Sweep Mission

[Daiwilletti]

Just flew one of the coolest missions. It was an autogenerated campaign mission in my modified stock testbed.
My aircraft of choice was the lovely JW_Bf109F4R1 with permanently modelled 20mm gun pods on the wings. A good aircraft shredder. It is a bit of an old model nowadays, by modellers such as Gerard van der Harst, Mathias Pommerain and Luca Festari. John Whelan did the external and cockpit textures.
I started a modified stock ETO campaign, in early spring 1943, on the North Western coast of France. Taking off from Morlaix, I headed east-north-east toward a recently established beach-head at Calais. Pesky Allies had invaded early.

I decided to test my new Sweep spawns and selected a Sweep mission. The target objectives are fighters taking off from an airbase. My flight (myself and seven wingmen) flew at the default operation ceiling, being 20,000 feet for the JW 109. We were warping along when I decided to drop out of warp 10NM from the airbase. I lost height as rapidly as possible, and ordered my wingmen to follow. At 3,000 feet I was still 4NM out from the airbase, when the enemy aircraft spawned on the runway - four p47s! I assigned a pair of wingmen to each target, by which time I was closing rapidly only about a mile out and doing around 450mph.

There was very little time I selected my gunpods so that when I pulled the trigger the wing cannon, the nose cannon and the nacelle MGs would all fire. Luckily I had enough time to line up properly, and give all the taking off aircraft a solid burst of gunfire. Unfortunately halfway along the runway at low level, I collided with an allied aircraft flying low - a fifth p47 which I hadn't seen.

The attached screenshot shows the result - one very damaged aircraft in a death spiral. The runway bears the scars of sustained 20mm cannon fire. The far end of the runway has my most recent bullet hits. So I died. The campaign was short, but exceedingly intense.

[Daiwilletti]

Another view of the conflagration

[Daiwilletti]

At least I hit my target. . .

[Pat Pattle]

Looks like fun David, if a little short lived!

[Daiwilletti]

Looks like fun David, if a little short lived!

Well it was intense. Every now and again the old Sim surprises me and dishes out something that brings me into a sweat. The basic campaign sweep spawns are nothing to write home about. But I've re-staged the spawns as takeoff spawns. The target aircraft start on the runway. As time goes on, if you don't shoot the target aircraft down, further aircraft spawn on the runway and before you know it things are getting hot in the air.

I've read that the 1942 rhubarb missions were very dangerous and caused a lot of losses for the RAF. I enjoy writing spawn sets where you have to work to stay alive