A-20 Question

T

tonybones2112

Charter Member
The A-20 was used, in the first batch, to the British as the "Havoc" nightfighter, and by the US in the Pacific as The P-70 nightfighter. Anyone got plans on doing these versions for CFS2?

Bones
 
Tonybones,

When I get around to it, I was going to ask Tom Sanford if he would mind doing an early-war version of the Havoc. The original early-war Havocs were powered by Twin Wasps, not Wright R-2600 Cyclones. It will depend on time. I suppose we could always slap a little black paint on her for now...
 
There was a A-20G Hovac in the CFS2 library...and Alpha Oldies one...but the link is now dead. I have the plane on disc...would need to dig out the individual weapons files...I have a panel set installed in the plane...complete with VC gauges and bomb site window.

OBIO
 
The ALphaOldies A-20G was pulled by user request? I know TR had his stuff pulled from the library.

OBIO
 
One of my wishes is that we can turn the night-fighter into a DB-7, sans antennae.

The trick will be changing the engine specs and weight. The DB-7s, later becoming the Boston Mk. I and II in British hands, were initially equipped with Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasps of 1,100hp each, and then shifted to the Wright R-2600 for the Mk. II and subsequent models.

The Boston Mk. IIs and IIIs with the Wright R-2600 engines were actually faster than a Hurricane and almost as fast as an Early model Spitfire, an impressive feat for 1940 /1941!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-20_Havoc
 
Rami said:
One of my wishes is that we can turn the night-fighter into a DB-7, sans antennae.

The trick will be changing the engine specs and weight. The DB-7s, later becoming the Boston Mk. I and II in British hands, were initially equipped with Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasps of 1,100hp each, and then shifted to the Wright R-2600 for the Mk. II and subsequent models.

The Boston Mk. IIs and IIIs with the Wright R-2600 engines were actually faster than a Hurricane and almost as fast as an Early model Spitfire, an impressive feat for 1940 /1941!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-20_Havoc
Click to expand...

The Havoc I with Mk IV radar and the DB-7A night fighters are two of the variants I'd like to see someday. I see them as relevant as the Mosquito and Beau night fighters for British enthusiasts. Tom's work above on the P-70 fills in a gap in US night fighter history, I can't wait to fly it.

I have an American skin for Colin Muir's Beau Mk1 night fighter, with WD's Beaus and a friend here is assembling me the Zero driveway-field mod for the A6M5 nightfghter as soon as I can get him the scan of the tail code and gun location. I'd love to have time to devour Cody's book and with you builders closing the gap and completing the collection, we can make the night skies dangerous. Rami, I'd love to have the skill to enter your contest.

I was friends with a man from England who confirmed to me that indeed the Germans had (at least) one of the D0-335 dedicated night fighters operational. He was on board a Mosquito recon doing bomb-damage assessment before dawn one morning in 1945 when one creeped up on them and took a shot at them. The thing was fast and hard to shake and the pilot was a bit of an enthusiastic chap who wanted to down them. Selwyn told me this about the time Monogram Models released their -335 in 1/48 scale.

A plane I got my first download session at Simviation back in Oct. is the twin engine Potez night fighter. That thing is a treat. I salute the boys over at Groundcrew; when you get close in to their He-111 the sparks of cannon and machine-gun hits on it are quite apparent. Any night fighter freaks like me reading this, PADBURY AIRCRaFT has the Boulton-Paul Defiant in day and night fighter skins.

Thanks guys, remember, war don;t stop at sundown. I'm going to take Akemi's IRVING up and see how many hits my newly aqquired VB B-29 can take.

Banzai!

Bonesimoto
 
Douglas DB-7

We badly need the early (and more elegant) versions of the Douglas DB-7. The only one avaiable is an old FS05 plane converted for FS98! This version was widely used by French and British pilts over Europe and Africa.

Lots of interesting ideas here:

http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/a/551/21

Take note of all Havocs variation:

http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/a/551/9

The early Twin Wasp engined bird has a more elegant tail.

Cheers

Pepe
 
Turbinlite Aircraft

There was one other attempt by the British to use the Havoc for nightfighting. This was the Turbinlite aircraft which mounted the 'Helmore Turbinlite' in the nose. At the time this was billed as 'The most powerful searchlight in the world'. As opposed to the 150amps of the Leigh light, this used 1,400amps and needed 48 12-volt batteries which were stored in the bomb bay. The heavy weight of these meant that it was not possible to arm the aircraft. Instead the plan was that the Turbinlite aircraft would identify an intruder with its radar and when within range illuminate it with the searchlight. Formating on the Havoc (at night!) would be a Hawker Hurricane attempting to keep position by looking at a white strip of paint, dimly illuminated at night, painted on the underside of the port wing of the Havoc. The Hurricane was then expected to shoot down the enemy aircraft whilst the Havoc pilot tried to hold it in the beam. It didn't work, but pilots tried very hard. Apparently there were a lot of sparks in the Havocs!
 
Hey TR and Bismark

Nole said:
You got that right...and it looks like it will make an appearance tomorrow: http://205.252.250.26/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1264965494
Click to expand...

Well, I'm not registered over at Simviation forums, so I'll answer TR's statement regarding flying night missions: 90 percent of my flying in CFS2 is night attacks and interceptions of bombers/night intruders. This became known at the end of WW2 onward as "all-weather" interception, we no longer here in 2010 have the dedicated "night fighter"and this term lingered into the Korean War before falling into disuse with the advent of all-weather capability in all interceptor/bomber aircraft. The night fighter is to conventional combat flight sims what the submarine is to the conventional surface naval combat sim: The creep and the sneak, which is what I am. Though I never had the pleasure(no sarcasm in that statement)of serving in my country's military, I can say I've had the full course of basic infantry training, and my speciality in that is sniper/recon, guerrilla and counter-guerrilla warfare. As far as I know there are no French Resistence/Soviet partisan scenarios in CALL OF DUTY, so I'll stay away from it, the closest thing to my form of infantry combat is LINE OF SIGHT:Vietnam in an infantry sim. I know more ways to blow a bridge than I'll ever need to know if I live for 250 years. Al Quaida wishes they had people like me. While the common infantry warfare is with the rifle and grenade, my war is with garrote and stiletto. So I know many of you salivate at the next Corsair repaint, I wet my pants when I found Akemi-San had done the Irving and Ki-45 nightfighters, and I'm deadliest with his Myrt nightfighter of all aircraft in CFS2, the Zero NF Oldwheat contributed to is second. We all have our pet interests, I find dogfighting in the day to be boring, around and around in circles. Before one of this form gave me one, I've spent hours looking for the FDG Dinah night fighter over at Simviation, Flightsim.com, Simnetwork, and thought, if I see one more Hellcat repaint i'm gonna puke. When I found night fighter versions of the Hellcat and Corsair, I left scorchmarks on my keyboard downloading them. There are Henderson Field missions of day interceptions. I want to see someone make a mission of an interception of Washing Machine Charley at night. The Russians tormented the Germans with nightly raids by PO-2 biplanes. The B-29 raids against Japan was useless and costly till Curtis LeMay stripped the guns, painted the bottoms black, and sent B-29s at 7000 feet at night with firebombs.

I've belonged to fundamentalist Christian forums that were not as helpful, friendly, and close knit as this forum is. What is keeping this sim(CFS2) alive is the attitude and treatment you people have given us newcomers, especially, as Jagdfleiger said of me, us esoteric ones. Obio did a hell of a job on Gryphon's He-219, and I think alone among all the active members Oldwheat's beard curls when I say the words "schrage musik". But we all get along, diversity is welcomed, and every DAY I come here and come away with something cool, like Dicken's French and Italian planes or TR's P-70 and the little I-15 Oldwheat contributed texture to.

To Tom(TR) and William Dickens I want to say,guys, you made my week with the P-70 and the little Italian NF. I hope the Brit skins are what Rami wanted for the British Havoc,if not,I hope we have the Havoc I soon, I want it for the Brit night fighter collection. Thanks to Bismark and TR, two more are crossed off my wish list. I'm off my soapbox now, I think I pretty well established that speaking formyuself, there is at least one pilot flying CSF2 whose primary interest in the sim is night operations. Just take those night fighters off the shelf, I'll sit and blow up Stirlings by myself. I got Ted Miller and K&M's Ju88s, I got the C6 mod that puts Schrage Musik into the 88, I can pop the wing off a Halifax from below faster than a lot of guys can crack a beer. Night fighters are my passion, most my now defunct model collection was night fighters.

On the subject of wish lists,I know a lot of talented builders got burned out over the years, to those of you left, we need a super duper multi skin 50 meg file length version of the Beech Staggerwing, something on the order of AH's Hurricane collection. I don't see that as an unusual wish as we have AC a lot of people have put thousands of hours into that never got off the drawing board in Germany. If nothing else, we have Paul Clawson's FS2000 version, which is hurtin' for a panel and looks like it would be a good canvas for SCW and Chinese nationalist skins. If I knew how to do all this myself, the SW would be my first project from the ground up. I think Mr. Clawson had plans for this plane; it's in that classic banana yellow skin but with two machine guns, something I'd say would be missing from the civilian version. To anyone willing, I have some rather nice photos of the panel.

Carry on friends, and thanks.

Bonesimoto
 
Dick said:
There was one other attempt by the British to use the Havoc for nightfighting. This was the Turbinlite aircraft which mounted the 'Helmore Turbinlite' in the nose. At the time this was billed as 'The most powerful searchlight in the world'. As opposed to the 150amps of the Leigh light, this used 1,400amps and needed 48 12-volt batteries which were stored in the bomb bay. The heavy weight of these meant that it was not possible to arm the aircraft. Instead the plan was that the Turbinlite aircraft would identify an intruder with its radar and when within range illuminate it with the searchlight. Formating on the Havoc (at night!) would be a Hawker Hurricane attempting to keep position by looking at a white strip of paint, dimly illuminated at night, painted on the underside of the port wing of the Havoc. The Hurricane was then expected to shoot down the enemy aircraft whilst the Havoc pilot tried to hold it in the beam. It didn't work, but pilots tried very hard. Apparently there were a lot of sparks in the Havocs!
Click to expand...

Dick, my British friend(now deceased) who rode shotgun on a Mosquito recon plane who was attacked by the legendary Do-335 nightfighter told me at the time of The Blitz the proposal was put forth to have thosands of trained pidgeons with a small explosive charge on them to pelt German night bombers. In the context of many decades after in the comfort and peace of our homes, that and the Turbinlite seems loony. In the context of the time when they were fighting for their lives, anything was considered credible. After making a long study of MI-5/MI-6(particlarly the writings of Peter Wright) we can understand the compartmentalized nature of warfare intelligence; I'm sure the originators of the Turbinlite were not aware that aircraft would soon be equipped with radar, nor were they told. We can say to them across the dim mists of history, nice try.

Bones
 
Nole said:
Tony, you say it so much better than I could. Me too. And now there's a P-70B model available too: http://www.simviation.com/simviation/?type=item&ID=301&page=13
Click to expand...

Nole, if it flies and carries a gun, I like it, I just love those night fighters. The challenge is different, you have work out different tactics, sometimes for different aircraft, and it appeals to me more than just flying in circles in the daytime. Thanks for the tip, I'm headed over there now.

Bones
 
question on engine sounds

gentlemen, I have the a-20g engine sounds, is there an earlier engine sound I would need to add for TR's first P-70 and this -B model?

Thanks

Bones
 
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