MaskRider Take a Look at THIS

[Devildog73]

Chris,

For your later work.....

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ams/formosa_city_plans/

Enjoy!

Lee

[MaskRider]

Excellent find! Very nice.

Getting a little itchy.

I will download them all and add them to my My Documents/My Scenery/Location Information/Formosa folder.

Thanks Lee.

MR

PS There are some wonderful airfield diagrams included. I am getting interested.

Shinchiku you said and what else? Oh, yes, Kiirun (Keelung). BTW, I have been to Keelung many times, back in the early seventies. The tin can I was serving on, home-ported out of Yokosuka, got in and out of Keelung regularly. The diagram of the harbor looks like old home week. We used to tie up way down in the inner harbor next to the warehouses on the right. I believe this same location was used for a couple of scenes in the movie "The Sand Pebbles". The airfield/city diagram of Shichiku is very neat. That would be a lot of fun to make.

MR

[Devildog73]

Excellent find! Very nice.

Getting a little itchy.

I will download them all and add them to my My Documents/My Scenery/Location Information/Formosa folder.

Thanks Lee.

MR

PS There are some wonderful airfield diagrams included. I am getting interested.

Shinchiku you said and what else? Oh, yes, Kiirun (Keelung). BTW, I have been to Keelung many times, back in the early seventies. The tin can I was serving on, home-ported out of Yokosuka, got in and out of Keelung regularly. The diagram of the harbor looks like old home week. We used to tie up way down in the inner harbor next to the warehouses on the right. I believe this same location was used for a couple of scenes in the movie "The Sand Pebbles". The airfield/city diagram of Shichiku is very neat. That would be a lot of fun to make.

MR

Uncle Sam's Misguided Children never sent me to Taiwan.
I managed to spend time at San Diego, Camp Pendleton, and in Vietnam, Korea, and Okinawa.

I Google Earthed Taiwan and Shichiku was converted after the war into a Free Chinese fighter jet base. They removed the square setup and just lengthened the main runway you have on your current Formosa Shichiku airbase.
The original buildings and barracks are still there on the SE side, as well as the NW half of the original square walled facility.
I am toying with the idea I had with Taipei of putting the basic CFS2 city/town scenery on the approximate location show on the 1944-45 Army map, but the altitude variances are scaring me.
The town runs from about 45 ft to over 90 ft of elevation as it progresses away from the airbase.
I am looking at some of the ETO villages, towns, and cities to see if I can move those bmps into my FSSC texture folder and use them.

Matsuyama was converted to Taipei's Songshan Airport.
In my VERY BASIC scenery build for Taipei and Matsuyama I had to put the city on the wrong side of the main river due to MS not actually investing any time in accuracy to CFS2 Formosa scenery and land masking.
I do not know how to move land and river scenery to make them more accurate.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST in this project!

[MaskRider]

BTW, I was able to identify the location of the Japanese airfield near Keelung last night on Google earth. It was at Jinshan which sits at the apex of an equilateral triangle formed by Taipei and Keelung- about 50 miles NW up the coast from Keelung. When I googled on "keelung airfield" one of the links returned was for a place called "North Coast & Guanyinshan National Scenic Area Old Jinshan Airfield and Li Qifeng Mansion". It described the location as being nearby to a bridge called the Sanjie Bridge with the only remaining traces of it being a raised stone platform upon which sit 3 huge stone rollers used by the Japanese to pack the runway surface. After several re-spellings of the bridge name I ended up with Sanjie Qiao and sure enough Google earth spit out a web site called MBeni.com which had a map and a stick pin showing the location of the bridge. So once I located the bridge on google earth I stared clicking on photo icons around the bridge location until I found photos of this set of three stone rollers. Stretching off to the NE from their location is some nice flat ground that would have been perfect for a runway but which today is agricultural land used to grow Azaleas. Apparently the runway ran from SW to NE. I have no idea how this location jibes with my earlier Formosa scenery for a Kiirun airfield. Back in the day that I made that scenery things like google earth were only a gleam in their creator's eye.
http://www.mask-rider.net/MaskRider2008/resources/jinshan-runway-rollers.jpg
Until later,
MR

[UncleTgt]

:redfire:I just love how this sim can draw you into doing some pretty extensive research, just to get the "details" right.

I can't think of any other WW2 PC "game" that could lead someone to do this kind of digging...:triumphant:

Especially an "old" shoot 'em up sim such as CFS 2!:jump:

[Devildog73]

BTW, I was able to identify the location of the Japanese airfield near Keelung last night on Google earth. It was at Jinshan which sits at the apex of an equilateral triangle formed by Taipei and Keelung- about 50 miles NW up the coast from Keelung. When I googled on "keelung airfield" one of the links returned was for a place called "North Coast & Guanyinshan National Scenic Area Old Jinshan Airfield and Li Qifeng Mansion". It described the location as being nearby to a bridge called the Sanjie Bridge with the only remaining traces of it being a raised stone platform upon which sit 3 huge stone rollers used by the Japanese to pack the runway surface. After several re-spellings of the bridge name I ended up with Sanjie Qiao and sure enough Google earth spit out a web site called MBeni.com which had a map and a stick pin showing the location of the bridge. So once I located the bridge on google earth I stared clicking on photo icons around the bridge location until I found photos of this set of three stone rollers. Stretching off to the NE from their location is some nice flat ground that would have been perfect for a runway but which today is agricultural land used to grow Azaleas. Apparently the runway ran from SW to NE. I have no idea how this location jibes with my earlier Formosa scenery for a Kiirun airfield. Back in the day that I made that scenery things like google earth were only a gleam in their creator's eye.
http://www.mask-rider.net/MaskRider2008/resources/jinshan-runway-rollers.jpg
Until later,
MR

I know what you mean. I also found that the IJA hid aircraft in caves on Formosa while the USAAC, USN, and RN bombed airfields, which is why all of the chronological accounts of both list few aircraft destroyed on the ground there.
They must have collaborated big time with the Nazi's controlling Germany at the time.

[Devildog73]

:redfire:I just love how this sim can draw you into doing some pretty extensive research, just to get the "details" right.

I can't think of any other WW2 PC "game" that could lead someone to do this kind of digging...:triumphant:

Especially an "old" shoot 'em up sim such as CFS 2!:jump:

I think it is because most of us are novice, or pseudo-historians, in addition to loving to fly this sim.
Where else can we explore our creative side of life in such a protected environment?

In years past we would have had to go to the library to research. Now, not so much.
I have the sim-MB up on one monitor while looking at research sites on the other monitor.
It is SO much easier to multi-task these days with modern computers.