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RAF Banff/Dallachy scenery?

JensOle

JensOle

SOH-CM-2023
With Mr. Garwoods superb Mosquito hitting the FSX scene I found muself reading up on Coastal Command operations against German shipping on the Norwegian coast during the war (well, I'm hopping to see a FB.VI... ). Very interesting reading about the Banff and Dallachy strike wings flying Beaufighters and Mosquitos, often with Norwegian pathfinders or "outriders" in Mossies from No. 333 Sqn. Sad reading as well to see the heavy losses these units had during the closing months of the war going after German shipping in Norwegian fjords.

So I went searching for a decent Beaufighter for FSX and to my suprise I found out that Garwood had even made this aircraft a few years back. The Beaufighter package contains a nice sellection of both night and strike fighters with the possibility to change the addon stuff like nose radar, gunner and tail leading edge extension from entries in the aircraft.cfg file.

I'm currently researching and painting No. 144 Sqn RAF schemes from the early 1945 time frame, when the squadron was based at Dallachy.

My question to the SoH crowd is; do we have any scenery of the old coastal command bases up in Scotland for FSX?
 
There is one base for Catalinas in Scotland, called something like "Degor". I could not find from flightsim.com or avsim or from myself ( I got it installed though). And then there is sub-hunting missions for Catalina (search word Catalina), but I suppose a Mossie could do them as well as a recon mission.
 
Jens,
as far as I'm aware, there is no scenery available for Dallachy and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Banff</st1:city></st1:place> airdromes (I’ve looked for it myself), although the remains of them are clearly visible if you have the Playsims Northern Scotland scenery (Vol 6) installed.<o:p></o:p>
There are books available:<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
A Separate Little War by Andrew D Bird ISBN 1 904010 43 1 which is about the Banff Strike Wing.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
A SteepTurn to the Stars by Jim Hughes ISBN 1 870384 71 7 which is a history of aviation in the <st1:place w:st="on">Moray Firth</st1:place>.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
There’s also a book called “Strike & Strike Again” that has been out of print for many years, I don’t know who the author is, it’s about the Dallachy StrikeWing, and I’ve been looking for a copy for the last 10 years with no success.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I can recommend Andrew Bird’s book, it’s a very good insight into life on a wartime RAF station in the North of Scotland during an extremely cold winter.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Unfortunately little remains of Dallachy and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Banff</st1:city></st1:place>,and what there is, are disappearing fast, Dallachy is being filled with industrial units, although the road through it is the airfield perimeter road and you can still see the aircraft hard standings. The control tower still remains, it’s in the middle of a farmer’s field, and there is a particularly well maintained memorial in the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">village</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Lower Dallachy</st1:placename></st1:place>, which always has a fine display of fresh flowers (I can only assume the residents ofthe few houses opposite put those on). The airfield always has a ghostly atmospheret o me.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Verylittle remains of RAF Banff, most of it seems to be taken up with a lorry trailer park & a go cart track, but there is a visitor centre there and a memorial off the main road.

Dallachy airdrome
View attachment 78251

Regards,
Ian.
 
Thanks for the information! Do you know of any other FSX scenery of RAF ww2 airfields in Scotland/North England?

I have been to amazon and ordered a few books :) The IWM ww2 picture collection also have a rather good selection of Dallachy Beaufighter pictures.

I'm working on NE164 PL-T of No. 144 Sqn and NE831 PL-O (belly landed back at Dallachy after the disasterous "Flack Friday mission) is probably also coming.
 
William Njurmi said:
There is one base for Catalinas in Scotland, called something like "Degor". I could not find from flightsim.com or avsim or from myself ( I got it installed though). And then there is sub-hunting missions for Catalina (search word Catalina), but I suppose a Mossie could do them as well as a recon mission.
Click to expand...

The file you mention was called RAFOban.zip and it was posted by its author Jim Dhaenens (jdhaenens@sbcglobal.net). I think I got it originally at AVSim but I was unable to find it again when I looked.
 
Jens,
I think the only airfields in the area are the ones in the excellent ScotFlight and Scotflight RAF Collection, Lossiemouth and Kinloss, both of which are modern. Over the years there have been many airfields in the ares, Lossiemouth is only 10-15 miles from Dallachy and Kinloss about 10 miles from Lossie. Kinloss is still there, but it was recently closed when the Nimrod fleet was scraped, and Lossie flys Tornado Gr4's. Sorry I can't be of more help, but I don't think the older airfields of Scotland have been very well catered for.

Regards,
Ian.
 
Just an FYI, Orbx has hinted that they will be making some WW2 airfields for their England release, but there hasn't been anything confirmed yet.
 
Jim Dhaenens RAF Oban seaplane base can be found at Surclaro.
Other WW2 fields are in Scotflight payware packages fs9/fsx , but brought up to date .

IIRC there were some covered by some cfs2 scenery which may or may not work in other versions of
Flight sim.

Ttfn

Pete

Just had a quick look, Banff was done for Cfs2
 
Hi,

Thanks for the help.

I have Oban as well, great place for the Catalina flights, but not very well suited for Beaufighter flying..

I have been checking out Ians sceneries, they are all from the south, but RAF Grimsby (closer to the coast, not far from RAF Binbrook) could work as a stand in for Dallachy since it is close to the North Sea (in striking distance of the Norwegian fjords...lol)
 
took me a while to find it, fictional freeware but this might fill the bill nicely

RAF Stronsay. Presenting RAF Stronsay airfield. A real airfield but redesigned as it might have been used in WW II. This is located about 30 nm north of Scapa Flow, the site of the Royal Navy's ships in WW I and II. ICAO and navaid numbers are in the readme file. Wry humor is evident in a couple of places. Notice the items in the gate guard house, the outhouse and the military personel done by John dutton of Malta, who sadly passed away May, 2010. By Robert Lacy.
Click to expand...

View attachment 78345 View attachment 78346 View attachment 78347

http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/files/8890/fsx-raf-stronsay-scenery/

and patch

http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/files/11246/raf-stronsay-elevation-fix/

HTH
 
If you build it they will come!

Haven't done much airfield modding since the PNW started getting Orbx'ed so I thought I'd shake the rust off and see if I could remember how to use all those tools sitting idle on my desktop.

RAF Banff - X6BN

banff_1.jpg


RAF Dallachy - X6DL

dallachy_1.jpg


dallachy_2.jpg


Just a beginning and info seems to be hard to find. If anyone can point me to sites where I can access historical Ordanance Survey drawings of the airfield building layouts that would be great, if not I'll wing it. Any info on what kind of nav aids these fields might have had, an NDB or something to home in on to get home?

Give me a couple weeks as I hack at this here and there and we'll have some bases to fly from, historical accuracy not guaranteed.

Al
 
Great news! Thanks a lot for taking on this forgotten coastal Command airfield!

The Beaufighter repaints are coming along, and they sure are looking forward to land back home on Dallachy.... :) A lot of research has gone into trying to get the late war Beaufighter coastal command scheme as close to the real deal as possible; Extra dark sea grey-sky scheme, decals/stencils, weathering, rocket details, exhaust stains

144 Sqn early 1945: (the screenshots are a few days old and more details have been added).

PL-O was a surviver of the "Black friday" raid on 9 Feb. 1945 and belly landed with heavy damage back at Dallachy.


Scrshot2042.jpg



Scrshot2142.jpg


Scrshot1982.jpg


Scrshot1922-1.jpg


Scrshot2252-1.jpg


Scrshot2242.jpg


Scrshot2352.jpg
 
Thanks!

I'll have paints for rest of Dallachys Strike Wing Beaufighter squadrons ready for the new scenery as well.

EO-Q1 from 404 Sqn RCAF (shot down during the "black friday raid 1945), P6-L1 from 489 Sqn RNZAF have already been finished. All Beaufighters from Dallachy with "1" after the code had the thimble ASV radar nose.
 
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