33LIMA

Maybe depends what features you want; if 'as good as B-17-2' then the answer may be 'nothing much'...I certainly haven't found anything that does the job nearly as well. If you have Il-2 '46 you may want to try this or similar heavy bomber campaigns: http://www.mission4today.com/index.php?name=Downloads3&file=details&id=923 There was (is?) a Just Flight add-on for CFS3 called 'Memphis Belle' which is quite good, coming with the plane and recreations of each of her 25 missions. However, formations are wide, fighter style and there's none of the detailed navigation or Norden bombsight that you get in the Microprose title. With the latest DX mod that provides good water effects and dynamic shadows inside and out, graphics are not too bad. I preferred the JF Belle to the Firepower mod version, not least on my PC it was much more FPS-friendly without sacrificing anything important. Just Flight also produced a decent 'Dambusters' mod for CFS2 and while the earlier sim has even earlier graphics it's still quite good at what it does: http://combatace.com/topic/81431-cfs2-training-with-the-dambusters/

Yes I think you can still change the loadout, but orders are orders! I was a bit flabbergasted to see in the briefing that the bombs could not be timed to explode a fixed interval after dropping. Which makes this screenshot a bit of a mystery... And yes Jeanba that's the way to do it, the tricky bit being to timing. I recently ordered 'Attack bombers' just coming into range and that seemed to work. I'm not sure that just leading your flight into the front of the bombers works, with no command.

A bad day in a long war... Ok, I've just been on the ranges testing my ability to drop a bomb from a Bf 109 into a formation of enemy bombers. Now, it's time to take my new-found skill (!!!) on operations. Here's the mission briefing. The first part looks to be a member of my flight telling me, Willi Redermann, just exactly what he thinks of this air-to-air bombing lark. And he's right, but orders are orders. To make matters worse we can't set the bombs to explode a fixed interval after dropping - presumably though Il-2 may support post-inpact fuse delays it doesn't allow for the former. So only direct hits will count! We might as well have saved the Reich some money by dropping concrete practice bombs. Although we are now dropping in flight strength, it seems our chances of actually doing any damage have fallen from slim to nil. As least, at this stage in the war - spring 1943 - we don't have to worry much about escorts from the short-legged Spitfires and early Thunderbolts and their so-far unreliable drop-tanks. Most of this campaign's missions - there are about twenty, overall - seem to be air starts, which is not my preference but it certainly saves the tedious bit between takeoff and nearing the scene of the action. It also saves any issues misjudging the height and coming in below the target. So it wasnts not long before I saw the gaggle of Ami viermots crossing my front. I swung in behind and above them, waited till I'm sure my bombed-up schwarm of four 109Gs is behind me, then ordered formation to be closed up. This done, I opened the throttle and close the range, anxious to make my drop while we're still out over the North Sea. Any fishing boats or other maritime traffic down there is just going to have to take their chances. I wondered idly if compensation will be available from the Reichsluftfahrtministerium, in the event of a serious mishap. As per the briefing, the rest of the staffel was supposed to make gun attacks imediately after we bomb, but evidently, they decided they didn't want to wait. The first attacks were already under way as we slowly overhauled the big enemy bombers, whom I could see to be B-17s. I stayed well up from the bombers, trying to steer above the vertically densest part of their formation, where, if our bombs didn't hit the upper aircraft, they might impact some of those behind and slightly below. Either I managed to stay out of .50 calibre range or the other attackers kept the US air gunners occupied, but little or none of their orange tracers seemed to come near us. Finally I let go my bomb and, looking back to see the others had copied me, cut them loose for attacks on the bombers. Rather than take time to pull away in formation and then try to set up something clever, I thought we might as well just use our height advantage and dive directly down onto them at high speed. I didn't waste my time looking for any bomb hits! In my first pass, I did some damage to one of the B-17s on the right edges of the formation before zoom climbing again. The speed of my approach seemed to have saved me from the return fire, for I escaped without being hit. Back on top, the enemy formation seemed to be in the process of being somewhat thinned out by our repeated fighter attacks. Abandoning my original victim, I decided instead to join in an attack on a vic of three B-17s which was at the top left-hand corner of the formation, looking potentially exposed - it's no coincidence that bombers on the outer edges of formations were statistically most at risk, after those that had actually been forced out on their own. I could see at least two other 109s lining up for a crack at these bombers so reckoned we would split their fire while concentrating our own - a bit of impropmtu teamwork. The others beat me to the punch and I pulled out below the B-17s and closed from behind and below while the two 109s completed their passes. They were doing well. First, the right-hand bomber went on fire in the port wing and slipped down and right out of formation. The B-17 on the left was next. He too was hit and slipped down and right, out of formation. His damage didn't look too bad and I was tempted to help finish him off. But instead, I dediced that it was up to me to complete the hat-trick. Get them out of formation first. After that, somebody would complete the job, at leisure. Contributing to team results was more important than running up personal scores. All of this had left me in a rather poor position, coming up on my own behind a heavily-armed bomber from dead astern, presenting at least one turret with a no-deflection shot. The other side of the coin was that I was closing quite fast and the bomber was also now alone, apart from some potential longish-range covering fire from the main body, rather off to our right. Just one quick pass then I'll come back for something smarter, I thought, as I cut loose with my nose MGs, waiting till I saw seome strikes before joining in with my motor cannon. Wham! Suddelly my canpoy was holed and oil sprayed onto my windscreen. Serves me right! I pushed the stick down and broke away fast, left and down. Not so good. I'd got some hits on the Boeing, in return, but not enough to worry him seriously From the radio chatter in the meantime, I had heard one of my flight announce he was bailing out, while another two had claimed kills. Not a bad result for four lightly-armed Messerschmitts. I decided the law of diminishing reutrns now applied and ordered my flight to break off and rejoin formation, leaving the remaining heavies to their business. I dived gently away, knowing that we were by now near the coast and heading in that direction. If my engine failed, I was determined to keep my feet dry, if at all possible! Reaching the coast, I turned right, towards home base. My flight were by now beginning to catch up but I sent them on ahead with a 'return to base' commmand; no point in them escorting my crippled bird. Soon, I was turning onto my final approach. I seem to make a habit of landing off right-hand circuits here. Today, my main concern was to stay over terra firma so that if my damaged motor packed in, I would be able to belly-land, rather than ditch. The landing itself was a bit heavy but I could put that down to 'battle damage'! And if I had succeeded in writing off the bomb mount under my aircraft, so much the better! Either way, hopefully this rather unsuccessful sortie would mark the end of our efforts at air-to-air bombing! ...to be continued!

Thanks Do335! I'm still using Il-2 '46 plus Dark Blue World 1.71 for this campaign. My other Il-2 install is the one for the Team Daidalos 4.12 patch; to this I will likely apply and try out the new CFM (Compressed Full Monty) mod, when this is available in about a week; as you may have seen, it's discussed in the last few pages of this thread: http://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,40015.0.html . At the moment I find DBW is the best 'supermod' for IL-2 single player and totally indispensible. I have not yet tried to set up the ''DBW 1.71 + 4.12 patch'' combo that seems to be hailed as a sort of 'pre-DBW2', and will likely just wait for the 'official' update of DBW/DBW2 for the TD patch. I wish the next mission had been bombing ships...anyway the report will be up very soon!

Yeah, nice piece of history, including the origin of the famous callsign. Hope they make it with the restoration project.

Concluding FlatSpinMan's Il-2 '46 campaign for the Bf 109! Having some months back posted reports for the first four missions in this entertaining and highly recommended campaign, I thought it was over-due time to complete the story! The Allied bomber offensive 1942-45 has always been a particular interest of mine and the ability of modded Il-2 '46 to support this - and other 'Western Front' campaigns - transformed my opinions of and interest in this classic sim, which, in its latest forms, is in my opinion still much the best combat flight sim for World War 2...and beyond. FlatSpinMann's Defence of the Reich campaign is one of several which enable you to pit your virtual life against the might of the USAAF's famous 8th Air Force in its campaign of daylight 'precision bombing'. You're cast as Willi Jedermann, an experienced member of the Jagdflieger whose Bf109's aft fuselage carries the white cross, black disc marking of the Nationalist Spanish Air Force, doubtless denoting time spent with the Condor Legion during the Spanish Civil War. The campaign comes with several nicely-rendered variations of the 'skin' for the player's Messerschmitt, the one below being for the 109G-6, to which the player transitions during the missions in this report, having started with the G-2. Earlier missions had seen our Willi transferred south from JG5 'Eismeer' in the frozen north to join I Gruppe, Jagdgeschwader 1 in defence of the Deutsche Bucht or 'German Bight', as they called the area of the North Sea bounded by Schleswig-Hollstein/Denmark to the east and the north German coastline near Bremen and Hamburg, to the south. That Willi is an alter hase, an 'old hare' who has seen it all before and then some, is clear from the mission briefings, which often feature Willi's frank expressions of his views, ranging from his reservations about operating so often over the seas on convoy escort, to his opinions on the latest bright ideas from his superiors. My fifth mission is a case in point. Willi is being sent aloft to practice air-to-air bombing of enemy bomber formations, prompted by the success achieved by real-life Luftwaffe ace Heinze Knoke (recounted in 'I Flew for the Fuhrer' and quoted in many other books). Willi is fairly scathing about the prospects for this tactic...but orders are orders! Soon, flying as Willi, I'm airborne and headed north, in rather murky weather with a 250Kg bomb slung under my Messerschmitt. I'm rather glad to be on my own. Level bombing in a bombsight-less fighter seems unlikely to go well and, methinks, the fewer of my squadron-mates who witness my efforts with this contraption, the better. Callling up the inflight map, I checked my bearings. Our base is at Windau, which Goggle tells me is these days called Ventspils and is in Latvia, on the Baltic Sea coast. A stock Il-2 map of this area is topographically not a bad substitute for the German Bight, though. I have been told that the target on this practice mission has been marked out on some muddy coastal land, in the form of something resembling a plan view of a formation of heavy bombers. I'm to bomb from about a thousand metres, apparently. On arrival, I first overflew the range, just to get a good look at what they have cooked up for me. It's not too bad a job, I soon find out: a series of large white crosses in a decent representation of an American heavy bomber formation. And there's a large white circle-and-arrow marking on the ground a few hundred meters short of the 'formation'. You can't see it in the screenie below because it's hidden by the junction of those canopy farmes on the left, but it wasn't too hard for me to work out that this marked my suggested bomb release point. It seems the idiots who dreamed up this aerial bombing nonsense have at least been thorough in laying out my practice target. What they hadn't done so well was explain how I was supposed to aim my bomb, given that on a straight run-in, both the 'formation' and the bomb release mark are hidden under my nose. I suppose they expect an officer of the Luftwaffe to be able to work out such things for himself. So that's what I did. I approached on an offset course and picked out a landmark inland to my right - to my left, there was only the sea - which was level with the aiming mark. Unfortunately landmarks were rather limited in this weather and in this neck of the woods but I picked out a reasonably distinctive point on the edge of a suitably-positioned forest. Nearing the bomb release point on this offset course, I made a sort of 'Z' curve, turning left to get the the aiming mark and the target in line and then back right, back onto the same course as before, but in line with the target somewhere under my nose. Looking to the right, when the aiming mark came level, I let go the bomb and turned right, mildly curious to see what happened next. Below you can see the bomb on its way down, about half an aircraft's length, directly ahead of my spinner. The results were a good deal better than I expected. The bomb went off just on the leading edge of the 'formation', close enough I thought to have done some damage. Had it been for real, lacking proximity fuses, the trick would have been to get the thing to go off at the same level, the problem being a three-dimensional one. As I came off the target, I got a bit of a surprise when I saw the shadow of a vic of aircraft flit across theground below and behind. At this point I suddenly remembered that the briefing warned me to watch out for the presence of some boys from a Jagdfliegerschule, who were on some training flights somewhere in the general area. Of course in concentrating on my bombing run I had completely forgotten about them. There were undoubtedly at a much, much higher risk of me flying into them, than bombing them. Looking around more carefully, I soon spotted the others, off to my right. Three Messerschmitts like my own, they were, also headed south, towards my airfield. I gave them a wide beth and watched as they dipped down directly towards the runway. For some reason they didn't land, but pulled up short of landing and climbed away. Drat! Now I was going to have to be more careful in making my own approach! As it happened, these three were not the trainees; or if they were, they were nearing the end of their course, flying operational types. The real trainees were also in the air, flying impressed Czech-built Avia B-534s. Having flown past my base on my right to keep my distance from the other 109s, I gradually let down to about 300 meters. I looked around again for the others and seeing nothing, turned right onto my base leg. The skies remained murky but clear of aircraft and it wasn't long before I was down. As I completed my roll-out, I heard two other aircraft advising they were going around and the tower acknowledging. So I opened up again and smartly cleared the runway, steering towards the hardstanding in front of the hangers, at the left end of the long grass strip. I thought to myself, that wasn't too bad, unfortunately...'unfortunately' as only a complete disaster seemed likely to offer any hope of the next step in the process being cancelled. That next step, I felt sure, would be to put the training into practice, on operations. I was right. To be continued...!