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Checking out the Bf109 in the new Eastern Front air combat sim! I was flattered to be invited by Skyviper to be on the team for the CombatAce review of 1c/777's IL-2 - Battle of Stalingrad (hereinafter referred to as BoS). Having only recently installed the sim (I wasn't a participant in the 'Early Access' programme) it'll be a little while until we get the review done & dusted. In the meantime I thought folks might be interested in my first impressions of one of the BoS aircraft, the iconic Messerschmitt Bf109, which comes here in the form of the F-4 and G-2 models, distinguished mainly be the latter's more powerful DB605 motor and visually, by its heavier-framed cockpit. So far, my impression of the BoS aircraft is that they're as good as, or better than, any aircraft I've seen in a combat flight sim. Cliffs of Dover's cockpits might be a little sharper-looking (perhaps just thanks to sharper or darker shadows) but outside and in, these birds look just terrific. As an old-time Luftwaffe modeller, while I find the vestigial swastikas slightly irksome and don't welcome the lack of unit markings, pending availability of the facility for user-made skins, I can't help but admire the accuracy of the finish. For example, the 109F I'm flying here has a very accurate rendition of the standard 74/75/76 fighter finish (Dunkelgrau, Mittelgrau and Hellgrau, respectively). It's applied in an accurate upper surface Messerschmitt factory pattern, appropriate for these later 109s and features readable stencil markings. Even the fuselage side mottling is straight out of the textbooks, with spots of Schwarzgrun (70), Dunkelgrau (74) and 'RLM' Grau (02). The slightly glossy standard Luftwaffe finish is also nicely captured and in the right light, you can see every rivet and panel line caught in relief. The overall effect is a joy to behold. Anyway, I recently took my first proper flight in a 109 - a favourite familiar to me from many another sim, including European Air War, CFS3 and the original IL-2 series - and it was an experience and a half! I just did the one circuit, set up via the 'Quick Mission' option (which will be familiar to Rise of Flight users, given the close family relationship with BoS). I don't do 'complex engine management' but even so, it was a pretty awesome experience, the sort of flight I'd have expected in a plane built for FSX. The airfield I think is Morosovskaya (spelt slightly different in the sim) which I recognised from William Craig's superb 'Enemy at the Gates' - if you read just one book on the battle, make it this one (the film was just a single episode from the book). This airfield I recall was, with Tatsinskaya, one of the two most important bases for the Luftwaffe's desperate 'air bridge' into the Stalingrad 'kessel'...until the T-34s arrived there and put a sudden stop to flying operations, in dramatic and violent fashion. From the cockpit of my chosen Bf109F-4, even the engine start (computer-assisted, just using the 'E' key) was most impressive. OK, there was no black-overalled mechanic standing on the wing turning the hand crank but there were cockpit indicator lights coming on and animated switches flicking. Then came the sound of the 109's flywheel spooling up and finally, the throaty roar of that big Mercedes DB601 as it spluttered then thundered into life. Great stuff, like watching and listening to a real warbird start-up video! Flaps set and flying control movement checked, taxying out to the runway was the first challenge, using mainly the brakes combined with short bursts of throttle to keep her rolling. I managed to get her lined up fairly well. The take-off was a bit hairy with plenty of swing, first left when I opened her up a bit then right when I steadily applied full power. I kept her fairly straight but once off the ground, was suddenly afflicted by a serious wobble. Did I pull her off at too low an airspeed, and maybe the leading edge slats had opened differentially? It was quite scary for a couple of seconds but I stayed in the air and, gaining height, turned onto the crosswind leg of the left-hand circuit I was planning to fly. Throttling back and gingerly checking out control responses while relishing the realistic sound of my engine - a far cry from the drone of the original IL-2 109s - I turned left again and settled onto a downwind leg, applying a bit of elevator trim (which I believe actually adjusts tailplane incidence, in the 109) when I'd settled on what seemed like a respectable cruising speed. Possibly I was a little high for the 1,000 feet I'd planned for the circuit - I had turned off inflight map and instruments. Once well down the leg, I looked out over my left shoulder for a glimpse of my airfield, remembering that when it was at roughly 7 o'clock, I would want to turn left again, onto the base leg. OK, so where was the runway? Oh-oh....my base was lost in a sea of whiteness. I remembered that there had been a medium-sized wood or town somewhere just north of the airfield. I could see what might have been that area, in the form of a dark patch on the ground. Taking this as my mark, when I judged it about right, I turned left and rolled out onto a heading just short of north and flew my base leg. At some point, fiddling about with the 'pilot gestures' controls, I had inadvertently fired a flare, which I assume is why the flare gun has now appeared in its slot below the starboard windscreen. Nice touch! When I was nearly level with the wood, I turned left again, onto my approach to the still-invisible airfield. As I began to roll out of my turn, peering desperately ahead to the left of the dark area I was using as my reference point, I was mightily relieved to see the runway, between wisps of low cloud. Whew! I held my left turn, then reversed it, to line myself up with the runway. Throttling back, I started dropping my flaps and then lowered my gear. The 109 is no slouch and things seemed to be happening awfully quickly! It's been a long time since I had my handful of flying lessons in slower Cessnas but in pitiful ignorance of the correct numbers for a 109, I did my best to use the throttle to control my rate of descent and the elevator to manage my airspeed. I often land in the external view because with no peripheral vision and the other limitations of 'flying' at a monitor, it's easier to judge when to flare. Not this time! Having flown the circuit from the cockpit, apart from slipping outside from some screenshots, I decided I would go the whole hog. Flying from the cockpit view with all the self-assurance of a rabbit in the headlights, I flared too soon and landed heavily, bouncing rather badly. I somehow managed to keep the wings level and did my best to make the next bump survivable. They say it's a good landing if you can walk away from it and a great one, if you can re-use the aircraft. By that standard, I'd made a good landing. And most of the plane looked to be re-usable. So far so rather brilliant. But this is a combat flight sim and therein lies the real test for BoS. Anyway it's off to a good start in my books, though I will want to spend more time doing circuits and bumps before I take on the Ivans in a campaign. In the meantime, of course I could not resist a bit of blowing stuff up (or attempting to) but that's a story for another day! Watch this space for the CombatAce review!

The heavies are back! Here's the briefing for the next mission in my Reich Defence career, flown as per previous missions in IL-2 '46 + Dark Blue World and the same campaign from FlatSpinMan. I say 'briefing' but it's actually a conversational piece between the campaign pilot Willi Redemann and his boss, followed by what has the appearance of a piece of extended radio traffic, from the local Ground Controller to fighters outbound for an interception mission. 'Furniture Vans' - 'Moebelwagen' in German - is a Luftwaffe radio nickname for heavy bombers, so it's pretty clear that we're up against the USAAF's Eighth Air Force. And from the reference to 'butcher birds' - a little-used name for the Focke-Wulf 190 - it's evident that our Bf109Gs from I Gruppe, Jagdgeschwader 1, won't be on our own. Just as well, methinks, even if, at this stage of the war, we're not facing opposition from escort fighters. Big formations of Ami four-engined bombers bristling with heavy machine-guns are no easy meat, even unescorted. The briefing map's a bit confusing as it shows two tracks, one leading out from the coast and the other (ours, as it turned out) running north-north-east. Neither appeared to originate or terminate at an airbase, which was a strong hint that this was an air-start mission...and so it proved to be. As usual for an intercept mission, I've chosen 20mm gunpods and a droptank for my formation, which as before is a schwarm of four Bf109G2s. The mission started with us in echelon right at the designated mission height, which saved us the takeoff and a long-ish climb to height, though I generally prefer to start on the ground. I throttled back slightly, gave the order to change to 'finger four' formation, then opened up again as my comdades slipped into position. As expected, there were at least two other flights on the same mission, which I could see from their contrails, above us. Who were they? Using the IL-2 view system to 'have a nosey', I could see that our companions consisted of another flight or two of 109s and a couple of flights of 190s. If I remember my Luftwaffe markings right, the checkered-nose 190s are from 1/JG1 and the ones with the 'tatzelwurm' (which is on the opposite side of the cowling of the other 190s, with the cross-hatched fuselage side camouflage) are from IV/JG1. Orders from the Ground Controller reminded us to turn right onto heading 090 when we reached the next waypoint, in which direction we'd been briefed to expect to encounter the American bombers heading home from their raid. Up ahead, the other two flights started their turn and rather than wait till I had reached the waypoint, above the lake just ahead, I cut the corner and turned in early. I didn't gain much ground; the others must have been at full throttle! Whatever might lie up ahead, it looked like they would run into it first. Fair enough, I thought to myself as I rolled out onto my new course, I tried. So be it! ...to be continued!

Mission # 3 in Flatspinman's campaign My first campaign featured as a set of mission reports - with Jasta 5 in Wings Over Flanders Fields - having come to an early and inauspicious ending, I thought I'd wind the clock forward to World War 2 and pick up on a campaign first reported here last year. This is none other than Flatspinman's IL-2 campaign covering the Luftwaffe's attempts to defend 'The Thousand Year Reich' from those who rather thought that Nazi hegemony over large swathes of eastern & western Europe for the aforementioned period was, perhaps, not entirely a good idea. In case you're wondering where missions 1 & 2 got to, they're here and here, respectively. To recap, my pilot was operating in Scandanavian skies flying the Messerschmitt 109G with Jagdgeschwader 5 'Eismeer'. But I've been transferred south to JG1 'Oesau', operating in the Reichsverteidigung (Defence of the Reich) role. My first mission had been a transfer flight south which had ended with an unplanned but successful interception of an RAF Mosquito shipping strike. The second sortie was my first mission with JG1, intercepting an unescorted raid by USAAF B-24 heavy bombers over the North Sea. As for this third mission, here's the briefing. As you can see, my virtual alter ego is bitching about various things, not least being sent on a shipping protection mission in poor weather. But orders are orders! As you can also see, an IL-2 map covering the eastern Baltic is doubling up for the German Bight, the area between the German North Sea coast and Denmark. With the map scrolled fully north and the briefing text scrolled fully down, you can see our flightpath and the tail end of the nicely-written briefing. Basically, we are to fly north along the coastline below the clouds then turn west and fly a rectangular patrol pattern, presumably in the vicinity of the shipping we are supposed to protect. Enemy airstrikes are going to be the threat, as the risk from U-boats, minefields and the Luftwaffe makes Allied naval incursions too risky. Before kicking off the mission I checked that I had the recommended 'skin' selected. I also chose to take a droptank and two underwing 20mm cannon gunpods. Rightly or wrongly, at this stage in the war - early-to-mid-1943, if I recall right - I wasn't expecting to meet enemy escort fighters so far from England and the extra firepower might come in handy. There are four of us in the mission and I'm the Schwarmfuehrer. My aircraft has been renumbered, had its JG5 unit badge replaced with the JG1 'winged one' equivalent (not actually carried till early 1944 I think) but is otherwise mostly in the same markings carried previously. From my rudder markings I'm something of an ace already and from the black disc with the white diagonal cross on the rear fusealge, I have evidently been in Spain with the Legion Condor. Wasting no time I checked my controls, locked the tailwheel and started up. With flaps set I opened her up gradually, ruddering to control the swing as the power built up. Off we went, past the parked aircraft and other paraphenalia of a busy operational airfield. Regardless of the weather and the mission, it felt good to be back behind the controls of a virtual 'Gustav', the most-built if not most successful version of the Luftwaffe's classic fighter. 'Bring them on!' I thought to myself, as we climbed away from our airfield. ...to be continued!

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

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

Flying a classic Western Front campaign...in a classic Eastern Front flight sim! I don't know about you, but the sim that came closest to my ideal of a WW2 flight sim was (and in some key ways, still is) European Air War. For one thing, EAW had - in spades - many little but oh-so-immersive touches that later sims seem to omit or neglect. There was something resembling a decent pilot logbook; basic but effective verbal campaign briefings; and a between-mission representation of your bunk in a Nissen Hut complete with creaking bedsprings, coughing (but invisible) companions, and a radio set which you could tune into renderings of appropriate popular music of the day. Break off from the campaign and you got an on-screen day pass complete with tickets to an appropriate show and a picture of your 'floosie'! Not only that, but EAW featured the two aerial campaigns that defined the European Theatre of Operations air war and always interested me most: the Battle of Britain in 1940, and what might be called the Battle of Germany, 1942-45, where the tables were turned and it was the Luftwaffe's turn to defend the Homeland against swarms of marauding bombers. In EAW, I could escort Stukas or Heinkels in 109s or 110s or try knocking them down in a Hurri or a Spit. And I could take to the skies over the Reich in my favoured German mount, the venerable 'Gustav' or Bf109G, and lead my staffel into deadly firing passes on huge combat box formations of B17s or B24s, braving swarms of tracers and watching my kills go slipping or spinning out of formation trailing smoke. If I fancied something different, I could slip into an FW190A or D, a later Bf110, or even a jet Me262. Or I could swap sides and take on the Luftwaffe in a P47, a P38 or a P51. My idea of sim heaven! When CFS2 came out, I enjoyed the better graphics and the change of scenery to the Pacific, as well as the opportunities afforded by many add-ons that enabled you to experience Pearl Harbour, fly with the Dambusters and all the rest. I spent a lot of time back in the ETO with CFS3, which failed to add better ground control and seemed worse in the air-to-air department, tho it was reasonably good in its declared aim of simulating tactical air ops, albeit in a weird version of WW2 where German shipping traffic plied the English Channel in daylight and an invasion could have been mounted in either direction. Battle of Britain 2 'Wings of victory' I played as well, loving its superior AI tho ultimately finding its odd combination of wargame and flight sim not quite to my taste. For the Battle of Germany, 'B17 the Mighty Eighth' was a really superb bomber sim but its fighter capabilities were much more limited. As for IL-2...well I bought and played, on and off, just about all the successive versions and some add-ons but while the rather dry single-player campaigns were jazzed up somewhat over the years, the Eastern Front never really floated my boat. Despite the 'Battle over Europe' add-on, coverage of the ETO remained very limited, while IL-2's drive to the Pacific seemed to me to have many fine aspects like the ability to defend Singapore in Buffaloes or later, take the fight back to the Japanese in a Beaufighter, but ultimately, to fall somewhat short, not least due to a hopelessly inadequate set of ship types. I longed for the tussles with the fleets of bombers that EAW brought to my screen, especially the missions against the 'Amis' in their 'viermots', the big, four-engined Flying Fortresses and Liberators, with their attendant swarms of 'little friends', the Thunderbolts, Lightnings and later, the Mustangs. EAW was still in business, but I wanted to experience its massive battles with the graphics, AI, damage and flight models of a modern sim. IL-2 Battle of Stalingrad might be an interesting diversion to the East, and DCS-1944 might get there one day, but what of the present...? Having rediscovered the delights of IL-2 in the form of the excellent Dark Blue World mod - surely, the ultimate single-player add-on for IL2 - and found there existed a version of Boelcke's "Defense of the Reich" campaign just for DBW, I thought it was time to revisit the virtual skies over the crumbling Thousand Year Reich. I wanted to see if I could rediscover the thrill of sailing, cannon blazing, into a combat box which filled the skies around me with tracers from dozens of .50 cals. Would IL-2, DBW and Boelcke's campaign hit that spot? ...to be continued!

Flying a South African Air Force Hurricane against the Regia Aeronautica in a WW2 backwater Notwithstanding the mounting excitement around upcoming new sims, there's still plenty of life in classics like IL-2. I for one was keen to try out a couple of new campaigns released by Greybeard which featured a little-known theatre of operations, Ethiopia and eastern Africa. Here in 1940, Musolini's forces staged an initially-successful offensive into British-controlled territories that was soon rolled back after some stiff fighting, in the air and on the ground. I decided to make a start flying for the victors, in a campaign which puts the player into the cockpit of a Mark 1 Hawker Hurricane in Number 3 Squadron, South African Air Force. The campaign announcement is here: http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3864227/No_3_Sqn_SAAF_in_East_Africa#Post3864227 I much prefer to fly IL-2 with the Dark Blue World mod. This campaign uses a particular version of the Dgen campaign generator by Asura and although it likely works in DBW I decided to make this my first outing with the Team Diadalos patched version. Before installing DBW I had taken a copy of my IL-2 '46 install (a simple cut & paste operation gives a fully-functional second install) and I patched this with the latest official patches and then the TD patches, to get it fully-up-to-date, then installed the DGen mod and the campaign. Here's the briefing for the first mission. I was assigned to lead a section of three Hurris on what the USN would call a Combat Air Patrol from our base on a rather barren, possibly volcanic, island off the coast opposite the opposing front lines. Clear enough, although the squadron was described at one point as an 'eskadrilyia' (Hungarian?) and the briefing didn't mention the presence of friendly aircraft, whose radio chatter I began to hear early in the mission. Anyway here we are, lined up and good to go. The recommended skin is quite superb, don't you think? Without further ado, I locked the tailwheel, tested the controls, and started up. Flaps set, I opened the throttle gradually to reduce swing, and was soon airborne. Gear and flaps up, I swung right into a climbing turn inland, and having put on a couple of thousand feet, levelled off and throttled back on a course just off north, waiting for my flight-mates to catch up with me. The island base is nicely done; in fact it reminds me of the old RAF verse, that goes like this: 'A little bit of Heaven fell from out the sky one day And landed in the ocean, oh so very far away. And when the air force saw it, it looked so effing bare They said 'THAT'S what were looking for We'll put the squadron THERE!' We didn't have long to wait, for the enemy to show up! While my wingmen were still some way behind, I head the call on the radio 'Fighters! One o'clock!'. And there they were - two specks to my right front, about the same level. I gave the others the command to get stuck into them, and turned into them myself, as they appeared to do likewise. The enemy was a pair of Fiat CR42 biplanes and they were short of neither manoeuvrability nor aggression. I gave their leader a fairly wild burst from my eight Brownings as they whizzed by in a frontal pass but it was no time at all after that before one of the b***ers was above me and shooting, ignoring the tracers from ground MG fire. For some reason, he then rolled away, perhaps distracted by one of the others. This gave me the chance I needed, and I didn't waste it. I chopped the throttle and rolled in after him, being careful not to push my Hurricane - which I had found in test combats to be prone to stalling - too hard. I got in a good burst and though he was in my sights only briefly, it was enough. Breaking away and taking stock, the sky seemed clear of enemies, so my comrades had evidently got the other impertinent Italian airman. I ordered a reform, and was relieved that both my chaps answered the call. Relaxed but still alert, I steered south towards our assigned patrol area, throttling back again to let them close on me before gaining height again as we headed into...what? ...to be continued!