33LIMA

Joining the Caterpillar Club, Imperial Japanese Army chapter Evidently, the chap screaming over the radio had not been my wingman. The latter was very much in business, as it turned out, despite having last been seen going down vertically. In fact he had recovered sufficiently to chase the two Wildcats off my tail. Great stuff! Definitely worth a bottle of saké in the officer's club, later. However, it was expecting rather a lot for him to keep both of the Americans tied up, and sure enough, one of them was soon after me, all over again. Out of rounds, I milled around with the Wildcat for a bit, exploiting my Hayabusa's superior manoeuvrability to avoid his fire. All the while, I was edging lower and closer to my airfield, now just a few hundred feet below. Finally, having opened out the gap between us, I grabbed my chance and dived again for the airfield, intending to make a sharp pull up and left turn onto short finals and then plonk my kite down on the nearer edge of the runway. I could only hope that the airfield flak would cover my backside for the last lap of my escape bid. I didn't get far. I'm not sure if it was the Wildcat I was dodging or if another one had slipped in behind me. But suddenly there were rounds slamming into my aeroplane which quickly burst into flames. Clearly, it was time to take my leave and make my application for membership of the Caterpillar Club. I'm assuming here that there was a Japanese branch of the exclusive society whose members were entitled to wear the little caterpillar badge, signifying a silkworm and the fact that the wearer had saved his life by means of a parachute descent. I broke right and upwards in an effort to get out of the merciless hail of 50 caliber tracer fire before 'hitting the silk'. Then I bailed out. I wasn't the only one. Not all the casualties had been Japanese, though. The American formation seemed to have swung to the north, where perhaps their real targets lay. Anyhow, our battle was over. The mission debriefing recorded the enemy raid as having comprised ten Avengers, four Hellcats and another ten Wildcats. It was no wonder, then, that it had been such a hard fight for the six of us. We lost two pilots killed and four wounded, but were credited with three kills, including my Avenger. Quite a mission! The main problem was my obsolescent Hayabusa; I really should have had a Ki-43-II with the more powerful motor and two heavy MGs, instead of one heavy and one light. But it was great fun and looked brilliant, with IL-2's excellent visuals and environmental effects at the highest settings. I should also have replaced the stock Ki-43 skin with a better one, preferably in my favourite mottle finish and with the normal yellow inner leading edges, which the stock skin lacks for some reason. Not that I didn't equally enjoy and appreciate the CFS2 Hayabusa mission I'd flown just before this one; but defending Tarawa in IL-2 '46 + DBW certainly gave me a deep impression of the increasing desperation the Japanese fliers must have felt, up against superior numbers of superior planes flown by some of America's finest. Highly recommended.

It ain't over till the fat Geisha sings It looked like the American raid on our island base was now moving on. Having expended all my ammunition on my damaged Avenger, I was disinclined to go after them. Instead, I wheeled around above the spiraling American bomber, to make sure he didn't slip away. If there was any doubt that he was going down, I would order my faithful wingman to clobber him. I'm not really sure that Japanese fighter leaders had individual wingman - sources tend to suggest they fought samurai-style, in individual combat, not in the accepted Western tactical formations. Anyway the flight-mate trailing behind me seemed to favour Western tactics and I hadn't the heart to tell him to clear off and do his own thing. It was about this time that I became aware that the enemy had not entirely cleared off, either. Below and ahead of me, were two small, grey single-engined aircraft. Stubby fuselages, rectangular wings - I recognised them immediately. Wildcat fighters. Not so good! I watched them carefully, maintaining my height advantage. Would they come up after us? The answer seemed to be 'no'. They fell behind us and slipped out to sea, away from our base. Relaxing somewhat, I returned my attention to the damaged Avenger. Was he going down, or was he not? The jury seemed to be still out on that one. I flew over our airfield. Then I noticed that the American was going down more steeply than before. He seemed to have rolled out of his spiral. Down he went, towards the glittering surface of the ocean below. This kill would be mine! I looked behind. My wingman was still with me, just to my left. But to the right, not much further back, a sudden shock! Two Wildcats, and they were coming straight at us! I did two things at more or less the same time. I stuffed down my nose and dived for my airfield. Diving away from a heavier US fighter was not a good idea as a rule. I knew that much. But our base was not far below me and I planned to draw the enemies onto the fire of our AA guns. This course of action immediately showed promise, as the flak boys quickly started shooting, which I could see from the muzzle flashes down below me. And if this didn't do the trick, well that would be where the other thing I did, would pay off. Hopefully. I ordered my wingman to cover me. Just in case he hadn't already decided it was time to do that. Which it didn't look like he had. Looking back again, all I could see now were two Wildcats. Closer than before. That part of my cunning plan seemed to go quickly from bad to worse. I have on-screen subtitles turned off but I didn't need to understand a syllable of Japanese - which I don't - to realise that the voice that suddenly screamed at me over the radio in that language was from someone who was definitely not having a good day. Looking behind again, I saw my wingman's Hayabusa going straight down in a vertical nose dive. Ooops! ...to be continued!

Haven't played WOFF - the considerable hike in minimum systems spec from OFF puts it out of my reach, despite being able to play RoF fine on great-looking medium settings - but I rate FE2 as much the best current WW1 sim. FEG with the latest patches is said by Third Wire to be the same as FE2 functionally but as Panama Red said the latter is better for multi-core systems. Biggest difference is that FE2 doesn't not have the seasonal terrain that FEG has and that campaign weather in FEG changes as you go but stays as it is at the start in FE2 (less of an issue if you play Ojcar's Armchair Aces as each month starts a new campaign, in effect. WOFF's AI seems to have caught up somewhat on FE's but IMHO the sim is still too reliant on the CFS3 'tactical display' (eg to padlock or issue some important orders) and I'm not sure that the new 'dot mode' fix for planes being invisible beyond about a mile and a half is a really satisfactory substitute for better level of detail models which make the plane itself visible at longer ranges. The new hi-res plane and terrain textures look very good indeed, if you've the system to handle them. With the free downloads, with FEG/FE2 you can have a couple of hundred flyable WW1 planes including variants, compared to fifty-plus in WOFF. Plenty you won't find in other sims: You can't gun in the 2-seaters, which you can in OFF/WOFF and RoF, but boy, there are a lot of them to fly in FE, multi-seat planes too; again, many you won't find in any other sim: And FE supports different theatres, including Italy... ...the North Sea... (with no land admittedly but there are ships and seaplanes), the Eastern Front and soon, Palestine. FE planes - even the user-made ones - are nearly all excellent, and look great thanks to bump-mapping in many cases and self-shadowing (which WOFF may get from Ankor's new mod, but they still are seen thru CFS3''s distorting wide angle lens effect in external view). There are other great touches in FE. The subtle head-bobbing means you feel you're in a moving plane not looking at a graphic superimposed on the scenery. You get excellent stall buffet effects - visible and audible - so you know when you're on the edge of a stall or a spin - much, much better than OFF or RoF and a pretty big plus in a dogfight. The aircrew animations - minimal in OFF/WOFF - are really great; none of RoF's visible hand signals and observers don't sit down but in RoF the gunners sit down too much and the RoF pilot animations don't feature adequate head-turning to scan; you get plenty of this in FE: Flak is a much better target indicator in FE than it is in RoF and not excessively deadly. IMHO FE's campaigns are absolutely second to none and on balance, not at all inferior to OFF's. The basic squad management element encourages you to identify with and look after your flight-mates. Depending on the campaign, front lines can move as ground operations develop. Squadrons can have ace pilots. Your planes usually have not only representative squadron, escadrille or Jasta colours, but unique markings for each plane in a flight eg serial numbers and aircraft letters and for the Germans, individual pilot badges or markings: The FE view system is great - at least as good as RoF's, on balance; and much better than OFF's CFS3-based view system. No reason not to try and buy them all. All three are best at something no doubt. But in my experience FE is the best WW1 air combat single player campaign experience - patrol-leading and air-to-air combat are what it excels at and are the most important things for a WW1 sim to do well - and it's the best value by a large margin, when you consider the mods (and you should as they are free and effectively part of the 'package'). Try RoF too as it's free and give Pat Wilson's Campaign Generator a go; buy extra planes if you like it, if not, what have you lost?

Banzai!!! I was by now closing steadily on an Avenger who was on the right of the enemy's leading element. I remembered the story of Zero ace Saburo Sakai, who was nearly killed over Gaudalcanal by an Avenger's rear gunner while approaching from behind what was then, to him, an unfamiliar single-engined aircraft. I have 'bomberskill=3' set in IL-2's conf.ini configuration file, which is recommended to tone down 'sniper' gunners, but I have been whacked often enough making an unsophisticated pass from behind - probably quite realistically - to know that I was still taking my virtual life in my hands here. The range was still quite long. But I might be dead the next second. So I started snapping out short bursts, noticing as I did so that the other Avengers were starting to wheel to the right. I had seen no bombs dropped...had I missed that? Had the Avengers simply picked a flak-ridden airfield as a rather dangerous waypoint? Or perhaps, had we actually succeeded in putting them off their stride and saving our base from their bombs? Hard to tell. But there was business to be getting on with, regardless. I saw muzzle flashes wink at me from my target's rear gun turret but his rounds went wide. I bored right in, seeing some tracer smoke trails high and left, evidently from comrades pitching in...so I had not been alone in this. My Avenger now seemed to be falling back out of the sky towards me and more of my bursts were producing hits, whose flashes splattered his wing roots and rear fuselage. Fragments of the Avenger swept past me. He wasn't turning with the others...but he wasn't going down, either. To Hell with my plane's feeble armament! And to Hell with the brass in Tokyo who kept us flying such relics! A sheet of whiteness was spreading in my windscreen - clouds! The American looked to be trying to slip away into cloud cover, and it seemed like he was about to make it. Just as we were both engulfed in the cloud, the Avenger at last spouted a stream of dark smoke and curved down and right. Just as well, for at that very moment, my ammunition gave out. The clouds were not deep and we were soon through into bright skies again. I watched the Yank swing away. The return fire seemed to have ceased. Phew! Looking beyond the smoking Avenger, I could see that there was a fight going on between several aircraft. It looked to be the remaining Avengers, harried by my flight-mates. My target was still descending in a wide spiral and I cut across the enemy formation as I watched him go. My wingman was still with me and I decided that I would order him in, to give the coup de grace, if the Avenger hung about much longer, before taking the final plunge. I was quite keen to be credited with this kill but equally, as I was now disarmed, I would present him to my number two rather than let him escape. ...to be continued!

The Yanks are coming... I climbed hard, without waiting for my flight to catch up. That could come later, once I'd gained a few thousand feet. My lightly-built aircraft rose steadily, till I was passing the first clouds, out on my right, by now settled onto a roughly southerly course. And there they were! Looking half right, I saw a ragged group of dark specks between banks of clouds, heading on a reciprocal course - straight at the airfield I had just left! They were too far away to identify the type, but I felt sure that they could only be the incoming American raid. Still climbing, I banked right and swung in towards them. As I cleared the tops of the intervening clouds, I saw that the first group - which I had intended to cut in behind - was merely the lead element in what looked to be a long procession of enemies. This wasn't quite what I had been banking on! Now what? What's the plan, now? I hesitated. My initial thought was, safety first - go wide and come in behind the end of the procession. I could not tell from their appearance or their formation which were bombers and which were fighters. If I stuck with my original plan, I would be sandwiching myself between the lead elements and those behind, some of whom might well be fighters who would then pounce on us. A dangerous and perhaps foolish move. It seemed the better tactic would be for me to go wide and play 'Devil take the hindmost' with the rear of the procession; by which time I should also have gained a better picture of the enemy's dispositions. But my job was to defend our island base. And the American formation was practically on top of it. That thought sealed the deal. Dangerous or not, I had to try to disrupt the attack by hitting the leading enemies, as quickly as I could. So I continued to curve in towards my original target, the leading enemy flight. At the same time, I gave the radio order for a general attack, reckoning that the sooner we all got amongst them, the better. At this point I cursed again my obsolescent mount. Its tubular, Aldis-stye gun-sight, used with the standard long eye relief that works just fine with a reflector sight, blocked rather important parts of my view ahead. Even after I had used Ctrl+D to swing aside the front sight cap, the cap itself added to the problem. Oh, for the reflector sight that came with the later Hayabusa our outfit should have been flying by now! I could have switched to the 'no cockpit' view (or perhaps there's another forward view which helps). But I decided to make do and get on with it. Closing in steadily, I noticed as the range wound down that my target was a flight of Avengers, who seemed intent on bombing our airfield in a shallow dive. We would see about that! ...to be continued!

Notwithstanding the movie re-incarnation (or rather, re-invention), wasn't it Manfred von Richtofen who's credited with the dictum, 'Aim for the man not the machine; if attacking a two seater, kill the gunner first.' Works for me: As for real life, why on earth would it be a war crime to shoot an enemy (who had not surrendered or equivalent) in the air or on the ground? I appreciate we're living in times when the Army's marksmanship principles training film* is no likely longer called 'Shoot to Kill' but sheesh! As for shooting people on parachutes, Goering reportedly sounded out German fighter leaders during the Battle of Britian about the practice, asking them how they would react if ordered to do this. He was reportedly rebuffed. Apparently his opponent Dowding thought that the Luftwaffe would be justified in shooting British pilots parachuting to earth over England as, though helpless, they were escaping, potentially to fight another day. From recently reading Norbert Hannig's autobiography 'Luftwaffe Figher Ace', it's evident that some US pilots agreed with Dowding. * the one from my day I was pleased to see is on Youtube:

Flying for the Imperial Japanese Army in Yoshi's 'Battle of Chishima' campaign! Having recently had a lot of fun spending more time with CFS2, one campaign I was keen to revisit was 'The Battle of Chishima' by Yoshitsugu 'Yoshi' Nagata, which I'd last enjoyed maybe 10 years ago. My original interest in this campaign sprang from an interest in Japanese WW2 warplanes. One of my favourite 1/72 kits 'back in the day' was Revell's Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa (Peregrine Falcon). I had my model painted up just like the box art, silver overall with wavy green camo on top and yellow leading-edge prop warning panels. By pulling off the two-bladed prop you could remove the engine cowling to reveal the radial engine, the cockpit canopy could slide back and I even managed to make the undercart retractable (albeit they didn't pivot, but could be manually pushed in place, either up or down. My kind of kit! The real Hayabusa was very popular with its pilots despite being rather underpowered, under-protected and under-armed by the standards of the time, even it first entered service in 1941. According to Osprey's 'Dogfight - P-40 Warhawk -vs- Ki-43 'Oscar' ' only 40 were in service by the date of the attack on Pearl Harbour and the first models had a two-blade fixed-pitch prop and just two rifle-calibre machine guns. However, its superb handling and manoeuvrability reportedly endeared the US-dubbed 'Oscar' to its pilots and it was certainly more modern that the even more manoeuvrable but slower, spatted-undercart Ki-27 that it supplemented then replaced as the IJA's premier single-seat fighter. Vulnerable to enemy fire it may have been, but it was no pushover. CFS2's Hayabusa is, I believe, the Ki-43IIb model with more powerful engine, stronger, shorter-span wings, some protection for pilot and fuel tanks and two heavy MGs, in full production by October 1942. Although it's one of the Artificial Intelligence-flown planes in CFS2, this is one sim that has no shortage of freeware and payware mods, including ones to make the AI planes flyable. The only catch is that some of these come with no cockpit so you just have external and 'gunsight' views (with the reticle hanging in a clear sky, not what I'm used to but great for gunnery and a good view!) This time around I wanted to fly the Hayabusa in both CFS2 and IL-2. The former is first up for a mission report here at CombatAce and features Yoshi's Chishima campaign. Chishima is better known to Westerners as the Kurile Islands, which stretch in an arc from the north-east tip of the Japanese mainland all the way to Russia's Camchatka Peninsula, just across the northern Pacific from Alaska. In mid-1943, US air raids began to probe the Japanese defences in this region and it's these relatively small-scale tussles that this mini-campaign represents. There's a set of five single missions designed to be flown in sequence, which is fine by me as I can live without the rather excessively goal-oriented CFS2 approach to campaigns. The Chishima missions aren't all intercepttions: for example the third mission has you providing air cover for a submarine whose engines have failed. Here's the link for the campaign: http://simviation.com/1/browse-Missions+%26+Campaigns-85-2 And here's the brief for mission number one. It's short and sweet but you get the picture! There's no indication of the enemy's strength, but I was leading a flight of no less than eight Hayabusas so, sensibly or otherwise, I was feeling fairly relaxed about the odds. Given that the local air defence set-up was liable to be a tad primitive, I suppose the limited 'int' is perhaps realistic! We were operating from Kitanodai airfield, which was on the island of Paramushiro (see pic of the real airfield here: http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/P/a/Paramushiro.htm ) and was apparently used as a base by the 54th Sentai. The sim crashed if I tried to open the map (it's on the 'Advanced Info' tab) in the briefing screen so without further ado, I kicked the tires and lit the fires, and consulted the map once the mission had loaded. Here it is. The enemy bombers - as in, the red plane icon - are evidently targeting installations on another island just across a narrow channel from our sea-side base. Sensibly, you can see that the only mission goal is to survive; there's no silly requirement to destroy at least a fixed number of enemies. And here we are, good to go. I've always liked this camouflaged natural metal finish on the 'Oscar' and the CFS2 version, though designed for the AI, is fully up the the high standard of the CFS2 player planeset, complete with animated parts like extending flaps and wheels which bounce on their oleo legs as you roll on the ground. Bring on the Yanquis! ...to be continued!

The falcon strikes again! Leaving my lagging squadron-mates to deal with the last bomber - and finish off my victim, if necessary - I went for another Mitchell. With the leader on fire, the other two had split and turned left. Picking my target, I cut across his turn, noticing for the first time the yellow pencil lines of his tracers streaking back towards me. I stayed low and this seemed to help, for his rounds went wide. But in matching his curve to stay under his tail, I ended up in a tail chase when he straightened out. Closing only slowly and reluctant to take too much of a chance with his heavy defensive weapons, I started snapping out short bursts from my twin heavy MGs, observing the fall of shot and correcting my aim till I started getting some hits. After a few of these, a fire started in his rear fuselage and then he suddenly flipped forward into a steep nosedive. It looked like my rounds had severed his elevator control cables. Two bombers down! That would do nicely! Back in the external, 'spot' view - which I generally fly in, pre- and post-combat, for better appearances and better preipheral vision - I banked left and looked around, wondering what my squadron mates had been up to. I turned on the TAC, to help. While I prefer to avoid such on-screen aids, in fast-moving WW2 or later air combat, it's actually a good way of simulating the results of a few seconds of rapid scanning. No amount of panning or head-tracking can really compensate for the limits of sitting at a monitor and using hardware to perform what the human mind and eye can do so much better and so much more naturally. Likely the TAC over-compensates but I'm not one of those people who equate difficulty with either realism or fun. Fine if that's your thing - each to his own - de gustibus non est disputandum. With the TAC's help, I soon saw what was what. My squadron was to my rear, some of them milling about for some reason; pehaps they were settling the hash of the bomber I had set afire. Other Hayabusas were closing in behind me. But the really interesting thing was that little white arrowhead on the TAC, off to my left, signifying an unidentified aircraft. Looking in the direction indicated, I could see it was a large aeroplane, likely the third Mitchell. I would almost certainly have spotted him without the TAC and so felt no compunction in altering to an intercepting course. My squadron was now again behind me and in view of their apparent lack of application so far this mission, I resolved to show them how it was done. After a short chase, I rolled in behind the Mitchell and blasted him, with spectacular results. I broke up and away, leaving the bomber diving to its destruction in the sea below. Perhaps he'd already been damaged by my comrades but I saw no evidence of it. In fact as far as I was concerned, all three victories were mine, and mine alone. At best I could possibly thank my squadron for dividing the enemy return fire, such as there was of it. Anyway, the skies were clear and it was back to base. Clearly I'd survived, and we'd taken no losses as a squadron, while knocking down three bombers. This seemed a pretty good return for a day's work. I doubted it would be so easy, next time, and resolved to make better use of my team in future. In CFS2 you can do this - within the limitations of the AI's abilities - by selecting each target in turn then issuing an 'attack' command, so as to send off a pair of wingmen after each one. With eight of us on the mission, I could and should have done this before piling in myself. But three kills and a lesson or two learned can't be all bad, I told myself as I came in to land back at Kitanodai. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this mission from Yoshi's 'The Battle of Chishima'; as much as I recall doing first time around, many moons ago. To my mind, CFS2's still a pretty good air combat sim, a good choice for anyone wanting to make a start in the genre and a great platform for a Pacific air war fix for old and new players alike. It's not the only one though. By way of comparison, the next report will feature the Ki-43 Hayabusa again, this time in IL-2 '46.

First blood! Slowly, we closed in on the three presumed enemy bombers. As they neared landfall, I thought they had the look of twin-engined aircraft with twin tail fins - B-25 Mitchells! We continued to gain ground and I nosed down slightly, both to gain a bit of speed and to bring myself in below the rear gunner's field of fire. The excitement mounted as the enemy flight, to start with just a group of indistinct specks in the sky, assumed the shape of a vee formation of Mitchells running at full tilt but armed to the teeth with heavy machine guns. Time to get busy! I switched to the cockpit view - well, ok, the no-cockpit, gunsight reticle view - and prepared to make my attack. So far, this seemed to be working. There was no return fire - yet. I hadn't realised that these early B-25's lacked the tail turret later fitted. So I was still more than a bit anxious, waiting for the moment the enemy gunners would decide to do something about my approach. I decided to attack the right-hand bomber but underestimated my closing speed. I had to break away below him without firing more than a few rounds, jinking to avoid return fire and nosing down again to pick up speed and get out of danger. At this point I remembered to give my squadron the order to attack, too. I seemed to have escaped this rather ropey performance without sustaining any damage. That was not my only piece of good fortune. I found that my speed had carried me past the two rearmost bombers and into a decent position from which to have a crack at the leader. So that's what I did. I got some hits on his left wing then, levelling out, fired again. His starboard engine burst into flames and he curved away, trailing a long streamer of dark smoke. So far, so good - one down, two to go! ...to be continued!

Up and at 'em! I started up, checked the controls and set flaps for takeoff. With incoming fast bombers to catch, there was clearly no time to hang around. I opened her up and roared off down the runway, correcting the swing with a touch of rudder. My squadron wasted no time and was soon doing the same, right behind me, an impressive spectacle. My morale rose accordingly as I climbed up and away from Kitanodai, leaving behind the large hangars, the parked planes and all the other paraphanalia of a secondary but well-appointed island airbase. I cleaner her up, turned on the Tactical Display and began a climbing turn to the left, to pick up the displayed blue route indicator line. This was a short leg and I was soon turning again, this time onto a course which seemed calculated to intercept the US bombers in the vicinity of their likely target. I'm not sure why the leg ran so far to the north-east, unless it was intended to take us along the enemy's line of retreat. Hopefully we would make contact long before coming to the end of the leg. This gave me the opportunity to admire my mount. CFS2 may be rather long in the tooth but though lacking modern graphic features like bump mapping or self-shadowing, its aircraft still look good in both outline and in finish, with realistic and sharp nicely-weathered textures. To my eye, they have stood the test of time pretty well, a fitting tribute to their builders. And while the exterior view zooms in fixed steps, there's none of the horrible CFS3-style 'wide angle lens effect' to distort the image. Back to business! From the map I was expecting to meet bombers over the next island, perhaps catching them on their way out as they crossed from right to left ahead of us. But instead, scanning an arc of sky ahead, I spotted a 'vic' of three aircraft coming in from the sea to my left, at about 10 o'clock, and fortunately not above us. They looked too big to be fighters, so I took them for an incoming enemy raid, targetting our forces on the island across the channel. They were moving fast and if I wanted to have any chance of catching them before they bombed - if they hadn't, already! - I could not afford to get dragged into a long tail chase. So I turned so as to set up the 'Tizzy Angle', named for the Polish RAF pilot who realised that the easiest way to set an optimal interception course on a bandit crossing your flight path was to adjust your course so that the enemy just grew as you closed, without seeming to drift either ahead or astern as the range wound down. With my squadron at my heels, I slowly edged closer. ...to be continued!

Mission goal? What mission goal? Having missed them on the first attempt, I was determined to nail one of those parked fighters on my next pass. I could see they had Republican markings, even though they were Fiat CR-32s like my own...some arms dealer somewhere was likely making muchas pesetas from selling the enemy the same planes we had. All the more reason to burn a few of them while we'd caught them on the ground. That'll teach 'em. This pass, I didn't do much better. Still no burning wrecks on the ground. Fleeting targets like these really needed a bit more firepower than a couple of heavy MGs, I thought to myself...couldn't possibly be anything wrong with my shooting. One more pass ought to do it. As I banked around to come in for one last, final, absolutely-and-positively-no-more-after-this pass, I had the satisfaction of seeing one of my flight make a firing pass of his own. I could see the muzzle flashes of his MGs as he dived in; it was nice to watch. I couldn't see what he was firing at. I hoped he was not still attacking just the airfield itself, 12.7mm bullet hits being only likely to give the runway repair hombres something to laugh at. Anyway his heart was in the right place, bless him. This time I decided to come in from the front of the hangars, to give myself a clearer shot at the planes parked outside their doors. As I did so I noticed several aircraft flitting about well above me. I watched them anxiously for a moment, but they seemed to have no plans to come down and interrupt us. Possibly this was part of the rest of our raid, arriving in the area at last. I continued with my own atack. This time I had more luck. One of the enemy Fiats blew up under my fire, its wings being flung up over the hangar roof in suitably emphatic fashion. That's more like it! I needed to pull up sharply to avoid making an unorthodox entry into the hangar itself. I had the feeling that this rather violent change of attitude should perhaps have pulled my wings off but my stoutly-braced Fiat stayed in one piece. The boys back in Turin know how to build 'em strong, evidently. Relieved more than elated, I levelled off somewhat and looked back. One hangar and contents thoroughly bombed, one aircraft burned on the ground. That would do nicely. In the second screenie below, you can see that there were warships off the coast. Something to mention during the debriefing back at base, for a possible future anti-shipping strike, I thought. At this point, I returned my gaze to the front and became aware of two things, neither of them good, and together, very bad indeed. Firstly, I was flying straight towards sharply rising ground. Secondly, my motor seemed to be struggling to maintain revs, having doubtless ingested some shell fragments from all that AA fire. I turned right, resisting the temptation to pull up hard as I did so, knowing that any attempt at a steeply climbing turn with a struggling engine could see me stalling in a situation where recovery was unlikely and disaster a near certainty. The immediate risks averted, I flew parallel with the line of the ridge for a while. The flak continued to throw rounds in my general direction but fortunately, my turn had been away from the airbase, where the guns were sited. I contemplated trying to make a break left, across the ridge at any point there was a gap in the crests. But my engine was steadily fading. She soon died and my propeller spun to a stop. Clearly, a forced landing was now inevitable. Looking ahead, I was glad to see a stretch of unobstructed open pasture between stands of trees. I steered for this and set down my wounded bird. She ground-looped at the end but stayed upright. Time to grab my escape kit and slip away quickly! They say that ground troops are always keen to meet the pilots who have just been strafing them, but I was not feeling particularly sociable. So concluded the mission. Unsuprisingly, the debrief didn't regard my performance as particularly successful. I was credited with an aircraft 'shot down' (!) and two bomb hits - but no buildings destroyed, despite one of these clearly being what the bombs had hit. In fact I was faced with a list of failed goals, none of which had been presented to me in the mission briefing - visit all waypoints (who cares if I missed one!) survive, and return to final destination and destroy an Hs123 formation. This is one thing that's badly wrong with CFS3. No real-life mission briefing would fail to be specific about the mission's objectives. And of course, no real life mission is likely to be planned in the certain knowledge that there's a formation of Henschels in the target area or therefore to insist the mission's a failure if it's not destroyed. Many sims dress up their briefings - 'orders' as the Army more accurately calls them - with a bit of padding about the situation or mood-setting musings or amusing observations; but yet fail to convey basics in a realistically military style. CFS3's briefings, with their hidden and often unrealistic 'mission goals', are at the wrong end of this particular scale. In the absence of a decent mission brief, I'd interpreted my task as a fighter sweep over a raid objective with the secondary mission of slipping down to ground level and attacking either the raid's target or other targets of opportunity in the absence of aerial opposition. I can live with getting clobbered doing this because I made too many passes over an alert and well-defended objective. But I'm not cool with the debrief. Nevertheless, this was an enjoyable mission in what for me is a novel theatre, an opportunity to relive some of the history that my happy holidays in sunny Spain have prompted me to study a little. Despite the CFS3 legacy limitations of the briefing and debriefing, the mission itself was well-constructed and gave me several tactical options - for example, how to interpret my task, whether or not to try to link up with the other flights in the raid, which targets to go for and when. Satisfying stuff. I also really like the ETO Expansion's CR-32, which looks great, has lots of little detail touches and has excellent engine and MG sounds. I'm looking forward to playing further ETO Expansion SCW missions for both sides and flying more of these pre-WW2 birds in combat. Definitely recommended.

The ups and downs of the airfield attack business I'm a bit rusty with my CFS3 flight-leading drills, outside of Over Flanders Fields where I made minimal use of the TAC as it's even more out of place in WW1. But it all began to come back to me. Bits of it anyway. I had ordered in my first pair to attack the airfield, which I hoped was Llanes. I now carried on with my usual drill for a CFS3 ground attack, which is to fly past the target, ordering in a pair with a gap in between, so that the target is hit by a succession of pairs coming in from different directions; hopefully also not too far apart in time, as I'm gradually getting closer. Last of all, I turn in for my own attack with my wingman. I'm glad to say, this mostly went to plan, if not entirely well. As I swung out over the sea then around for my own attack, I heard my flight-mates give the usual canned CFS3 radio chatter, confirming 'Target spotted' and that they were generally on the job. And I had the satisfaction of seeing one of them plonk his bombs pretty well right in the middle of the runway. At this point, I realised what I'd done wrong. I'd picked the airfield itself as the target. What I should have done was selected its buildings or its parked aircraft (assuming the latter also showed up on the TAC) which are a separate CFS3 target type you have to cycle through to select. So I did this now and, hitting the 'A' key several times, ordered an attack on the hangars instead. I hoped this wasn't going to be a case of 'order - counter-order - disorder'. Then I turned off the b***dy TAC and concentrated on making my own attack. This didn't go too badly. I lined myself up on the row of hangars and armed (selected) my bombs, firing a few MG rounds as I came in, just for the hell of it. Finally, I let fly with the bombs at what seemed like about the right point in time and space. The results were about as satisfactory as I was entitled to expect, from a couple of small bombs. Not bad at all, really. I pulled around and dived in for another pass, this time with my MGs. I was aiming at the parked aircraft outside the front of the hangar I had attacked but with the smoke from the burning hangar and the bursting AA, I failed to get a decent sight picture and did no visible damage. Mierda! Nothing for it but one more pass! I should have known better... ...to be continued!

Target ahead! As we neared the coast, with the Tactical Dispay/TAC turned on, I noticed that the blue line on the display which showed the direction of the next waypoint - which will point up, towards the twelve o'clock position when you're on course - had swung around. So I altered course to follow it. Perhaps we were supposed to orbit and await the other flights in our raid on Llanes airfield? The in-flight map wasn't much help; not just because it was the usual horrible CFS3 low-resolution muddle, but all the waypoints and course legs drawn on it for all our flights produced an indecipherable cat's cradle. I did a '360' and rolled back out onto my course to the north, as I dod so switching the TAC to display airbases. Time to get a fix on the one which was our target! My course changes seemed to had the desired result, inasmuch as the blue course marker line now lined up with my course north. Finally, we crested the last row of hills before the sea. The course marker line flicked around to the two o'clock position. Roughly in that direction lay an airfield. As I turned tentatively towards it, flak started bursting around me. You'll do, I thought to myself. There was no sign of other aircraft, so I judged that the time had come to do something useful with our little bombs, while we had a target in sight and the opportunity to hand. I selected the airfield as a target, noting the little trianglular target icon in in the TAC turn from red to yellow. Then I hit the 'A' key, to initiate the attack. Looking back, as expected, I saw two of my flight of six peel off to the right. I also head them acknowledge the command on our non-existent radios...I don't think CR-32s usually carried RT sets. Anyway the point was, we were in business. ...to be continued!

A stock CFS2 campaign mission in the Imperial Japanese Navy's famous Zero fighter! Figuring that - if I was going to be spending more time in CFS2 - I should get myself better re-acquainted with its ways and workings, I decided to kick off a stock campaign in the fighter which defined the Pacific War, Jiro Horikoshi's A6M Navy Type Zero Carrier fighter. I'd always had a soft spot for this plane, having built many a model back in the day, including in 1/72 those by Matchbox (A6M2), FROG (A6M3, later re-released by Matchbox Germany), Airfix (A6M2) and Revell (A6M5) and the excellent 1/32 A6M5 by the latter maker. The little Matchbox kit was always a favourite. Even though its Pearl Harbour version had the short wing of the later A6M5, it looked well left in the white plastic in which it was mostly moulded, with canopy frames picked out, motor cowling painted black and prop in silver. Nice box art too: And of course there were the movies - specifically, the Zeros in 'Tora, Tora, Tora!' That was a flim made in a day - long gone, if the silly, rather sad comic-book aerial scenes in 'Pearl Harbour', 'Red Tails' and the like are anything to go by - when some film producers could contrive to show just a little bit of respect for their material. Nowadays it's just spectactular but contrived car chases on wings, often hiding behind the claim that they are 'Inspired by true events'. Ouch! Anyhow a Zero it would be for me, in CFS2. I could have started at Pearl Harbour as I have the Just Flight add-on of that name but I'd never fully played a stock campaign before so started there, even though I knew this begins after 'the Hawaian Operation'. While IL-2 Pacific Fighters has a better stock planeset and isn't restricted to fighters, CFS2 has a more representative set of ships, decent graphics and even now, is still a great choice for anyone wishing to fly in the PTO, not to mention the many add-ons, freeware and payware, still available. I quite like the distinctive comic book style CFS2 campaign interface - which again, seems to hail from a mostly-lost era, when sim-makers added such little touches, which brought their campaigns to life . So I sat thru the Japanese pilot's subtitled soliloquy which nicely set the scene for my campaign. Then I got my briefing for our first mission. It was March 13th, 1942, and we were flying land-based Zeros based at Malaguna in New Guinea, supporting our offensive operations in the western Solomon Islands. On our first mission, my flight of thee Zeros was to escort some D3A 'Val' dive-bombers and B5N 'Kate' torpedo/level bombers to raid the enemy airfield at Buka. Serious air opposition was not expected and were were briefed to strafe the airfield, on arrival. A gentle start to our campaign...or a death trap? I would soon find out! Having consulted the map. I took a quick look at the reconnaisance photograph of the objective. This is actually a very good feature. As it showed the location of the airfield flak, I should have used it to make a plan, allocating my wingmen to attack these positions first, once I'd eyeballed them on arrival. But I was I a hurry, and instead, headed off to the flight line, where my mount awaited! ...to be continued!

Hey, those are great warships! Love Ise, Hyuga, Kongo and the heavy cruisers - downloading the ships and missions now, thanks for the link! PS this is the Aerosim Val, it comes with skins for most of the carriers in the 'Hawaiian Operation':

My pleasure, and thank YOU guys for this great mod, still going strong!

Whohooo! This is looking good, we even get Lawrence of Arabia by the look of it! Shipping, harbours, bridges and camps to bomb or photograph...the best just got better....or will soon! Looking forward to taking your BE for a flip over this lot and dropping some Cooper bombs onto suitable parts thereof.

Nice pics Comrad! Love the IJN carrier group and the D3A1! What mods are you using? I have the Aerosim Val campaign but that's not it.

Flying the German Air Service's premier fighter in First Eagles 2 The Siemens-Schukert Werke's DIII and DIV are described with some justification in Gray & Thetford's 'German Aircraft of the First World War' as 'Without doubt...the best German fighters to reach operational status'. The first SSW D-type (biplane scout/fighter) was basically a copy of the French Nieuport 11 with a German engine and a conical spinner. But the DIII was a wholly-new machine, a barrel-shaped fighter built around the powerful Siemens-Halske ShIII rotary engine. Early operational deployment in Spring 1918 ended with the aircraft being returned for modifications to correct serious engine problems but - joined by the DIV version with a reduced-chord upper wing - the type was back on ops during the summer. The Siemens-Schukert was highly manoeuvrable and had an outstanding rate of climb with excellent high-altitude performance. They served with Jastas 14, 15 and 22, the Marine Jagdgeschwader and, in the home defence role, with Kests 4a, 4b, 5, 6 & 8. Their work in the latter capacity inspired a member of the Independent Force, formed to mount 'strategic' bombing missions into Germany, to pen the following appreciation: 'It's not the Pfalz or the Fokker Scout It's the Siemens Schuckert that we worry about They do fly high, with the beaucoup speed We can thank our stars that it's the pilots they need!' The plane and the mission First Eagles is one of the very few sims ever to have featured this outstanding warplane, courtesy of the A Team Skunkworks. Public assess to their functional download pages is by email application only and once granted, care must be taken to observe the site's download and usage rules, but it's very worthwhile as the A Team's collection includes some excellent and essential WW1 types like the Sopwith Pup and Triplane. http://cplengineeringllc.com/SFP1/ In fact, as the A Team acknowledge, their SSW DIII is based on that featured in Illusion Software/Silver Wish Games's Wings of War. You may remember that when released, this neat little WW1 air war game's great-looking planes and excellent landscapes and envirommentals had many simmers attempting mods to make it more sim-like. Sadly, these didn't get far beyond unlocking all the flyables and killing off the deadly rocket armaments, but it was still great fun and a highly professional and well-produced package, well worth a blast if you can track down a copy: Back in FE2, I wanted to play a campaign mission so opted for Ojcar's 'must have' Armchair Aces month-by-month campaign set. In the FE campaign creation screen, I cycled through those for Flanders in the last months of the air war till I found a staffel flying the SSW DIII - Jasta 14 (which really did fly the type) in October 1918, flying from Masny aerodrome, north of Cambrai and west of the larger town of Valenciennes. When I kicked off a mission, I found that the weather was awful - a few patches of blue sky visible but mostly cloud, rain and general murk. Not for me. I don't much mind bad weather in Over Flanders Fields, but only because - apart from the clouds themselves - it doesn't really hinder your visibility. In FE and in RoF, more realistically, bad weather really does clobber your visibility. It also makes for dull screenshots, because your plane is dull and unlit (unlike OFF, where the planes in bad weather look bright, like they've been spot-lit for a movie). Another problem with bad weather in FE2 is that you're stuck with it for the campaign, as it inexplicably lost the original FE's ability to vary weather, in-campaign. Anyway being stuck with murk is not my cup of tea, really. So I edited the campaign's data file in Wordpad, replacing the starting (and in FE2, unchanging) weather - 'INCLEMENT' - with 'BROKEN'. That did the trick. Things looked better, and there was no murk to blind me. The weather sorted, my first mission was a defensive patrol, behind our side of the Lines, down south to Bonvais, the far side of the town of Cambrai. Two aircraft were allocated to the mission but as I usually do, I opted to pick three to accompany me, selecting Vizefeldwebels Neumann, Heim and Josten from the bottom of the staffel roster screen. Here we are on the grass at Masny. The SSW is one of the relatively few FE planes not to feature individual aircraft markings, and although there is at least one different skin available, I elected to stick with the stock one, with a snake-marked brown fuselage and 'lozenge' pre-printed fabric wings. As usual with FE planes, there's plenty of animation - wheels, pilot, control surfaces, the rotary engine and even the cocking handles on the MGs. And provided you don't have shadows turned off in the plane's .ini file, you get dynamic self-shadowing (in the cockpit as well as outside if you have the sim's graphics/shadows option set to 'high' or better). As usual, FE kicked off the mission with my engine just having started and my prop picking up speed, which is arguably more realistic than the ground-crewless self-starting featured in other sims. In the external view, I paused to let the others take off and then opened the throttle. There was little swing and once my wheels were off the ground, I decided to go for broke and perform an immediate test of my machine's renowned climbing abilities. I yanked back on the stick and up she went, cocking a snook at the row of Fokkers parked outside the canvas hangars to my left. Off to a good start, at any rate! ...to be continued!

A different kind of target... Irritated, I realised that we were again under fire from enemy AA, over our side of the Lines. 'This should really not be happening', I thought. What was going on? Looking down, I could see some gunflashes from the ground, a pair of weapons maybe a hundred meters or so apart. Two enemy AA guns on our side of the Lines - evidently there had been a breakthrough here! I should have paid more attention to the planning map at the mission briefing! One of the neat features of FE is that this map - which for security reasons presumably, you can't take with you on the mission! - will show you a black line, bulging away from the Lines, portraying as a salient any side's penetrations into enemy territory. The map also displays ground unit symbols (in NATO format) and if you mouse over them you get a display of the unit's title (if known) and what it's doing eg '36th (Ulster) Division - Conducting offensive operations into Bonvais'. I made a mental note to be rather more attentive to what was happening on the ground, at future briefings! What caught my eye next lay off to one side of the AA guns. There was a little cluster of four dark objects in a field, evidently on the move from the small clouds of dust they were trailing. Enemy vehicles…possibly tanks! I turned and commenced a shallow dive towards them, intending to strafe whatever it was, unless identified as friendly as I ran in. At the same time I gave my flight the signal to commence ground attacks. As I swept in, I could see that my intended target was a troop of four British tanks. Their markings as well as their movements indicated they were not captured and in our hands [the Germans frequently re-using captured tanks, which were generally better than their own A7V model]. So I selected one in the middle of the group and opened fire as the range closed. I was not expecting to do much damage and I didn't. Apart from spurts of earth being thrown up around the tank, I saw no sign of damage. I only just managed to pull out in time, my second near-miss so far on this mission! Looking back, I realised that, having turned right as I climbed away, I was now in a good position to make a firing pass along the line of the two enemy guns I'd seen originally. These were not the stock FE truck-borne AA weapons, but a couple of wheeled guns. So they might have been field artillery in action, rather than the AA guns that had been firing at us. If so, better still, as we would therefore be helping directly our friends on the ground. One way or another, those guns were now for the chop. I took out one weapon on each of two passes. Both targets went up in a rather satisfying fireball, presumably caused by the explosion of their ready-use ammunition. Whatever it was, the enemy gunners were now well and truly out of business. Swinging around again, I resumed my firing passes at the nearby enemy tanks, which were pressing on regardless in the same ragged formation. I might not be doing them much damage or even putting them off their stroke, but perhaps I might have been providing some much-needed comfort to whoever was facing them, down there on terra firma. Looking right as I passed over them, I saw that the lead tank, which was a little way ahead of the other three, had stopped. Puffs of light smoke danced around the snout of the metal monster as his tracers whipped out at an unseen target in a hedgerow beyond the road just ahead of the tank. As I pulled away, my ammo almost certainly nearly gone, I saw the other three tanks slide into line beside their leader. Whoever was ahead of them, was going to be in for a very hard time. I could do no more. Regretfully, I carried on, away from the vicious little fight developing behind me down there, and called my flight back together. But the war wasn't quite finished with us, yet. As we flew towards what was evidently the northern limit of the salient the English had pushed into our lines, I saw some tracer fire, zipping out horizontally from an MG on the ground towards what must have been German positions in a village to the north. As this was on my route home , I thought I might as well try to help out, one last time. I nosed down and fired off my remaining rounds at the enemy machine gunner, pulling up just in time to clear the spire of the church in the little village where his targets lay. Phew! Another near miss! I didn't hit him. This became fairly clear as I pulled away; the enemy MG gunner quickly switched from shooting at his previous target and sent a burst of tracer up my backside, instead. You can see some of his tracers on the left of the pic below, curving up after me. I could have sent my flight-mates after this rather nasty little man but they were likely low on ammo too. I wasn't going to risk planes and pilots on this last target. So we carried on. This time the battle really was over and we arrived back at base without further incident. It had been an eventful mission, not ideally suited to the high-flying abilities of our fine aeroplanes, but with the enemy pressing forward relentlessly on the ground with plenty of air support, we could not complain. A review of the debrief confirmed that I was credited with a Camel and an SE5a, while Neumann got another Camel and Josten an SE. I was also credited with the two guns destroyed. Three of our SSWs were damaged but we all made it home. In recognition of our success, the debrief finished with a nice medal screen. A citation in the name of Friedrich August III, King of Saxony, awarded me the Ehrenkreuz mit Schwerten for my courage and leadership in the face of the enemy, with a nice illustration of the medal alongside. Great stuff! This was a typically eventful, satisfying and enjoyable First Eagles mission. For me, it reaffirmed why, of all the WW1 air combat sims I've played (FCG, RB3D, OFF, RoF, CFS2+Combat Aces, IL2+DBW 1916, FEG, FE2) I consider FEG/FE2 - thanks to a great combination of solid core features, all the better for the many great mods freely available from the skilled hands of so many talented people - to be 'simply the best'.

First blood! I peered at the flak bursts, looking for their target. At first they'd seemed to be drifting left to right, leading me to hope this was a flight passing by, behind which we could creep. But the reason it took me a while to see the planes was that they had swung around and were now coming at us head-on, in a slight dive. There were two at least, probably three or more; the type I could not tell. I pulled up my nose slightly and aimed myself at the right-hand enemy, as we rushed at each other head to head. It seemed we each opened fire at the same time, tracers briefly flashing back and forth across the rapidly-diminishing gap between us. He came straight at me, unflinching. I felt a suddden apprehension, realising I was now staring virtual death in the face. I made a slight but rapid movement of my controls, right at the last minute, praying he would not mirror - and cancel out - my move. Then whoa!!! ...and relief as he flashed past, missing me by inches, it seemed. Instantly, I pushed the nose just below the horizon and banked hard around after him. At the same time, I gave the signal for an attack, just in case any of my comrades hadn't already taken the hint. He was an Englishman in a red-nosed Camel. I was soon behind him and following his every move, snapping out short bursts as he turned and jinked. I gained ground on him, sensing victory. But we were not alone. At intervals, rounds slammed into my plane from somewhere behind me. I ignored them. I was determined to get my man and relied on my own manoeuvres in his pursuit to put off the aim of whoever was shooting at me. I continued to take hits and really ought to have paid the price for my conscious target fixation. I could clearly see the increasing number of holes and tears in the wings around me. But suddenly, the Camel under my guns sprouted a trail of grey smoke and I saw his prop spin to halt. Enough! Now it's time to spare myself the same fate! I broke hard left, determined to revenge myself on the chap who'd been trying to kill me. Meanwhile, my flight-mates had started their own merry dance. A second Camel was after one of my men, but he in turn had a Siemens-Schukert on his own tail. The two Camels were not alone. The enemy behind me was in an SE5, as it happened. My third flight-mate had quickly settled the hash of one of his friends, whose burning machine left a dark banner of greasy smoke staining the heavens, but it would be up to me to deal with the other SE This didn't take long. A tight turn brought me out behind and below him and a long-range burst sent him down, engine smoking. Having knocked down the SE, I turned into a climbing spiral at full power and looked around. My trusty machine was well-holed - FE visual damage modelling tends to over-do the 'well peppered' look though it certainly leaves you in no doubt you've been hit - but I seemed to be flying normally. And we had evidently swept the skies of opposition. All four SSWs were still there, thank goodness, but the only sign of our former opponents was a couple of pillars of smoke from crash sites down below. I signalled a recall. Apart from our flight, the skies now seemed clear. An 'unofficial' sweep with the excellent FE view system established that there were numerous other flights going about their business, including some US Air Service Camels and these fellows: friends in Fokker DVIIs and some more foes in the form of Belgian Camels and bombed-up RAF DH4s. But none were to be seen from our position. It looked and felt like were now masters of all we surveyed. And so we were...in the air, at any rate... ...to be continued!