This mission is about the 244th Sentai, under the command of Captain Kobayashi Teruhiko, intercepting a B-29 raid on 27 january 1945. You will be leading your flight and shoot down, or at least damage, as many B-29s as possible. Some Ki-45s and Ki-61s from other units will also participate in this mission. At this time B-29 raids were often targeting Nagoya and Tokyo so the 244th regularly moved to Hamamatsu just before an interception, in order to be above one city or the other. Every Sentai had a ramming unit, officialy called Shinten Seikûtai. Those planes were stripped of any armament and protection in order to attain the maximum possible altitude and to ram the bombers, as it was deemed a practical way to down them. Most pilots died from those ramming attacks, those that did survive (bailed out, crash-land or land) were forced to continue until they were killed or too badly wounded to fly. Kobayashi Teruhiko did use this tactic once but most of his kills were from conventional attacks. The 244th Sentai was the most famous and successful aerial defense unit, earning a letter of commendation from the Army High Command and Kobayashi was awarded the Second-class Bukōshō and a promotion to major for his actions in May 1945.
In this mission, for the Japanese side this time I am using the Ki-61s by Akemi. There are more skins of the 244th Sentai available for them and there are 3 variants available (Ko, Otsu and Hei). I "created" a Ki-61 Tei variant using the Otsu model, even if it doesn't have the streched forward fuselage. I put the textures of the Ki-61 Hei (as "295" was a Ki-61 Tei flew by Kobayashi) on the Otsu and changed the DP to have a Tei variant (20mm cannons in the fuselage and 12,7mm in the wing).
Disclaimer: I also put the wing pylons, drop tanks of the Ki-43 and the Ki-61 by Andrew/AcWai in use in the DP of the Tei variant, as they are truly top quality. Please note that the DPs I am including are my own preferences, I do some changes (hand-edit) here and there like triggers, sounds etc but it's really for my own liking. Sometimes, with cowl weapons I have a tracer like if I had a Motorkanonen à la BF-109, which for a japanese plane is a no-go for me so I hand-edit the DP to not have that. Don't know if it's the same for you all but again, it's really just me nitpicking on some details.
I am also using Akemi's Ki-45 with a Mainland Defense skin from Morton (5thS 3rdC Capt Fujitaro Ito). I took the DP from UncleTgt in his Akemi Ki-45 Nick skins UT pack and just changed the category in the misc data (changed to 1) to have a true fighter.
If you wish to use others planes you can also use Ki-61s by Andrew/AcWai and a Ki-45 by Kimihiro, please see below in this readme for the links.
For the US I am only using William Dickens/Bismarck13's AI B-29 with prop textures from Kelticheart.
You can also use the outstanding B-29 by Gnoopey/Ghostrider. I am limited by my laptop in terms of performance/FPS (I tried them and the mission becomes unplayable for me, unfortunately) but I am listing everything available on SOH (for a WW2 mission) in case you want to put this Superfortress.
I am also putting the new JAP Flakguns 1 UT by UncleTgt in use, especially the JAP_120mmAA_UT, with the AAMGpit_UT also by UncleTgt in his Port Moresby Objects UT, as shown in his screenshot in the JAP Flakguns 1 UT pack.
Thanks again to Cody Coyote for his Mission Building Handbook, still not sure if I am doing everything right but I am trying things here and there and some features are easier to do than before. I am still not sure if my missions are realistic/dynamic enough though. Again this mission is not perfect so feel free to change/update anything and everything you want. I am including two versions: one straight out of the MB and one that I hand-edited. The hand-edited should be the one played, the MB by default one is here for ease of modifications in the MB.
Thanks to all the creators of every objects, aircrafts, skins, sceneries etc used in this mission, I hope I didn't forget someone and that I was clear enough in this readme. Please see the readme of the different downloads.
This mission is freeware and should be available only on sim-outhouse.org.
Ludo
