33LIMA

Phase 1 - clearing the enemy defensive positions on the ridgeline Before leaving the briefing map screen, I had ordered my platoon to 'Do as I do!' and into line abreast formation. I haven't played much SF'42 but one thing I do remember is that there's no hanging about. When you launch the mission, likely as not the other units in your combat team - to use the Cold War British Army term for a grouping based on an infantry company or a tank squadron (US company) - are already hare-ing off towards the enemy. No pauses, however brief, on the Start Line (US 'Line of Departure', IIRC) to pick up our dressing and orient ourselves on the axis of our advance. So I ordered the driver to proceed at speed, uphill for 'the off'. He skillfully negotiated the bank on the near side of the track that seemed to mark the Start Line, with my platoon's other two Tigers waiting their turn impatiently, close behind. You can see how our tanks are basically early production jobs, finished in uncamouflaged Dunkelgelb (dark yellow) which was standard on all German heavy equipment ('Grossgerat') from early 1943. Not only do we have the early 'dustbin' commander's cupola, Fiefel air cleaning system to hull rear, triple smoke grenade launchers either side of the turret mantlet and dished rubber-tyred interleaved roadwheels, we also have on each hull corner the cylindrical 'nahverteigungswaffe' launchers fitted to discharge an S-mine as a defence against nearby infantry, which was only carried on very early Tigers. Across the track and playing for now from the external view for better situational awareness, I saw the Panzergrenadiers' SPWs moving ahead on my left. I maintained my speed so as not to be left behind by them. The pace they were setting was such that there was no time here for anything fancy, like making the attack with my tanks on a separate axis and shooting the infantry onto the objective with fire from a flank. The Grenadiers were pelting full tilt towards the enemy to our front and I now needed to be right up there, with them. By about this time, you need to have made a decision as to how you are going to play this sim. You can play from most crew member roles including the driver, but the gunner or commander are the main choices from which to fight your tank, in SF'42. Playing as commander, the sim lets you give orders to your AI driver: a fairly decent set comprising speed, direction, halt, short halt for firing, follow road and go hull-down/into cover. And you can select weapon (main gun, co-axial MG) or ammo (AP or HE, typically) and designate targets for your AI gunner, as well as sending him simple shooting corrections (over or short). However, mainly because it was my preferred and familiar method in M1TP2 and Panzer Elite, I opted to fight from the gunner's position. This is actually a sort of merged role as you can also issue driver orders, as if you were also the commander. So as we advanced I switched to the gunner role, from which I was able to swing the turret left and right to scan for targets and cover likely threats quickly (a good idea, as the Tiger's turret traverse speed was not one of its strengths). SF'42 has nicely rendered tank interiors, including these, for the commander and ahead of him, the gunner: However, I spend no time in these, finding it better to play in the external view (or if playing as commander, in the 'unbuttoned' view, standing in the cupola with hatch open) and to switch to the binocular (commander) or gunsight (gunner) view to locate or engage targets. Another point worth mentioning is SF'42's 'Head-Up Display' which provides a pretty good set of icons around the edges of your screen, covering everything from ammo to crew status to turret/hull orientation. There are also target markers which provide a visual cue to any targets that are called out on the intercom. You can see the 'HUD' icons in the screen below. You can also turn off all of this, which, somewhat dangerously, I opted to do on this mission. The only other thing I could wish for is a turret ring indicator in a ticker-tape format when I was in the gunsight view, for use with the icons turned off, as not knowing which way the turret is facing can be a bit disorienting when in that view with no icons visible. Back to the battle! With my two other Tigers close behind, I rumbled over a ploughed field, throwing up a cloud of dirt. As I did so, rounds began to fall amongst the advancing SPWs to my left, throwing up spouts of dark earth. I hadn't noticed any tracer (the Soviet variety is conveniently green while German is red, in SF'42) so guessed this might be indirect fire, from either artillery or mortars. Half right, the second platoon of Panzer Grenadiers were forging well ahead, accompanied by some more Tigers which I hadn't noticed in the briefing. Just beyond them, the enemy defensive line on the low crest was dotted with dark clouds of smoke from a combination of supporting artillery fire and direct fire from the other Tigers, who had begin to engage targets I could not yet see with direct fire from main guns and MGs. From time to time, Stukas screamed in and added their bombs to the general mayhem. A platoon commander like me would generally not in WW2 have been able directly to request or control air support and in an attack like this, both air and artillery support would have been organised in advance anyway. So it's no reflection on SF '42's realism that I had no influence on all this fire support, which, combined with friendly tank fire, now fell on the enemy to our front. One of the best things about SF'42 is the great battlefield ambience, backing up the great visuals with equally good sound effects. Many of the MG sounds are poor, too 'mechanical', and you can hear voices which appear to originate outside your tank just a bit too easily. But overall the effect has to be heard to be believed. Violent bangs from the discharge of cannon or incoming rounds, a wild miscellany of screams and shouts, the pop and rattle of small arms fire, the clunk of fragments hitting your tank, the roar of engines...they're all there and together, they create a real sense of your being mixed up in a confusing and continuous inferno. Brilliant! Looking back left, I saw that the Grenadiers had de-bussed from their armoured half-tracks and were forging ahead. This left them with rather far to cover on foot, to get to the first objective. Perhaps their Artificial Intelligence is a bit 'iffy'. Or perhaps it is actually rather clever and judged that even with tank support, the risk in open country from AT weapons made it safer for them to leave their lightly-armoured 'battlefield taxis' and assault on foot for the last few hundred metres. The infantry carriers on my right had their own tank support; the ones to my left seemed now to have mainly me to rely upon. Anxious not to let them down, I forged ahead, without pausing to scan for targets of my own. Ahead of me was a row of 'knife-rest' obstacles and not far beyond that, the low crest were lay the enemy. As I roared on at full tilt - though heavy, the Tiger I is no slouch - more enemy rounds fell to our front. Red and green tracers from friendly and enemy MGs and tank or anti-tank weapons started to fly back and forth on both my flanks. Battle was well and truly joined, but so far I was still not engaged! I plunged on, taking a chance but keen to contribute my platoon's fire to the assault that was now developing on the enemy defensive line. ...to be continued!

Wow! MS Trainsim meets FE and goes to war! Can't wait to see this new Verdun terrain from my cockpit, looking forward to flying some Hat in the Ring missions, Navarre Nieuports and all the rest, plus now taking out a Gotha or an AEG to clobber those beautiful railway facilities!

Good to hear Geezer Those fuselage texture are really superb, can't wait to see this one in flight!

Hi Shoresroad My issue with OFF formations is that the are legacy CFS3 - very wide, WW2 fighter style, much too spread out for WW1 (from when they really started formation flying, anyway). And that likewise, formations are very easily lost. I always fly as leader and anything but the gentlest course change sends the flight slipping well wide and taking ages to catch up. CFS3 was the same ,but at least with WW2 reserves of power, the fighters caught up again relatively quickly. In a climb, my OFF wingmen also tend to fall far below, and need me to level off for a bit, at which point the AI seems to recognise the vertical separation and they climb back up. I'd be very interested to know what improvements WOFF has made here, as these formation-keeping issues were a real negative for me, in OFF. As for RoF, my own experience is that when they're good, they're very, very good (best of all) but when they're bad, they're awful. You look back and one or more of your wingmen has disappeared, and can usually be seen instead weaving about, somewhere behind and well below, possibly after a near miss. In my DFW mission report at SimHQ, here: http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3817656/Re_Best_Current_WWI_Sim#Post3817656 ...I mentioned how I looked back to see both wingmen just spinning in, without any visible damage. On an earlier DFW mission, they just disappeared! In FE the wingmen weave much of the time but they seem to stay with me a lot better! I find they may stop weaving after a while but are fairly easily set off again. If I 'warp' they are settled when I come out. AI-led formations don't have this problem, which helps a lot; the screenie with the nice echelon will either be AI, or mine at a point they were settled. Be interested to see the results of that edit!

Thank you and my pleasure!

Planes, trains and automobiles... Heading south after knocking down the Ju88 near Valognes, I was soon back in the dark, metaphorically and literally. I tried to pick up roads or railway lines heading down towards Carentan, which lines of communication I was now to interdict. I managed to pick out the occasional bridge which evidently marked out the presence of one or the other of these features, but between them, I could see nothing but open fields and the occasional small town. Wandering over one of these got me fired at from the ground, so I promptly wandered off again, still without having seen anything that looked worth having a crack at. I ended up rather to the east and swung back, getting fired at again in the process, this time by an automatic weapon in open country. What I failed to notice at the time was that this came from a group of dark objects sitting in a field, possibly parked motor transport or armoured vehicles. You can just about see these in the screenie below, two little rows of dark objects to the left and lower left of the muzzle flashes. I had not yet made the connection that something defended by flak might well signify the presence of something worth attacking, perhaps even the transport I was specifically briefed to clobber. I wandered on for a bit, trying harder to stay close to the line Valognes-Carentan. Soon I was fired on again, this time more vigorously and from nearly directly below. I turned away and came in for another look. The flak seemed to be coming from two separate points not too far apart, and sitting on a long, dark line. This looked like it! My first thought was that it was a line of MT on a road, with mobile AA weapons towards the front and rear of the column; I wasn't expecting a train to have such protection, at this stage in the war. But that's excactly what it turned out to be - a train. Either way, this was just the ticket. Back in the cockpit view I set myself up for a firing pass in a shallow dive. In the dark, even with the intermittent muzzle flashes, it was hard to align my aircraft for a run along the length of the target so I settled for an attack from an oblique angle, coming under steady fire as I did so but escaping damage in the process. As soon as my sights were on, I cut loose. Sweeping over the target with the flak blazing away at me, I could just about make out that this was indeed a train, and that it seemed to consist of a row of flat cars carrying tanks, Mark 4's possibly. Clouds of black smoke sprang from the cars I'd attacked. I wasn't carrying any bombs on this run - they weren't an option in mission setup, though my FBVI Mossie had a small bomb-bay behind the cannon in her belly and pylons under the outer wings - but my MGs and cannon were evidently doing some damage. I banked around and came in again. And again. Making a second pass on an alert and defended target is of course a bad idea but I was emboldened by my continued survival. Having realised that the train carried armoured vehicles and unsure how much harm I'd be able to cause this cargo, I tried to target the locomotive which I expected to be outside one of the two flak wagons. But it was impossible in the dark; or at least, I found it so. On the last of about four firing passes my cannon ammo gave out and I decided to call it a day rather than risk my aircraft and my virtual neck trying to cause further harm with my remaining .303 ammunition. I banked away and was soon over the coast and back out to sea. Finding my way back onto terra firma was the night's last little adventure. Using the mini-map I picked up my track and was careful to hit the last waypoint on my return route, thinking this might be the trigger that brought my airfield's lights back on. Things stayed dark for a bit and I was beginning to get worried but then the lights came on and without bothering with a circuit, I landed straight away. Flying in the external view and lacking a shadow, I found it hard to judge my flare accurately and bounced a couple of times, but was soon down, all in one piece. Perhaps I was cut out to be a night intruder, after all! The debriefing seemed to suggest so, at any rate. One enemy aircraft confirmed destroyed, plus four railway vehicles. Not a bad night's work! I've always had a mind to try a night intruder mission in a sim; ever since having read an account of one, long ago. It was in the aviation volume of a trilogy called 'Freedom's Battle', a highly-recommended compilation of short personal accounts from those who served in British & Commonweath forces, laced with airmen's, seaman's or soldier's songs (like the one I quoted earlier) and humorous material from the RAF's 'house magazine', called Tee Emm. The night intruder story was from a gunner in a Mitchell whose gung-ho pilot was trying to impress a war reporter onboard for the trip, in so doing hugely un-impressing his more war-weary crew, who were more interested in surviving the mission. Back in the 1970s, I never thought for a moment that one day, I would myself be 'flying' similar missions, courtesy of the wonderful world that's been brought to we simmers by such great products as IL-2 '46. And by the work of modders like Prangster, who produced the clever, hugely immersive and well-presented mission reported here. It comes with other 'goodies' including a movie intro and recce photos and fully lives up to its exceptionally-accurately-presented briefing. Highly recommended.

Ill met by moonlight... Though disheartened with so far finding only a star to chase, I contined to stooge around in the darkness over the illuminated enemy airfield. Should I fly lower, to silhouette an enemy against the sky? Would I be more likely to catch an aircraft in the circuit if I was north or south, east or west? As I pondered, I kept an eye on the airfield itself. The runway lights could signify a take-off as well as a landing! But I'd seen neither and suspected that the length of time the lights had stayed on most likely signified an incoming aircraft. But the minutes ticked by and still, I had seen nothing in the air or on the ground. Oh, for a radar set! But I was a fighter-bomber on a night intruder mission, not a night fighter, proper. Perhaps the Germans, hearing me, had thought me to be their visitor and were puzzled at me neither landing nor making radio contact! Continuing my solitary vigil, I turned south, to where the skies were the darkest. While this looked to be the hardest sector in which to spot another aircraft, it was, I felt, also the most likely direction from which a German aircraft would come. As I watched, with mounting excitement I spotted a faint but distinctive pattern of lights, low in the sky. This was not a single, bright point of light, like the many stars higher in the cloud-speckled sky. Rather, it seemed to be a short, horizontal cluster of faint lights, whitish in the middle, duller and tinged with colour at the outside. I immediately switched to the cockpit view and continued to observe this phenomenon, while lining it up in my sights. Things now happened with dizzying rapidity. In a split second I realised that I was indeed seeing the navigation lights of another aircraft. And that it was headed right for me, just slightly lower! In the little time I had to react, I pushed down the nose to bring my point of aim ahead of the light cluster as it rushed in below me, and quickly pressed the tit. Four Browning 303s and the same number of Hispano 20mm cannon roared into life. It was the briefest of snap shots, a split-second burst. But with all that firepower, it had taken effect. The Ju-88 - for that's what it was - swept past inches below me and staggered off into the darkness, trailing fuel or glycol and leaving a cloud of aluminium fragments in his wake. I banked around hard after him, not so hard so as to bring on a stall or lose the horizon and risk a 'controlled flight into terrain'. I was not sure how hard I'd hit the enemy aircraft and having found him at last, was determined there would be no escape. I need not have worried. The big Junkers went straight in, his end marked by a plume of orange flame which seemed narrowly to have missed some local Frenchman's property. I had not positively identified the aircraft I had just shot down. A moment's doubt crept into the back of my mind...but replaying the circumstances, I remained clear that it was as near a certainty as made no difference that this had been an enemy. Leaving the fragments which burned on the ground, I resumed my vigil around the airfield. The lights remained on, and I hung around for a while in the hope of repeating my success. Perhaps I would have done so, had I waited longer. But the second half of my mission - patrolling the roads and railway line to the south - also required my attention. So I pulled away and left the Lufwaffe base behind. ...to be continued!

'Ki te Mutunga!' 'Through to the end!' - the Maori motto of no. 487 Squadron, Royal New Zealand Air Force The flight to the first target area - the German airfield at Maupertus, north of Valognes - was uneventful...and dark. I flew much of the way in the external view at a fast cruise, about three-quarters throttle, calling up the mini-map or the red 'speedbar' on-screen text display at intervals, to maintain course. Taking no chances, I stayed up at about 2,500 feet. No dangerous messing about at a mere thousand feet for me, thank you very much! I could see the French coast, off to my left, a continuous stretch of sandy beach with the dark countryside receeding to a barely-visible horizon, beyond. I lost a bit of height as I crossed inland near the base of the Cotentin Peninsula, where the coast runs more or less north-south. Back in the cockpit and switching to the gunsight view, I was a bit put off by the brightness of the reflector sight's illuminated reticle. If there was a keystroke to dim this, I hadn't set it. So on I went, watching out anxiously for anything that looked remotely hostile, but most especially for the ground, which flashed past beneath me with a vague, dark menace. About half-way to Valognes I flew over something which took exception to my passage. Blue tracers fanned out from an automatic weapon below. The rounds seemed to pass quite close but the firing seemed fairly wild and I took no evasive action, relying on my speed to carry me past in the dark and out of their field of fire. Emboldened by my surviving this first hostile action, I soon arrived south of the enemy airfield and began to circle, careful as ordered not to overfly it and thereby hopefully avoid being shot down by its defences. The airfield's grey runway, apron and taxiways were visible, but it was in darkeness. Then the runway lighting came on. A few to start with. Then the whole runway was lit up. Evidently, they were expecting a visitor, other than myself. Someone whose visit it was now my job to interupt. Violently. I banked around, looking for any sign of another aircraft. In the campaign 'difficulty' setup, I had retained on the mini-map the display of my own plane and my route, but had turned off other aircraft icons. So I kept fairly low, looking around and hoping to see something silhouetted against the sky, which at night is still generally lighter than the ground. Nothing. Round and round I went. At one point I found myself chasing a light in the sky which seemed to be moving, but it was just a star. But the Germans down there on the ground were not just teasing me, I was sure. Somewhere out there, an enemy aircraft must be approaching, if not already in my immediate vicinity. The excitement was palpable. Where was he? ...to be continued!

Holding the line against the Japanese onslaught in New Guinea! There's no point disputing matters of taste - as the Latin saying goes, 'de gustibus non est disputandum'. But if there was a contest for the most attractive US WW2 fighter, the Curtiss P-40 would get my vote. Especially the later models with that long, deep radiator bath under the nose, with or without the famous 'sharkmouth' marking. The P-40 is of course celebrated mainly for its exploits with the American Volunteer Group in the China-Burma-India theatre and with the British and Commonwealth air forces (and later the USAAF) in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations. While the Warhawk/Tomahawk/Kittyhawk lacked the high-altitude performance to keep it competitive later in the war, the P-40 made a vital contribution to the middle part of the Allied war effort, adding service in Russia to its many laurels. There's some great P-40 warbird action here, courtesy of New Zealand's Historic Aviation Film Unit, showing the -C, -E and -N variants: Up to now, my simulation 'stick time' with the P-40 has been very largely limited to some action in CFS2, made up between Just Flight's 'Pearl Harbour' add on and the user mod package 'In Defence of Australia: http://www.justflight.com/product/pearl-harbor http://jamcraft.net/DoA_42v2/Docs/RAAF_Expansion_Pack_v2.htm My appetite for another crack with the P-40 was recently whetted in unusual circumstances. Having in my last mission report castigated the flying sequences in the movies 'Red Tails' and 'Pearl Harbour', I decided to watch that footage again, to see if I still thought it as contrived and inane as I did first time around. The answer was a resounding 'Hell, yes!' I mean, guys on the ground talking to pilots in 1941 on a 'walkie-talkie' to arrange an ambush for Zeros by placing rifles, MGs and a shotgun(!) on a tower? Not to mention that the same two intrepid P-40 pilots had just impossibly arranged a game of 'chicken' between opposing fighters...I mean, why not just jump out on the wing and knock them down with light sabres, which would have been as realistic? But P-40s feature prominently in both films and you can't help but admire the planes, however silly are the things they're made to do by the total muppets who dream up this sort of nonsense, when the real thing could be just as cinematic. IL-2 '46 has an outstanding selection of P-40s and includes a USAAF Pacific fighter pilot campaign featuring the type. So that was my sim of choice. The variants available in IL-2 include: P-40B: P-40C: Tomahawk: P-40E: P-40M: With IL-2 - and presumably, this came originally with the 'Pacific Fighters' installment - you can opt to fly the PTO campaign I had in mind with the US Army Air Force, starting with Pearl Harbour in December 1941. I choose instead to start with the next segment of the campaign, during the following year. It was 30 July 1942, soon after Japanese fortunes had been spectacularly and decisively reversed at the aero-naval Battle of Midway. Still intent on isolating rather than invading Australia by seizing Port Moresby on eastern New Guinea, just across the Coral Sea from northern Australia, the Japanese attacked overland, along the Kokoda Trail. Such is the dramatic period in WW2 covered by this IL-2 campaign, with mainly US and Australian forces pitted against the Japanese drive to Moresby. Here's the briefing for the campaign segment's first mission. And there's no time to lose - it's a 'scamble' to intercept an enemy raid, said to be coming in from the south-west! I was at the head of a flight of just four P-40Es; and here we are, lined up on the concrete at Port Moresby's main airfield. We're not alone, though; behind us are no less than six Army P-39 Airacobras. There were quite a few other aircraft parked around the airfield, including some B-25 Mitchell bombers and some more P-40s. But we four and those P-39s seemed to be the only available aircraft for this sortie. All the more reason to get off without further ado, and gain what height we could. As it turned out, that wouldn't be much. ...to be continued!

Do tell Craig, where did you get the stuff for Toko-Ri? Haven't come across much for Korea in IL-2,. Not that I've been looking hard, but having always loved the movie (flying and carrier sequences anyway; did they REALLY belly-land that Panther? It certainly didn't look like a model) I would quite like to have a shot at dropping that bridge and/or clobbering the triple-A.

IIRC the weaving about used to be worse, but a patch to FE(1) adopted a user fix which reduced it. I often 'warp' (Alt+N, 'next encounter) to save time on longer patrols and they seem to be settled when you come out, but start weaving again after course changes. Haven't tried Quack's mod. I just put up with the weaving, not least as the formation-keeping in FE/FE2 is still better than in RoF and much, much better than WOFF. Sorry I forgot about the cat extractor, it's been a long time, one of those things you do early on then likely never need to do again...provided you remember to zip and copy to DVD your complete mods folder when you get your basic setup settled, then again once you've d'led and installed all the planes, campaigns etc you want for a while, so you can recover easily without having to re-install and tweak everything you spent ages doing first time...including remembering which ones needed the feline remover :)

Thanks Craig. Yes Il-2's worth revisiting. A great sim; never really caught my fancy while it was purely Eastern Front but it's a whole different ball game, now you can so this sort of stuff as well, and more besides: Ivor

Wow! Lovely model and textures Geezer. all those polys...some LODs definitely indicated! As for the pilot, he must be an instant victor in the prize for the most intimidating sim pilot ever, makes BA look positively cuddly, nice touch!

Hi Shoresroad as Panama Red's link doubtless explains: - the 'mods' folder for 2nd generation Third Wire sims doesn't get installed into the same folder you installed the sim, but into a sort of parallel folder structure that's crated when you install, path varies depending on flavour of Windows but in Vista 64 it's [your user name]/saved Games/ThirdWire/FirstEagles 2; and - when first created when you install, the subfolder structire isn't a COMPLETE mirror image of you install folder; only some subfolders are created. You need to use Windows Explorer in the usual way to create manually any extra folders needed by a particular mod eg if the mod needs to go into a subfolder called 'Flight' and it's not there, just create it then install the mod into it. That mission (.msn) file would go into [your user name]/Saved Games/ThirdWire/FirstEagles2/Missions, creating the last subfolder manually yourself, if it's not there, exactly as spelt. Forget about the instruction about swapping the ref to Cambrai to read Verdun. I'm 99% sure this is because Vosgen uses some stiff from the Cambrai terrain, and this arrived only with the FE (1) expansion pack (FE plus expansion pack was later released as 'First Eagles Gold' or FEG. FE2 is an update of FEG and comes complete with the Cambrai terrain (but not the seasonal textures so if Vosgen uses the seasonal ones from FEG for Cambrai, then you won't see them in FE2 as this has only single season textures. To get seasonal textures you'll need to add Jan Tuma's set of another user-made set which has them. If it's any consolation I find adding mods to IL-2 more complicated than FE2! No air.ini files to locate and edit etc. the most complicated thing I came up against was getting some markings (decals) to show on planes like the FE8 that are designed for FE(1), which took a bit of digging to trace the issue, then it was a simple Wordpad edit or two.

Hi Shores Skyhigh's list is a good base set. If you want to head off to 'sunny Italy' then Gterl's combined terrain and campaign is great. No reason to delay doing that, you can start right there if you wish. You might want to create a separate install for Italy: copy + paste FirstEagles2.exe into the folder you installed the sim alongside the original .exe so you get FirstEagles2 (copy).exe. Then remane this copy to something like FE2Italy.exe and run it. Doing this will create a separate 'mod' folder, alongside the sim's original one - like [your user name]/Saved Games/ThirdWire/FE2Italy. Install the mods for Italy there. This isn't strictly necessary, but it will mean that when you add more Western Front-only planes, you won't see these appearing in any single missions you run on your Italian install. The Italian theatre d/l readme lists the other mods (planes, mainly) you need to install, so go get 'em. Most are available here at CA. As for the stuff you need at the A Team Skunkworks, you need to apply by email for access to the functional download page and once granted, take great care to stick to the site's rules particularly the limit on concurrent downloads.

The Fat Lady sings! I banked hard right to clear the masts of the cargo ships berthed next to the destroyer. The Zero banked too, but went slightly wide, perhaps in a last-minute effort to avoid the Navy tracers streaking towards him. Just when I thought he was going to get past unscathed, an AA round burst right on top of him. For a split second it looked like the Zero had got away with it. But then he staggered and burst into flames! The 'Zeke' seemed unable to recover from his bank, and nosing down, he sped at full tilt towards the ground, trailing a long banner of orange fire. At the last moment, the Japanese pilot made a desperate attempt to escape from his plunging fighter. The Zero's canopy flew off. But at that low altitude and at that airspeed, he didn't have a chance. The Zero smashed into the ground at a terrific speed and simply disintegrated. As I banked away, its firey fragments bounced and then scattered across the ground behind me. Phew! The Navy had done it again, God bless their cotton socks! Mightily relieved, I started gaining altitude. It now looked like I might be making it back to base after all. Naturally my first act - after gratefully kissing the Port Moresby concrete - would be to deliver a crate or two of cold beer to the Navy boys who had saved my bacon - twice! I looked around. To my right, inland and above me, was a ragged group of single-engined aircraft, flying slowly west. They weren't atttacting any AA fire and in fact they were the P-39s who had accompanied us off the ground. They seemed to have come through the battle with perhaps a couple of losses. There was still some desultory AA fire going on but apart from the P-39s and the odd other aircraft here and there, the air fighting seemed to have died away. After orbiting in an ascending spiral, I throttled back and gave the flight the order to return to base. I could have recalled them and gone in search of any remaining enemies I could find but ammo was likely to be low all round - with the possible exception of my own wingman! - and I'd had enough for one day. Time to go home! The airfield defences were still firing nervously but thankfully, they left me alone. The last excitement of the day came on short finals. An aircraft which I could see was landing ahead of me - which turned out to be one of the two missing Airacobras - slowed unexpectedly quickly after touchdown and turned off the runway just past the threshold. Fortunately he kept going so I was spared the necessity of going around. Back on terra firma and taxying back to dispersal, I could see that a few fires were burning and that one of the B-25s, at the end of a row parked in front of some hangars, was looking a bit the worse for wear. But otherwise, our base seemed to have come through the raid quite lightly. Had those Bettys made a determined bombing attack in formation, it would have been a different matter. The debrief showed my flight had scored two kills, one of them my Betty. The other one was likely this fellow. He looks like the one I had damaged and left smoking, but he'd since taken more damage than I'd left him with so he was likely our flight's second kill. The raid had comprised 15-20 of these bombers, escorted by the two Oscars and the four Zeros. As for the raid's results, I had seen that at least two aircraft had been destroyed on the ground, a P-40 and a B-25. Considering the scale of the opposition, we had not done too badly, though next time I will be less wary of the rear gunners and make better use of my ammunition. Not a bad start though. Even though the Army now owed the Navy a favour or two! Overall, this was a great mission, thoroughly enjoyable, despite those strangely indecisive and ineffectual Bettys. IL-2 still looks just great, with lovely environmental effects including very effective lighting, glistening, animated water and clouds complete with shadows on the ground. With successive editions and all the community input adding content, features and improvements, the sim has aged rather well and in the proceess has lost some things I for one disliked, such as the 'sniper' gunners, the awful droning external engine sounds and aircraft markings that looked like badly-applied kit decals. With the Eastern Front now just one of the many experiences available and looking fantastic on even a modest system, IL-2 '46 is one sim that will be keeping me happy for a very long time to come.

The end of the line? The other Zero - who as ahead of the one the Navy clobbered - had stayed low and right behind me. In doing so he escaped his comrade's fate and - unscathed, even as the second 'Zeke's's remains fell from the sky - the enemy fighter sped over the destroyer - and straight after me. Where was my wingman? Nowhere in sight! The IL-2 wingman commands are pretty comprehensive but the nested menus can make them slow and distracting to issue - especially when you have an angry Zero right behind you. If there were hotkeys for the more common or pressing wingman commands in IL-2 that I didn't know, this was not a good time to go looking for them! Tracers sped close past me at intervals as I jinked and swung around. My only consolation was that the enemy seemed to be out of rounds for his wing-mounted cannon, leaving him with just his rifle-calibre cowling MGs. At full throttle I fled over the water, as low as I dared. The Zero clung to me like a limpet. I tried to steer back towards the destroyer; all I could think of was having another go at luring the second Zero to destruction at the hands of its AA gunners, who seemed quite good at swatting low-flying enemy aircraft. I edged towards the harbour, but it was impossible to keep a straight course under fire and I ended up going wide and across the headland. As I crossed the headland, the Zero made a diving pass which took him below me. For a moment I hoped that he was not going to pull out in time...but no such luck. He recovered and using the speed built up in his dive he was soon behind and just above me and firing again. Out over the water again, I reversed course back towards the harbour, with the Zero still after me. Rounds spashed in the water to my right as I made the final dash towards the destrover. Running in over the last hundred yards or so, I could see that the Navy was doing its level best. The muzzle flashes from the destroyer's 20mm and 40mm light AA weapons were the proof of that. I was now pretty well out of ideas. Would my gambit work a second time? I would soon find out. ...to be continued!

Thanks for the positive feedback guys! I'll finish this report now!

Hi Dave That must have been before somebody found out how to neuter those rear gunners! Did your Bettys mill about aimlessly, too? All I can think is that neutering the bomber skill level may have been the problem on my mission. Anyway I'm off to get some kip, will finish the mission report tomorrow evening. Ivor

The navy to the rescue! From the Japanese raid on Port Moresby, I had definitely destroyed one G4M 'Betty' bomber and badly damaged a second. I hadn't heard or seen much from my flight's number three and four since cutting them loose at the start of the battle. But having spotted two Zeros low down to the east, I was glad to see my own wingman was back with me. With my own ammo long exhausted, I led him up in a climbing turn, away from the enemy fighters, who had shown no sign of having spotted us. However, seen us they had. P-40s were renowned for being able to leave a Japanese fighter in a dive. But a climb...well, that was a different matter. See what I mean? They say that a bad plan is better than no plan at all. And in an air fight, speed is vital - to quote the RAF's No.13 Group's 'Forget-me-nots for Fighters', 'Don't hang about thinking up something clever.' So I made a plan - fast. Enemy forces - one Zero closing up from below and behind, likely the second one close behind him. Friendly forces - me, unarmed, and my wingman closer behind me...and the Navy. Earlier on, I'd noticed flashes of pretty vigorous AA fire from a friendly warship in Port Moresby's little harbour. In all the excitement, I was lucky not to have forgotten. But I hadn't and so here's the plan. Climbing away from the Zeros was definitely not working. So I would wing over and dive, calling my wingman to cover me. Hopefully, in the dive I'd gain some ground, while luring at least one of the Zeros after me, thus setting up a kill for my number two. 'Roping the dope', I think they call it, nowadays. Except that there were two of them, and neither might be dopes. So the second part of my plan was that, as I dived, I would swing towards the harbour, and draw the enemy into a nice little concentration of naval AA fire at low level. If my wingman didn't get them - or at least, drive them off - hopefully the boys behind the AA guns on that warship would manage it. My own rather more plausible version of the gambit in the Pearl Harbour movie, if you like. So I winged over and dived hard for Mother Earth, with two Zeros snapping at my heels and my wingman roughly in the middle somwhere. Nearing the ground, I pulled up heading for the harbour. There, I could now see that the friendly warship appeared to be a USN destroyer; a modern Fletcher class job, by the look of it. So far, so good. The destroyer's 5 inch main guns were trained out and in action as well as the lighter stuff. It was quite scary, flying straight into the muzzles of that little lot and hoping that the gunners' aircraft recognition would be first class and their aim, even better. Head-on, one single-engined fighter isn't that easy to tell from another. But despite the fact that WW2 USN people will have been much more accustomed to seeing radial-engined friendly planes, the boys on this destroyer seemed to know a P-40 when they saw one. Unscathed, I flashed over them, just above mast-head height. One of the Zeros wasn't so lucky. One moment he was there, the next there was a flash, and flaming debris rained down, scattering across the port and into the water. Hooray for the Navy! One Zero down, one to go! ...to be continued!

Betty bows out Having clobbered one of the enemy bombers, I had a good look around. The formation of Bettys whose numbers I had just thinned out seemed still to be heading west, down the southern coast of New Guinea. Were they retreating, or heading on to bomb a target further into our territory? Neither of the above, as it happened. Looking back in the direction of our airfield, I could see that there were aircraft milling about all over the place. The airfield defence people were banging away into the middle of all this, so there was evidently still a raid of some description going on. At the time I didn't see any pattern, but this is roughly what was happening. The Japanese 'top cover' seemed to consist of a pair of Army fighters; namely these two Ki-43 'Oscars'. They didn't seem to feel much affinity for their naval coIleagues because I never saw any evidence that they came down to intervene in the proceedings. Perhaps they were engaged with the Airacobras at some point but they didn't seem to bother my lot. Meanwhile, lower down, were the Zeros. There were apparently four of these, including the pair I'd seen diving as the raid came in. Two were 'Hamps', the clipped-wing version; the other two were conventional model 'Zekes' of Pearl Harbour fame. The square-tipped 'Hamps' seemed to be doing most of the damage in this raid, including this strafing attack, which claimed a P-40 from a group parked on the grass. The really strange thing was the behaviour of the Bettys. There were more of them than the six I'd attacked, and they seemed to be doing most of the milling about. Perhaps from our attacks, their formations seemed to have broken up. Every so often, one or two of the bombers would fly over our airfield, or one of the other airstrips in the area. There seemed to be three - ours, the largest, another slightly smaller one to the north-west, and a smaller airfield to the east. Perhaps the Bettys - true to the characteristic commonly ascribed to their feminine counterparts - couldn't make up their minds. They seemed to make shallow diving attacks from different levels, every so often. But I never saw a bomb hit. I remember reading somewhere that when carrying bombs, the G4M's bomb-bay doors were removed. Later, watching the replay of the mission track I saved, I had a look at a couple, and this is what I saw - open (or missing) bomb bay doors and just two tiny bombs inside. At one point watching a Betty from above in the replay, I thought I heard the whistle of falling bombs, but there were no explosions. I believe that setting 'MaxBomberSkill=0' in you IL-2 configuration file is necessary to neuter the 'sniper' rear gunners - you know, the ones who, nearly every time, put a round straight through the armour glass windscreen of your Messerschmitt 109G and knock your reflector sight askew, without harming you. But I also gather this setting reduces the skill level of bombers across the board. Perhaps this was a factor in the Bettys' strange performance. Meanwhile, back at the war...the skies over our base being full of these Bettys milling about in ones and twos, and with no sign of enemy fighters, I thought I had better have another crack at one, with my remaining ammunition. So I re-joined the party, chasing after a pair of bombers which had started a shallow diving attack, as I approached. Again, the Betty I attacked proved to be fast and hard to catch. He eventually pulled up streaming a light trail of smoke from his port engine. At this point I caught up and fired off the rest of my ammo at him, breaking away under return fire from his dorsal gun position but not, thank goodness, from that nasty 20mm cannon in his tail. Meanwhile, his comrades continued their diving attacks, or attack-like diving manoeuvres, or whatever they were. With my own wingman still in tow but out of rounds myself, I climbed up and made a wide circuit around my airfield. My plan now was to assess the situation and if it seemed favourable, to cut loose my number two for an attack of his own, on a suitable target. I would follow him, reversing roles. With no ammo, I would be able to do little more that watch out for danger and if all else fails, see if the IL-2 AI pilots could be scared off by an unarmed enemy plane on their 'six'. Given that the AI often seem to break when you're closing in on them and are just about to open fire, I was optimistic on that score. As I orbited at higher level, the skies seemed to be somewhat clearer. Our airfield's AA was still cutting loose at intervals so there were still some bad guys around. But none came our way. Deciding the time was right, as I arrived to the east of Port Moresby, I gave my wingman the command to 'attack all'. Off he went, first rolling over and diving, then pulling up and going into a climbing turn. I gamely followed, wondering what on earth he had in mind. This went on for a bit, until I lost patience and called him back. At that point, I banked around and looked below. There, just inland, I could see a couple of pale-coloured single-engined aircraft, heading in opposite directions, quite low down. Zeros! ...to be continued!

Battle of the Bettys I climbed as steeply as I dared, trying to intercept or head off the six enemy bombers up ahead of me, which I judged - correctly as it turned out - to be Japanese G4M 'Bettys'. These long-range and well-armed bombers, I knew, had a reputation for being rather vulnerable to enemy fire. This hypothesis I intended to put to the test, very soon. But not that soon. Caught at such a height disadvantage, there was no way I was going to be able to hit them in a climbing attack from ahead and below. Instead, I was forced to watch them sail past over my head, out of range. I had to reverse my course again and now found myself chasing the bombers. For whatever reason, they seemed not to have bombed our airfield, despite having passed more or less right over it. But this was not the time to ponder this deliverance. There was work to be done. One of the bombers seemed to be lagging, on the left rear of the small enemy formation. So I went for him, by now at last nearly up to the enemy's level. As I began to close on my intended victim, I remembered my flight, and gave the radio command for a general attack. There's no time for anything fancy, so let's all just get stuck into them now, I thought. The 'Betty' was quite fast and maintained a left-hand turn as I closed. Wary of the 20mm tail gun I seemed to recall these bombers had, I fired without getting too close, relying instead on putting a bigger shower of flying metal into the air from my six 50 calibre MGs than my foe could manage in return. Such tactics were not conducive to conserving ammunition but soon began to produce results. I saw hits flicker on his airframe, then a small orange fireball exploded somewhere in his rear fuselage. Trusting - or at least, hoping - that this damage might have put off his waist and tail gunners, I closed more confidently, continuing to snap out short bursts. Finally, a fuel tank in his starboard inner wing burst into flames. That ought to do it! Wisely, the burning Betty's crew decided the time had come to part company with their aircraft. I left them to it and pulled up and away. Scratch one enemy bomber! ...to be continued!

Into battle! With throttle wide and flaps down two notches, I roared off, using differential braking and then rudder to keep her straight, but still grateful for the wide concrete runway. At first I climbed hard roughly eastwards, away from the incoming raid. I wanted to gain as much height as I could, before swinging around towards the enemy. The base fell away behind and below me. With its plentiful hangarage, storage tanks, barracks and parked aircraft, it was more than likely that our own base would be the object of the enemy attack. I didn't want to return to a smoking ruin! So maintaining my course to the east, I climbed hard. This didn't last long. Behind me, the airfield AA sprang into life. That bl**dy raid must be coming in right behind us! Easing off my rate of climb I turned hard left, hoping my flight, clawing for height in my wake, would do a good job of keeping up but having no time to look for them. Likewise, as I rolled out of my turn, I had no time to admire the nice view I now had of Port Moresby itself, to my left. My attention was focused instead on the patch of sky above and now ahead of me, into which was soaring intermittent streams of tracer fire from the airfield's defenders. Where was the enemy? They weren't hard to spot. As I watched, a pair of specks wheeled around then fell from the sky. They looked too agile for dive bombers, so I took them to be enemy fighters of some description, likely going after either the AA guns or the parked planes. But I wasn't watching them. Right ahead in serried ranks were two 'vics' of what looked like twin engined bombers, heading right for me. Plan made. The enemy fighters I had seen had dived down and were not offering combat; not right now, anyway. My priority was to hit these bombers while I could, preferably in time to disrupt their bombing of my own airfield, assuming - as seemed very likely - that this was their target. ...to be continued!

Hi Shoresroad! I have a modest system (8800GT + early quad core) and have both FEG and FE2. I didn't get a massive FPS boost, just a modest one (don't have the figures). A few people say they prefer FEG but most including myself seem to prefer FE2. I have the FEG seasonal textures installed in FE2 as I like the stock terrain textures (winter set seen below on the user-made Vogesen terrain)... ...but could just as easily have gone for a modder's terrain texture set (Jan Tuma's is popular) which does include its own seasonal textures. This set has is a modified version of the stock seasonal terrains for FE/FEG: http://combatace.com/files/file/9756-first-eagles-stock-terrains-visual-upgrade/ (some mods lost their d/l page pics a while back but the mods are still there) And here's Jan Tuma's set: http://combatace.com/files/file/10549-first-eagles-seasonal-tiles-by-jan-tuma/ For the Western Front, the Flanders terrain is also worth having: http://combatace.com/files/file/4424-first-eagles-flanders-terrain/ ,,and there's the Vogesen terrain: http://combatace.com/files/file/5933-vogesen-terrain-version-10/ ...and of course if you fancy warmer climes - at least down in the valleys - there's Gterl's superb Italian terrain, which includes a campaign for the theatre: http://combatace.com/files/file/14440-italian-terrain-incl-1915-1917-campaign/ 'Second Generation' Third Wire sims like FE2 have a different install process than earlier ones like FEG, mainly as the former installs mods outside of the program files folder (they go into a sort of parallel file folder set - the so-called 'mods' folder, under your username instead). And for terrain textures, the name of the subfolder these go into was changed, too, from 'terrain' [singular] to 'terrains' [plural]. Worth noting if you're installing terrain. Most mods (except effects) designed for FE/FEG work fine with FE2, they just need installed the new way, which may not be described in their readmes. Main point is that the decal markings for planes need copied to a 'decals' subfolder - Stephen1918's planes are recent and have installation instructions for both FE and FE2 so check out his readmes. Other things I think are better in FE2 are the effects - for example, smoke columns last longer and there are persistent aircraft wreck models whereas in FEG wrecked planes just explode and disappear: I seem to recall finding the AI improved in FE2. Horizon distances are I think also greater in FE2, setting for setting and with a higher furthest horizon before the 'fog' cuts in (though I had to edit the setting MeshDetailSize - increasing it to 22, it's in FirstEagles2/Flight/Flightengine.ini - to avoid objects like the buildings in towns having somewhat too close a draw distance, now they are drawn far away). The only negative to me is that weather doesn't change randomly in FE2 campaigns, but I believe there's a mod which provides a manual workaround. Good hunting/gute jagd!

Defending 'Bloody Tarawa' in the Ki-43 'Hayabusa'! Having enjoyed flying the Nakajima Ki-43 in an island defence mission courtesy of CFS2 and Yoshi's 'Battle of Chishima' campaign, I was keen to see what IL-2 had to offer, in the same department. IL-2 1946 includes the previous 'Pacific Fighters' installment so I opted to use this, combined with Dark Blue World, the premier add-on package for offline IL-2 fans. If you want to see the real Hayabusa in action, you probably can't do better that this war-time film: This looks to be a reconstruction for the cameramen of a 25 December 1941 Imperial Japanese Army raid on Rangoon, Burma by Ki-21 'Sally' bombers with a Ki-43 'Oscar' escort. Even though I suspect it has no real combat footage, it's pretty good stuff, and includes some staged dogfights between Hayabusas and a P-40 and Buffalo. There's some impressive Japanese model-making skill on display too but it all gets blown up in the 'bombing'! The real Christmas Day raid on Rangoon is described in some detail in Chapter 7 of Grub Street's 'Bloody Shambles' by Shores, Cull & Izawa and involved over 60 Ki-21s escorted by 25 Hayabusas, followed by another thirty-plus Ki-21s covered by a similar number of Ki-27s and was intercepted by both the American Volunteer Group and the RAF. The defenders reportedly believed they had definitely shot down at least 42 enemy aircraft but Japanese losses are said to have been two Ki-43s, the same number of Ki-27s and three Ki-21s, plus a handful more force-landed; casualties on the ground were more clear cut and were estimated at 5,000 killed. The Hayabusa also stars in the recent Japanese movie 'For Those We Love', about the Kamikazes, notably in the final climactic attack on a US Task Force. The flying sequences look to be filmed with a mix of scale models, CGI and full-size taxying replicas, and have the odd contrived moment, but they totally put to shame the high production value but inane and inept combat footage in films like 'Red Tails' or 'Pearl Harbour'. This is the link to what I believe is the legitimate official trailer on Youtube (as opposed to the 'unofficial' uploads which include the final attack in full): As for the simulation equivalent, while CFS2 features the mid-production Ki-43-II (shorter span wing and two heavy MGs), IL-2 '46 + DBW provides virtually the 'full Monty', from the early Ki-43-I with longer-span wing, tubular gun sight and two rifle-calibre MGs, through later versions with one heavy and one light MG; to the Ki-43-II with reflector sight, more powerful engine, two HMGs, shorter span wing and extra intake in the lip of the upper cowling; and the Ki-43-III with separate exhaust ejector stubs. See for yourself: Ki-43-I Ki-43-II Ki-43-III The mission I forgot to create a new pilot so I ended up with a rather un-Japanese named left-over pilot! But having created a stock IJA fighter campaign, I was pleased to see that I didn't have to start with the long flights of the Malayan operations but could choose to begin later, in November 1943, on defensive operations - just before the US Marines came ashore in Operation Galvanic - defending Tarawa atoll itself. I'd picked a starting rank high enough to lead operations, which is how I like it. Here's the briefing for the first mission - and it's 'in at the deep end' with a 'scramble', to intercept an incoming enemy raid. I'd have appreciated some information on the the enemy's height and maybe numbers, but at least I knew they were coming and roughly where they were coming from! Here we are on the airfield - six of us, lined up and good to go. CFS2 formation takeoffs are in pairs and quite brisk, but while I believe the Team Diadolos patches now support formation takeoffs, in DBW it's as per the stock IL-2 'conga line'. This is the 'vanilla' IL-2 Ki-43-I skin, solid green uppers rather than my preferred mottle. But my main beef here is that it's late 1943, yet we've been given obsolescent early-model Hayabusas, with the original 980hp engine and just one of the rifle-calibre MGs upgraded to a 12.7mm model. Okay for 1941-42 but not so good for this point in hostilities. I haven't checked but maybe it's because this is a stock campaign and the later model Hayabusas come with DBW. Whatever the reason, it appeared that someone at Imperial General Headquarters was being rather parsimonious with the latest kit. And this, despite the fact that, as the briefing reports, we're believed to be facing an attack. And a massive one at that. This being a 'scramble', there was no time to waste musing on the shortcomings of our kit. I don't bother with Complex Engine Management and as I dislike fiddling with radiator flap settings (and have on-screen text suppressed, so don't get 'Engine overheating!' warnings) I have set my motor to keep itself cool, as well. This may not be very 'hard core' but it's just how I like it. So I started up, checked my controls and set flaps to one notch down. Possibly that is actually the 'combat' setting - the Hayabusa being one plane which really did have combat flaps, apparently needed to meet the design requirement to have manoeuvrability comparable to its fixed-undercart monoplane predecessor, the Ki-27 'Nate'. Anyway off I went, followed at intervals by the others. The IL-2 Ki-43 is somewhat higher-polygon than its CFS2 equivalent although its mainwheels are rather angular, side-on anyway. It took me a second or so to realise that the green aircraft parked to my left as I took off were not modern Argentine Pucarras who'd badly lost their way in space and time, but typical Japanese dummy aircraft. They weren't the only ones; further down the runway was parked a row of dummy fighters, the far side of which sat the airfield's real planes, sensibly in blast pens. Some nice touches there! So the mission had begun. Now, where were the Americans? Coming from the south-east, the briefing said, though our flight plan indicated that we should head pretty well due south. Airborne, I raised flaps and undercart and began a turn to the right as I gained height. I could have climbed away from the incoming raid to gain more height before turning south, but orders are orders and they said 'go south'. ...to be continued!