We sadly don't have any good representations of the Seafire in FSX (we had a few for FS9), so I got the idea for some years back to paint up Realairs great Spitfire IX and XIV as Seafire III and XV. The III was sort of a mix with the Spitfire V fuselage with some aspects as seen on the IX (horn elevators etc), but with a short 55M series Merlin (but with individual exhausts) and of course the A frame hook. As I'm sure most of you know, the Seafire was quite an handful for the pilots with its narrow and fragile undercarriage. Not to mention its very short range compared to the US naval fighters. The later was partly solved by using US type drop tanks and the Seafire did very well during the final months of the war in the pacific flying from the British Pacific Fleet carriers.
William Mackay got me to bring forward my old seafire paints for the realair Spitfire and hopefully a few XVs with the Griffon will follow as well. The great problem was to get the hook function to work as it did not work simply by adding it to the aircraft file. Finally William and some other smart people found out it was due to a missing "Hydraulic" section. The hook is of course not visible, but it traps as it should with many broken propellers...lol. Actually I find the Realair Spitfire to be much easier to land on a carrier than many other models, including the Sea Fury. A curved approach is very much needed though to have a visual on the carrier.
Seafire Mk L.III "112/S" of 887 NAS flying from HMS Indefatigable, BPF in 1945. On 15 August Sub/Lt G J Murphy claimed two A6M Zero kills over Odaki Bay Japan with this aircraft.
Bookmarks