ETO Battle of Britain campaign Mark II

[33lima]

Flying for Fighter Command with Daiwilletti's new version of MrJmaint's classic campaign!

Having always had an abiding interest in the Battle of Britain, I was delighted to read here on Sim Outhouse that Pat_Pattle's BoB mod is coming in for attention, as mentioned here. Also that Daiwilletti was working on a 'new package' for MrJMaint's BOB campaign for the ETO. Having got Daiwilletti's package working (after a few hitches of my own making) I decided to re-start my ETO-BoB campaign with it, applied as a JSGME mod to automate most of the installation steps.

Quick Combat actions can be a lot of fun, and campaigns based on historical mission sets very engaging, but I agree with Daiwilletti that there is also a lot to be said for CFS3's dynamic campaign. It's a bit less anonymous than it used to be now you can have skins with accurate unit markings and for an air fight whose outcome was intended to decide the prospects for an invasion, CFS3's ability to link the two actually fits well with the historical situation in the summer of 1940. That the result could be different adds to the mix!

This is the first mission report of a series which I hope will cover the campaign, as far as I get with it. I should mention that following advice from Daiwilletti, I tweaked the campaign file in an effort to get two missions a day instead of the one I was getting before, which I think better reflects the experience and the strain of the typical RAF fighter squadron in 11 Group during the Battle. I also edited the file in an effort to get more aircraft available to fly from the start, and succeeded to the extent that I found myself flying a Spitfire, rather than the default Hurricane.

As usual, festivities begin on the Battle's official Air Ministry start date of 10th July 1940.


92 Squadron, Martlesham Heath, 10 July 1940

It's early morning when our eight Spitfires are scrambled from our grass airfield to intercept a raid to the east of Dover.

The mission map shows the location of our base, near Ipswich, the mission briefing, and our vector - the Controller rightly intends us to hit the Huns well short of their target, even if it's coastal shipping.

Few Fighter Command airfields had got hard runways by the Battle, and ours isn't one of those that did, but the weather is fine and we have no difficulty in getting away smartly.

The sun is just beginning to show above the eastern horizon as we straggle away from base.

I throttle back and settle into a gentle right-hander, to allow the boys to form up...

...then, still turning, open her up again as we near the coast, north of the port of Felixstowe. Ahead is the RDF station at Bawdsey Manor, now a museum and which pioneered the technology which was to play such a vital part in the Battle.

Which technology will soon direct our merry little band straight to a bunch of unsuspecting Huns - we hope!

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

Martlesham Heath falls away behind us as I level off and check the boys are in formation.

The headland at Orfordness is prominent on our left, as we edge out over the North Sea.

I resume the climb and we pass through some light, scattered cloud.

The port facilities at Felixstowe and Harwich are to our right rear as we gain height to the south-east.

By now, the sun is well above the eastern horizon.

Time to warp ahead! We come out at above twenty-one thousand feet, a few miles short of our calculated interception point. What's waiting for us out there, just up ahead?

We'll soon find out!

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

Up ahead is the coast of northern France. I turn on the TAC, simulating communication with the Controller. This tells me there's Bogies to my right, but the Bandits - our target, indicated by the purple arrowhead - are ahead and slightly left, out of our range of vision.

I bank left to look down, wondering if they're slipping in below us. But not this time - there they are! A ragged group of twin-engined aircraft, coming at us nearly head on. I start snapping out orders to attack.

I roll into them, recognising them as Junkers 88s, as I do so.

Instead of holding formation, the Huns break in all directions, pursued by sundry Spitfires. I begin to black out as I tighten my own turn after them.

These boys are throwing their big aircraft around like fighters. I'll find out why later, but for now, I try concentrate on one of them without blacking out completely.

I cut across the turn of the nearest Junkers and the range begins to wind down. Soon, now!

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

The Ju88 pulls up steeply and I go with him, shooting as I come.

Up and up he goes, ever more steeply. My rounds hit home, tearing fragments from his airframe...

...which stream past my kite, joining the streams of spent cases from my eight Brownings. Meanwhile, unseen just below, another group of Huns is racing north for England.

My Hun falls off to one side and I break away to avoid him. Then I wing over to find him again. A Ju88 is corkscrewing steeply down with one wing torn off. If that's my target, he's clearly done for, but it's hard to be sure it's him.

It's at this point that I finally get a clear view of the lower German formation. By now, the R/T chatter tells me some of the boys have got kills and are joining up again, so I start some of them on attacking these fresh targets.

These Huns look like Heinkels, and they're headed for the North Foreland. They could be after shipping in the Channel or the Thames Estuary, the airfield at Manston, or any number of other targets. Clearly, my job is to see they don't make it!

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

Off to my right is a pair of Heinkels, with another one closer in and lower down on the same side. These are the fellows I've ordered attacked by those who've reported themselves free. My commands were acknowledged, but no attacks have yet developed.

I press on with my own attack on the Heinkel that's well to the left. Poor formation-keeping will be the death of these people. At least, that's my plan. Weaving to avoid return fire, I close in and start shooting.

Too much weaving! My aim is awful. I'm compelled to orbit and set up a second pass. This takes me wide to the right, giving me a grandstand view of two Spitfires blazing away at one of the other bombers. That's the way to do it, as Punch would have told the kiddies.

Their target is soon on fire. So I waste no further time in rolling left and going after my own.

I'm soon closing in...

...and this time, there's no mistake!

So far, so good. Time to regain control and take stock.

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

Pulling up and looking around, I can see the action is continuing over on my right. The damaged Heinkel is going down steadily and the two Spits have moved onto the pair in front.

My own aircraft has taken several hits but is flying well. The same can't be said for the bomber I just attacked.

For my next trick, I latch onto one of the aerobatic Ju88s.

I get some hits, but before I can finish him off, one of the boys does the job for me in emphatic fashion.

It's no surprise that nobody gets out. Such are the hazards of war, one might say.

Suddenly, I see a fighter pulling up ahead and to my left. Have the 109s arrived?

High time to find out!

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

I chase the newcomer for a while before realising he's another Spitfire - from a different squadron (No. 19 in fact, as a quick check via the reversed player-target view confirmed), as he wasn't responding to calls to rejoin. I break left and go my own way.

My shiny Spitfire is going to need more than a wax polish when I get back to Martlesham Heath. That's the French coast in the background, the Channel being only twenty-odd miles wide, hereabouts.

By now, the boys are beginning to slot into formation behind me. This is always an anxious time in CFS3 - finding out how many of the eight you led into battle have made it out the other side.

As it happens, we all came though this time and in high spirits I lead the pack home in the brightening morning skies.

My rigger will have to put in a bit of work on those holes, but I'm sure he and my fitter will mainly be relieved that I brought 'their' aircraft back.

The reason those Ju88s behaved like fighters was that they were fighters. Night fighters, to be precise, as this picture shows.

While the Ju88C heavy fighter was entering limited service about this time, radar-equipped versions like this one were a couple of years away, at the time of the Battle of Britain. So after this mission, in Notepad, I checked out the .xdp files for the two C-versions in the ETO expansion and corrected their service entry dates, which were set to 1940. I also set them not to spawn. This affects just the campaign; CFS3's isn't really designed to handle many of the aircraft now available, which are best set not to spawn so that their use is confined to quick combat and scripted missions.

The debriefing credited me with one victory and the squadron with a successful mission. And instead of moving on a full day, the campaign advanced only to the afternoon of the 10th. So this was a good start and a promising one with Daiwilletti's new package for the ETO-BoB campaign!

 

[33lima]

92 Squadron, Martlesham Heath, 10 July 1940 - afternoon

Our next scramble is to the area of Canterbury, south of our base and across the Thames Estuary. Something strange has happened to the front line, which is now forming a sort of angular doughnut shape which partly extends overland. Have the Huns invaded? I hope not! Anyway, we can worry about that, after we get airborne. We have a raid to intercept.

I've reduced glossiness to the minimum setting (1 - it was only 2 before) in d3d8.ini and the shiny Spitfires are now looking smart rather than shiny.

Easing off on the power, I look back to check the boys are catching up.

I suddenly realise that I can hear the sound of distant Ack Ack or ground artillery fire. Perhaps the invasion has arrived! Suddenly, a flash of light catches my eye, as a fireball erupts next to the hangars at Martlesham Heath.

Our own airfield is under attack!

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

I quickly call up the Controller (ie open the TAC) and ask him what the heck is going on (ie look at the TAC). This tells me that there are Bogies to my right at about two miles, roughly over our base. As I can't see them against the sky, they must be lower.

Sure enough, there they are - Junkers 88s, bomb doors open. I start ordering pairs of Spitfires to go get them.

Curving around after the Huns, I look down to the left and see several of them in a rough line, coming off their target. They're barely visible against the ground, only their movement giving them away.

I tip over after them, then reverse my bank to the right when another bomber, higher up, crosses underneath me. You'll do, I decide.

The Hun's course takes us over another airfield, which happens to be Ipswich airport, a civilian affair apparently, possibly now commandeered for wartime purposes.

But there's no time for sightseeing. I open fire on the bomber at about the same time as the Ack Ack boys get going. But the Hun's moving more slowly than I expected and I break off without doing him much visible damage, taking some hits myself in return.

Meanwhile, I can hear from the R/T chatter that the squadron is also getting stuck into the Huns. Which is as it should be. But it's high time I made my own contribution!

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

The Ju88 hasn't escaped unscathed and is now leaving a faint trail of leaking fuel or glycol. His bomb doors are still open as he heads south over the River Orwell, with Felixstowe and its balloon barrage in the background.

I come around and latch onto him again...at least I think it's him - he's now flying back the way he came.

Got him! After a couple of bursts, the bomber disintegrates in spectacular fashion, with the wings and tail going one way...

...and the remains of the fuselage, with blazing engines still attached, going the other - down. With bomb bay doors still open.

Whoever they are, civil or military, I trust the current occupants of Ipswich airport are suitably grateful that I've probably just delivered them from being bombed!

But the skies all around are still alive with aircraft and anti-aircraft fire, so I'm not done here yet.

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

Ack Ack bursts quickly draw my attention to another Hun. He's flitting about inland, at about my own height.

I'm quickly on his tail and shooting him up. It's another Ju88.

My first pass doesn't quite settle things, but I'm soon coming in for another one.

The Hun's now flying north, away from safety and clearly in trouble. Worse is to follow.

After my next burst, he noses down into a dive which gets steeper and steeper. Finally, he smacks into the ground next to the runway intersection at Ipswich airport. Oops! At least he didn't hit anything important.

I hand out some more attack orders; it seems there's still no shortage of Huns. I'm not yet out of ammo, so it's time I went looking for another one, for myself.

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

Three widely-spaced Ju88s are beetling along in a conga line, their course marked by angry black Ack Ack bursts. And then there were four...except the last in line is a Spitfire - my Spitfire, to be precise.

The last Hun promptly catches a packet from my Brownings, before I have to break off...

...but doesn't go down...

...until I come around for another pass. At which point, long before I get into range, he noses down and that's the end of him. I'm sure the Ack Ack boys will be claiming that one.

There were at least two other Ju88s in that conga line. Time to see if they're still in the game.

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

What's left of the conga line is indeed still in the game. And I'm soon trading tracers with the new tail-end Charlie.

But not for long. My ammo runs out almost at once. Worse, the power is suddenly beginning to drain from my Merlin. It's no surprise when the prop grinds to a halt.

At it happens, I'm by then almost directly above my own airfield, which is looking slightly the worse for the attentions of those Ju88s. Happily for me, the grass landing strips look unobstructed by bomb craters.

Fearful of landing short, I turn in early and from too high, so to lose height, I gain too much speed. As soon as it's café I drop the undercart...or try to. Nothing happens.After a few seconds in shock, I remember the drill and start pumping them down. This works, but very slowly, and is a major distraction when I really don't need it.

The flaps won't come down at all, so I land very fast. I'm going lickety-spit when I slide over the perimeter track. Slippery aircraft, Spitfires.

I somehow come to a halt without ramming the scenery, tearing my flying goggles off in disgust as I walk away from my well-holed kite.

The good news is that I'm credited with three kills, and from the R/T chatter I know the boys got as many more, at least. The bad news is that the mission is rated a failure. Perhaps we shot down the wrong Huns!

At any rate, this is proving more exciting and varied than the unmodified campaign, so I'm definitely along for the ride, thanks to Daiwilletti.

 

[Daiwilletti]

Whew. Thanks for the mission report, 33Lima. This old desk-jockey's blood certainly got pumping. Those marauding bombers were certainly an unpleasant surprise. With the rumour of an invasion down south, it is a particular worry. Clearly you were unable to meet the campaign mission's vital strategic objective, yet what could be done? The airbase was under attack!

 

[Daiwilletti]

Getting Warmer

Just one thing about the "package" - all I've done is cobble together a few files to make campaign missions more interesting for ETO BoB. There is plenty which could be done, as described in the screeds of blue stuff I wrote. At this stage maybe the campaign has gone from luke-warm to warm.

Having defending flights of fighters attached to specific sectors, and attacking Axis flights associated with various targets (eg radar triggering bombing spawns - Ju87s, Ju88s Cr42s etc) would liven the skies up a bit. It just takes a bit of time and facility files need to be modified. The airbases in ETO are often associated with a time period. Hence a 1943 bomber base looks different from the 1944 version, and this is allowed by having a 1943 global layer and a 1944 global layer. So Ideally the BoB global layer should reference modified radar, ports and airbases which can trigger spawns of different aircraft on different era-appropriate missions.

You may not have had time to notice that I threw in a coastal shipping spawn set, so a few patrol boats, submarines etc show up near the coast. I also have some CAP spawns which cause defending aircraft to take off from your own airbase. You would have found them handy in your last mission, because you could have left the Ju88s to them, and headed off on the campaign mission (you get the mission briefing by pressing M in-flight). To get the combat air patrol to trigger, a goodly proportion of the Bob-era airbase facility files need to have the spawn string attached to the xml file. I've done that to my own install, and I could have thrown a whole lot into the "package", but it seemed like a good idea to minimise the variables at this initial testing stage!

Another thing - have you taken a look at your My Documents pathway, and into the .cmpstat files that lurk in the My Documents/CFS3 ETO Expansion pathway? After a campaign mission, if you save the campaign a new .cmpstat file is generated. It can be opened with Notepad. In the file you can find the disposition and health of all the squadrons. Further down, you will find the vital statistics of all the pilots which are available to fly your campaign missions.

**IDEA** given your comment about too many pilots floating about, you could radically prune the team of pilots available in your latest .cmpstat file. Then the next time you flew the campaign, you would have a more realistic number of pilots available? Maybe - it would be worth a try! You just have to make sure when you rejoin the campaign that you select the right date so the right .cmpstat file is opened.

 

[33lima]

Thanks for the tip about that stats file! I was wondering if there was some way to keep track of what happened to your squadron, pilots or aircraft, after each campaign mission. I had a look at the (huge) roster after the last one and it doesn't list casualties (maybe because we didn't have any, this mission or cumulatively so far) and shows current kills only, so no way of seeing who just got some. Ideally some of this should show up in the debriefing, but I suppose that would require coding rather than hand-editing files.

Anyway that file is a start, plus I will try thinning the boys down to twenty, and maybe some adventurous stuff like promoting myself to Squadron Leader rank and the most successful Pilot or Flying Officers to Flight Lieutenants. And reducing them all to zero kills - there are huge tallies in there, and as well as being more realistic, starting at 0 would enable me to see who is doing well, even in the roster. Probably I will just break stuff. But if I can delete rows/entries in that file, I'm hoping I can edit some values in each row, too, if they're just text strings (ranks) or numeric values (kills).

I did notice a small, incidental convoy on a recent mission and it'll be good to see such traffic - we are a maritime nation, after all

Anyway , yes better already and there's a lot more could be done. I will keep the little things I've added like setting plane spawn values and start date fixes, for possible inclusion or release. I added the Ju88's tail insignia to the He111 that lacked it- a bit blocky in closeup, but better than none and hopefully no major ownership issues (seen in Bob not ETO mod).

 

[33lima]

PS have deleted pilots in cmpstat so there are now just twenty, plus the player. Those left, I reduced their kills to zero, and their number of missions flown to two, except the first two whom I set to 6 and 8. Ranks seem to be defined somewhere else and possibly system-allocated, as I have found comments by modders referring to ending up with all Air Marshalls or Air Commodores if some values are overdone. As nobody flying Ops should be above Wing Commander and that only rarely, it would still be good to eliminate ranks above say Squadron Leader. Or adjust the values in cmpstats for each pilot so that they can't go too high.

Anyway I may have broken something by reducing values that should be system calculated, and/or impact on AI ability; possibly I will end up with everyone being AC2s who don't know how to take-off, let alone fly or fight! Back up file stands ready to be restored!

EDIT - the reduced-roster cmpstat file loaded ok when I reloaded the campaign, with just me and my twenty fellow novices listed. But after the mission, when I looked up the roster again to see how we had got on, it was back to the cast of thousands with aces galore. Many of the novices (maybe all, distinguishable by having zero kills listed) were still there, but it looked like not only were the numbers back up, many had identical names and ranks to the novices, but large kill counts. Strange that it brought us right back up to strength, stranger still the way that it did so. I wonder if whatever tells the campaign that squadrons have over 40 pilots can be edited, to set that to twenty. Anyway, next mission report to follow.

 

[33lima]

609 Squadron, Martlesham Heath, 11 July 1940

OK, I've just realised that my squadron is 609 not 92. I had mixed up the latter's GR identity letters with the former's PR. Despite my kite carrying the correct letters. Especially silly, as I'd just recently finished reading David Crook's wartime account his Battle of Britain days with 609, 'Spitfire Pilot'. Anyway, mistake corrected; hopefully it confused the Huns, too.

Anyway it's late afternoon and we're scrambled to intercept a raid near the airfield at Rochford, about forty miles to the south-west.

We take off in roughly the opposite direction and once aloft, I have a good look around. After last time, I'm half expecting the Huns to be on top of us at any moment. Conditions are murky at low level, but the skies seem to be free of the enemy, out to the east...

..and having completed my turn towards the south, out to the west, too. We're now passing our own base and you can just about see that the hangar on the left that was bombed in the earlier raid is now just an open, grey space.

The others are soon catching up. As usual, we're putting up eight Spitfires, in total.

We clear the hazy cloud layer and I get my first vector from the Controller. Thirty miles to go. Not too far, so I decide to fly in real time.

My Spitfire is climbing freely and at about 3,000 RPM, doesn't need much in the way of elevator trim to maintain a decent rate of ascent.

Hopefully, this time, the only people getting a nasty surprise will be the enemy!

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

The ports of Harwich and Felixstowe are soon falling away behind and below.

Above the low cloud, the sky is clear and the glare of the sun, harsh. At least it's not behind us.

Onward and upward we go. How high? I decide we'll go to twenty thousand.

Below, the cloud is sufficiently thin and patchy to provide a view of useful landmarks. But not such a good view of any Huns who might be trying to slip past beneath us, sneaky devils that they are.

But it's what's up ahead, that I'm mostly interested in.

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

We're getting close, so it's time to check with the Controller. This reveals we've only about seven miles out. I stay slightly left of the vector, to give me a clearer view past that long Spitfire nose.

There's no sign of any Huns yet, though. The first sign that all is not well is when I hear a succession of 'crump!' sounds. The black puffs appearing nearby confirm it's Ack Ack fire. Crikey, the front line bulge on the map did not lie - they've come! They're here, German boots on English soil!

Soon after that, the TAC/Controller/somebody with better eyesight reports bogies to our left. It's those pesky low-flying Junkers 88s again.

Playing the game, I ignore what the reversed player-target view tells me. I got severely chastised after the last mission for diverting from my assigned target to attack low-level bombers. So I decide not to make the same mistake again, and fly on, rather than investigating the sighting.

A little later, we're passing Rochford...

...but the promised Huns don't show up. Which is really rather unsporting of them. To make matters worse, when I re-check with the Controller, I find that we are vectored back to base.

But the day is not yet lost. As we come about, Bogies are again reported, quite close to us.

This time, I'm not going to pass them by!

...to be continued!