CVAN-65 FSX Freeware

[gray eagle]

Any plans with populating the documents folder with "Stuff". Right now, nothing there.

Any plans adding any additional surface escorts i.e. DD's DLG's etc ?

For now, looks like a DLG and two sewer pipes.

 

[lazarus]

Looks good Laz!

Now tell me, could not help but spot the parked Vigi in the background - how did you get the wings to fold without the rudder also folding - if my eyes see correctly!

I ran the A-5 through MCX, locked the animations like that, and changed the texture names on one machine so the serials and modex numbers can be changed. You'll note that both of the parked A-5's have different numbers than each other and the user aircraft. I can U/L those if any one wants those. I did try changing the tail fold animation tag on the A-5 so that the tail could be left unfolded. Alas, the animation scrambled.

Grey Eagle; in the aiCarriers folder there is a cfg file for aiC that has formations set with all the stuff in the upload. Drop that into your Aicarriers conf'd folder, you'll have options for Big E, Showboat, Billy B, helios and SSN's. The SSN's, once underweigh, submerge to periscope depth, and are 8-10 miles ahead, and 5 miles or so left and right of track. They show on traffic radar2, and will surface when the stop command is selected, or; the sharp-eye'd may spot the periscope, though they leave a very small wake. I skipped a detailed explanation for now. But, the cfg is thus:

Title=CVAN-65_Enterprise
Unit.0-USS_CVAN-65_Enterprise,0,0
unit.1-USS_CVAN-65_Enterprise_deckstuff1,0,0

Long Beach has the same set up. I had to put railings and small bits on another model to get it through the compiler. You'll see it in the provided aicarriers cfg file.

The deck park is compiled into a model mirroring the deck height and geometry, set up as a ship with the same speed, the centre point is obviously coincident with the carrier. The carrier position and deckstuff positions must be the same numbers.
That's it.

...'Any plans adding any additional surface escorts i.e. DD's DLG's etc ? '...
CVAN, DLGN, CGN, SSN's, and equipment...Nine New models in this pack. Dude! I'm not a machine! But, someday. Right now, I'd like to get a mountain of crap off and uploaded; if life will co-operate, and quit throwing plagues, famines, locusts, commies, jack-booted fascists, cancers, Comanchero's, deaths, detonations, insurrections, CFIT's, wolves, Raskolnik's, jihadi's and hasasins at me - frequently all at once! - I might achieve some winnage.

 

[TARPSBird]

Lazarus, my flight deck guys are missing their textures. The other "deckstuff" looks OK.

 

[lazarus]

Whpus...I mean, hwsup...damn...WHUPS. I jammed the models into the container in the upload folder, and forgot textures. But, I'd forget the beytsim's if they weren't welded on...I'm was about to post a new flight deck texture in a 'mo, anyway.
Give me twenty minutes to bring the blood caffeine/nicotine/THC levels up to minimum life support level, and perform the daily vermin interdiction-by-fire, I'll pack up mods/corrections.
Cats working? Thanks for the eyes on.

 

[lazarus]

Replace your texture folders for 'E' and deckstuff. Much more painting to be done, but the deck looks better. Needs more dirt, though.

View attachment 73683

 

[lazarus]

Latest version, texture fixes, update

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nAwnyROOoPbNsBHc-16_ixTzoXYCpk5P


Can't attach a screen cap-Board total unfeature. Weird. Switched VPN routing, fixed. Very odd.

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The deck looks a bit...better? Much less sterile, anyway. needs more dirt. Isn't Dino's War Hoover luverly? 5 traps, ball fly's right to a centerline three wire every time, though the lens needs moving. Did a low and high approach, off axis approach, it waves off when it should. I also have to look at the tag for the shooter...move the BPDMS pepperboxes on to the deck clutter model so we can get away with one boat model for pre and post '72, maybe an early and late '60's deck park, add a HUP pre '63, a shuddering ishthouse for post '63...something like that. Map the shuttles at a way higher resolution. What else?

 

[expat]

Looks great! Like the idea of early and late 60's deck parks. Maybe also what she had during the Cuban missile crisis (though I think she had A-5 Vigi bombers, not the RA-5C back then).

 

[TARPSBird]

Looks great! Like the idea of early and late 60's deck parks. Maybe also what she had during the Cuban missile crisis (though I think she had A-5 Vigi bombers, not the RA-5C back then).

No Vigi's aboard during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The bomber Vigi's came aboard with VAH-7 the following year. Photo recce in 1962 would've been provided by a detachment of RF-8A's from VFP-62. I much prefer the 1960's/70's aircraft assortments vs present-day with just bunches of Hornets and some E-2's and C-2's.

 

[expat]

No Vigi's aboard during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The bomber Vigi's came aboard with VAH-7 the following year.

Hmm. One source I found agrees it was not until 1963 https://www.navysite.de/cvn/cvn65deploy.htm

But then I also found this: https://www.flickr.com/photos/skyhawkpc/15243835090 Perhaps trials?

 

[expat]

And this: https://www.flickr.com/photos/skyhawkpc/8671670593/

Whatever the year - not sure it's important - nice photos of a beautiful aircraft!

 

[lazarus]

According to Miller, VAH-7 stood to at Sanford with 4 A3J-1's on 27 Jan 1962, a full complement of 12 aircraft deployed to the Med and joined Enterprise in Aug 1962.
Oct 1962 orbat for Enterprise's airgroup equipment was F-4's, F-8's, A-1's, A3J's, A-4's, Willy Fud's and HUP's.
I've also dig up a recently declassified strategic orbat for oct-dec 1962 which is fascinating.
We should have squeezed the trigger. Despite the Fat Boy's bellicose shoe-pounding, Khrushchev was un-happy with the fellow travellers in Cuba, who he viewed as unstable and unreliable. He also went into it scared, against his 'better judgement', if such a thing exists for communists.
The US had a 4-1 advantage over the soviets in all nuclear systems. Most tellingly, the reaction time for soviet forces, even at their highest readiness, was close on order 12-24 hours for many strategic systems. The biggest single immediate threat to CONUS was the RDS-6 tactical gravity bombs in Cuba.
Turkey and europe would have been smeared. It is likely that some expendable beaten zones on the eastern seaboard might have been 're-organized', and Florida may have had some supplementary craters installed. May have. ADC was as thick as flies on a falafel stand around the quarantine, large numbers of TAC assets were in position to interdict any strikes coming from cuba.
The Warsaw pact, Cuba, the Soviet Union, and surprisingly, the PRC, would have ceased to exist as polities with in twelve hours. The Moscow complex alone was targeted by some 300 high kiloton and multi megaton weapons.
We should have shot. Western civilization would have decisively owned total victory, communism in russia, china AND THE EU would be blowing in the wind, now and forever, at low cost (DC-POOF-meh) to CONUS, and we'd not have the existential threat to Western Civilization that the PRC and EUSSR poses today.
Crap. I might have went to far.
Anyway, we can speculate, and that golden moment is long gone.

 

[Bjoern]

I just flipped off an innocent computer screen. Good work!

 

[expat]

I've also dig up a recently declassified strategic orbat for oct-dec 1962 which is fascinating.

Lazarus, leaving aside Armageddon, (you have seen Dr Strangleove (see below) and know the theory of MAD), interested to know what you found - what was the Order of Battle at the time of the crisis, i.e., what were the cv deployments and squadrons?

 

[lazarus]

I just flipped off an innocent computer screen. Good work!

Top kek. Understand, there are large dollops of splenetic humours to hose down all sides of this bit o' history. The transcripts from DC, Kremlin, Havana are all alarming. Then and now. The hair-raising disconnectedness, WAG intelligence estimates, paranoia, Castro and C3I inertia at the top had all of the decision makers way behind the curve, or right out of the loop. Then and now.
The A-5 is a perfect capsule example. 1955 proposal, 1958 first flight, service entry 1962, and discarded from it's design role by 1964. I have to sit down and calculate what the price on that sucker per pound is, adjusted for inflation. It's not all wasted, of course. The accumulated skill capital out of all of it more than offset the dollar value.
The Navy had no requirement for the A-5, until one was written for N.A.A, because it was super sexy, there was an H-bomb in the middle somewhere, and it needed a giant boat under it, which made Admirals happy. But really, ship-board strategic bombers never worked well as as bombers. The super carrier is an enormously powerful, persistent, flexible, tough and expensive warship that has affected most aspects of the planets maritime and political thinking. It has also created a culture of risk aversion in command-level thinking. All because nobody involved really knew what they were doing. Nuclear planning and doctrine is even worse, though at least the yields have come down with CEP's.
Can't say that brain trust has improved in quality, and the operational environment, all 8 billion monkeys of it, has become much hotter.
All any of us can do is react, which starts you out in a positive feedback loop, which always ends badly.
In practical terms, I see no resolution. We are what we are, and this is the best we've got.

 

[lazarus]

The surface quarantine line was established at 2PM GMT on October 24, 1962, as an arc 500 miles from Cape Maysi, Cuba. That range was chosen to be out of range of the Soviet IL-28 bombers based in Cuba.
The initial line was to be kept by 12 destroyers from the Second Fleet’s Task Force 136, a task force established specifically to implement the quarantine. In addition, the aircraft carrier USS Essex formed the foundation of an anti-submarine warfare carrier group, supplemented by ASW squadrons based in Bermuda and Puerto Rico. By the time the quarantine was finally lifted, the quarantine line had involved an at least Essex and ?Bennington?, two cruisers, 22 destroyers, and two guided missile frigates on two quarantine lines, “Walnut” and “Chestnut.”
Enterprise and Independence groups operated east of Florida. USN and RCN surface and air ran ASW and recce operations well out into the Atlantic.
Gitmo, PR, Key West were jammed full, Marine amphibious forces Atlantic was in there. Florida was out of ramp space, and SAC had B-47's parked on any airport that could land one. It was a big show.
Literally, a coin toss away from some hairy going down.

 

[TARPSBird]

According to Miller, VAH-7 stood to at Sanford with 4 A3J-1's on 27 Jan 1962, a full complement of 12 aircraft deployed to the Med and joined Enterprise in Aug 1962.
Oct 1962 orbat for Enterprise's airgroup equipment was F-4's, F-8's, A-1's, A3J's, A-4's, Willy Fud's and HUP's.

VAH-7 was in fact onboard Enterprise for their maiden voyage to the Med and probably during the Missile Crisis as well, so I stand corrected from my previous post. Squadron strength was 12 jets... I wonder how many stayed aboard during regular ops. Even for a big ship like the Enterprise 12 Vigi's would take up a lot of deck space.

 

[lazarus]

https://drive.google.com/open?id=19UDQdqi7JgeFd4FpmhmghrihMml-v6LP

That's a couple of monographs on the naval operations and ORBAT. The second CVS was Randolph, not Bennington. It seems likely that Enterprise's A3J's were put ashore in favour of more A-4's and A-1,s, as Independence sent her A-3's ashore in exchange for more light attack.

Model wise- I have a nice FOXTROT ready(GOLFS, HOTELS, JULIET'S, ECHO'S,NOVEMBERS, WHISKEYS - all redone and diving). Some diving GUPPYS, RCN units, Gun Gearings, a so-so VN FRAM Gearing. DDG-4's can be had, there are a couple of freighters in Henrick's AI packages that are dead ringers for soviet-era freighters. Klaus has the gun cruisers out, and I've done the Albany's, don't know if any of those were around.
Aircraft are covered fairly well, down to Seabats and Trackers. I'd love to puzzle out the rest of the F-4's, those guy's are really uncooperative though.
So it's fairly easy to mount a FSX 1962 boogaloo.

 

[Bjoern]

...

I take the flip back if the last seven sentences were poorly veiled sarcasm. If not, I raise the ante to two flips.

A first strike on Cuba would have most likely killed my parents and their assorted family, because unlike the average bored-as-bollocks armchair general in his comfy air conditioned, fortified TAC, SAC, FAG, DEW, MEW, SLEW and SAGE, GAGE, WAGE protected office in the backwater of a continent filled with mostly nothing, East and West Germany were each one densely populated bullseye for anything with a blast radius larger than a cherry bomb in the arsenal of the opposing side.

So list all the ORBATs, plans and equipment down to the last maintenance item all you want, but avoid the bloody rest.

 

[lazarus]

I would have ceased to exist as well. My entire life's been spent in one bulls eye or another. Cashing in the chips was always no more than 90 minutes back, so I'an I are pretty indifferent. They can only kill me once. People also keep mistaking Governance with Politics. I am also guessing people are mostly unfamiliar with the History of Errors as applied to Games Theory, and plotting the frequently grizzly outcomes.
'62 was a weird node. I'm still not certain which way we were lucky, or not. Mathematically speaking, we've got to an interesting place again, where the total mega-tonnage has been falling dramatically as high accuracy delivery systems become cheap and easy, and the requirement for an expensive Hydrogen weapon to ensure a high SKP vanishes. Even Iran can field long range weapons accurate enough to hold hard targets at risk with conventional or sub kiloton warheads. Cheap accuracy turned out to be the crucial value, and nobody expected it. It is possible to conduct pre-emptive counter force strikes with conventional weapons; off the shelf and cheap as the line between tactical and strategic grade weapons vanishes. This has driven the nuclear use threshold down. It's very analogous to '62 where the players with the large nuclear investments were in a 'use it or lose it corner' with otherwise non-peer actors enabled by near-peer actors.
Also, the misanthropic sperg-engineer in me says 'Yeah! Cool! Twist that key, lets see what happens!'. I totally get why Teller once did the math for multi-gigaton Arbitrarily Large Staged Devices.

But back to the boat.

 

[lazarus]

Basic light maps. Yet more work is required, but the hard part is mercifully over with. I. Loathe. Graphics. I have to run some LMs for the deck stuff, but those are just a red night light glow. Add to your enterprise texture folder, yes to overwrite. Looks aright in preview. Still may be too bright once in sim, and the glow forward needs some adjusting. Honestly, I rarely ever night fly the sim. Have y'all noticed that FSX does crappy night? FS8 does night better than FSX. Go figure. I think it's just that the night maps all need brightness cut by about 60%, but who in the heck want's to run million 6 textures through editor.
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