Spinners

Grabbed this today - lovely work mate!

Get yourself the Third Wire Strike Fighters 2 CAT File Extractor http://www.thirdwire.com/downloads_tools.htm

Not even a basic aircraft folder with a single .ini ? It probably means you've installed them to the wrong place. Regardless of that you will need to extract the DLC cats to get at all the skins, decals and ini's. I can get at mine using this path (but ymmv); Computer > Local Disk (C:) > Program Files (x86) . Third Wire > Strike Fighters 2 > DLC

P-40N Warhawk - Irish Air Corps, 1949

April 1962 - Lt. Cdr. John Young sets two new World climb to height records in F4H-1 Phantom II (BuAer No 149449) as part of Project High Jump

File Name: [Fictional] Curtiss P-40N Warhawk 'IDF' File Submitter: Spinners File Submitted: 23 August 2013 File Category: What If Hangar Curtiss P-40N 'IDF' for STRIKE FIGHTERS 2 This is simple mod of Raven's P-40N20CU to give a fictional P-40N 'Warhawk' as it might have appeared in service with the newly-created Israeli Defence Force Air Force in 1948. BACKSTORY Following the Israeli Declaration of Independence on May 14th, 1948 David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of a Jewish state to be known as the State of Israel. Within two weeks the Israeli Air Force was formed mainly using foreign volunteer pilots (including many World War II veterans) flying a variety of obsolete and war surplus aircraft sourced by various means. Among these were 36 P-40N Warhawk fighter aircraft delivered in crates from the United States and alongside the Avia S-199's and Supermarine Spitfire LF Mk IX's they formed the backbone of the early Israeli Air Force. Whilst the Warhawks were not ready to help in attempting to halt the Egyptian advance from the South during early June 1948 they were soon in operation in the close support role and also bolstered the air defences around Tel Aviv and were successful in shooting down several Egyptian Air Force DC-3's and Spitfires. The Warhawks were also tasked with escorting the handful of Israeli B-17 bombers but were mainly committed to the support of IDF ground forces. By December 1948 IDF ground forces were ready to commence Operation Assaf to take control of the Western Negev and the Warhawks helped in stopping an Egyptian counterattack and helped prevent another counterattack when a Warhawk flying an aerial reconnaissance sortie revealed Egyptian preparations and the IDF was able to launch a pre-emptive strike. Following the ceasefire the remaining Warhawks were gathered together to re-equip No.101 who operated the type until the end of 1956 playing a minor role in Operation Kadesh by escorting Israeli Air Force DC-3s dropping Israeli paratroopers behind Egyptian lines at the Mitla Pass and Et-Tur. INSTRUCTIONS 1. From the AIRCRAFT folder drag and drop the P-40N_IDF folder into your Aircraft folder. 2. From the DECALS folder drag and drop the P-40N_IDF folder into your main Decals folder. 3. From the WEAPONS folder drag and drop the AN-M81 and TANK75_IDF folders into your main Weapons folder. At this point it might be a good idea to change the pilot to whatever you've got in your install suitable for the early post-war period. CREDITS Thanks to Third Wire for the continuous improvement of a great little game/sim. Massive thanks to Raven for creating the superb P-40N20CU 3D model and, indeed, his other P-40 models. Thanks to Raven also for the shark mouth decals - compulsory on this aircraft!! Thanks also to the creator of the AN-M81 260 lb fragmentation bomb used here. It just looks so right. And thanks to everyone in the wider Third Wire community. Regards Spinners Version 1 - 23/08/13 Click here to download this file

WW2 is the undiscovered country! I must admit to watching the forthcoming IL2 Battle for Stalingrad development videos...

Land reclaimation

Thanks Stary. To be fair, it's Raven's P-40N (from the SF1 section and c/w a NMF skin) with a recoloured spinner and my IDF decals with stock Mustang codes.

Petlykov Pe-2 'Peshka' (aka The Soviet's MRCA)

Merci et regards Coupi.

Me too! Superb.

Boulton Paul Defiant Mk.I - Eskadrille 726, Royal Danish Air Force, 1940

The Lavochkin La-11 'Fang' masquerading as the Blackburn Firestorm FB.2

Fritz (Thanks Paul, Thanks Stary)

Steppe-ing out in Raven's Soviet P-40M

Bereznyak-Isayev-Bratukhin BIB-20R - PVO Strany, 1955 Despite the failure of the wartime Soviet rocket-powered development and prototype aircraft, principally by Bereznyak-Isayev and Polikarpov, in 1946 Stalin demanded a new fast-climbing rocket-powered 'Blizhnii Istrebitel' or point defense fighter as a last line of defence against the perceived threat of US bombers armed with atomic bombs. With Stalin's blessing the remains of the Bereznyak-Isayev design team formed an alliance with the Bratukhin design bureau (formed in 1940 to produce helicopters) and with input from TsAGI set about creating a rocket-powered interceptor. Almost immediately the new Bereznyak-Isayev-Bratukhin design team realised the inflexibility of an aircraft only powered by rocket engines and set about creating a more flexible design with a single axial-flow turbojet engine supplemented by booster rockets. Designated BIB-20 the design initially had a straight wing with two large wingtip mounted rocket boosters before being extensively redesigned with swept wings and four smaller booster rockets initially clustered around the rear fuselage before later being relocated beneath the main fuselage. However, fears over tip stall led to a further redesign with the wings now having more chord at the wingtip than the wingroot in an attempt to generate more lift and delay the point of stall at the tip to that of the entire wing. The design also meant that the wingtips had more internal room enabling the landing gear to be mounted to retract outwards and allow fuel to be located in integral inner wing tanks that also boosted the torsional resistance of the wing to counter the additional outboard mass of the 'inverse taper' wing. The prototype BIB-20 first flew on May 1st, 1949 piloted by Konstantin Gruzdev and powered solely by a Lyulka TR-3A single-shaft turbojet with a seven-stage axial compressor developing 5,500lbs of thrust. By the Autumn of 1949 the BIB-20 prototype had been retrofitted with four RD-1KhZ rocket engines each developing about 660lbs thrust and the first flight of the BIB-20R took place on November 7th, 1949 with Vasily Pliyev at the controls. On the modest power of the early engines the performance of the BIB-20R was quite unimpressive at low altitudes but was much improved at higher altitudes with the rocket engines enabling altitudes in excess of 60,000ft to be achieved and later versions with more powerful RD-2 rocket engines rated at 1,500lbs thrust each saw operational aircraft reach 65,000ft with outstanding rate of climb. Entering service in late 1953 the BIB-20R was hailed by the Soviet Union as a massive technical achievement but in reality the type suffered from very poor range and very high maintenance and with the MiG-19S entering service before the end of 1954 it was soon phased out in favour of more conventional types.

The Republic XF-91 Thuderceptor masquerading as the... Bereznyak-Isayev-Bratukhin BIB-20R Backstory in the main section.

Gimp is good and all I've ever used since wandering into 'Planet Strikefighter'

Awesome!

Sweep