33LIMA

Part 2 - the campaign, the plane and the mission Boelcke's Defence of the Reich campaign is actually a set of campaigns. There's a Luftwaffe fighter campaign ('Defense of the Reich') and a US Army Air Force one ('Battle over Germany'). Within this, there is a series of no less than ten sub-campaigns, covering the period 1943 to 1945 and spanning several different areas of operations. Details and the download are available here: http://www.axis-and-allies-paintworks.com/download.php?view.517 The first German sub-campaign is 'Germany Berlin 1943 You encounter bomber formations mostly without escort. Sometimes some P47 and/or P38 will appear, but only a few.' Not too many pesky 'little friends' - sounds like a good place to start, I thought to myself. In contemporary Luftwaffe parlance, an opportunity to have a crack at the 'Dicke Autos' without much interference from the 'Indianer'. I began with a new pilot, for whom I chose the surname Knoke, as I had just started re-reading the autobiography of Heinz Knoke, the rather sensationally-titled 'I Flew for the Fuhrer'. This is the best Luftwaffe pilot memoir I've read, a fine counterpoint to what for me is the premier RAF memoir (and the best fighter pilot book of all, IMHO), Pierre Clostermann's 'The Big Show'. There's a really great little IL-2-based movie featuring missions re-created in Knoke's own words from the book, here on Youtube: Unfortunately, while the available campaign aircraft was, as I'd hoped, a Messerschmitt Bf109G, Knoke's unit of the period - 5 Staffel from II Gruppe, Jagdgeschwader 11 - was not one of those available for this campaign, which started on 17 August, 1943. So instead, I chose JG27. Here's the brief for the first mission; militarily, it's a little vague, only implying that we might expect to be intercepting an incoming enemy bomber raid. You can see that we were based at an airfield NW of Berlin, somewhere near Oranienburg I believe. I'd selected the rank of Hauptmann and as I'd hoped, was rewarded with leadership of the Staffel operation, leading two schwaerme, each of four Gustavs. I prefer to lead as I'm thereby freed of the chore of formation-keeping, and instead get the extra tactical element of leading the mission, which is how I like it. Strangely, the briefing lists me as a Oberfeldwebel (senior NCO) rather than the comissioned rank I'm fairly sure I'd chosen; but no matter, there I was, at the head of my Staffel and all was well with the world. Here's my bird, on the ground at the head of the Satffel. I should probably have stuck to the default skin because I ended up with the Berlin Bear badge of II/JG27 on my port fuselage as well as the I/JG27 'Afrika' emblem either side of my engine cowling; likewise my flight-mates ended up with two II/JG27 badges. Still, it's a nice skin, tho personally I'm inclined to think that at this period the JG27 rear fuselage stripe was the original ReichsVerteidigung red, rather than the later green. For this operation, I had used the pre-mission aircraft setup screen to select for all planes the 'loadout' of one nose-mounted 3cm MK108 cannon, two MG151 2cm cannon in underwing 'gondolas', and a 300 litre drop tank. Just the thing for knocking down the 'heavies', I thought. I've never bothered with 'Complex Engine Management' as I find it a distraction. So it was a simple matter to check the controls, start up, lock the tailwheel and roar off down the runway, opening the throttle slowly but still having to apply a fair bit of rudder to keep her roughly on the centreline of the long concrete runway. Gear and flaps retracted, I throttled back and fretted impatiently till the others had caught up. Then I opened her up, trimmed elevator for the climb, and we steadily climbed for height on our assigned track to the holding pattern south-east of Berlin, the second schwarm vapour-trailing as it tailed us above and behind. I felt a surge of pride mixed with a twinge of anxious anticipation. What would today bring for us? I was soon to find out. ...to be continued!

I think the open countryside is a big improvement. the greener hues look much more natural, as does the reduced contrast between different fields. Also the greener shades reduce the [revious 9exxessive IMHO) visual prominence of trees. At the same time this reduces the visibility of repeating patterns, both for fields and trees. Only think I really don't like about the countryside is the odd whitish areas on the trees; they don't look at all realistic to me (and I have seen plenty of Hawthorn and the like in flower). The other thing I don't like, from the original, is the buildings and towns, where I think the default ones are much better. Apart from the odd green roofs (oxidised copper???), the buildings themselves look like office or tenement blocks from a large city. The effect to my eye is that the small towns look like somebody has uprooted a central business or industrial district from a large city and plonked it in the middle of the countryside. Even as part of a large city, such areas of 'block buildings' would need surrounded by larger areas of less block-like buildings. As a complete small town they look particularly out of place, even tho they have here been well blended in with surrounding simulated foliage.

Wow! these look GOOD! Especially like the wood effect on the decking fore and aft of the cockpit!

My first couple of missions in the IL2 Dark Blue World 1916 'Code of Honour' campaign hadn't given me much experience of dogfighting. It was to remedy this that I returned to skies over the Western Front with the RFC's 56 Squadron. This time, I got my money's worth (proverbially speaking, of course, the mod & campaign being free). From the mission briefing below, you'll see that an obliging Hun pilot had evidently decided to help me fill the air-to-air gap in my logbook, by challenging me to a duel! One thing about scripted mission campaigns - they can provide a degree of variety which you tend not to get in 'dynamic' or 'random mission generator' equivalents. This mission was an air start, placing me just short of the duel's appointed location, over the Lines. For this mission, I'd chosen another attractive 60 Squadron skin in the 'aircraft setup' screen, this time I think of a machine flown by New Zealand ace 'Grid' Caldwell, hence presumably the 'silver fern' marking on the upper fin. Staring ahead into Hunland, I soon made out a dark speck at about my level, drifting slightly left from the glare of the rising sun, to the East. There was no sign of AA fire but I nevertheless took this to be my enemy, arriving for our appointment and not hesitating to meet me on my side of the Lines. I climbed slightly in the hope of starting the fight with a bit of a height advantage but it was not to be. The enemy had seen me too and came straight at me. So we started with a head on pass. I'm not actually sure if he was firing at me, but I was certainly firing at him, as the range rapidly closed. As he swept past, I saw he was a light blue Roland DII, one of the types unique (I think) to DBW 1916. This was not a particularly successful machine and served in small numbers, usually in quieter sectors or secondary theatres, so it was a bit out of place in a hot sector of the Western Front in July 1917. Pilots reportedly disliked the unusual and view-blocking centre section pylon (replaced with more conventional struts in the later DIII model) and were not impressed by the heaviness of the controls; but my opponent seemed not in the least put off by any of this, for he threw his kite about quite readily, making plenty of use of the vertical. The combat seemed to resolve itself into a series of near head-on passes, as each of us tried to get his nose around faster. This is where things started to get awkward. I soon realised I was suffering from two fairly serious issues. First, there was the IL2 padlock. Perhaps it was partly unfamiliarity, and perhaps it was IL2's padlock limitations (range and angle?), arguably preferable to the padlocks of First Eagles, Over Flanders Fields and Rise of Flight, which are easier to engage and maintain. Of course, X-ray vision is not realistic but I'm with the crowd who thinks that padlock should not break too soon after a target disappears behind some part of your plane, given you should often be able to extrapolate his course and pick him up coming out the other side, without too much fuss. Anyway, whatever it was, I was mostly unable to initiate or hold a padlock on my foe. Not being a fan of head-tracking kit, I was reduced to using mouselook to (try to) keep 'eyes on' the Roland. The second issue was the very poor visibility from my plane. Being in the middle of a fight for my virtual life, I wasn't much bothered about the rendering issues in my SE5's virtual cockpit (which the plane's readme describes as 'provisional', so the much-needed improvement may be coming). The problem was that the wings - mainly the upper one, with its inaccurately-placed and too-thick struts supporting an odd, drooping centre section - blocked a great deal of my view. I know that Fifty-six's pilots lowered the seat position before taking their SE's to war, thereby losing some of the ability to see over the upper wing that persuaded the Royal Aircraft Factory to adopt the original, higher seat. But I also know that even with the lowered seat position, which was adopted as standard, visibility from the SE was still considered very good, ace James McCudden specifically commending it. The view from the SE in the 'big three' current WW1 sims seems much better, and I have flown a dogfight in the RoF version using only mouselook and without undue difficulty. Adjusting the zoom setting seemed to make no difference. I could have switched to the IL2 'no cockpit' view but dislike using such features, useful though they may be. Despite these handicaps, I did manage to pick up the dipping and turning Roland now and again. I even managed to get behind and put some rounds into him. As I drew away from my firing pass, sure that I had got some solid hits, I watched my enemy carefully. I saw that he seemed to be flying much more sluggishly. It was time for the kill! But when it came, it wasn't the Roland who got the chop, it was me! The cause of my virtual and fiery demise was not immediately apparent to me. There had been no AA fire in this mission and I was fairly sure that 'Archie' was not responsible for my losing the duel. I reckoned I'd been hit my MG fire from another aeroplane and sure enough, the Hun had not been alone. A couple of his mates had been in the air and had decided to intervene. All terribly unfair, of course. Furthermore, my assailants seemed to have come a long way, for the privilege of despatching me. All the way from Austria and the Italian front, in fact. They were flying one of the distinctive versions of the Albatros DIII built in Austria by Oeffag. I'm pretty sure that the Austrians had better things to do their precious Albatrosses than send them to the Western Front. And as DBW 1916 now has models available of the German-built DIII and DV, there was really no need for the Austrian variant to show up. But show up they had and that was that. To get my own back, I re-flew the mission. This time, I made a point of settling the Roland's hash without delay, making a greater effort not to lose sight of him and to hit him hard when I could. I then gained height and flew around, to see if the two wayward Austrians would show up; and if so, whether I could repay them in kind for their services on the previous mission. I'm guessing their arrival was time-triggered, for they duly appeared. This time, with a height advantage, I was able to pick out one of the enemy and fell on him: 'the Devil take the hindmost' as they say. I soon sent him down, apparently wounded, to a crash which, I'm sorry to say, made rather a mess of his nice aeroplane. The other fellow lasted a bit longer. We had a short dogfight but I got behind him and hammered away until he leveled off and slowed down. I overshot but he was evidently in no condition to do anything about it. At this point, those padlock and visibility issues got the better of me again and I lost sight of him for a while. When next I saw him, he was flying away quite fast, straight and level, in an apparently random direction; more to the south, rather than due east towards nearby German territory. Perhaps he had decided to call it quits on the Western Front and head back to Austria! Either way, I have seen seemingly-damaged Artificial Intelligence enemies disengage like this before, in IL-2, and they can be quite hard to catch up with. It took me a while to overhaul him but I finally did so. IL-2 AI pilots appear impossible to creep up behind as they always seem to spot you and break; just as you are about to shoot, usually! The Austrian in the V-strutter was no exception but I was half-expecting it and his attempt to turn out of my way didn't save him. In fact, his random (?) escape route had taken him towards my own airfield, which I recognised from previous missions; he had crashed just a short distance away. I trust the chaps on the ground will confirm my kill, if not all three. Before I offer any further impressions of DBW 1916 in its latest iteration, I'm going to swap sides and have a crack flying for the Kaiser, in one of the several authentic German fighter (aka 'scout') types now available in DBW 1916. Watch this space for the mission report!

Thanks WM! Can't think why your install doesn't look as good, which is a shame as the IL-2 environmental and lighting effects are one of the strong points of this mod. Despite having only an 8800GT I can manage graphics maxed out with 'Perfect' settings with this. Maybe the SE5 missions pictured happen to be set in weather and at times of day when the lighting effects are seen to best effect; at other times, it can look a bit more bland:

A campaign mission in the RAF's short-lived twin-engined fighter I thought I'd fill time to my next report on IL2 WW1 mod DBW 1916 by posting my impressions - in the form of a campaign mission report - of a recently-released and very welcome addition to IL-2's Second World War planeset - the Westland Whirlwind. Children of 'the Airfix Generation' like myself will likely know this aeroplane from the great kit-maker's 1/72 scale incarnation. The aircraft itself wasn't a great success. It was built around an engine - the Rolls-Royce Peregrine - whose development was ended early. The Whirlwind's relatively short range left it with few advantages over the Spitfire once the latter had begun to carry reliable 20mm cannon, which weapon was apparently the main requirement behind the design. The Whirlwind served operationally with only a couple of RAF squadrons between late 1940 and late 1943. However, its performance, though falling off at higher levels, was apparently very competitive in terms of speed, general manoeuvrability - and of course, firepower. Survivability was also well regarded and the short nose and clear-view canopy gave outstanding pilot visibility. Having seen the release announcement for the Whirlwind developed by modder 101tfs and others, I was keen to check out the IL-2 version, in Poltava's aptly-named 'Reaping the Whirlwind' campaign: http://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,37163.0.html Having installed the necessaries in my IL-2 '46+DBW 1.71, including the recommended C&C mod which (as I was soon to confirm myself) amongst other good things helps ensure missions can replay differently, I fired up the campaign's first mission, eager to get off the ground and into action. Here's the mission briefing, which is written in the style of a personal narrative and while not very military, is nicely crafted: I'm not an expert on IL-2 campaign flavours but the campaign is evidently a 'DGen' one, accessed via the IL-2 campaign menu option, and not just a set of single missions flown as such. One of IL-2's limitations (compared, say, to CFS3) is the breaking down of theatres into relatively small maps, but the one used here gave good coverage of the English Channel area, including much of southern England and a good swathe of northern France & Belgium. And so to the flight-line! I'd have preferred to have found myself leading the flight but it looks like I'm not the briefing's diarist, rather the new bloke being taken up to be shown the ropes. Perhaps if I had chosen a higher starting rank than the one recommended, I would have led. Anyway, we started at RAF Warmwell, in machines with correct squadron markings (for pioneer Whirlwind unit 263 Squadron) and I was rewarded with a very effective rendition of both airfield and aircraft. I don't bother with complex engine management so it was a simple matter to check the controls, set the flaps, start the engines and then hare off after my leader when he took off over the grassy, snow-spattered airfield. I followed as he climbed, turning south to takes us out into mid-channel. As we climbed away from the coast, I noticed a straggling line of aircraft at about 11 o'clock high, coming in the opposite direction. They did not react to us nor my leader to them; nor were they being fired on by our AA, so I assumed this was an incoming friendly flight of some description. We leveled off and I took the opportunity to admire my machine, inside and out. When I get a chance I will install some of the higher-resolution skins available for the Whirlwind, but she's already a fine sight, inside and out. At first, the leg to the south was uneventful, and as the campaign advertises that some missions could see no contact with the enemy, I was beginning to wonder if this was one. So I concentrated on trying to stay in reasonable formation with my leader. As we approached the next waypoint, things suddenly livened up considerably. My leader announced the presence of bandits on the RT and broke down and left. I dutifully followed, not wanting to miss out on the action! For a little while, I could see nothing of the enemy and kept somewhat behind and above my leader, just in case. Then I saw our target: a large, greenish aeroplane, heading on a reciprocal course, quite low over the waves. He was a German, all right, a whopping great Focke-Wulf Condor maritime patrol aircraft, seemingly caught without an escort. I was now in a hurry to get a crack at the Condor, before my boss polished him off. I spralled down as he passed beneath, and then rolled out after him. Unfortunately, in pausing and un-pausing the sim to take screenshots, letting go of the joystick in between, I lost the fluidity of my pass and screwed up my attack. My leader, free of any such distractions, made no such mistake, and his four 20mm cannon made short work of the big German machine. I watched the Condor spin seawards, and was surprised to see a series of parachutes blossom, the last one just before the inevitable waterspout marked the end of this particular Luftwaffe sortie. I climbed up after my leader and we returned to our patrol route. The rest of the flight was uneventful, and soon we were back in sight of the south coast of England once more, slipping in past the barrage balloons protecting Weymouth harbour. I got the 'mission over' on-screen confirmation as - having got permission from Ground Control - I came in for a landing. It wasn't easy to make out the grassy airfield in the countryside but I made it down ok. Not the most eventful of first flights in the new Whirlwind but it was an engaging and interesting one and a good intro to my machine and our area of operations. My mount seemed fast and tractable with no vices that I've found so far. Unfortunately, I missed my opportunity to try out her firepower but I'm looking forward to remedying that omission on the next mission! Highly recommended, and Kudos to 101tfs, Poltava and the SAS team for this package!

You mean this one? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Whirlwind-No-1772-1984-Commando-Comic-67811-/281128604134 I very well remember the 'Commando' comics/mags myself, tho I don't recall reading that particular one - my favourite was the one about a tank squadron's battles to stop a column of Tiger tanks escorting one carrying a Nazi atom bomb! If you're into some nostalgia, collections of Commando stories were recently republished as sets in thicker, vinyl covers; you can find them in those bargain bookshop type shops at times or on eBay, along with the originals. That's the great thing about these air combat sims, eh? We get to 'fly' beautiful models of the kits we made and the planes we read about or saw on TV docuemntaries 'back in the day', never dreaming that one day, there would be affordable visual simulators which let us have some sense of what it was like to fly and fight in them. And now, the Whirlwind, too...! You probably need the Dark Blue World mod to get the best from this new bird, besides DBW's a must-have anyway if you haven't already got it. I posted some advice on how I found it best to get this mega mod after the WW1 Nieuport 28 mission report on DBW 1916, if you're interested: http://combatace.com/topic/78684-a-nieuport-28-campaign-sim-by-sim/page-2?do=findComment&comment=631496

Thanks mate; I did a shed load of these comparative missions over at SimHQ and have started a short series specifically on DBW 1916 here at CA, in the Mission Reports section: http://combatace.com/forum/307-mission-reports/

You might want to check out my mission reports for the 'Code of Honour' campaign: http://combatace.com/forum/307-mission-reports/ Basically, so far there's a series of 'single mission set' campaigns. These look to be varied and imaginative, though they are a mix of historical and non-historical elements eg the 'Frankenplanes', Zeppelins at the front in 1917, Austrian Albatrosses on the Western Front. There are some rough edges eg poor rendering in the SE5 cockpit views, weak engine sounds. OTOH the terrain and environmental modelling is very good (at or close to best in breed IMHO) as are the unbeatable (but possibly too deadly) flak effects. For its many good and different aspects, it's definitely worth playing for anyone interested in the era and genre, even tho not yet a serious competitor for the 'Big Three', for the die-hard WW1 afficionado. Not the place to discuss other sims or mods I know but since it was mentioned...

Hi there! Can't help with the gunnery; fly the same planes a lot in 'Bloody April' and other campaigns, no such problem, and that's flying at the hardest setting. Only issue I have is learning to judge the aiming point in the absence of a better gunsight view. I assume you're getting close enough? Not necessarily THIS close: ...but at least THIS close: Re takeoffs, in most cases I make a habit of pushing the stick forward and raising the tail as soon as I can anyway, to reduce drag and gain speed faster, so I'm not sure if I would have the same problem as you, otherwise. Many clips of WW1 planes taking off seem to show this being done. Are you flying 'Hard' Flight Model setting? If so, some 3rd party planes are 'optimised' for the less realistic 'Normal' FM. The solution for this is to use Peter01's set of modified FMs which is designed for the 'Hard' setting and provides new FMs for all these planes. Some 3rd party planes will not take off at all on 'Hard' without this FM mod. Only issue is that it also rather nerfs 2-seater gunners, I had to hand-edit them all back to make them more dangerous. If you really want an interesting take-off, try an RE8 with a full bomb load; you may be glad you can 'ghost' through trees! Not sure about the micro-stutter. By design FE, much better than the others in this respect, gives us both visible and audible stall buffeting effects. so your nose will judder when entering a stall. But if you're experiencing a really odd visual judder, often in a stalled or a very odd flight attitude, then I have noticed this and think it's an FM oddity with some 3rd party planes. Again, Peter01's FM seems to be best all round.

[File Removed] Here you go, Dave.

IL2 - World War One Fighting the First World War in the air, IL-2 style - part two Code of Honour - the campaign continues... Plan for this mission report was, I'd fly one in a different campaign. But my first mission in the Code of Honour campaign left me wanting to have another crack at the Huns in my Dark Blue World 1916 SE5...considering I'd barely seen the enemy, on the first outing. So back I went to 56 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps and the Third Battle of Ypres, July 1917; which battle the campaign designer had moved south from its actual location, so as to make use of DBW 1916's excellent Somme map. I loaded up the next mission...and got my first surprise. Here's the briefing screen: As before, the mission seemed to be in the form of a Line Patrol, flying up to, then along, the area of the trenches. My task could have been stated more clearly, I think, as it is, for example, in the Rise of Flight missions you get with Pat Wilson's Campaign Generator. But the surprising thing in this briefing was the warning to look out for low-flying Zeppelins! Now, the French and the Germans - the main operators of large airships in WW1 - had learned much earlier in the war, through painful experience, that the front was no place for airships, especially in daylight or at low level. I dare say that attacking Zeppelins can be fun - I haven't done that since the last time I played Crimson Skies! - but I don't care for such departures from historical reality in a flight sim. Modern jargon like 'Primary Recon Marker' also jars a bit, in a WW1 briefing. "Oh well, I've started, so I'll finish", I thought to myself. I needn't have worried. The mission loaded, putting me in the virtual cockpit view for the briefest of moments, before there was a series of bangs as my SE5 and the others lined up for take off blew up noisily. I reloaded the mission; same result. The 'Frankenplanes' and balloon ground crew looked on sadly, as our SE5s burned. Fortunately, this was a campaign formed of a succession of single missions, so my virtual pilot suffered no long-term harm in this unpleasant mishap. On to the next mission, then! This turned out to be a solo effort. Again, my destination was the Lines, but this time, my target was rather more realistic...though there were rather a lot of them. Apparently, the Old Man, perhaps understandably unimpressed at my performance against enemy aircraft in my first mission, had decided that I would benefit from some target practice, under operational conditions, against some rather larger and less mobile potential victims - a string of Hun observation balloons. These were tethered in a long row just on the enemy side of the trenches. Off I went, and whatever it was had caused the flight line explosions last time, it was gone, now. The rain had showed up, though, and it was a thoroughly murky day to go balloon-busting, with visibility quite limited. For a bit of variety, I had chosen a different skin, one of 60 Squadron's short-lived but colourful schemes. Anyway, off I went and I was soon airborne and heading up to the front, just a short distance from our airfield. As my virtual pilot climbs east towards Hunland for his intended fiery rendezvous with the German observation balloons, I'll digress to offer a few of my impressions of the DBW 1916 Flight Model and the in-flight experience, generally. If you don't like digressions, you may want to bypass this next bit and read it last. The FM for the DBW 1916 SE5 (or early SE5a, if that's what it is) has a few features which stand out. Firstly, the aircraft is quite tail-heavy. In this respect it is reminiscent of the Rise of Flight equivalent. I believe the real SE5 was one of the few WW1 aircraft which had a facility for trim in pitch, in the form of a variable-incidence tailplane. Other aircraft may have been able to be trimmed to fly level at a given speed, by rigging the elevator accordingly. Given the choice I would have done this in preference to having to maintain continual forward pressure on the joystick, especially as I find it makes flying level turns harder. Doubtless IL2 trim controls can be used here. The other noticeable feature of the FM is torque, which is significant at high throttle settings. Between this and the tail-heaviness, flying the DBW 1916 SE5 takes a bit of concentration, but it's otherwise a fine ride. Rate of roll is perhaps a little faster than the Over Flanders Fields SE, perhaps a bit slower than the (modded) First Eagles version. General manoeuvrability appears good and I have not noticed any tendency to stall, spin easily or to sideslip too much in turns. Climb and dive rates I've not attempted to assess. Likewise damage models; all I've noticed is a possible 'glass nose', from a head-on hit on a quick mission, which immediately stopped the engine dead. The DBW 1916 aircraft I've flown so far - SE5, Albatros DIII and Nieuport 28 - all seem to fly faster when flown by Artificial Intelligence pilots. En route, they take full advantage of this and you have to cut corners in turns to catch up; or at least, I do. I tend to fly without 'complex engine management' and don't know if being able to adjust fuel mixture manually would help. Anyway, the speedy AI is another reason why flying as leader rather than wingman is a good idea, to my mind. The AI also seem to be very agile, plane for plane, capable of suspiciously sudden or violent manoeuvres, which I seem to recall from IL2-WW2. Engine sound in the DBW 1916 SE5 is distinctly underwhelming, even in the cockpit view. I know WW1 pilots wore helmets (apart from a few exceptions, which actually included 56 Squadron's Albert Ball) but even so...I have never been in an open-cockpit aircraft but this made sitting in a Cessna with headphones over my ears seem rather noisy. OK, let's get back to the mission. The murky weather was a good excuse to call up the in-flight map to navigate (although I tend to do this anyway, murk or no murk). As you can see, I have elected to display my own plane's icon and the 'mimap path', but I have it set to hide other aircraft icons. Looking down as I came up to the Lines, I noticed a balloon well below; not far from the ground, in fact. This I judged to be a British one and therefore left severely alone. You can see this balloon just off my starboard wingtips. A little further on, with shells bursting below, I looked down again. Another balloon! This time, it could only be a Hun 'sausage', hopefully the northernmost in the string that I was expected to clobber. Like its opposite number, this gasbag was very low indeed. Undeterred, I throttled well back, banked hard left, and spiraled down, right onto him. I opened fire as my sights came on and was surprised to see my target blow up immediately. That was easy...too easy, really. No need for le Prieur rockets or anything fancy. I pulled up hard, into a steep climb. No sooner had the thought occurred to me, 'Wot about the anti-aircraft guns, then?' than there was a flash and the first of a series of very loud bangs, as the Hun Archie woke up to my presence. I reckon it was about their fifth or sixth round that abolished most of my tailplane. Making the best of what control I had remaining, I managed to swing around and point my nose towards friendly territory. My engine was still running, at least.... ...or it was, until another Hun salvo arrived, neatly and simultaneously placing rounds right under my nose and what was left of my tailplane. This could not go on much longer and in fact, it didn't. Well, that was that. I don't know if I would have been any more fortunate had I refused to be drawn into an attack at virtually ground level and instead continued down the Lines in search of easier and higher prey. But even so, I really think the accuracy of the enemy AA fire was as excessive as the anti-balloon properties of my .303 rounds. If you bypassed my earlier digression into Flight Models and stuff, you might want to read it now. But this isn't quite the end of my Code of Honour campaign. Not just yet! I was determined to get a better flavour of DBW 1916's air-to-air combat. And I'll report on just how that turned out, in the next installment. Watch this space!

Looking great! Who needs the air combat, as well? When this comes out, I'll be quite happy just sight-seeing and admiring the great scenery, for at least the first week!

Fighting World War One in the air, IL-2 style Dark Blue World 1916 This is intended to be the first in a short series of mission reports, designed to showcase a new kid on the World War One airwar block - IL-2 Dark Blue World (DBW) 1916. This 'mod within a mod', as the title suggests, adds a 'Great War' experience to that long-running and still popular WW2 classic, IL-2. It's is not new, but it has been recently updated and expanded, to the point where it's now a serious contender for any WW1 flight sim enthusiast. For anyone new to DBW 1916, I'll respectfully refer them to this post, in which I've attempted to describe how to get up-and-running with DBW and the latest version of DBW 1916: http://combatace.com/topic/78684-a-nieuport-28-campaign-sim-by-sim/?p=631496 DBW 1916 started with mostly 'Frankenplanes', adaptions of some existing IL-2 types like the Po-2 biplane. These are still there, but they have now been joined by a considerable variety of authentic British, French and German aircraft, including not only favourites like the Camel, Fokker triplane and Nieuport 17, but also some less-often-seen types like the German Roland DII 'scout' and AEG CV two-seater, seen below: I've purchased and flown pretty well every version of IL-2 since the original, but it's only with the advent of Dark Blue World that I've spent much time with the sim. DBW adds many planes, maps, better visuals and sounds, and most important to me, does a better job than previous (payware) addons in bringing the European Theatre of Operations to IL-2. So I was intrigued to read modder VPMedia's announcement on another site that the basic 1916 component that comes with DBW had been updated. So I gave it a try, and while DBW 1916 is still something of a diamond in the rough, I was most favourably impressed with the package in its current form. Having so far played around with quick missions, I decided it was time to get serious - and fly a campaign! The single-player campaign is, to my mind, the heart of a good sim. There are now several campaigns available for DBW 1916, which you can find here: http://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,34834.msg377269.html#msg377269 These campaigns are sets of linked missions, which you simply unzip into your IL-2 'Missions' folder - everything else you need to fly them, comes with the latest version of DBW 1916. Some of the mod's planes like the Camel (and even the inline-engined Albatros DIII!) have their engine power controlled by the magneto (via whatever key you assign in the 'setup' screen) rather than the throttle. You can search 'blip switch' at the aerodrome.com for a good description of how rotary engines did this. Perhaps because I have on-screen messages like power settings turned off in IL-2, I found this magneto power control hard to get the hang of. So I elected to fly a campaign in an aircraft which DBW 1916 gives a conventional throttle, the Royal Aircraft Factory SE5a. Of the two campaigns available for that aeroplane, I chose the Western front-based 'Code of Honour' campaign, in preference to the Palestine-based 'Angels of Armageddon'. DBW 1916 includes very pleasing WW1-themed loading and menu screens. It also features, as menu music, recordings of songs from that era, including the iconic 'It's a Long Way to Tipperary'. To get the full effect, you might want to try humming or singing this to yourself, while studying the screenie below: Campaign Preliminaries 'Code of Honour' assigns us to the Royal Flying Corps' famous 56 Squadron, formed in England in Spring 1917 to fly the new SE5, of which great things were expected, after the hammering the RFC had taken during 'Bloody April', when a hard price was paid for its successful support of the British Expeditionary Force in the Battle of Arras. The squadron included some experienced pilots, not least the great ace Albert Ball. Ball hated the SE5 at first, calling it 'a dud' and regarding it as inferior to the Nieuport types he was used to. In fact, when the squadron took the field in France, Ball was allowed to have a Nieuport for his solo patrols, flying the SE when operating with the rest of the squadron. This DBW 1916 campaign starts - some months after 'Fifty-six' deployed to France - on 31 July 1917, at the beginning of the Third Battle of Ypres (pronounced 'Wipers' by the British 'Tommies'!), also known as the Battle of Passchendale. By this time, most pilots flying the type would have appreciated the SE5's virtues, although in 'Sagittarius Rising', CS Lewis, who served with Ball in 'fifty-six' from the start, recorded that 'unfortunately, it soon became clear that, good as the SE5 was, it was still not equal to the enemy. Scrapping at high altitudes, fifteen to eighteen thousand feet, the Huns had a marked superiority in performance'. Evidently, the SE really needed the extra 50hp it soon got, with the more powerful geared 'Hisso' and later, the ungeared British Wolseley Viper development of that famous Franco-Spanish-Swiss engine. Back to the campaign! 'Code of Honour' uses a Somme map. This actually covers an area well to the south of the real-life 'Third Ypres' battlefield. By the time of that battle, the tide had begun to turn, thanks in part to the arrival of the SE5/SE5a, which had been joined, by then, by the RE8 and the equally-famous Sopwith Camel. Our first mission was what would have been called, at the time, a Line Patrol - a flight up to and then along the trench lines. The main aim of such patrols was to destroy or drive off enemy two-seaters flying artillery observation or reconnaisance missions in our patrol area; and to protect our own two-seaters, who would be doing the same thing. We were flying in two flights of four each, with myself as number four in the right-hand flight. In 'normal' IL2 campaigns, you can get to lead a mission or flight by setting your starting rank high enough in the campaign setup screens. But in a campaign, like 'Code of Honour', which is actually composed of single missions, there's no such facility, I believe. So I could forget about leading a flight ,on this mission! Here's the mission briefing, showing our area of operations. As you can see, this being a single mission, you can change quite a few mission parameters here. I left them alone, except that I used the 'arming' option to replace the default skin (actually one of the colourful schemes briefly used by 60 Squadron) with a skin for a machine flown by the legendary RFC ace JTB 'Jimmy' McCudden, which carried Fifty-six's early squadron marking, a broad white rear fuselage band. This skin, I believe, came with a series of skin packs which are already available for DBW 1916, which I had previously installed. The mission begins At last, it's time to fire up the mission, and see what the latest DBW 1916 and 'Code of Honour' SE5 campaign have in store for us! The first thing you notice is the new loading screen. This looks like a couple of pages from a contemporary illustrated magazine. It's another neat touch, giving DBW 1916 a professional touch as well as adding a bit of atmosphere. Now, to the flight line! I should perhaps have used the mission setup screen to roll the clock forward a tad, as it was still rather dark. Light enough, though, to get a good look at my mount and at our airfield. You may be able to make out that the planes in my flight, ahead of me, carry the default 60 Squadron skin with distinctive white-edged blue markings, while the second flight, to my left, has the white converging lines that 56 Squadron used later on in the war. The broad white rear fuselage band of the skin I'd chosen was correct for the unit at the time of this campaign, I'm fairly certain. As for the DBW 1916 SE5a, it's a decent representation. The interesting thing is that it's an early variant - a proper 1917 model, rather than the 1918 Wolseley Viper-engined models generally featured in other sims (tho OFF does have a version of this with some cosmetic modifications to resemble an earlier machine). The main points of identification are the sharply-upswept underside to the nose, relatively shallow radiator and low thrust line/prop. These indicate the DBW 1916 SE is powered by the 150hp direct drive Hispano Suiza engine. This was fitted to the original SE5 - and to the first SE5a's. Apparently, the 'a' suffix does not, as commonly reported, denote the later 200hp engine, but the fitting of more squared wingtips. The DBW SE has quite raked wingtips, so it might actually be an original SE5, not the SE5a that it's billed as. The SE5 had the 150hp engine with upswept lower nose, and raked, not more squared, wingtips. It was modified before entering combat, most visibly by the original, unpopular 'greenhouse' windshield being removed and replaced with a much smaller, conventional one, and the centre section being modified to replace a prominent 'blister' gravity fuel tank, with one neatly built in. The DBW SE5 has a four-bladed propeller, though, which usually came with the later 200hp engine. This had a higher thrust line - because it drove the prop via a gearbox, not direct - which the DBW model does not have. Either way, despite some mixed features, it's an early SE5, and ideal for the 1917 era. The REALLY impressive thing was the airfield and its environs. Even in the half-light, I could see it was heavily populated with figures, vehicles and all the paraphernalia of a busy operational airfield.And all around, were the trappings of the French countryside, including a windmill and a small but impressive chateau. DBW 1916 has the most detailed and impressive airfields of any WW1 sim. I'm not sure if there was ever an airfield called 'Albert' at the much-knocked-about French town, close to the lines, whose teetering church tower statue of the Virgin Mary was a local landmark in WW1. And if there was, its complement of aircraft would not have included a large four-engined bomber bearing a suspicious resemblance to the later Soviet TB-3 with an extra wing - one of those aptly-named 'Frankenplanes', as some enthusiasts dubbed them. But the airfield was a truly impressive spectacle, even in the poor light: just full of detail (tho I had to use the latest Nvidia driver's ability to set Vsynch to 'Adaptive (half refresh rate)' to avoid serious stutter around airfields). Our two four-plane flights were drawn up in parallel, in line astern, with me at the rear of the right-hand flight. I tested my controls, fired up the engine and held the joystick hard back, which in this position acts as a brake. Soon I was roaring off into the lightening skies, past the parked biplane bomber 'Frankenplane' and after my flight-mates. Into battle! Our two flights climbed steadily for the Lines, leaving our airfield behind us. You can perhaps make out in the shot below the tethered baloon. I suppose we were just about close enough to the front for an observation balloon to be viable! The Somme map landscape was excellent; the preponderance of red-roofed, whitewashed buildings might have better suited the south of France but it is pretty impressive. It's a matter of taste but like the airfields, I'd rate the DBW 1916 Somme terrain as another area where this mod excels. It's ultimately a matter of taste, but overall, the DBW 1916 terrain is perhaps the best available in any WW1 sim or mod. RoF has better water effects but otherwise I think I like DBW-Somme best. Below is the DBW 1916 SE5 cockpit, with those of other sims below again, for comparison. Adequate, perhaps, but while the control column looks about right, the layout otherwise does not appear particularly accurate - short of instruments and no sign of the breech end of the Vickers gun on the left, for example. Nicely textured, though. As far as the audio was concerned, the engine sound was a little quiet to my ears, inside and out, tho the revs did audibly pick up in a dive, a neat feature. DBW 1916: Rise of Fight: First Eagles 2: As we came up to the Lines, we encountered two other areas - besides the airfields and surrounding countryside - where DBW 1916 stands out from the other WW1 sims - the front, and the flak. Over Flanders Fields has been the champ, in its more varied, more convincing and more active portrayal of the 'shelled area', the lines of opposing trenches which cut across NW France, Belgium and Holland. In that department, OFF now has some serious competition, from DBW 1916. The front lines ahead of us were alive with noise, shellbursts, fires and explosions; it was like looking down onto a scene from Danté's 'Inferno'. And the terrain itself was most convincing; there was no 'river of brown mud' with regular trench lines, but a much more varied, tangled and ultimately more convincing battlefield landscape, well up to the high standard set by OFF's front line. In the twilight, some of the shellburst effects looked like rather large lightbulbs being switched on and off; to my eyes, a little too white, a little too long-lasting. All in all, though, the spectacle was impressive, immersive and pretty convincing. Another big plus for DBW 1916. We then experienced the other area where DBW 1916 excels - Archie, to use the RFC's dismissive jargon for anti-aircraft fire (based on the contemporary music hall refrain where a wife reins in her husband with the line 'Archibald! Certainly not!'). By now, we were on the leg of our patrol which took us south, down the Lines. Suddenly, the deeper rumble of the shellfire below was drowned out with a series of sharper bangs as the sky ahead of us came alive with the flashes of bursting anti-aircraft fire. In all the sims I have played, I have not so far come across a more convincing, visceral and downright scary portrayal of AA fire. I have even seen aircraft reel under the impact of close bursts. Brilliant! I could see that Archie was not shooting at us, but at something up ahead. That 'something' was a flight of enemy scouts, which swept straight towards us, head on and still under AA fire. As they closed, the rapidly-diminishing space between the two sides was filled with glowing chains of tracer fire. It was another impressive spectacle; the peaceful skies, one moment quiet and full of gentle pastel shades, had suddenly sprung into aggressive, violent life. The DBW '16 visuals did a great job of making the point that the joyride was over, and a life-or-death fight had begun. The DBW 1916 SE5 seems quite handy and I whipped around after one of the Huns, who turned out to be a flight of Albatrosses. At this point, I failed to get padlock working, and tried to track my enemy with mouselook, instead. I got in a few bursts but soon lost him in the general gloom and ground mist. The others, friend and foe alike, seemed to have gone for the deck fairly quickly, judging from the occasional bursts of tracer fire which I could see snaking about at low level. Even though I was now apparently on my own, I was reluctant to lose altitude until I was quite sure that there were no more Huns up at my level. By the time I had decided that this was so, there was no sign even of the tracer fire. I banked around, then leveled out, wondering what to do next. You can see from the cockpit shots that there are some issues with rendering, including the disconnected gunsight, 'loose ends' to some bracing wires, and the misplaced aileron. I've seem similar issues in the DBW 1916 Nieuport 28. Anyway, there I was, but where was everyone else? Whither away? I banked around, looking for any sign of other aircraft. After a bit, I saw some more tracer fire, evidently an air fight resuming down below. In the murk I could not make out the planes involved, and by the time I got down there, it had all gone quiet again. In the air, at any rate. I wheeled around a bit more. Finally, I saw more low-level tracer fire, further away this time, and again turned my nose in that direction. Whatever it was, it was over well before I got there. I met two SEs from my squadron coming the other way, having evidently settled matters without my assistance. I turned in after them as they swept past, back onto our patrol route. By this time, the Hun Archies were in full swing and the sky around us was soon flecked with noisy bursts of orange fire, which faded to black smoke and trailed away behind us. Some rounds burst quite close to me and although I seemed to escape damage, the effect was really quite scary, and I threw in some evasive action, just in case. Really, DBW 1916 brings AA fire to life in a way the other WW1 sims don't quite manage. By this time, we had reached the southern limit of the leg down the Lines and the pair I was following turned onto the next leg, heading back into friendly territory. It was something of a relief to leave the ferocious AA fire behind, even if its bark was worse than its bite. A glance at the inflight map confirmed that we were indeed homeward bound. Seemingly, the patrol was 'programmed' just to fly one big circuit, rather than, more realistically, flying a 'beat' in a given area for as long as our fuel loads permitted. There was at least still some opportunity to practice my formation-flying. This I managed to do, rather better than I would have in Rise of flight; perhaps because the DBW 1916 SE5 is fairly well balanced, stable and steady, which I think she should be. For some reason, my companions climbed into some cloud, but I managed to come out the other side still in reasonably good position. 'Am I finally getting good at this, or what?' I asked myself, rhetorically. You can see that the other two aircraft carried the coloured noses, fuselage stripes and fins used, in 'Flight' colours, by the SE's of 60 Squadron for a time, before the RFC powers-that-be insisted that such unofficial and un-British markings were removed. Home, sweet home! En route back to our airfield close to the front, there was little to do except keep formation and admire the view. The light was improving but there was still a light mist around. DBW 1916 makes the most of the excellent IL-2 atmospheric effects. Nearing the aerodrome, the other two SE's split left and right. At this point the usual IL-2 ground control radio chatter intruded; I thought I had that muted, so that's something I will need to do. I had already edited the config file so as not to display on-screen messages or warnings, from flying the parent sim in WW2. Without further ado, I spiraled down to lose a bit of height, turned into a final approach, and settled down into a nice steady descent towards terra firma, well throttled back. On 'short finals', I roundly cursed whoever had left that b***dy windmill standing right at the edge of the airfield, having realised, quite late on, that I was heading straight for its outstretched sails. Having managed to avoid tilting at that particular windmill - which I am sure my virtual self would have been a long time living down, in the virtual Officer's Mess - I taxied right up to the canvas hangars, where you can see the quite extraordinary level of detail that goes into airfields in DBW 1916. So concluded my first campaign mission in Dark Blue World 1916. Being new to the package, I was a bit lost during the air combat, like a tyro in his first sortie, all over again. The mod has some rough edges, to be sure; notably some rendering issues in cockpit views and those 'Frankenplanes'. And as yet, the only campaigns available seem to be themed mission sets. But it is still developing, and already, DBW 1916 has some really outstanding features, that rank with or above the best the others can offer. Definitely recommended. Kudos to SAS~CirX, VPMedia and teams for bringing us Dark Blue World, a mod which first transformed single player IL-2, and has now added a very creditable WW1 capability to what is still one of the top-notch propsims you can play today. To follow - another DBW 1916 mission in a different campaign.

'Obsolete, propeller-driven Spitfires'??? Pul-eaze! I think I know what RRG are trying to say - that the jet age 262 in a sense made the prop types obsolescent - but the Spit XI (let alone the Mark XIV) was still one of the best in 1945, three years after its debut. Anyway, this sounds really good. The emphasis on a good singe-player campaign experience and good AI is VERY welcome. And a sim which majors on both the tactical, fighter-bomber role AND the battle with the 'heavies' (109s against 'waves of Flying Fortresses', implies decent formations), this could be a true successor to European Air War (which was uniquely good in its coverage of the air war in the ETO) and is long overdue. If DCS: Europe 1944 can fill EAW's shoes as well as the write-up suggests - even for just the 1944 timeframe and even if the flyable plane-set is limited at the outset to the 'Jug', the 109 and the Spit - this could be the Next Big Thing in this genre and a big hit.

Magical stuff - after Flanders, this scenery is simply breathtaking! Great work!

Nice pics and the blog looks great - eg that Fokker DXXI in the wriggly tin hangar - keep 'em coming!

Not cockney slang - it's pure Python:

Nice B&W pics there!

Done!

Nice! I did not enjoy flying the Albatros DIII tho. I could not keep up with the others in my flight and raising my nose more than a few degrees caused the engine's power, such as it was, to drop right back. Weird that you have to use the magneto settings to get a working throttle (a good idea with rotaries maybe but on an INLINE engine???) but even at the highest setting the power is pants, climb rate next to nothing. Complex Engine Management 'on' and using mixture controls makes no difference I can see. Maybe I'll get the hang of it.

Your Hurricane avatar looks fine to me hurricane3...just like the old FROG kit in fact, built one many years ago, tho mine was moulded in black plastic not grey...

Hi Hansa this is the method I suggest. First, install IL2 '46 (you may be able to use an earlier version but '46 is best). This will probably give you version 4.07m of IL2. If you have Vista or later, don't install it to Program files or Program Files (x86) - just somewhere else on your C drive. Take a complete copy of this - just cut and paste it to a different folder. This means if anything goes wrong you have a clean install. Next, download the torrent file for Dark Blue World (DBW) 'Super Pack one-Stop Download', here : http://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,21514.msg239532.html#msg239532 Use the link to birdman's torrent file. This is a very big download but I found it faster and easier than the alternative - downloading the 19 part zip files. I'd recommend Bittorrent to handle this: http://www.bittorrent.com/. If you can't download DBW 1.71 as a torrent then you will have to download the 19 separate parts. There is no way to get the WW1 mod, without DBW (WW2 mainly but it also supports the Korean War and early Vietnam War, plus the Spanish Civil War). You will also need a programme to handle zip files, I'd recommend 7zip: http://www.7-zip.org/ Whatever way you do it, you will end up with the 19 parts (the torrent file includes them all) as compressed, .rar files. You double click on the first file in the set (it's called '4.07m_to_DBW_1.17_Update.part01.rar') and set it to unzip to your IL2 root folder. When the first file had finished, it will automatically kick off the second one and keep on going till all 19 files are unzipped. You now have the latest version of DBW, which includes the original version of the WW1 mod, DBW1916. You now start IL2 using a program called 'IL2 selector' which enables you to start either DBW and DBW 1916. All you need to do now is get the updates for DBW-1916. The links for these are in vpmedia's post, here: http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3641261/9 If I recall right, these are just more compressed files you need to unzip into the same IL2 install, that you unzipped DBW into. If this seems complicated, it's a lot better than it used to be. You used to have to patch IL2 4.07m to 4.101m (two separate patches IIRC); then d/l and install Ultrapack 3, and patch that up to date as well; and then d/d and install DBW. The one-stop superpack has everything you need to bring IL2 4.07m up to the latest DBW version, so that all you have to do is update DBW-1916. These are really essential, as the basic version of DBW-1916 - the one that comes with DBW - is very basic, with 'Frankenplanes' like repainted or re-worked Po-2 biplanes. These are still there, but the latest version of DBW-1916 has a good selection of realistic WW1 planes.

Hi AceWardie! I vaguely recall having this problem - or at least, something very similar - a long while ago. So long ago I've forgotten what the solution was :( I have a funny feeling it was something to do with my using Vista 64 - that the version of 7-zip I was using, only worked with 32-bit versions of Windows. I see from a quick search that there is a 64-bit version of 7-zip: http://www.afterdawn.com/software/desktop/compression_tools/7-zip_64bit.cfm The only other thing I can think of is that if you have IL2 installed into your Program Files or Program files (x64) folders, and are using Vista or later, then the new controls which limit changes to what's in there may be blocking you. I gather that is why it is generally recommended to install IL2, and many other less recent programs, into a different location eg C:Ubisoft or something. Might also be worthwhile turning off User Account Control, if you have it running. Good luck!