Bullethead

Good trick. Do you have day and night versions with different colored lines? I can imagine the effort that went into making your table of speeds and altitudes to use your sight--I've done similar things in other games, and swore never again . When I first learned of OFF's bombsights and discovered that the DFW (the only plane where it actually works) didn't have crosshairs, I dug around looking for its texture with the idea of reskinning it with crosshairs. But I couldn't find it anywhere, at least not with an obvious name, so I gave up on it. Besides, if I'd put crosshairs on it, I would then have felt obliged to go and and spend a lot of time doing practice drops to develop the type of table you've got, so I could upload the whole thing as a complete package for folks to use. It appears, however, that the DFW's bombsight is much more complex than just an overlay mask around a downward view at a fixed angle. I'm thinking some CFS3 WW2 stuff still exists in it. I've only used it a couple times, but it seems that the center of your view is always where the bombs will hit, regardless of your speed, altitude, or even angle of attack. Also, if you use the rudder while in the bombsight, you don't seem to bank the plane nearly as much as you do otherwise. But I could be wrong on all this and just lucky where the bombs have landed. Anyway, it's too bad the Fee's bombsight doesn't work. It looks like OBD WANTED it to work, but either had to give up on it or didn't have time to finish it.

<BR><BR>Olham, I confess. I put a bullet magnet on your plane because I thought you were having it too easy, and the only place it would stick was to the engine.<BR><BR>I thought you've have noticed it by now. Every time I keep getting hit in the same place, I open the plane up and sure enough, there's a bullet magnet put there by some joker in the squadron <IMG class=bbc_emoticon alt= src="http://forum.combatace.com/public/style_emoticons/default/rofl.gif">

Zo, now der Vorld finally zees zhe Atrocities of die Britischers! Not kontent mit starvink our Vimmenz und Kinder all zhese years mit zheir illegal und unmoral Blockade, now zey rezort to bombink zem in zheir beds! Der Vorld hast ingored zhe Blockade, but it kannot ignore zhis bombink! Und zhose back-stabbink Danes! Zhey just THOUGHT Bismarck settled der Schleswig-Holstien kvestion! Vunce ve haff zaved der Vorld from zhe barbarisch Britischers, zhe Danes vill pay! ================================== Seriously, good show, Lou! . And I find it cool that the Fee was the 1st to bomb Berlin. How long did this take you in real time? Now, where did you get a Fee with a working bombsight, let alone one with crosshairs? Last time I looked, the Fee's bombsight was a solid gray screen with no view of the ground at all. And do you have a bombsight with crosshairs for the DFW? If OBD ever comes out with a Home Defense expansion, I'll give London a try. But until I can warp part of the way, I'm out of the strategic bombing business. Flying for hours over the water isn't much fun for me.

Sure you can. I've done it. 48 gets the Brisfit in April 1917, just like the history books say. The other Fee squadrons convert to Brisfits before the end of the year.

Yeah, that's a great book. I think to go with it, you should also get The Sky on Fire, by Raymond H. Fredette. They compliment each other nicely, I think. One is more technical, the other (being a decade or 2 older) has more 1st-hand accounts by veterans of the affair. The impression I get from reading these things is that the "England Squadron" was the Apollo program of its day. Just getting a few Gothas over London was every bit as hard then, it seems, as putting a couple guys on the moon. It could be done, but it was the very limit of available technology, so it was hugely expensive and fraught with risk from machinery of questionable reliability and the harsh environment. One day, for instance, the Gothas got caught in a very strong southwest wind and not only couldn't cross the Channel, but got blown far to the east, many crashing in the Netherlands and even Denmark, effectively wiping out the squadron. I think somewhere around 6 or 8 Gothas were lost to things like this and landing accidents for every one shot down by the defenses. The other amazing thing about the 1st Blitz was the very few number of raids. I think there were only 6 or 7 daylight attempts, of which only about half reached London. There were a few more night raids, but not significantly more. But they definitely had a moral effect, what with diverting a thousand or so guns and numerous fighter squadrons from the front, plus leading to the amalgamation of the RFC and RNAS. Oh I dunno. Every inch of that island has been fought over and burned down repeatedly for thousands of years by many waves of roughians, both foriegn and home-grown. It's what gives the place it's charm

Oh yeah, the 148th has it ROUGH in its early days. But once it transfers south, things calm down considerably for a while, until the French counteroffensive in the summer of 1918. This ain't 148, but it gives the idea. Oops....

A true "pidgeon strainer"... And I'm sure his claim was denied anyway . It looks to me like that skinny poilu is eyeing that bird and thinking it will taste good for supper .

I have a very vague recollection of a great article on this plane written back in the 70s. I wish I still had it, because it had some very detailed drawings of the beast, plus all sorts of factoids I no longer remember. Anyway, what stuck in my head was that the drawings showed that the oil tank, and IIRC at least an auxiliary fuel tank, were inside that little stub wing between the wheels. Or so I seem to remember. Is that correct? I remember back then thinking it must have been funny seeing one flying along with a raging fire in its landing gear

Damn, I'll buy you a drink for that one . I'm glad that Albatri are one of the planes that bullet holes show up on, because they're my main targets . Well, I suppose you can always kick your dog around the house a few times .

This is what I use. 7zip is a great program. Besides handling regular zips and RAR files, it can compress stuff into its own .7z format which is VERY tight compared to a regular zip of the same stuff. I find this quite useful for handling sickeningly huge file transfers. That's what I got it for, so its ability to open RAR files for me is langiappe.

Gaffing off my briefed mission to hit a railyard, this evening I bombed Dover harbor with my Marinelandflieger DFW. Strike photos show the bombs landing on the docks. We're still waiting for the enemy newspapers to tell us the damage done, but at the very least it was propaganda fodder. This mission of course had to be flown in real-time because it was WAY off the waypoint trail. It took about 2 hours of real time and would have taken a bit more if I hadn't landed at Vlisseghem, the 1st German field right on the coast, instead of going another 60km to my home drome. But I have to get up at 0500 to work tomorrow.... That's why you all will have to wait nearly 24 hours for a full write-up with screenshots. The annoying thing is that I got ZERO credit for anything at all. As soon as I hit END FLIGHT, something in OFF crashed, but part of it kept working. After I cleared the "OFF BHaH has quite working" message, I was back at the main campaign screen with no info as to what had happened to the squadron in my absence, no option to replay the mission, and zero flight hours logged in my dossier. ARGH!! But at least I've got the screenies to prove it happened. I'll post them tomorrow evening.

Thanks . I was a bit worried myself. Observe in the screenshots how the DFW makes 2 trails of smoke. One is where you'd expect, from the over-wing exhaust pipe, but the other is in line with the fuselage. I had never noticed this myself until I was flying this mission, despite having fought DFWs a number of times, not to mention all the time I spent looking at it to make this skin. I 1st noticed the fuselage smoke when taking some of these screenshots, when I was well out over the water. My immediate thought was that I had some sort of engine damage, which would force me down. So I worried and stewed over how it might have happened. I thought I'd flown well away from all Brit flak. I'd heard some explosions a couple of times as I was leaving the coast, although I hadn't seen any bursts, so had put it down to the rumble of the Front. But maybe I'd flown over an enemy ship--are there any? Also, I'd never flown this high for this long before, the DFW took off at max gross weight, and I'd been flying with full power on since leaving the ground. So alternatively, I wondered if the game might model overtaxing your engine just as it models overstressing the airframe. Anyway, for a while there, I thought I was going to end up like Igles or worse. But apparently the fuselage smoke was really coming from a camp stove that my observer was using to try to keep us warm and brew up some coffee

I agree. A good fighter pilot needs to know both styles of fighting, because you need to use whichever style works best for the situation you're in. Most of my flightsim experience is MMO with WW2 planes and no restrictions on which makes and models you could fly. Thus, it was not uncommon for a fight to have both guys in, say, a P-47. Normally, you'd be crazy to turnfight ANYTHING in a Jug, but against another Jug, you NEED to :). Shaw wrote the book without naming names of planes. Instead, he has hypothetical fighters which he calls the LWL (low wing-loaded, ie turnfighter) and HWL (high wing-loaded, ie E-fighter) machines. He doesn't give them absolute performance specs, but instead makes them just significantly different, relative to each other. One turns much better than the other, the other zooms much better than the first, to the point that trying to play the other guy's game isn't a good idea at all. So he has the HWL machine doing E-tactics and the LWL machine doing turnfighting. The diagrams in the book have real airplanes in them, chosen apparently to underscore this. For example, an F-104 vs. a MiG-17 in 1 picture, or a P-51 vs. an Me-262 in another. By basing the tactics on relative performance between the particular planes involved, Shaw is making the point that you need to know whether you're the LWL or HWL guy in that situation, and act accordingly. For example, the P-51 is the LWL plane vs. the Me-262 but the HWL plane vs. a Zeke. This model is a harder fit for WW1, however, because the performance of the majority of planes is pretty similar. Sure, some are faster, some zoom better, some turn better, but the differences between most of them aren't anywhere near as big as they became say by WW2. Plus, very few of them can really zoom that well at all. This all means that the vast majority of the time you're engaged while in OFF, you're within effective guns range of the enemy, even if you're using E-tactics. This REALLY changes how you have to apply E-tactics, compared to how Shaw wrote them. But that's why the book is still quite useful for WW1. You need to understand the theory in order to develop effective tactics to fit your situation. It's harder to do this for WW1, for the reasons outlined above, but it can be done.

It's not my definition, it's Shaw's, and therefore is Gospel . But the important thing is, he uses it, as do I, in terms of tactics, not airplanes. IIRC, I said above that there were "3 ways to fight", not 3 types of airplanes, nor that a given plane is locked into a particular style. The pilot is the true E-fighter, not the plane, because E-fighting is a style. If the pilot knowns E tactics, then he'll use them if he thinks the situation warrants. Of course some planes do 1 style much better than another, which influences the choice of tactics by the wise pilot. And while an experienced Dr.I pilot will of course hang onto his E as best he can when fighting, say, a SPAD, he always knows that he's less likely to beat the SPAD playing the SPAD's game than he is getting the SPAD to play his game. So when it comes down to it, the Dr.I pilot will always be looking for ways to turn on in on the SPAD, because that's where he's got the biggest advantage. ACM is very much a martial art. I liken turn-fighting to the "hard" styles like Tae Kwon Do, because when you get down to it, it's pretty much brute force and ignorance. I liken E-tactics to the "soft" styles like Jujitsu, requiring much more patience and finesse, using the enemy's own moves against him and thinking further ahead in the fight.

You pray for us sinners, and we'll drink to your good health . Have a good trip.

You continue to amaze me, Stumpy.

I admit to some "cheating", as in the use of the HUD VSI and artificial horizon, plus the trim controls. It was a VERY long flight and I did a lot of the over-water part AFK both ways. I ate supper, took a shower, brushed my fangs, etc., all with the DFW droning on perfectly trimmed out, just hoping I wasn't attacked in the meantime :). For the navigation, I estimated the winds aloft while I was still over land on the way out and could judge the drift by looking down. Once I got far enough out to sea to feel safe, I hit F6 to look at the wing-mounted compass (which you can't see with TIR), turned to my estimated course with the wind correction factored in, checked the HUD instruments to make sure I was flying level, watched the compass for a while to make sure I was trimmed to hold my intended course, and then went AFK for up to 10 minutes at a time without checking on the plane. When I did look in on her, it was just to make sure she was still level, on course, and not under attack. I didn't make any course changes unless the wind had changed and taken me off course. Once I spotted England, I took over the controls and used visual naviation to find Dover and line up the bomb run. Then I turned around and repeated the instrument dead-reckoning to get back home. I'd timed how long it took me to get from my 1st turning point to Dover, so I guesstimated that amount of time + wind difference for the return leg and then made and instrument turn toward the beach. I tried to warp home at this turn point, but it said "warp disabled". By then it was getting very late considering my early reveille this morning, which is what decided me to land at the 1st available field. I WAS rather proud of myself for regaining German territory so close to where I intended . But I didn't have time to savor it--I had to get down so I could go to bed. My bombs landed in the water right next to the beach, which is where I aimed them. Hence, nothing destroyed. The docks and such that were there in real life ain't in OFF, it seems. This was my 1st time to use the DFW's bomb sight so I was impressed that I came anywhere near where I was aiming, espeically given the lack of cross hairs. I'd been assuming that the sight was calibrated for a specific speed and altitude (both unknown to us end-users), and would be badly off anywhere else. But maybe the sight automatically adjusts to your speed and altitude? Yup, he's the guy who inspired me to do this. Someday, if I've got nothing better to do, I might make an attack on London, too. But it takes SO LONG to get there and back, and most of the trip is EXTREMELY boring, that it's hard for a fighterpilot to stand. I'd much rather go get into a furball over the trenches. I leave it to some other daring aviator to be the 1st to bomb London :).

Very pretty! I suppose by this point in the war, the navy was lucky to get any land fighters at all, let alone good ones, and so its "official" scheme had gone by the boards, eh?

OK, here's the story and pics: 30 April 1917, Marinelandkampflieger Abteilung, central occupied Flanders. I've heard rumors that the army is putting together a Grosskampffluzeug Abteilung to conduct daylight raids on England, but are having trouble with their huge beasts. Sounds like a job of Leutnant zur See Gesundheit Geschosskopf! I'll steal the army's thunder and show them the navy is already capable of doing such things. I think this will be the cure for my "sore throat". At the very least, this will give Scheer some leverage to get better land planes for MKF, and perhaps more besides, even if I die in the attempt. Wir fliegen gegen England! Now, I just have to wait for the right moment, like a stupid, futile, deep-penetration bombing mission without escorts. (later) WHAT LUCK!!! Tomorrow morning's mission is just what I had in mind. Just me and 2 wingmen to attack a railyard somewhere in the vincinity of Paris, of all places. Screw that! England's not much further away and of immensely greater material, moral, and propaganda value. My lads will follow me anywhere! 1 May 1917, evening.... Well, things didn't go as planned. Of course, I hadn't told anybody of my plan, and when I headed NW far from the briefed flight plan, my wingmen apparently thought I was starved of oxygen and eventually broke off to follow the official mission. No matter! "Press on regardless", as the Tommies say. More Blue Maxes for me! I climbed steadily on course 320 to get well to seaward of the RNAS fighters along the coast, then steered about 250 for Dover. I had enough fuel to go for London, but being by myself and utterly ignorant of the defenses, I thought it best to forego the propaganda value of an attack there for the concrete military value of disrupting the Tommies' cross-Channel shipping, if only for a little whle. With 3x 50kg bombs, my DFW would go no higher than 4000m anyway, which I considered too low to brave what were surely the strong defenses of the enemy capital. It was a very long flight without sight of land, but eventually I raised the English coast, not far out of my dead reckoning. Only minor corrections were needed to bring me in over the White Cliffs, after which I would follow the coastline to Dover harbor. On the bomb run, I was extremely nervous, expecting the full wrath of the English defenses to concentrate on my lone DFW. But not only was I not intercepted, but not a single round of Flak disturbed me. We had taken the Tommies completely by surprise. I made the most of this opportunity and lined up carefully to bomb the docks, carefully missing the civilian housing immediately adjacent. Still unmolested by the defenses, we reversed course and went home the way we'd come. As I turned around, I glanced at my map, which bore the notes of the mission we'd received at the briefing. Looking at it, I figured my erstwhile commrades, if they were still alive, were by now recrossing the lines on their way home. Ah, they don't know what they missed! The thought of gloating to them upon my return made it easier to bear the intense cold of the long flight home. I essentially retraced my steps and fully intended to return to base. However, about 2/3 of the way back, we ran out of canned liquid oxygen, and I began to get extremely tired controlling the heavy DFW. Thus, I decided to land at the first German aerodrome I came across. Fortunately, my navigation was still good enough and we regained the friendly coast nearly at the same place we left it a lifetime before. As soon as the friendly coast came in sight, I began my descent and landed uneventfully at Vlisseghem aerodrome. WHAT A RELIEF to get back into warmer, breathable air! Nobody was expecting me at this field, of course, but by the time I arrived, the personnel there had already heard that I'd bombed Dover, so I received a hero's welcome and was soon roaring drunk at their expense. Unfortunately, that was the extent of my glory. Apparently, Scheer had taken a special train to my home field and was quite miffed when I didn't return there. So the whole thing went off half-cocked to the highers-up, and became just another minor factor in the continuous squabble between the army and the navy. I doubt I'll get my Blue Max now....

Pretty much every time I've flown the Eindecker and Pfalz. This sensation is immediately followed by the dejection of having to make another pilot.....

Thanks for that tip. I'm ordering it right now.

I'd like to know more myself. I know little more than that they existed and did various types of jobs. As to how many existed at any one time, or what types they were, I know just a little. My book on Marinekorps Flandern is more of a general history and focuses mostly on ships and U-boats, not airplanes. What complicates the issue is that Marinekorps Flandern was a very strange organization of all arms. Its purpose for existence was to use the occupied Belgian ports as destroyer and U-boat bases to interdict British cross-Channel shipping. The navy asked for and received responsibility for defending these bases, so on top of the naval base personnel and ship crews, MKF also included 2 divisions of naval infantry fighting in the trenches next to the coast, plus all the gunners in the shore batteries around the ports. As you can imagine, this arrangement caused much friction with the army, and the only way the navy retained control over all this stuff was to divide its attention between both the land war and the naval war. This meant that about 1/2 its land planes had to due army support missions. MKF's air strength fluctuated wildly during the war, in numbers of both squadrons and available planes. There were separate organizations for seaplanes and landplanes, and the seaplane side seems to have run pretty smoothly. At least MKF doesn't seem to have complained of not having enough of them of sufficient quality. The land side, however, was a different story. Here, MKF was in competition for planes with the army, which already owned most of the output of the aircraft factories. Thus, MKF didn't have a steady supply of replacements, but received batches of 20 or so planes every few months, once it had whined enough to the Kaiser to get him to make the army release some. From 1916 on, MKF had 2-4 land fighter squadrons at various times, ON PAPER. In reality, they usually had no more than 15-20 in total planes at any 1 time, and often less than 10. And of these, about 1/2 had to cover the land front, leaving the rest to defend the Flanders bases, which often wasn't enough. MKF's great demand was for fighters, because the Brits were continually trying to bomb the naval bases, plus stop MKF's 2-seaters from doing their jobs. Obviously, MKF was competing with the army for 2-seater landplanes as well, but this doesn't seem to have been as acrimonious as the fighter situation.

Outstanding work, SB! Can't wait to give them a try.

Thanks. It does look a bit sinister, doesn't it? It's my understanding that planes like this used to hop across the Channel fairly often and bomb Dover. I'm thinking about doing just that as a way to avoid doing boring recon and arty spotting missions. I'd have to pick a time when there are some Home Defense squadrons in residence, though, to make it interesting. "Wir fliegen gegen England..." Nope, it's still the same black as before.

File Name: DFW Realistic(?) Naval Hex by Bullethead File Submitter: Bullethead File Submitted: 04 Sep 2009 File Updated: 23 Oct 2009 File Category: Aircraft Skins After a lot more research, I totally re-did the paintjob of my naval DFW skin. Now it looks (I THINK) about as realistic as possible, per Dan-San Abbott's information. Hand-painted, symmetrical hexes in hopefully the right colors, and the correct colors on the fuselage and rudder. But for those of you who prefer the apparently inaccurate "blue" version, it's still available here. Now includes text file with OBD credit for original skin. Click here to download this file