MBot

The Argentines have one official confirmed air-air victory. On 28th May Pucara A-537 piloted by Teniente M Gimenez shot down Scout AH1 XT629 by cannon fire ( source: Falklands Air War, Chris Hobson ).

Great to hear :)

Hey, I just wanted to pop in and tell you that I am still watching the progress you make very closely. Like many others do without doubt. I am very excited to see your sim taking shape. The screenshots of the coastline and Stanley airport look very good. I am impressed how well you managed to capture that cold, "south atlantic" look. Both tumbs up ! One little thing tough. Are the A-4 and Sea Harrier cockpits still placeholders or are they the level you aim at ? Because frankly their textures look a little low-res. Sorry, I guess I am a bit spoiled by LOMAC :) The Pucara WIP screens show extremly nice front panel textures. And try to spend extra care and ultra high details on the gunsight/HUD/canopy framing area, as you usualy look very close at these parts while zooming in the view to shoot. But now I shut up and don't tell you how to do your job :) Keep up the good work !

The book is called "Warbird Tech Series Vol.21: Boeing/BAe Harrier" by Dennis R. Jenkins. I ordered it some years ago trough my local book store ( altough I think they imported it from the USA ). But I wouldn't call it a must have book. It basicaly covers the developement from the first prototype to the Harrier II+, but not in extraordinary detail. The best from the book are some interesting drawings and diagrams, from wich I think I scanned the most interesting ones. If you can find it easily and have some bucks left, get it. Otherwise I wouldn't run after it :)

Found some pictures in my little library. Perhaps you find them usefull. Keep up te good work.

I can't wait to see the deck crew in action :) Great work, keep up the good progress.

I still can't imagine that the Mirages were held back because of the Vulcans. I am sure that the AAF did the math and calculated to what extend the RAF could mount Vulcan missions to the south. Even if they didn't know exactly that the RAF only could send a single Vulcan every several days to the south, it wouldn't justify to hold back all 15 Mirage III. The keep 1 or 2 on ready alert would have been more then enough IMO. But even this is questionable. If you could dig out some argentinan sources about the orders of the Mirages, that would be great.

Wonderfull. I can't wait to use the 25 de Mayo. Altough I am sure that VTOL carrier ops will be cool , there is nothing like trapping on a "real" carrier :) On one of the first campaigns I fly with Jet Thunder I will try out how the Argies would have done if the 25 de Mayo stayed at sea ( of course from the A-4Q viewpoint ). Btw, interesting deck painting.

To my knowledge the Super Entendard couldn't operate on the 25 de Mayo in 1982 because the carrier had a too weak catapult. Later the carrier was modified to carry the plane. Are there any plans to make the Super Entendard carrier operating as one of the "what if" options of the dynamic campaign ?

I am very excited by the progress that has been showed in the last weeks. Keep up the good work ! That project looks very promising, I keep checking the forum on a daly basis since months.

It is often stated that the good training of the FAA pilots and the excellent AIM-9L were the two big factors that provided the british air superiority over tha Falklands. Regarding the AIM-9L, this is questionable the me. Altough the AIM-9L should be an all aspect weapon, all kills with this weapon were achieved from the rear aspect. To my knowledge, any attemt to get a lock from the front failed. On the other hand, on 1st May a Dagger successfully launched a Shafrir from a frontal aspect aganst a Sea Harrier. The missle tracked and the Sea Harrier had to give up much altitude to shake the missle. Altough not killed, that Sea Harrier was effectivly put out of the fight. Seconds later the Dagger was killed by the second Shar. The AIM-9L was most likely the best AA-missle in the theater, but the Shafrir event - altough perhaps just lucky circumstances - shows that the superiority of the 9L wasn't godlike.

That might have been the intention of the RAF, but did it realy succede ? You often read that the Vulcan missions on Stanley airport stopped the Mirage III flights over the islands ( because they were forced to move north to cover the mainland ). I haven't seen any evidence yet that supports this. To my knowledge the Mirage III spend the whole war at Rio Gallegos, from where they couldn't cover any significant part of Argentina excpect the southern AF Bases. But an Vulcan attack against them was most unlikely anyway, as that would have been suicidal for a single, unescorted Vulcan. I think we all agree that the Mirage III ( ar the whole argentinan AF ) stopped to search aircombat because of the disasterous events of 1st May. But why didn't the Mirages apear over the islands between 1st till 21th May ( the Mirage III kept flying escorts and decoy flights over the Falklands after 21th May ) ? Sharky Wards theory that the Mirages spend their whole droptanks stock on first May sounds very plausible, at least much more plausible than Mirage III covering Buenos Aires from Vulcan raids... Are there any argentinan sources on that matter ? That would be very interesting. While I agree with the original poster that Wards book has to be read with big caution, I agree with Ward that the Vulcan raids didn't achieve much more that morale effects.

Wow :ph34r: If you don't know what I am talking about, check out the Jet Thunder homepage...

Splendit view :) Just wanted to say that I keep checking the forum every day that I love you guys :)

I am too very confident about the high capabilitys of the british SSNs. But in this case they seem to have failed. On 1-2 May ( clearly after the war went hot ) the argentinian carrier closed within strike distance to the british Task Force. I am fairly sure that if a sub had contact to the "25 de mayo" she would have been sunk on that night. What strikes me is that I have read somewhere that the three british subs were actualy tracking all three argentinian taskgroups at the beginning of the war. This beeing the Belgrano group in the south-west, the "25 de Mayo" group in the north-west and a frigate group in the north ( all out of my head ). The fact that the carrier could close at attack distance on the british taskforce unharmed indicates that the shadowing sub lost track on the "25 de Mayo". The choice to spare the Tigerfish' for more dangerous targets makes sense. Also the bigger punch of the Mk8 seems plausible to me. Didn't the Conqueror also fired upon the escorting destroyers with the same salvo ? What weapons did it use on them ? Wow, the A-4C carrying Shafrirs. That sounds nasty :) Do you know if they carried them ever on combat missions ( I suspect not ) ? I would defenitly like to make strategical descisions on the campaign. As the dynamic campaign will most likely reach the level of a naval RTS anyway ( judging from the infos I paste together ). Also to option to have it either player controlled or automatic sound good. Sometime you just want to fly assigned missions as a fighter pilot, sometimes you would like to try if you could do better in wining the war. Keep it comming, I am enyoing this discussion very much.