By
33LIMA
Back to CFS3...in the Martin B-26 Marauder
I was - and suppose I still am - a fan of Microsoft's last fling in the Combat Flight Simulator series, CFS3. I didn't especially like the air-to-air combat - AI planes flying at empty weight meant that even heavier, more sluggish enemies could often prove frustrating foes. And there was the unfortunate fact that CFS3 ignored the strategic bomber component (even decent add-ons like Firepower, which added 4-engined bombers, just tended to expose CFS3's limitations as a bomber sim). European Air War, this wasn't.
Neverthess, CFS3 was billed primarily as a simulator of tactical air power, 1943-45, and that, I felt, it did reasonably well. The radio and intercomm chatter and the wingman commands were very limited, of course. And I didn't particularly like it's 'alternative history' version of WW2, as presented in the dynamic campaign, with German shipping flowing freely in the English Channel in daylight and the Germans having the possibility of invading England even late in the war. It's World War Two, Jim, but not as we know it. A dynamic campaign that's...well, a bit too dynamic.
But unlike IL-2 at the time - I mean, as in, over ten years ago - CFS3 provided rather good coverage of the European Theatre of Operations, which was and remains my main interest, by a wide margin. So I played CFS3 a lot, and downloaded many user-made aircraft, like those of the 1% and GroundCrew teams.
I also ended up buying many of the CFS3 add-ons, my favourite being the D-Day one, which improved quite a bit on the historical accuracy of the dynamic campaign. This expansion I could never get to install correctly in Vista. But salvation was at hand - in the shape of the ETO Expansion, a massive user mod which features improved terrain, a huge increase in the planeset (including many of the aforementioned user-made models) and an 'era switcher' which enables the player- as in the recent CUP mod for IL-2 '46 - to configure the sim to cover different eras, in this case from the Spanish Civil War to the end of WW2.
Just recently, I have been prompted to fire up CFS3+ETO Expansion once more, by the arrival of the latest version of Ankor's DX9 mod. To the dynamic shadows and sea reflections of previous versions, this adds ground object and cloud shadows...and, joy of joys, enables players to lose at long last the dreadful 'fisheye (wide-angle) lens' external view that always gave CFS3 aircraft a distorted appearance, which I for one loathed.
As an illustration of this, here is a picture of the rather unattractive Whitley bomber, one of the ETO Expansion's planes, without Ankor's mod...
...and here is a pic of the Expansion's Coastal Command version of the Whitley, with the latest DX9 mod. Note that despite the camera being zoomed in more closely, the perspective is much more natural. You can also see the shadows cast on the aircraft itself, and also the ground shadows, cast here by trees, clouds and folds in the ground. I'm not saying it makes the poor old Whitley pretty, mind, but the natural perspective is a big improvement.
Having fired up CFS3+ETO Expansion with the DX9 mod installed, I naturally took several virtual aircraft up for a virtual spin. It was soon apparent that some of the planes which benefit most are those USAAF machines in natural metal finish, like this P-47 Thunderbolt (this is the stock CFS3 one, with the latest DX9 mod applied)...
...and here's the P-38 Lightning - again, this is the stock CFS3 version:
So I thought I'd go for a campaign with one of these nice silver birds, in the ETO Expansion. I chose the B-26 Marauder - this is how the Expansion's natural metal version looks (unlike IL-2- the 'skin' supplied is used for all planes of that type, in game). Note how the reflections on the fuselage nicely pick up on the terrain below. I''ll have one of those, I decided, for my first CFS3 campaign for some time.
Having selected the D-Day era, I started by creating a new pilot, chose a bomber career for him, then used the 'Change aircraft' option to switch from the allocated B-25 Mitchell to my nice shiny B-26G. I was undeterred by the real Marauder's bad reputation. Being a 'hot' machine for a bomber, she had at first a bad name for crashes, earning unsavoury nicknames like the one in this mission report's title, also 'The Widowmaker'. By 1944 things had improved and I expected I'd appreciate advantages such as the good defensive and offensive armament, high speed and tricycle undercarriage. 'Baltimore Whore' or not, she's not just a pretty face.
I kicked off the campaign and began to remember how CFS3's dynamic campaign handles these things. I was started in May 1944, about a month before the real D-Day, although I knew that my unit's performance could influence this. I was placed at the lead of the squadron operation, flying from RAF St Eval in Cornwall. I can't recall which Bomb Squadron we were flying with, but CFS3 isn't particularly strong on creating a strong sense of unit, and any resemblance between that and the markings on your aircraft is co-incidental.
On campaign, CFS3 offers you one of a set range of mission types, which you can opt to change. I never worked out whether there were any campaign advantages to be had, between which missions you chose and when. Commonly, you start with an anti-shipping missions, whichever side you are playing for. And that's what I got. I was placed at the head of two flights of four B-26s - bombers in CFS3 fly fighter-style 'finger four' formations, widely-spaced to boot.
Our target was enemy shipping down to the south-west. Not quite in the English Channel, but still, it was rather silly of the Germans to expose whatever ships it was to overwhemling air power in daylight.
Well, it wasn't quite daylight yet. It was just before dawn as we formed up for take-off. But it would be daylight, by the time we got to the target area. I had accepted a torpedo armament - bombs being the alternative, naturally - so we started with these rather short, fat airborne tin fish slung under our silver bellies. If I'd known they'd be external - and if I knew if CFS3 replicated their drag, which I didn't - I might have gone for bombs.
A fat lot of good it likely would have done me, as it turned out.
The second flight of four B-26s was already in the air so I wasted no time in taking off to the north, passing over St Eval again as I began a wide turn to the left, to come around to our assigned track out to the target, which lay to the south-south-west.
I kept throttled back to let the others catch up, and it wasn't long before all eight bombers were stacked up behind and either side of me, sadly in their wide fighter formations. At least the risk of mid-air collisions should be low!
The 'warp/move to next event' feature in CFS3 has evolved to a very fast form of time acceleration, instead of the CFS1 and CFS2 'teleport' equivalent. It remains a very convenient way of flying what would otherwise be longish, uneventful legs in the typical CFS3 campaign mission. The trick is not to leave it too late to interrupt this 'very fast forward' process. This is especially important in torpedo or other low level attacks, for you 'warp' at a fixed altitude, about 14,000 feet in this case, which is much too high an attack profile fo most CFS3 missions. And if enemies were spawned based on radar detection, which I suspect they may not be, well at that sort of height they would have seen you coming from many miles away.
So while I flew a direct course to the target, I took care to break the 'warp' at intervals, which not only made sure I could lose altitude in good time, but also gave me a chance to admire the sunrise and the reflective effects on my aircraft.
I forgot to check if the briefing advised if we had a fighter escort - you often have on a CFS3 campaign mission, and in this case it was a flight of Mustangs, four I think. They were soon to make themselves useful.
...to be continued!
