Which brings to mind a question I had. Does Bletchley's suggested settings for a given side and time period still apply or are those already incorporated in P3?
As the answer appears to be "no", here are the settings again
Allied Pilots: EASY (1915), NORMAL (1916/17), REALISTIC (1918).
German Pilots: EASY (1915/16), NORMAL (1917), REALISTIC (1918)
In both cases, if flying in a sector where a large ground offensive is indicated in 1917, bump up the level to REALISTIC
I did post a more complicated set of month-by-month settings for P2 based on flak casualty figures, but I lost that somewhere along the way (and the great Forum Crash deleted them from the P2 forum). I guess this version is probably just as 'historic'.
The "white" Allied flak bursts was due to the continued use of shrapnel well into 1916 (it was the black powder charge that gave the white smoke). The shrapnel shells were next to useless against aircraft, but the Allies had real problems designing an HE shell for AA use, and so hung on to shrapnel for much longer than the German flak force. The German flak units switched early to HE shells, which burst with a black smoke signature and were far more lethal. In general, British and French AA technology (particularly with regard to muzzle velocity and shell fuses) lagged somewhat behind that of the Germans, at least up to 1918, although their ranging technology was, for the time, very good.
Bletchley