Gterl's Italian Front for FE/FE2

[33LIMA 972]

Not for the faint of heart - battling Huns and high ground in scenery to die for!

 

The latest campaign for World War 1 air combat sim First Eagles/First Eagles 2 is by Gterl and covers the fighting between Italy and Austria-Hungary, 1915 to 1917. Those of us who have been following the development of this new terrain have been slavering over Gterl's screenies and waiting keenly for its release, which has now come:

 

http://combatace.com/files/file/14440-italian-terrain-incl-1915-1917-campaign/

 

Better still, the terrain comes complete with a campaign, which - as usual with FE campaigns - you can play from the perspective of any of the flyable planes in any of the featured squadrons, on either side - so it's actually a set of campaigns, covering both scouts (as fighters were called in those days) and the two-seater 'working planes' which mostly did the important stuff - reconnaisance and bombing (although this distinction evolved over time and was only coming into vogue about the time this campaign starts).

 

As the download page says, you need also to download and install the listed freeware aircraft, most available here at CombatAce, the others at the A Team Skunkworks. Be careful to respect and observe the different registration and download rules at each site.

 

http://combatace.com/files/category/360-first-eagles-add-on-aircraft/

 

http://cplengineeringllc.com/SFP1/

 

Many FE players will already have most or all of these planes installed - I had all but one of them! If not, it's more than worth the effort.

 

The campaign is built for First Eagles Gold (=original First Eagles plus the Expansion Pack) but works equally well in First Eagles 2, which is what I play. Only thing to note here is to observe the slightly different installation drill for FE2 - for example, the stuff in the folder 'Groundobjects' [plural] should, for FE2, go into a mod (sub-) folder called 'Groundobject' [singular]. Old hands with Third Wire sims like FE and Strike Fighters will know the drill; anyone else can get the 'gen' here at CA on the SF2 knowledge base, or ask for advice.

 

It's not needed, but I made a second install of FE2 just for this campaign; amongst other things this means if I fly a single mission, I'm less likely to find myself fighting against or alongside planes that didn't serve on the Italian Front. Again, there are posts here at CA which describe the drill for both first (FE) and second generation FE2) Third Wire sims; ask if in doubt. Not difficult and second nature once you know the drill.

 

The Campaign begins!

I elected to kick off playing for the Italian air arm, which I gather was called the Servizio Aeronautico before it became independent of the Army and adopted the more familiar title of Regia Aeronautica.

 

I usually favour the 1916-1917 era as the earlier planes are decidedly underpowered even by 1917 standards. But this time I decided to start at the beginning, in June 1915. So I created my pilot - Umberto Bernadotte - and found myself assigned to 1a Squadrigilia Veneto, based at San Giovanni.

 

First thing I noticed was the quality of the opening campaign briefing. It was short but nicely written, I thought, and brought a wry smile to my face. A perfect mood-setter.

 

We were allocated the Voisin LAS, 120 HP engine version. This is a pusher biplane with a radial engine, unusual compared to the more common rotaries. It's also a two-seater, with the pilot in front and the observer behind, with a Hotchkiss machine-gun mounted on a frame above and behind the pilot's head. I believe this type of machine scored the first recorded air-to-air kill back on the Western Front. Although later, bigger and more powerful Voisins gave sterling service as night bombers, even by mid-1915 they were rather obsolescent and I was not entirely looking forward to taking one of these machines to war, over potentially mountainous terrain, and likely against better-equipped foes. But I had signed up and orders were orders!

 

And for my first mission, those orders were to carry out an offensive patrol over Flugfeld Galital. This was an Austro-Hungarian aerodrome some distance to the north, on the far side of what looked from the planning map to be some rather high ground.

 

I decided to take five of us, using the 'Roster' screen to select four companions from the bottom of the list. I got Biron, Pinna, Buscaglia and Novelli - yes you get decent localised names! I'm not sure if this is because I have Capitaine Vengeur's medals pack, or some other mod, installed, but it's a neat touch.

 

I didn't waste any time, accepted the default loadout (no bombs, I was not going to weigh us down on our first flight over high ground) and headed to the flight line, where my virtual mechanics had the prop swinging as I popped into the cockpit. I opened the throttle immediately, countering a tendency for my machine to nose up on its four-wheel, cart-like undercarriage. Any attempt to pull her off quickly seemed futile and my heart was in my mouth as we got closer and closer to the trees at the end of the airfield. In FE you can 'ghost' through trees but it was still pretty scary! I managed to edge her gently off the grass just as the boundary came up and just about cleared the tree-tops, knowing from past experience with the Voisin that she would happily stall if pushed too hard. Phew!

 

 

I gained height slowly, being careful to keep the speed up and not pull the nose up too steeply, for fear of a stall close to the ground, which could have only one ending. Gradually, as we gained height, I was able to spare a bit of time to observe and admire my immediate surroundings, which consisted of pleasant, arable land, fairly level and scattered with many tracts of woodland.

 

 

So far, so good! But there was a long way to go. If I had known what lay ahead, I would have been a lot less keen to keep going!

 

...to be continued!

[33LIMA 972]

Part 2 - into the mountains!

 

At the head of my flight of five obsolescent 120HP Voisins, I set a course to the north. As to what might lie there, I now consulted my inflight map.

 

 

While the First Eagles planning (pre-flight) map is a conventional one, with roads, rivers, major place-names and so on, all marked using conventional map legend or symbols, and bears an excellent resemblance to what you see in-game, the FE 'in-flight' (in-game) map is quite different. It bears an even better resemblance to what you see in-game, because that's what it is - a zoomed-out 'satellite' view, like an FE version of Google Earth without the streetview or the holiday snaps...and without place-names. Great for navigation but maybe not so good for tourists. I have FE's map set to suppress aircraft symbols, so no AWACS eye-in-the-sky for me. In fact I can't even see my on plane's icon, but it's always at the near or 'cut' end of your yellow navigational track, which you cannot easily eliminate. In the planing map, you can drag about your waypoints except for the 'target/objective' one. So in the planning map before flying the mission,  I usually drag the waypoint before the objective - the 'initial point', in Strike Fighters bomber-style jargon - some way back. This is because, if you use the SF/FE 'next encounter' a.k.a. 'warp' feature, this often brings you out at your initial point, and dragging it back gives me a longer run-in to the objective area and thus more time to assess the situation and make plans according to what I can see.

 

I didn't do that this time, because I had decided to fly this mission in real time. I wanted to see how my AI flight-mates performed, crossing very high ground. And I wanted to enjoy the view, as we did so.

 

And that's exactly what I got. I could not yet see my objective on the map, and because there was no continuous 'river of brown' set of trenchlines, I could not easily make out the front lines either, although I suspect they are the intermittent linear patches of brown you can see, in between my flight-path and the solitary, cross-marked enemy airfield, way off to the east. But I pushed on steadily, opening her up as my flight caught up with me.

 

 

Some way off to my right, I could make out a plume of smoke, which climbed a short distance into the sky. A crash, a bombing raid...I could not tell.

 

 

Here's the view ahead from my cockpit, complete with Stuka-like vision panel in the floor beneath my feet. And the view to the side, traversed fully right. I think I will hand-edit the plane's data file before my next flight, to give myself a greater view to the rear; it's a simple thing to do. No point in a 360 degree 'Linda Blair' job, as the observer will block most of the view directly to my rear, anyway.

 

 

The FE Voisin - a freeware add-on by modder Stephen1918 - is a great little model which nicely captures the original's sleek lines - 'sleek' as pushers go, anyway. And my animated observer looked the part, as he scanned the skies most assiduously, peering in warlike fashion along the barrel of his Hotchkiss...within the limited traverse and elevation he had.

 

 

My flight weaved about quite a bit behind me, which they often do in FE, but they kept up fairly well, although I had to throttle back a bit at first to enable them to climb up to my height, after an early effort to gain altitude took me somewhat far above them. Having to level off for a while was rather disconcerting, because I was fairly sure I was going to need a fair bit of height to get over the high ground ahead of us, and our Voisins were not great climbers. I felt a distinct tingle of excitement when, all too soon, steeply-rising ground began to loom out of the mist ahead. The mission's first challenge had arrived!

 

 

...to be continued!

[33LIMA 972]

Nice scenery...not-so-nice people

 

As we flew on, the outline of mighty mountains loomed ever more clearly in the haze ahead. Before too much longer, I would be attempting to cross this impressive but already-daunting terrain. Soon, I was flying over the foothills and indulging in some scenic sight-seeing before things got too serious for such pastimes.

 

 

To my right front, some way off, I could make out the top of a plume of smoke, rising from dead ground on the other side of a snow-backed ridge. On the near, white flank of this ridge, I could make out the dark, zig-zag lines traced in the snow by the entrenching tools of many men, friend or foe, seeking shelter from storms of fire and steel. The front was now not too far away.

 

 

I checked my map, concentrating on the yellow line marking our planned route across the mountains to our objective, the enemy airfield we knew as Flugfeld Galital. For now, I decided I would stick to the planned route, rather than attempting to find a way through along the lines of suitable valleys.That might come later, if rising ground looked too dangerous. I was conscious of the need to avoid flying up a re-entrant, only to find I did not have the power to get out over the other, higher end, and perhaps also not the elbow-room to turn around and go back, a sure recipe for disaster. For me and for the men I was leading today, and whom I was determined to bring back alive...Biron, Pinna, Busceglia and Novelli. First Eagles, I find, is good at encouraging you to identify with and try to look after your men.

 

 

Behind me, my flight was still weaving but also still with me. On we went, over the white ridge. As we flew over its crest, the land fell away sharply in dramatic fashion, to reveal a pleasant valley along whose floor, far below, the blue snake of a river wound its steady way.

 

And that's when things started to get interesting,

 

 

On a clearing on the upper reaches of a deeply-forrested spur to my right front, I saw a cluster of flashes, each  succeeded quickly by a puff of grey smoke. What was this? At first, I thought I was perhaps seeing an artillery battery in action, firing salvoes against some distant target. This notion persisted for perhaps two seconds, until the first flashes burst in the skies around me. No room for doubt, there, now -  it was a enemy flak battery and their target was my flight!

 

 

...to be continued!

[33LIMA 972]

Avanti! Onward, to the objective!

 

The Austrian flak that greeted us as we flew into the valley was intense and unrelenting. Right, I said to myself, I now have TWO problems, where before I had but one - to get myself and my flight over these b***dy mountains, which looked like being hard enough, and now, to avoid being shot down by all this anti-aircraft fire. And this, in an aeroplane whose performance seemed barely enough to pull the skin off a rice pudding. I reminded myself of the predicament of General Slim in Burma, circa 1943. Feeling the need to say something to buck up the morale of his staff after a litany of disasters at the hands of the seemingly-invincible Imperial Japanese Army, he had been able only to say 'Well, it could be worse!' and when asked 'How?', could only reply, 'It could be raining!'

 

On we went. I edged our flight left, over to the west, but it seemed the front ran more or less east to west here. We were now behind enemy lines and a legitimate target for every Austro-Hungarian AA gunner in the area with a round to spare and a point to prove.

 

 

After a while, I realised that the flak was just not going to ease off and resorted to weaving as much as I could, without actually flying backwards. As time passed and body, soul and airframe stayed together, it became clear that the flak's bark was definitely worse than its bite and I would just have to trust to my luck to get through. I kept on weaving, though - in the words of an old Balkan proverb, 'God will look after your donkey; but tie him up, as well'.

 

 

So I concentrated on flying the final leg, up to our 'initial point', the last waypoint short of the objective area. I was already no longer flying straight and level so instead of sticking to the plotted course, I looked at my map, for a route I could take down the remaining valleys, perhaps relying on a spot of what today might be called 'terrain masking' to screen me from at least some of that b***dy AA fire (you can't see much of it in these pics, but it was there, and darn noisy too).

 

Down my selected valley we went. Had I been flying a virtual Tornado or Jaguar, I would have hugged the contours but in my 'prehistoric packing case', I stayed quite high, reluctant to arrive in the vicinity of the objective on the deck with a plane reluctant to leave it.

 

 

As we neared the end of the valley, I peered ahead, to the right of its exit, where, I knew, lay our objective. In about the position where the enemy airfield must be, looming over a low ridge on the valley's lower right flanks, I could make out some plumes of dark brown smoke. Something was clearly afoot; what exactly it was, I must surely find out soon. Glad to be over the hills and to have survived the flak, I relaxed momentarily, then tensed again, as we edged closer to whatever it was, that was going on, down there.

 

 

...to be continued!

[33LIMA 972]

E' meglio vivere un giorno da leone che cent'anni da pecora!

('Better live a day as a lion, than a hundred years as a sheep' - Italian slogan from WW1)

 

We emerged from the hills, my anti-flak evasive moves having left my comrades still with me, but straggling somewhat. Ahead, the enemy airfield came into view. A plume of dark smoke rose from its centre, slowly dispersing.

 

 

I scanned the skies all around anxiously, but there was nothing to be seen of any friendly bombers, who might have caused this apparent damage. Nor was there as yet anything to be seen of the occupants of the damaged airfield...perhaps they were not at home, or if they were, had been caught on the ground by bombing? I wasn't sure whether to be relieved or disappointed but it was clearly too soon to feel either, just yet.

 

As we approached the enemy aerodrome, the AA fired died away briefly, but soon resumed. This time I could see AA guns around the airfield perimeter had opened a steady fire on us, soon joined by some optimistic, long-range bursts of tracer fire from a solitary machine gun on the far side of the field.

 

I chose to ignore this rather unfriendly reception and flew unconcernedly right up to, then over, the Austro-Hungarian airfield. I noted the two short rows of bomb craters, one in the centre of the field and the other, straddling a row of unidentified aircraft parked in front of some canvas hangars.

 

 

The briefing hadn't mentioned a friendly air raid, though I find in FE that if I am tasked to patrol up to an enemy airfield, even though I'm not the actual escort, my flight quite often turns out to be in support of a friendly raid. The First Eagles virtual staff officers are busy and well-organised people, keeping lots of stuff on the go and providing for many an interesting mission, but perhaps they're not always as communicative as they might be.

 

Looking off to my left, I could see a couple of plumes of smoke rising from wooded foothills, along what might have been a track away from the airfield. Did this mark casualties along the line of retreat of the Italian formation which had evidently recently raided the airfield below us? And if so, where were the enemy aircraft which were the most likely cause of these casualties?

 

 

They weren't too far away. And they were now heading back to their airfield, right in our direction. They were a bunch of Pflaz eindekkers, known to German aviators as 'flying death cards' because their black-edged white colour scheme made them look like the sort of little cards then printed to mark someone's 'passing'. Now, they seemed likely to wish to herald our passing, as they had probably done recently for a couple of our friends.

 

 

It wasn't long before I saw them, coming in behind us in a manner which left no room for doubt as to their intentions towards us. Not being massively confident in the air-to-air combat capabilities of our mounts against these nasty little aeroplanes, I decided that I would see if I could outrun them. I also admit that I had in mind trying to draw them towards higher ground: if FE's Artificial Intelligence pilots had difficulty in handling such terrain, especially with lower-powered aircraft, they might be wrecked there. All's fair in love, war and air combat sims, and anyway I wanted to get some evidence of how well the AI coped with terrain avoidance. So I kept the throttle wide open and - avoiding making a sharper turn which the enemy could cut across - I very gradually steered us east, nudging south a few degrees at a time, back towards higher ground.

 

 

It didn't take too long, nor did it come as any particular surprise, for me to realise that the enemy aircraft were steadily closing the range. Soon, the first, tentative long-range tracers slid out towards our rearmost machines, from the enemies at the head of the pack.

 

 

It was time to cast caution to the wind and get stuck into the enemy. I gave the command to attack, watched briefly as my comrades broke and fell upon their pursuers with commendable aggression, then wheeled around myself to join in the developing air combat.

 

 

...to be continued!

[33LIMA 972]

The Fat Lady sings...

 

In a vertically-banked turn, being careful to keep ny nose below the horizon to avoid spinning out, I whipped around into the fight, looking for a target. It was five against four, but I wasn't sure how well our big, slow pushers would fare against the eindekkers.

 

 

One of the enemy went low, so I banked over and tried to get behind him, or at least, bring him into my observer's field of fire. With no forward-firing guns of my own, that was all I could do. I have some experience of flying FE2b pushers in FE and OFF and knew the drill, having managed to set up some kills for my observer in both sims. How would it be in the Voisin? Not so easy, I soon found out.

 

 

My chosen target pulled up sharply and we ended up in a short series of 'rolling scissors', each of us seemingly trying to force the other out in front. He soon seemed to be winning.

 

 

For a moment, my attention was diverted from my own immediate danger to a dramatic development ahead of me. There was a bang and looking left, I saw that there had been a collision between one of my planes and an enemy.  The Voisin had lost most of his right wing structure and fell like a shot bird, trailing grey smoke. The Pfalz had not escaped lightly and was following him down, with only some ribs and spars remaining from his left wingtip. Two explosions on the ground anounced that it was now four against three.

 

 

My own opponent seemed to have lost some ground, which was just as well, because one of my remaining comrades was in serious trouble and only I seemed able to save him. Ahead and just above me, a Pfalz was hard on the heels of a Voisin, snapping out vicious bursts of tracer fire. The Voisin started weaving as the rounds whipped past him. The Pfalz stuck to his tail but in doing so, enabled me to cut some corners and close the range.

 

 

 

Above my head, I could see the barrel of my observer's Hotchkiss swinging back and forth as he tracked the Pfalz. But he resolutely held his fire. 'Shoot! Shoot! What are you waiting for?' I said to myself. Finally, he seemed to hear me. His rounds punched into the enemy machine, which broke off the attack on the Voisin.

 

 

My comrade banked away to safety, but now I was the one in trouble. Rounds crashed into my machine somewhere behind me and it was my turn to throw my machine into a turn, as my former opponent renewed our little contest.

 

 

It didn't take me long to realise that I had turned into a re-entrant running into a rather high ridge. Just the sort of move I had been keen to avoid en route! And now, there was an Austrian behind me, waiting to hammer me into the ground even if I managed to avoid flying into it. Perhaps conscious of the danger, he seemed to pull up and hang back.

 

 

A lot of good it did me. Not daring to risk turning around, with high ground looming either side and an enemy scout behind, I tried to fly up and out, over the end of the gully. I was just short of clearing the crest and getting away with it, when my plane shuddered on the verge of a stall. The ground below me was rising sharply ahead but I still managed to recover, hold off the first stall and resume my bid for freedom. But a second stall quickly developed and this time, I didn't have the altitude to make any sort of recovery. I prayed the undercarriage would break my short fall into the rising ground but my machine smashed heavily into the grassy slope in a slightly nose-down attitude...and blew up.

 

 

I bit my lip and switched the viewpoint to my enemy, half hoping he would also come a cropper. And at first, it seemed that he might. He flew on, into the same re-entrant, his engine sounding not at full throttle. But he was in no danger; with a roar he opened up, raised his nose and flew effortlessly up and away, out of trouble.

 

 

The mission debrief showed three crews killed - Buscaglia's and Pinna's (who got a kill apiece, one being the collision victim) and Novelli's. Only Biron escaped. A sobering first mission, all the way across those mountains, all of us getting there safely despite the peaks and the flak...and then to lose four out of five.

 

But it was one of the most intense and satisfying campaign missions I've flown in any WW1 airwar sim, and the terrain I can only describe as magnificent, one of the best I've seen in any flight sim, as I hope the screenshots show. I should emphasise that before flying, to avoid any possibility of FPS loss or stutters with all that scenery on a mere 512Mb 8800GT, I had dialled back my usual horizon and ground objects settings, from 'Far' to 'Normal' and from 'High' to 'Medium'. And she still looked great!

 

It's also worth mentioning that there were other flights active - the ones I picked up on the FE view system were another flight of Voisins (likely the ones who had bombed the enemy airfield) and this chap:

 

 

The only evidence I saw of any possible AI difficulty with the high ground was a single damaged Voisin near a peak, crewless, which had as likely been shot down, as crashed.

 

I'm a dedicated Western Front virtual flier with comparatively little interest in other theaters, but with a mod of this quality bringing the Italian Front to life, this is a First Eagles expansion I'm going to spend a lot of time with. If campaign missions flying 'Fokker Fodder' like the cute-sy but not-very-deadly Voisin can be so immersive and compelling, I know I will have even more fun flying faster types like the distinctive Austrian Albatros fighters and many others like the Phoenix scouts and Hansa-Brandenberg two-seaters. It seems very unlikely that any other WW1 sim, anytime soon or perhaps ever, will feature such a good planeset for the Italian front or such great terrain for it. I look forward to the possibility of a variant to suit the last year of the war, when more open warfare pushed the front lines back and forth from Caporetto to the Piave and back to Vittorio Veneto, and would allow other types like the Hanriot HD-1 and Camel to feature in the orders of battle. But that would be icing on the cake. This is a top-notch free expansion for a great WW1 flight sim. Very highly recommended.

[MigBuster 2,887]

Its literally a pram with wings - great stuff!

[+gterl 1,214]

Thx for the review...nice to see you like the terrain

[thedogfighter 0]

Beautiyful map clearly a free addon! Great mission, loving this reports.

[jeanba 1,920]

Great account, thank you !