. But if flight sims modeled the problems that MiG-19s really had and if you only had one life to lose in flight sims, most people wouldn't fly the MiG-19 despite its UFO performance, because no one wants to fly an aircraft that has a better chance of killing you than the enemy. Now, as it applies to Strike Fighters series games: AI don't use the hard flight model. If you plug in the correct performance numbers for the MiG-19, it will still be a UFO, partly because it really was the good and partly because of the way the AI flight model works. I can say that a skilled pilot flying the MiG-19 in SFP1/WoX mutliplayer was essentially unbeatable by any other aircraft until a patch crippled the MiG-19 a little bit and turned the F-8 Crusader into a magic UFO that could beat all other aircraft. One fact to consider is that in flight sims, focused on the player, 1 vs 1 performance is everything. But in reality, the slightly inferior F4F beat the hell out of the A6M Zero once US pilots learned how to fly as a team. In DCS World, a lone F-5E has little chance against an AI MiG-19 with high pilot quality. But with two player flown F-5Es vs two AI MiG-19s, the odds go in favor of the players if they use good tactics... except that the AI flight model and gunnery skill is even worse in DCS World than it is in SF series games, so sometimes you just can't beat them even if you properly execute the correct tactics. Overall, in SF series games, I never found it necessary to mod the AI enemies. I understood how the AI was flying and could generally beat them. It was actually pleasant to see the AI do something unexpected and beat me every now and then. I wouldn't spend a lot of time trying to make the MiG-19 FM better, because the AI doesn't really use the full FM. Learn the vulnerability of the AI's tactics and exploit it, then the FM won't matter as much. SF AI is predominately horizontal turning tactics. Creative use of the vertical, rolling scissors, and "Top Gun" movie style sudden slow down tactics can beat just about any AI no matter how good their flight model is.

"Guns! Guns! Guns!.. Splash one MiG-29!"

Hawker Hunter FGA.9B - No.45 Squadron, RAF Strike Command, 1974

Bill Gates: "We designed the Blue Screen especially for this boy to solve his map problem"

Si, nella realtà è lunga 1000m, non a caso uso il modello Runway3 che è il più corto disponibile in Strike Fighters, lungo 1200m. L'ex Yugoslavia è piena di aerodromi sportivi, ma essendo più corti di 1000m, non ci ho pensato proprio ad aggiungerli. Per la campagna non prometto nulla, perché il terreno mi richiederà tanto impegno ancora. Non è facile fare una campagna ben funzionante, specie se il terreno non è ben fatto. Almeno faccio metà dello sforzo. Altri più esperti di campagne potranno crearne coi miei terreni, una volta rilasciati.