ETO Battle of Britain campaign Mark III

[33lima]

59 Squadron, Bibury, early morning, 12 July 1940

Poor control over the time acceleration controls in the campaign briefing screen resulted in my fast-forwarding not the one day planned, but two. In the meantime, we've moved airfields - and the balloon has really gone up, with most of Kent and part of Hampshire in enemy hands! Cliking on a map square that lies on the land, in the hope of supporting our hard-pressed troops, tells me only that no missions are available! So I settle for another anti-shipping sortie, the target lying slightly south of the Isle of Wight.

A check of my map gives me a better picture of exactly where we're going.

A couple of mouse-clicks is all it takes to get the armourers to replace our unsatisfactory default bomb load with four 250-pounders, and then we're up and away.

A check of my surroundings via the Tactical Display reveals we're not alone!

Once again, low-level Dorniers are attacking, and drawing off our fighter escort.

I switch to the radio operator/air gunner's position in the dorsal turret and the pilot starts a steep climb for height. This gives me a grandstand view of bombs bursting on our airfield.

Escort distracted, base bombed - not a very auspicious start, is it?

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

I hop back into the pilot's seat, ease off on the climb, and lead the squadron away, lest enemy fighters are also in the vicinity.

But no attacks develop. So I drop back behind the VGO machinegun and let the pilot get back on course and resume his climb.

Clear of the action, I begin a period of warp, taking us up to the usual rather excessive twenty thousand-plus, while I check my map and briefing.

This suddenly stops short of the coast, a sign that there may be enemies about. Which a check with the TAC soon confirms.

There they are, above and right! Three large aircraft, Messerschmitt 110s I think.

One of the Huns is soon attacking from astern. The R/T crackles to life with a report of serious damage. Sure enough, one of the Blenheims is clearly in trouble, and our escorts are no-where in sight!

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

Next second, the damaged Blenheim disintegrates...

...and falls away like a burning torch.

I track the marauding Messerschmitt from the dorsal turret, but before I can get off a round, he's struck again!

He then wheels around in our rear and I start snapping out short bursts, in an effort to put him off, more than anything else.

This seems to have the desired effect, for instead of attacking again, the 110 peels off...

...and drops down below us. Apart from hits in the nose and one aileron which may or may not be my work, he doesn't look to be much damaged, and seems now to be stalking us from below. By this time we're over enemy-occupied territory and drawing flak as well as fighters!

At this rate we'll be lucky if there's anybody left to bomb those flipping ships!

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

The Hun isn't on his own, but the other 110s seem to have held back - perhaps our escort is threatening them, I can't see.

I'm rather more concerned with the one who's slipped below us and is now in my blind spot, where my gun can't reach him.

The 110 goes wide on our left and I pick him up again. The range is too long for even a deterrent shot, so all I can do is watch him and wait for the right moment.

Here we go! He could be coming for me, this time!

Time to have a rattle!

The Hun breaks away and simply transfers his attention to another tail-end Charlie. And another burning Blenheim is soon falling from the skies!

Could this get much worse?

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

The Blenheim goes down, and the 110 goes after it. The latter pulls out, but the bomber doesn't...and won't.

Once again the Hun disappears into my blind spot.

When I next see the 110, he's making a wide turn a few thousand feet below. As he comes back in below us, I notice that he's leaving a faint but visible trail of glycol or perhaps fuel.

The 110 eventually takes up station behind and below us again, but now, he's got a lot more holes in him than last time.

Soon afterwards, he gives up altogether and flies away to the north, apparently heading for a captured airfield on our side of the Channel.

Mightily relieved, we fly on out to sea. Our next ordeal will be down there, somewhere.

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

Back in the pilot's seat, a check with the navigator/TAC reveals it's about time I started getting rid of our surplus height. So I reduce power, push the nose down, and trim out the worst of the excessive stick pressures

Is that them? We come upon the ships earlier than I was expecting, and still way too high.

Another TAC check seems to confirm these must be out targets.

Time to get busy! I push the nose down harder and pull the throttles to idle, making for the rear of the flotilla.

When I get astern of the ships, I order the others to attack and turn away. The idea is to spiral around to lose height and give the boys a bit of time to get going, then roll out to make my own attack.

Right, here we go then.

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

In we go! Time to pick a target. I decide to go for the large vessel on the left rear. I steer to the right because I want to drop my bombs across it at a fine diagonal, to compensate for any errors in line. And I want to do that while heading away from the ships, not into the thick of them...and the flak.

Speaking of flak, it now starts, just as I level my wings before rolling left. I realise that I'm the only one they've got to shoot at; the others must be somewhere behind. No time to worry about that now. Things are starting to happen very fast.

Ok, roll her left, keep the nose down, double check the bomb-bay doors are open...

...left, left, keep the nose down, ignore the bursting shells and the tracer zipping up at me...

Bombs gone!

Now, that's more like it! And to boot, I have managed to avoid both blowing myself up with my own bombs, and clipping a mast - but not by much, by the look of it.

That's one load of supplies that won't be reaching the enemy invasion force!

...to be continued!

 

[MajorMagee]

It looks like they were carrying a deck load of aircraft parts.

 

[33lima]

Either that, or surplus props from voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

 

[33lima]

As I pull up and away, closing my bomb bay doors, it seems that the others are attacking at about the same time, but with rather less success.

The flak is pretty terrific, looking 'so thick you could get out and walk on it', as the saying goes. Happily for me, it seems no more accurate than the rest of the bombing. What I dread in these situations is the sort of hit that will cause both engines to fail at the same time, which may not be a problem with the ETO Expansion, but is certainly the cause of many an early bath in stock CFS3 anti-shipping missions. But I get away with it...

...up to a point. Because the sim CTD'ed when I got back to friendly territory. Screenies I thought I'd been taking stopped with the one above.

So just to complete the story, I orbited while watching further attacks by the other three Blenheims. I quickly reined them in when I realised they were no longer bombing, just strafing. If they had been Beaufighters, with four 20mm cannon and six .303 Brownings, I would have let then continue!

When I left the ships, the fire on my target had gone out, and it neither lost way nor sank. Still, the one or more 250 pound bombs I hit it with won't have done it much good.

As for my CTDs - which always seem to be towards the end of a mission - references here to excessive settings causing the sim to 'run our of memory' (video or otherwise) have led me to dial back the settings in my compositetexturebudgets.xml, which I had pushed out to try to eliminate low-res textures being too obvious near the horizon in some situations. Visually this dialling back seems to have made things no worse; we'll see in time if it helps with the CTDs. But I can always do what I did and advance the campaign manually after a CTD, even though that will mean giving up a chance to reverse the invasion, and no pilot stats or 'experience points'. The chances of kicking the enemy back into the sea seem slim enough anyway. Delaying Sealion for at least several weeks after the Battle is an improvement I hope will appear in the campaign for coming BoB mod update. The chances of survival on each mission are bad enough flying Blenheims, without the chances of an early invasion being so wildly high!

 

[Daiwilletti]

It looks like they were carrying a deck load of aircraft parts.

hi MajorMagee I wonder which effect it is? Obviously the effect is double-timing with some aircraft explosion or other? Years ago Guy Fox was the effects maestro. It would take dedicated time to get a set of ship-specific shrapnel effects, using different textures.

In my Modified Stock install I've taken the fireball out of small shell explosions - like tank shells because I think that debris would be more likely then a large flash when dealing with something like a 75mm AP shell.

There's so much scope for improvement. . .

@33Lima, most of my QC flights from coastal airfields have ship spawns appearing within 5 minutes or so, which can act as targets for torpedo practice. The ships are called from the ground.spawns file, and I generally throw in 3 or 4 different shipping formations, for a bit of variety. There must be a shipping lane close to Guernsey airbase, because ships often appear right in the bay beside the airbase, which can be disconcerting

 

[MajorMagee]

I just wish we had a real effects editor tool.

 

[33lima]

59 Squadron, Staverton, evening, 12 July 1940

Advancing the campaign time several hours (so I'm not starting where my interrupted mission left off) I still only have a choice of ship targets. It's like flying this BoB campaign restricts the player to one mission type (intercept - if there are others, I didn't go looking) and the bomber version, similarly, although less appropriately. Anyway, anti-ship it is, again. I've a bit further to fly this time, as we've moved once more, away front the advancing enemy.

Once again our target is south of the Isle of Wight. Happily, the overland section of our route is over friendly territory - just about. Whoever assigns these things obviously doesn't believe in dog legs, or avoiding coming back the way you went out.

Here I am about to start up. Given I must have taxied here from dispersal around the perimeter track, my engines should already be running by this point. One nice touch is that when you do start the Blenheim's Bristol Mercurys, you first hear a bang which I assume is the cartridge of the Coffman starter.

Engines running, I check the situation with the Tactical Display. It's as well that I do so, for it reveals there are Huns in the circuit!

Whether they are fighters or bombers, since I can't get out of the aircraft and run for a slit trench, I don't want them bombing or strafing my kite on the ground, while I'm in it. So I set the flaps, push the throttles forward and let go the brakes.

There are the Huns! I can see a small group of what I hope are bombers, trailed by some desultory Ack Ack fire. Over on the right, higher up, a bevvy of smaller aircraft is wheeling around after them. It looks like our escorts will be otherwise occupied, again!

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

The Spitfires tear into the Hun bombers. even if they still manage to unload onto our airfield, it looks like we have got away in time to avoid being under their bombs.

And unload on the airfield they do. Bombs burst next to the hangars and right in front of one of the blast pens around the peri track, nearby.

These are some of the people responsible for this state of affairs.

I don't especially want to get caught up in this any more than we already have been. We have our own job to do. With that in mind, I begin to lead the boys around in a wide sweep, to get clear of the area.

This actually leads me back into the thick of it, as the action has drifted away from the airfield. It looks like the Heinkels' escape route is taking them across our path, while the air above fills with Spits manoeuvring to get at them.

I level out and plough on, as a vic of three Heinkels slides across my path from left to right - you can see them in the pic below, about ten o'clock of my bomber's nose.

It's at times like this that you wish you were flying the fighter version of the Blenheim, with the four-gun belly back instead of a belly full of bombs. I wonder if Fighter Command are accepting transfer requests?

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

I bank left again to get back onto course, finally putting the action behind us.

The Spitfires chase off the Heinkels. Not all of them make it.

This one looks like he might have better luck.

The fight hasn't been entirely one-sided, though, as this rather shredded Spitfire testifies.

I race away at full throttle, glad to see the back of it. The problem is, we've probably seen the back of our escort, too.

But there's no point crying over spilt milk or preoccupied Spitfires. We have a long way to go and a job of work to do, when we get there.

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

I start putting on a bit of height. I haven't worked out whether or how to stop warping taking me up to well over twenty thousand every time - a pretty ridiculous default, for a sim that's originally built around tactical air power - so I know what's coming.

Sure enough, up we go - and out we come, well short of our next waypoint, which is our target in the Channel

Turning on the TAC confirms the reason for the switch back to real time - we're being intercepted by Messerschmitt 110s! This really isn't welcome - shooting down Blenheims is one thing that 110s are rather good at.

However, one thing they're less good at is shooting down Spitfires. Our escort hasn't deserted us after all, and are soon chasing off the Huns.

I watch anxiously from the dorsal turret...

...but it seems we've got away with it, again!

...to be continued!

 

[MajorMagee]

I'm not sure if this is the cause, but there is a parameter at the bottom of each aircraft's xdp file that sets the cruise altitude. If it's CruiseAlt="6100" that may be what's taking you up to 20,000 ft. Try setting it to 3050 to stay at a more reasonable 10,000 ft. That should be just high enough to avoid most small caliber ground fire along the way.

 

[33lima]

Thanks MajorMagee. Daiwilletti had also pointed me to the line in the .xdp that sets Min, Cruise and MaxAlt but reducing cruise to 625 (m) had no effect (after deleting/regenerating the .bdp). Looks like mission type, aircraft type or something else is over-riding CruiseAlt. Definitely tried the correct Blenheim.

 

[33lima]

The fight between the 110s and our escort falls away astern, but the interruption has left us with a long way still to go.

However, we're clear of enemies and we can now warp again. This gets us out over the Channel, before warp suddenly ends once more. A look at the Tactical Display is enough to confirm we have company!

Could they be our escort? A look down suggests not - the nearest one looks like a Messerschmitt 110.

Which is what they are. But the Huns seem to be heading in the opposite direction, for now.

I open the throttles in an effort to put as much distance as I can between us and the new arrivals. I know that I'll need to start descending towards the target soon, but want to hold off for a little longer, now I know what else is down there!

About ten miles out, I decide it's time to make my move. Power, attitude, trim, and down we go.

I try not to think of the threat to our rear and focus my mind only on what’s ahead!

...to be continued!

 

[33lima]

About seven miles out, I roll right so as to offset our approach from the target. Ideally, I want to come in behind them, so if they're crossing our path, I've got a 50:50 chance of being right first time.

I happen to leave the TAC displaying aircraft instead of switching to 'all' or 'ships', and get a shock when Bandits are suddenly spotted less than a mile away! Where did they come from?

The 110s are back, and this time, it looks like they're coming up after us.

Six miles from the target - if it's actually there. Still too high, but a bunch of heavily-armed Huns coming up from underneath. What to do? I decide that trying to evade interception now is pointless. We might as get on with what we came here to do, and take our chances with the fighters.

There's the shipping - I've ended out slightly in front of them! It's a single large freighter, escorted by four motor launches of some description. In the excitement, I order the boys in, without concentrating on the big ship instead of wasting bombs on the small fry.

At this point, unknown to me, the screenshots stopped being taken, apart from a couple which ended up as blank .bmps. Some time later, on the way home, the sim crashed altogether, so my tweaked texture budget file didn’t help. The one singular thing with this much earlier cessation of screenshots was that I took a lot more than usual, because of the action on the way to the target.

It’s as if taking a large number of screenshots results in some kind of limit being reached which first stops any more being taken, and then contributes to a CTD. No more than co-incidence perhaps, but the two phenomena do seem to occur together pretty consistently. Anyway I have cleaned out my screenshot folder (which had got VERY large) and will try using only FRAPS to take screenies, next time. I don’t know what other cause there could be, like a spawn failing eg calling one of the aircraft (like the FW200) which I have set not to spawn, or one whose service dates I have set outside the period (like the Hs123). I don't think it's overheating, but maybe some kind of memory problem is involved - I have 8Gb of RAM but just 1.5 of VRAM.

Either way, it’s a bit frustrating, though in no case has it prevented me from having an otherwise very enjoyable experience, usually missing out only on the landing and debriefing (and the impact if any of the mission outcome on the campaign).

As to what happened after the screenshots dried up…well I made another masthead-height bomb run on the large ship, but near-missed this time. Once again, no-one else hit anything, and they then started strafing attacks. Since the targets were mostly the launches, I decided to let this go on, while I made a couple of firing passes myself at what turned out to be an E-boat. I got some hits without doing any visible damage. I also got a nice close-up view of its rather nasty-looking automatic weapons, much more powerful than my single .303 peashooter. So after two runs I gave up and called the boys to order. The flak wasn’t quite as bad this time…or maybe I’m just getting accustomed to it!

About this time, those 110s finally showed up and we started taking losses. I pushed the nose down and ran for home, as close to the wave-tops as I dared. Repeated calls to reform brought no further answers, so I began to fear the worst. Any thought of turning back to help was abandoned when I realised there was a 110 coming after me! We played cat and mouse all the way back to the coast, with my air gunner letting fly any time the Hun came within range. A combination of this and my extreme low flying seemed to deter any attacks and none developed, before the Hun gave up and turned away. By this time, I was hedge-hopping across the Isle of Wight, the masts of the RDF station at Ventnor off to my right having given me my bearings as I came in.

At this point I would have pulled up and orbited to see if anyone else had made it out, but that’s when the CTD did what the Huns couldn’t manage, and put an end to my sortie! I didn’t sink anything or shoot anyone down, but I did survive a very exciting ride, and I’ll settle for that, if I must!