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I know...the initial response is the logical one - but the Viet Minh didn't have any planes?! Which is of course is true, but as far as ground attack wars go it was a very interesting one. I've recently gotten back into Strike Fighters, while at the same time having recently written a campaign for the French Indochina war that uses a tabletop miniatures rules system. One of the houserules I created for the tabletop was to implement a different map scale system that tracked the ingress and egress of French bombers and Para transports on a separate map so that the Viet Minh could go up against them with their Chinese Type 55 AA guns. In the last 2 years of the war the VM had quite a few of those AA guns and they got damn good at using them. I played through the campaign for WoV way back when, and it got me thinking that a French Indochina campaign might be interesting for the mud moving fans amongst the Strike Fighters crowd. From what I recall the map from WoV or SF2 Vietnam would include the territory that the French Armee de l’Air and Aeronavale operated in. Something that was very prevalent amongst the French Indochina War was para drops and cargo drops. That's something missing from the Strike Fighter engine, but I was wondering if there might be some way to abstract/mod the recon mission type to accommodate it? The other thing of course was for the vast majority of air strikes the target were against infantry in large numbers, so I'm not sure how well the engine would work for that. The aircraft in the latter half of the war in which air missions became much more utilized and important were: Douglas B26 Invader (ground attack) Grumman F8F Bearcat (ground attack) Grumman F6F Hellcat (ground attack) P-63 Kingcobra (ground attack) Douglas C-47 (transport) Junkers JU-52 (transport) Fairchild C-119 (transport) Morane-Saulnier MS.505 Criquet (FAC-recon) Anyhow, having only ever created custom missions with the fanmade editor, I'm not sure how doable such a campaign like this is with the Strike Fighters engine. I'm also not sure how many, or if any, of the necessary aircraft have been made by fans. If anyone could give me any feedback on how viable this would with SF engine, I'd appreciate it. [Edit] Don't know how I screwed the grammar up so badly in the topic line, but I did. It won't let me edit it, so my apologies <sigh>

Those are great listings Wilches - thanks for posting the links. I've been using 1-1/72 scale models for our French Indochina tabletop game, so there's a few kits on those lists that I've already purchased. Those lists helped me finally locate a 1-1/72 Bearcat, which I had a problem sourcing and we've actually been making do with a Hellcat. I don't have the skill or resources to make digital aircraft ls with apps like 3D Studio Max or Photo Shop, but I'm guessing the digital modellers here use model kits like these for reference?

I'd like both campaigns, but that's mostly because I believe I can have my French pastry and eat it too. ;)

A cool vintage photo of an artist's illustration of the battle of Dien Bien Phu. I'm not sure if this was taken from a book or a newspaper. This is an interesting picture as it actually depicts the main location of Viet Minh AAA batteries and their key artillery positions. It also shows where C-119's and C-47's would have made their cargo drops. Sorry for the size, but it's necessary to see the details:

Some stats I came across yesterday about the air war. Numbers of aircraft at the conclusion of the war: 75 x C-47 24 x C-119 60 x B-26 112 x Hellcats, Bearcats, Kingcobras, Corsairs and other fighter-bombers 85 x Recon & Liasion aircraft such as the Criquet. Unfortunately my source didn't give breakdown of the fighter-bomber or recon-liaison aircaft Aircraft casualties a the Battle of Dien Bien Phu: Aircraft shot down: 48 Aircraft destroyed on the ground: 14 Aircraft damaged: 167 Average pilot flying hours for April 1954 (height of the battle): 150 Air command organization in French Indochina was named Groupements Aeriens Tactiques (GATAC) and was organized as follows: GATAC South: Southern Vietnam (Cochin-China), Cambodia & southern central Vietnam GATAC Center: Central Vietnam, southern Laos GATAC North: Northern Vietnam, northern Laos The vast majority of the air missions were flown out of GATAC North. There was also a GATAC Laos that temporarily existed from 53-54.

If you enjoyed Fall's Hell in a Very Small Place you'd no doubt enjoy his Street Without Joy: The French Debacle in Indochina and I'd highly recommend it. IMO it's the best book ever written on the French Indochina War. Fall himself was killed on the "street without joy" (Route Colonial 1) in 1967 when he stepped on a land mine while accompanying US Marines. Probably just about everyone here has had a brief glimpse of 1 of the battles covered in that book - the opening scene in We Were Soldiers where Groupe Mobile 100 is fatally ambushed by Viet Minh Regiment 95 just east of Pleiku.

If by "nule" you mean non existent? That was definitely the case for the Viet Minh. The only air opposition by the VM was in the way of Anti Aircraft guns which they had by early 1951. They were Chinese made and called Type 55, but in fact they were the same as the USSR's 61-K 37mm guns of WW II. The French started noticing the Viet Minh having many more of them in early 52 and sometime between then and Dien Bien Phu in the spring of 54, they started receiving 57 mm guns. Another thing of note was, just as in the US era of the Vietnam war, the Viet Minh were very good at ground -to- air attacks using small arms. Another thing of note was that the VM were masters at disassembling AA guns, just as they were with 75mm artillery guns, and packing them up mountains. So French aircraft could potentially come under attack in just about any part of the country. On the other hand if you meant the French air opposition was comprised of, I don't know the squadron makeup and numbers, but both the French Far Eastern Air force (Armee de l’Air) and Navy air command (Aeronavale) had squadrons deployed. I do know that they never fielded more than 275 aircraft at any one time. Most of the Air Forces' airbases were in the Red River delta not far from Hanoi, but they had some forward bases at Na San and Dien Bien Phu. And of course they had airbases in the Central and Southern part of the country, but for the most part the aircraft there never saw active service. [Edit] BTW I spelt "Vinh-Yen" incorrectly earlier as "Yen Vinh" - <sigh> Vietnamese names are a challenge for me to remember.

Good point. While some of them would have resembled a US 60's era FFB, compete with the razor/barded wire perimeters and bunkers, some of them for sure were French colonial-styled forts. Some were just reinforced, concrete block houses that you might see anywhere in German occupied Europe during WW II.

If a French Indochina War campaign were to be created, it seems that it might work better to stick to the 2nd phase/half of the war, as those battles were more akin to what the SF engine was designed for. I got off my butt and did some checking and noted that the Hellcat, Bearcat, Invader, C-47 and, much to my surprise, the Criquet are available. There also some French skins for some of them - very nice. Five out of 8 for the later phase of the war is none too shabby, and IMO those aircraft alone could make for a good series of missions. Of course I say that without having a clue as to how you link missions into a campaign. [Edit] In terms of the runways that others have commented on, from what I've seen in pictures and read about, they were of the corrugated variety that were also used in Korea around the same time.

Actually, that's only partially true - there was actually 2 phases to the war. During the 1st phase (1946-1949) for sure it was a guerilla war and there was only about 10,000 Viet Minh who's only real achievement was to occupy the resort that was on the eastern slopes of Thud Ridge. France, due to the Vichy Republic aligning with the Axis powers from 40-44, wasn't allowed to deploy a full army there until 46. in 1947-48 the French Colonial army launched a major offensive (operation Lea) against the VM, which pushed them north and at 1 point surrounded them with a pincher movement. It should be noted that virtually all of that fighting occurred in the Tonkin (northern) region of the country - some of it took place in Laos too. The north is heavy forested, mountainous terrain though, so no surprise that a vast majority of the VM slipped through the French encirclement and made it over the Chinese border in 48 to live to fight another day; Maos' communist forces were well on their way to victory by then. It's in the 1st phase that the smorgasbord of both Axis and Allied WW 2 aircraft like the C-47, Junkers Ju52, Spitfire, Mosquito and Ki-43's were flown - think there was also some Zeros and Mustangs used too. There was a lot of para drop ops involving the C-47 and Ju52's. For sure a lot of the air war in the 1st phase involved Recon, SEAD bombing and strafing ops, but there also would have been some close air support missions. This phase concluded in 49 with the Communist Chinese -now in power- initiating a major training program for the Viet Minh in southern China cites of Nanning and Qinzhou. The 2nd phase began in 1950 with a real bang. Viet Minh, who were now much better trained, better equipped, and much larger in numbers, launched a major offensive against the French forts in the north east along a road called Route Colonial 4 (RC4.) Within a month they had destroyed, or were in control of, all but 1 of the forts along RC4. Much of that fighting involved conventional seige tactics, but it also featured a lot of human wave assaults which became a trademark tactic for communist forces in Vietnam. Much of the air mission flown by the French were close support, BAI and para drops. For the last standing fort the, French sacrificed a battalion of paratroops by para dropping them in to rearguard a retreat - that's an unfortunate tactic the French would repeat many times throughout the war. It should be emphasized that these forts were a massive loss for the French, and the Viet Minh recovered so many tons of gear at the last fort that they actually held an advantage in the number of mortars per company for the remainder of the war! With strong bases of ops now in the North, the Viet Minh went on the offensive in early 1951 in a major way wich didn't stop until the late summer. The 1st major battle was Yen Vinh, where 2, VM divisions deployed off of Thud Ridge and attacked the French fort there and the hedgehogs supporting it. That battle was on a massive scale with the hedgehogs trading hands a number of times throughout. There were a few 1sts about that battle; it was the 1st time the Grumman F8F Bearcat saw action and it was the 1st time napalm was used on a large scale - VM NCO's were so surprised that some actually thought it was the atom bomb. I don't have the exact stats but the Armee de l’Air and Aeronavale flew a large number of BAI and close support missions that involved anything from strafing to dropping BLU. There were similar large battles fought that same year at Mao Khe and the Day River with the Viet Minh getting their heads handed to them each time, but inflicting a large number of French casualties in the process. By this time the earlier WW II aircraft had mostly been ditched by the French who were now mostly using Hellcats (did most of the napalm bombing), Bearcats, King Cobras and Invaders; the C-119 boxcars had just started to show up and they were still using the Skytrain and Ju52. The guerilla warfare that the US Vietnam war was noted for, didn't really begin until late 51 - early 52 when the VM shifted tactics. For the rest of the war the Viet Minh kept to guerilla tactics with lots of ambushes. That said, the last battle of the war, the famous Dien Bien Phu in 1954, was a massive, conventional siege attack that involve a huge number of forces on both sides. That fighting involved a very large amount of artillery on both sides and the Viet Minh -although it's unofficial- were estimated to have 60, 37 mm and 57 mm AA guns. The French flew many para troop and cargo drops, BAI, close support and medivac missions. So although a good portion of the war invoved guerilla fighting, there was roughly 2 years where it was anything but that.

@Wilches: It's late for me too so I can't give many details, but in terms of which countries fought the war it was a colonial war fought between France and a Vietnam nationalist/communist army known as the Viet Minh. There weren't any other nations officially involved, but in the last 3 years of the air war there were a number of US pilots that flew the Fairchild C-119 boxcars. Something to note though, was that the French Foreign Legion had about 20,000 troops in the theater from 1948 on, and those forces were truly multinational in makeup. There was even ex WW II German Fallschirmjager and Italian Carabinieri serving with them. To make things even more bizarre, there were actually both WW II Japanese and German veteran officers functioning as trainers for the Viet Minh - most figured it was better doing that job than returning home and possibly facing war crimes. Needless to say much of the war had a covert nature to it, and that's 1 of the reasons it was known at home in France as "the dirty war". It should also be noted that the Viet Minh never so much as fielded a single aircraft against the French, so in terms of the air war the French had total air supremacy.

Bummmer a Strike Eagle crashed in Libya. It was mechanical failure and not AA that caused the crash, and both Pilot and Weapons Officer ejected and have been safely rescued. Damn, I hate it when one of those beatiful birds falls out of the sky.

Dang, I didn't even know there was a Libyan terrain. Going to have to download that. ;)

The campaign by coalition forces to enforce the nofly zone has now been officially dubbed "Odyssey Dawn." I heard the audio feed from someone in the US airforce brass named Childress. He stated the US has committed F-15E, B-2 and F-16 aircraft to the actions. As stated already the UK committed Tornado and Typhoons while the French Dassault Rafale. In addition to those the Danish have now committed F-16's and Canada has comitted CF-18's. If you're thinkning that sounds like a lot to handle for the Libyan Air Force and its aging fleet of 70's jets like the Mig 23 and the SU 22 - I'd definitely agree.

I've read through the IR section of the Weapons Delivery Mnnual, but unlike the radar missile section, there isn't any information on firing proceddures. I'm well aware that the AIM-9B wss one woefully unreliable, 1st gen IR missile, but the results I'm getting are poor beyond belief. I've been firing them no futher than 1.2nm and no closer than .6nm and I've always been within 10 deg's either side of the tagets bearing. I've also tried firing them slightly above and below the target, but that hasn't helped much. Does anyone know, or can point me to a good resource, on the optimal firing distance and height for the AIM-9B?

Thanks for the replies everyone. I haven't been hitting with the ratio I should be, but I'd estimate I'm around 8%-10%, so maybe not so bad afterall. I was aware of the Beagle taking 2 successful hits, which is a problem since I'm flying a Sabre with only 2 AIM-9B's. Oh well guess I'm going to have to work on my cannon shots, which are also proving to be ineffective against the Beagle.

I found the tutorial in the Knowledge Base for modding the [Mission Data] section of the _DATA.ini file. Unfortunately, there's no mention in the tutorial as to whether the NormalMissionRadius or MaxMissionRadius refers to Kilometers, Miles or NM? Can anyone here tell which of the 3 measurements is spec'd for those 2 entries?

Wrench, many thanks for the reply. I knew about using Meters per Second for the Flight Control settings, but wasn't aware Mission Data was metric too.

I just installed the NATO I & II campaigns and flew 5 sorties, before discovering that there's NATO III and IV campaigns too and that I & II aren't compatible with the Oct 2008 patch I'm running. I've read that installing the new NATO campaigns after you've already stated a campaign will likely corrupt the campaign file. So I'm wondering what the campaign save file is named and where I can locate it, so I can delete it before installing N3 & N4. Can anyone here tell what the name of the campaign file is and where it's located? I'm also wondering if it's possible to back up the campaign save file and copy it back after the installation to resume my current campaign progress?

lol...well I can see why no one replied, as my question was easily answered with a little folder investigation - found it in '\Wings Over Europe\Pilotdata\'. As the NATO Fighters readme states, you can't continue a campaign after you've applied the last 2 patches. I tried copying back my campaign SAV file, but WoE crashed as soon as I loaded and started the next mission. I restarted the campaign and I'm completely blown away with all the improvements that NF3 and NF4 add. kudos to Column5 all those who contributed to it!

I haven't flown the F-15A much in WoE and I mostly play WoV, so this is my 1st time with the Track-While-Scan radar in this game. My problem is that I can't seem to get the radar to detect any enemy aircraft. I've made sure the radar is turned on [Ctrl]+[PgUp], entered the TWS mode via [PgUP], and I know to select targets with [Home] and acquire them with [insert]. I've also ensured that the radar range is large enough and that I'm flying in the direction of the bogeys Control is calling out; also checked it on the map. I also made sure that the AIM-7E Sparrow was the selected A-A weapon - not sure if that matters. No matter what I do, enemy aircraft aren't being detected and displayed in the radar. I searched 'track while scan' in this forum and read through pages 191-200 of the Weapons Delivery manual, and everything I've found and read seems to confirm I'm using the radar correctly. Not sure if this is a issue, but all of my game play setting are set on 'Hard' except for 'HUD Display' and 'Visual Targeting' with are set on 'Normal'. Last night I ran into a flight of 2 Frescos and for all it's worth I couldn't get either to display in my radar. Luckily I had some AIM-9L Sidewinders and took both down quite easily. I considered the possibility that they may have had ECM, but that's not something a Mig-17 could equip - right? Any help in getting TWS to work would be greatly appreciated. [Edit]Thought I should mention that I'm running with the most recent patch - 10/08

Many thanks for the reply MigBuster. I thought I did have the correct altitude based on what Control called out, but I'll give it another try tonight. One thing I did try with 1 of the Frescos, was to get roughly 5 nm distance on them, then turn and head straight for them. Even then the TWS didn't detect them. Is there possibly an effective envelope for it's use; i.e. do I have to be closer to 10 nm distance away for it to detect?

I curently own SF Gold, WoV and WoE and I'm looking to buy 2 copies of either WoI or SF2 Israel for my son and I. First off I should probably state that I've read MigBuster's "Whats new in the SF2 Series" thread. So I feel fairly comfortable with what the differences between the 2 versions are. However, having only ever run games based on the SF1 engine, I'm unsure how well SF2 Israel will run on both our gaming rigs - particularily my 4 year old rig. My son's gaming PC is only 18 months old so I'm fairly confident about it. I haven't recorded my exact WoV and WoE settings, but I know with my older system I'm not able to run all graphic settings on high and a few are set to medium &/or less than the max distances. All sound settings are maxed. Here's the specs for the 2 systems. My System (the very-long-in-the-tooth one) :) Processor: AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3200+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.0GHz Memory: 2048MB RAM Hard Drive: 250 GB Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT w/256 MB Sound Card: SB Audigy 2 OS: WinXP SP3 w/DirectX 9.0c My Son's System Processor: AMD Athlon II X2 Dual Core 2.6 GHz Memory: 2048MB RAM Hard Drive: 512 GB Video Card: ASUS (ATI) EAH4670 w/1GB Sound Card: Integrated VT1708S High Definition Audio 8-Channel CODEC OS: WinXP SP3 w/DirectX 9.0c Whatever version we decide on, it's important we get the same as we hope to fly some co-op missions. If anyone could give me some feedback as to whether both of these gaming rigs would be capable of running SF2 Israel with acceptable performance, it'd be greatly appreciated. As well, any feedback as to whether it's worth our while to pay the few extra $ for SF2 Israel over WoI, would also be welcome. NOTE: acceptable performance to me would be an average of about 35 FPS.

Doh...somehow I missed that. BTW great job on that post.

Fair enough, but my purpose on getting the Israel campaign is to fly it co-op with my son. As well, I'm quite content with the state the SF1 series is in after the October 2008 patch. If I need to purchase the SF2 version later, I'm not really bothered by that considering the price. My only real concern is whether the SF1 series will run on a dual core - actually not too much of an issue as I'm aware of the necessary tweaks sometimes required.