horseback

I think that part of the problem is due to the mistaken idea that the human eye is attracted to motion. In reality, what attracts our eyes is the variations in reflected light that motion causes--and that is dependent upon focus, angle, light source and color contrast, all of which are apparently brutally hard to mimic in a 'photo real' simulation. These sorts of sims have to maintain a sort of infinite one-eyed focus, so that you can see everything everywhere on the screen, but it also seems to give every visible object a sort of blurry sameness which hinders motion from attracting our eyes. Add the monotone color/lighting, and moving objects become the next best thing to invisible. We may need some sort of graphics breakthrough to solve the problem, or just require a s**tload more video RAM. cheers horseback

This was what made the B-17 such an iconic aircraft; among the heavy bombers of its era, it was the easiest to fly accurately and in a 'tight' formation for mutual protection. Even so, there was no hydraulic (or electrical) boost for the controls, which meant that for many basic maneuvers you had to have a second set of arms and legs working the yokes & rudder pedals, there were literally dozens of gauges that needed to be closely monitored and the workload for the two pilots was such that somebody else had to keep track of the course, another guy had to juggle the radio communications and intercom, and five more men had to be dedicated almost solely to manning the guns aft of the cockpit. Modeling this aircraft's systems at the same level as the existing DCS P-51D should need a network of at least 2 or 3 people just to get it off the ground, fly around, and safely back down. Chances are that you would need 6 or 7 to operate at minimum combat efficiency, or the AI interface will need to be brilliant. I'd look for a couple of extra levels of 'play' for those who can only fly the Fortress offline or solo, with role-specific training programs for pilots, navigators/radio officers and flight engineers at a minimum (I do not envy the person assigned to creating that aircraft's manuals...) That is going to be an enormous project. cheers horseback

De nada, mate. You gave me an opportunity to dispel a few popular misconceptions that have irked me for years. I too have a great deal of respect for the P-40's record, but from the start it was an improvisation that at best 'sort of' worked, and Curtiss' management just 'doubled down' on it instead of making a real effort to do more than put band-aids on the obvious flaws & problems in the design--by all accounts, much too often they left their engineering staff high and dry in terms of resources. Stalin would have had the lot of them in front of a firing squad by the end of 1943. The credit should go to the pilots. The RAAF would have been far better served if we'd sent you Hellcats or Corsairs as soon as the production numbers allowed; of course, the last thing MacArthur wanted to see was the RAAF equipped with aircraft having adequate range... cheers horseback

Interesting read, but there are a couple of things that contradict what other sources tell us. First, the Spitfire Mk II used a Merlin X engine; the 45 was associated with later Mk V versions. Second, metal ailerons became standard (at least on the Channel Front) by late 1941; Both Tuck's and Bader's popular biographies (Reach For the Sky and Fly For Your Life, although I can't remember which was which) mention the improvement conferred by the metal ailerons, and pushing for and making the switch while both were flying either Mk IIs or very early Mk Vs before both of those stalwarts became guests of the LW by the first half of 1942. I also seem to recall from several bios or memoirs that mention taking operational aircraft from the front line to the depot to have the ailerons replaced while the pilot waited in 1941. Some emphasis is placed on the discomfort of the Spitfire's cockpit, but the aircraft was not designed for missions over 90 minutes; something that would be intolerable for 4 to 6 hours (short of arterial bleeding or a severe anal itch) can usually be endured for 90 minutes. Pilots in the various Bf 109 models had it much worse, and if the comparative loss rates over friendly territory is any indication, the Spit was much safer to bail out of. The Spit was also considered easier to take off, land and taxi than the 109 (and the P-40) by a fairly wide margin. My reading of the passages is that the writer is playing up, or emphasizing the difficulties a bit to add a little drama. cheers horseback

Changed the throttle axis to a slider in the Tuning GUI and now it works. This may be an issue of cause and effect, or it may be that my computer was still digesting a large Windows update. In any case, I'm back up and running and botching my landings as before... cheers horseback

Let's keep in mind that the US military had a great many uses for the .50" M2 heavy machine gun--in a way, they had a compulsion to stuff it into every conceivable ground unit, vehicle, boat, ship and aircraft they could find, not unlike the Brits and their need to stuff a Merlin (or some derivative thereof) into practically everything that flew, sailed or drove from 1936 to 1950. There weren't enough M2s to go around for almost two years after the US entry and installation of the .50" in the 'e' wing came about only after the US manufacturers had reached saturation of US military needs for the .50" machine gun; once there was a surplus of the weapons, the RAF was given as many as were available. According to some sources, early versions of the 'e' wing had the four .303" light MGs. cheers horseback

As I understand it, Spit IXs were at least originally Mk Vc fuselages and wings from the firewall back, with an additional large radiator under the left wing replacing the old tube-shaped oil cooler. Forward of the firewall was the two stage Merlin and a four bladed Rotol prop, making the IX about a foot longer and somewhat heavier than the Mk V. During its service life, the Mk IX underwent several improvements, becoming a more formidable and versatile combat aircraft. The wing went from the 'c' type with 2x200m cannon and 4x.303" lmgs to the 'e' type with the .303" Brownings being replaced by a pair of American .50" hmgs mounted inboard of the cannon, the elevators got larger balance horns, and the rudder got a bit bigger and had a point on top, along with the various wingtip mods (clipped, standard, and high altitude pointy tips) and several different late series Merlin engines and a couple of different carburetor filters. There were other changes, but those were the main ones generally identified with the Mk IX. Which of these improvements will be on the Mk IX we'll be getting from RRG? -engine series -wings -armament options -elevator type -rudder type cheers horseback

What I've been saying is that coming up with the idea wasn't that great a stretch; the key requirements were knowledge of the Mustang's qualities, knowledge of the existence of the two stage Merlin, and the recognition that the size and weight of the original Allison were not significantly different from the Merlin (something that had already been done in the case of the P-40F). The Brits were reflexively stuffing Merlins into everything in sight (I seem to recall something about them in torpedo boats, for Pete's sake). As I said, the idea itself is in the same class as the thought that the voluptuous young lady across the way would look very nice in a top with a deeper neckline (especially if it were to get wet somehow...). I quoted directly from America's Hundred-Thousand. It is likely that if the contract specified Packard Merlins, then it was on the basis that Packard had (at least) received a contract proposal to build the two stage engines (which would have allowed the US government the right to poach 'examples' for their own use). In any case, Packard were very busy pumping out the single stage Merlin in large numbers for both the RAF and the USAAF (in P-40F/Ls), and would logically be commissioned to build the two stage versions. It is significant that Packard started building their two stage Merlins less than a month after the North American XP-51B made its first flight, don't you think? It takes a while to tool up for building new engines using American (SAE?) measurements instead of the British measurements, after the contracts are signed off, so five months isn't unreasonable when they had to start new, separate production lines since the single stage Packard Merlins continued in production under their pre-existing contracts. Whoever was behind the invitation to Rolls Royce's Ronnie Harker probably had the idea before he did; so it could have been the Wing Leader for that first Mustang wing (two squadrons of which were Canadian, which included a number of Yanks among their pilots), one of the three squadron leaders, or it could have been Tommy Hitchcock, the Air Attache from the US Embassy, who wanted a RR advocate for putting a Merlin (any Merlin) into a Mustang. It doesn't really matter. What matters is how quickly the idea caught fire and was implemented by both the British and the Americans at very close to the same time, so that the best aircraft possible was arrived at. cheers horseback

No dreams; the timing is unquestionably hinky. Regardless of what is in the book IvanK is touting (or who commissioned it), here's your timeline, and keep in mind that North American owned the rights to the design, which means that any major modifications to the aircraft legally had to have their approval, war or no war, government or no government: 1st (prototype) Spitfire flight with a two stage Merlin engine: September 27th, 1941 1st Mustang Mk I arrives in Britain: October 24th, 1941 (not ready for flight until the end of the month) 1st Mustang Squadron (2 Squadron) receives its first Mustangs: February 1942 1st Mustang Squadron (2 Squadron) operational: April 1942 (I believe that RAF had between 16 and 20 aircraft assigned to fighter squadrons at that time) Ronnie Harker, Rolls Royce test pilot, is invited to fly the new American fighter, supposedly by the CO of the new Mustang Squadron although several sources cite Tommy Hitchcock, the US Embassy's Air Attache (formerly of the Lafayette Esquadrille in WWI) as being a facilitator; regardless the flight takes place in late April 1942, and Harker is very impressed. The US Army orders 1200 Allison powered P-51As: 23 June 1942. Rolls Royce makes a "preliminary study" of installing a Merlin 61 engine into a Mustang airframe: 14 July 1942 (Bastille Day!! General De Gaulle insists in his autobiography that this is incontrovertible proof that it was his idea). The US Army awards North American Aircraft a contract for the conversion of two P-51 aircraft to XP-78s using Packard Merlin engines with two stage superchargers: July 25th, 1942. 1st Spitfire Mk IX Squadron (64) receives its first MK IX Spit aircraft in June of 1942, declared operational in the new type on 28 July 1942. Only four more Mk IX squadrons become operational by the Dieppe operation in August of that year (there aren't a lot of MK IXs available, and not many more 60 series Merlins). Prototype installation of the Packard Merlin into a P-51 airframe is made by North American and Rolls Royce takes delivery of five Mustang Mk Is and begins their conversion process: August 1942 August 26, 1942: an order is placed by the US Army for 400 P-78 aircraft (NA-102); the model is redesignated the P-51B the following month, and the P-51A order is cut back to 310 in order to get the Merlin powered models in production sooner. Executives at Curtiss Aircraft (makers of the P-40s that the Mustang would have replaced) heave a huge sigh of relief. Key facts: 1) The RAF was desperate to get as many Spit IXs into operational squadrons on the Channel Front as soon as possible, but they had only four operational squadrons totaling not quite 100 aircraft almost a year after the first converted Mk V was flown; there were plenty of airframes available--the bottleneck appears to have been the supply of engines. 2) Putting those precious engines into an American design would have caused the RAF to revolt; the very idea would have caused every Air Marshall to snort his tea out his nose. The only thing that would have made the idea acceptable would have been an enormous American source of the new engines which would have created a large enough supply that everyone could be made happy. The shortage continued for the next year; new P-51B airframes were accumulating at the LA facility in May of 1943 while they awaited their engines-- the RAF had the first rights to Packard's single stage Merlin production (limiting or slowing their ability to produce two stage models) while RR mainly concentrated on producing the two stage models for Spitfires. 3) Tommy Hitchcock was the Air Attache for the US Embassy in London; it was his job to monitor not only the military aviation situation in the UK, it was his job to keep abreast of how US made aircraft in British service were measuring up and find ways to make them better, presumably for US service. Hitchcock split his time between polo and flying, and was reputedly very good at both. He flew the Mustang I well before Harker (it was his job, and there were six months between the first examples arriving and Harker's famous flight) and he was quite aware of the Allison V-1710's shortcomings; any version of the Merlin would have improved the Mustang's numbers, so even assuming that the two stage supercharged versions were unknown to Hitchcock, he would (should still) have been lobbying for a Rolls Royce endorsement for putting one of their engines in the new Mustangs. If he wasn't the father of the idea, he was very probably the midwife. 4) The close timing between the RR study and the US Army's order with NAA for converting P-51 airframes to two stage Merlins pretty much required that NAA and the USAAF were kept in the loop from the beginning; it is likely that both Hap Arnold and Dutch Kindelberger lusted in their hearts for the best inline aircraft engine in the Allied inventory for the Mustang within microseconds of learning of its existence, so their full cooperation was a given. Nine days is a very short period in which to absorb the technical implications and draw up a contract between parties in London, Washington DC and Los Angeles even today; doing it 'over the phone' in 1942 doesn't bear thinking about. On July 26th, 1942, dozens of second lieutenants in all three cities probably collapsed in exhaustion, some never to recover, broken in their country's service and never knowing exactly why...one has to wonder where their memorial is, and if the National Parks Service has it blockaded because of the government shutdown. My original claim was that the idea for putting the two stage Merlin into the Mustang was 'taken up' simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic. I'm pretty sure that that means people on both sides of the Atlantic (and on our side of the Pacific) were laboring to get the job done at the same time. As I said, as soon as someone on the Allied side knew about the Mustang Mk I's qualities, they would quite likely have wondered what it could do with a Merlin in it; once the two stage Merlin became known, it would be an obvious choice BUT no matter whose idea it was (and the more I think about the Bastille Day connection, the more I favor Charles De Gaulle), you needed North American Aviation's permission and cooperation to proceed. The logical course then was to get NAA on board immediately. And seriously, their version was much better looking and performing than the Rolls Royce version. cheers horseback

Just installed 2.6.2(?) this afternoon, and tried to run the Engine Startup Training Mission. As stated above, the throttle is not working. It works for a few seconds at the start, before you press the Spacebar, but after that, it won't budge--not with the axis controller (I tried reassigning, and it gave me the same results for my CH Pro Throttle, CH Throttle Quadrant and the Saitek Throttle Quadrant (a guy can't have too many controller axes!)), not with the mouse, and not with the assigned keyboard keys. All of my other assigned axes appear to work fine; it's just the throttle. I have tried 1) shutting down the program and re-starting my computer, 2) re-assigning the axis to three different controllers, 3) Tuning the axis, and 4) cursing and throwing things. None worked, but 4) did relieve a bit of tension. I did notice that the tuning GUI got a bit wonky; no matter what I did, if the controller handle was all the way forward, the axis position indicators, both actual and raw, would be all the way in the bottom corner, regardless of whether I inverted the axis or not. No matter what controller or even if I reset the axis direction using the CH Manager software, if the controller was all the way forwards, the tuning GUI shows it at minimum, and when it is all the way back, the GUI shows it at maximum. Also, I noted that at the start of the Engine Startup module, that all of the controls assigned to an axis were at mid-position; this hadn't happened before. Tried other Training Missions, with the same results; once the player is supposed to manipulate the throttle, it won't budge; not in Taxiing, and not in either Takeoff mission. First, am I the only one with this problem? Second, any ideas? Skip the one involving a beer and taking some time before trying again-- I'm right in the middle of that (actually, about three Stellas deep). cheers horseback

Everything I've read on the subject combined with over thirty years working as a defense contractor tells me that this was a case of spontaneous combustion. It is a classic example of the Obvious Thing To Do, like inventing Rock and Roll to go with electric guitars, matches for firecrackers or plunging necklines for women's clothing. First, let's look at the timing; the first Merlin 60 series equipped Spitfire took to the air on 27 September, 1941, and the first production Spitfire Mk IXs entered service in June 1942, the first squadron (64, out of Hornchurch) becoming operational in late July of that year. By that time, the Mustang Mk I had been in combat operations for about three months, the A-36 had entered production in order to keep the lines going until funding for the USAAF fighter versions could be authorized, and the first P-51A contract was signed in June. The following month, the last Mustang I was built. According to most British sources, Rolls Royce test pilot Ronnie Harker was the primary motivator for the British effort to place the Merlin 60 series in a Mustang airframe after test flying a Mk I in late April of '42, but no one on the British side seems to cite dates and times until the first flights of the Mustang Mk X on October 13, 1942. According to America's Hundred-Thousand, by Francis Dean, Rolls Royce made a preliminary study of installing a Merlin 61 in a Mustang airframe on July 14th. On July 25th (only nine days later, in an age before the modern instantaneous communications we take for granted today) "... a contract was given to North American for the conversion of two Lend-Lease P-51 aircraft to XP-78s using Packard Merlin engines with two stage superchargers (later to be XP-51B aircraft)." Mustang: The Operational Record by Robert Jackson mentions that this was a US Army contract, not an RAF contract. Jackson also mentions that Dutch Kindelberger was on record as being unhappy with the Allison as a powerplant for the Mustang almost from its first flight tests. There are also mentions of visits to the various Eagle Squadrons by the Canadian Squadrons that were flying the new Mustangs in several books covering those units' histories before and after their absorption into the US Eight Air Force, and several notables in those squadronss were quoted in contemporary accounts (including squadron diaries) asking what the Mustang might do if a Merlin (presumably a 40 series, as in their Squadrons' Spit Vbs) were put in it. Yank pilots in RAF service were bound to share their impressions with their fellow Americans in the Eighth Air Force (especially if the 'American' Americans were paying for the drinks). Remember, this was also during the same period of time that the first single stage Packard Merlin powered P-40s were being produced, and this had improved the altitude performance of the P-40F significantly over the P-40E or -K. Anyone who had flown both came to the conclusion that the Mustang was a better fighter, so putting a Merlin into it was the next logical step. The idea seems to have been universal among people 'in the know', given the acknowledged failings of the Allison above 12000 ft. If you knew anything about the Mustang and had heard of the new two stage engines going into the new Spitfires in the summer of 1942, you were going to speculate what the American design would do if they put an R-2800 and a GE turbosupercharger--ummm--I mean, a Merlin 60 series in it. Too many highly placed persons took a personal interest in the project for it to be attributed to one person's stroke of genius. It was just too obviously the thing to do. For all intents and purposes, the cutting of metal and installation of the new model Merlin engines was nearly simultaneous at both Long Beach and at Rolls Royce's facilities in England. The cruder and more improvised Rolls Royce conversion flew in October and the North American version, which photos reveal to be very similar to the final production versions, flew November 30th. Hap Arnold, the Commanding General of the US Army Air Forces, had already placed a (verbal) order for 2,000 of the new aircraft before the first North American flights, signing the contract in January of 1943. That means that events took place much too fast for everything to have been done by one side or another, given the timing and distances involved; it literally had to be a cooperative venture almost from the start, and that means that once you knew about the new airplane and the new engine, you had an unavoidable impulse to want to put them together. Government and business bureaucracies just don't work that fast without Divine Intervention. cheers horseback

Flame on. In early 1940, when the original proposals were made, the British were looking for any useful combat aircraft; bombers, fighters, patrol aircraft and trainers. At that time, the Spitfire had yet to see any serious combat and the Battle of Britain had not begun. American aircraft were sought in anticipation of the Luftwaffe achieving the sort of success over England that it had over France and the Low Countries, particularly against airfields and aircraft production facilities. The Mustang I arrived in January of 1941, by which time the BoB had been won and the Spitfire Mk V was in full production. The Luftwaffe was not sending large daylight bomber formations into British airspace, and the RAF was in the process of 'leaning forward' across the Channel, where the combat was taking place at increasingly high altitudes. Head to head tests of the new fighter revealed that it was superior in many ways to the Spit V (including top speed and range), but that the single stage supercharger of the Allison engine provided inadequate performance at altitudes over 12-15,000 ft (depending upon the engine's generation). The Mustang replaced Lysanders, Tomahawks and Kittyhawks (not 'more capable interceptors') in the Army cooperation role, and was instantly favored for the high speed low altitude recon role, being easily the fastest aircraft available below 15,000 ft with an exceptionally useful range. It might have been applied against the 'tip and run' raiders, given its tremendous performance at lower alts, but I suspect that it was already 'slotted' by Higher Ranks as an air to ground weapon as well as being tainted by the 'not made here' syndrome (apparently this was not limited to the USAAF). Huh? The idea for putting a Merlin 60 series engine into the Mustang airframe was taken up practically simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic in mid 1942, shortly after the first Spitfire IXs were deployed and Packard had received licenses for building 40 series Merlins for various British aircraft and the P-40F/L; if North American's first prototypes of their Merlin powered Mustang flew a month later than the Rolls Royce effort, it was because they had to jump through a lot of extra hoops to obtain the necessary legal permissions and the engine(s) and transport them from England to Los Angeles. RR's Mustang X (an effort that may not have been entirely legal--some sources at NAA thought that it was a veiled attempt to take control of the Mustang design) was considerably less capable than the 'numbers' indicated it should have been and it was ugly (bordering on vandalism, IMHO). North American's effort not only looked better, it performed significantly better from the start and soon added further improvements that showed up in production models, including the more efficient Hamilton Standard props. When all was said and done, the only thing about the Mustang that belonged in the 'British' column was the basic engine design, since the Packard Merlins varied somewhat from the RR Merlins in several ways. How patronizing. The Allison powered Mustang was a significantly superior aircraft to every variant of the Hawk 81/87 series in every measurable way except the turning circle--and it took a much more experienced Kittyhawk driver to achieve a tighter turn than could be attained by a 'novice' in a Mustang. The wartime consensus was that the maneuverability of the Mustang in the hands of an equally experienced pilot was neck and neck with the P-40 (and the P-40 had a very good reputation for maneuverability as long as Japanese fighters were excluded from the conversation). The P-40 series were harder to takeoff, land and taxi than the Mustang and in flight required constant trim adjustment in both elevator and rudder in order to keep stick and rudder pedal forces manageable, while the Mustang was considered to be exceptionally easy to control and rarely needed trim adjustment by the standards of WWII era fighter aircraft. Below 15,000 ft, the Mustang II/P-51A was considered to be the best Allied fighter available in most regards and preferable to the Spit V if range was any consideration at all. The only reason that the Allison Mustang didn't replace the P-40 in the Allied inventory was that it was quickly replaced on the production lines by the P-51B/C and the whole of that production was committed to the ETO until the middle of 1944. The P-51A variants became vanishingly rare very quickly, despite being considered the 'sweetest' Mustangs of them all in many ways. Below 10K ft, the Allison Mustangs were faster and better handling than the Merlin Mustangs; the only advantage the Merlin ponies had at those heights was rate of climb (and it wasn't as great an edge as you'd think). This I agree with; razorback Mustangs with the blown Malcolm hood were generally preferred to the D models by combat pilots once the ammo feed issues were solved, especially the ones that had the fin fillet kits applied. Many of these models soldiered on into early 1945 before they were forced into 'retirement' due to accumulated stress and wear on the airframes. Hang in there though; if this sim prospers and continues to develop, we still might see a razorback Mustang before I get too old and blind to fly it. cheers horseback

Reality Check! Pleeeeaaassse. The British Purchasing Commission approached North American asking them to build Kittyhawks on license from Curtiss, a job that required very little in terms of creativity or risk. They could have taken the money from the British and the drawings from Curtiss and pumped out borderline combat aircraft as long as the customer wanted them. That would have been the easy way out, and everyone would have been happy; the Brits would get their cantankerous trim hogs of marginal performance to hold place until enough Spitfires could be built to replace them, and North American Aircraft Company would get the (borrowed) money from the Crown, and already be in full war production mode when the US government finally came calling. Like Lockheed, they might have ended up locked in to building a borderline aircraft (they had a big British Purchasing Commission contract for the Hudson that demanded a great deal of their company resources) instead of having the people and resources available to concentrate on the strategically important P-38 at the time when it was most needed. Instead, Dutch Kindelberger, the head of North American, decided that his engineers were capable of creating (or had already created) a superior design using the same engine and armament; he undoubtedly knew that they were doodling design ideas on their own time anyway, and if he talked with them at all, he had to know that many of their design concepts were fairly complete. Kindelberger told the British that he didn’t want to build someone else’s designs when he could make a better airplane in less time that it would take to set up the jigs and production line and clear the legal paperwork for the other company’s aircraft. The British took the offer, knowing that if North American were unable to produce a better fighter in the proposed time, they would still be able to fall back to making license built P-40 variants. The sum total of the British specifications were 1) Allison engines of the V-1710 class, 2) provision for at least four forward firing .50” and/or four .303”machine guns, and 3) performance and range equal or superior to the Curtiss Hawk 81/87 series fighters, all of which would have been a minimum baseline for any new inline fighter design built in the US in 1940/41. To be honest, according to all accounts, any specifications that exceeded those three would have been proposed by North American. The British provided an opportunity and capital (once the prototype had been produced and proven) a bit earlier than the US Army Air Corps, not inspiration or any unique new design input. The design and risk were all on North American; they would have produced the Mustang design in the same amount of time for the US Army (or the Navy or Marines for that matter); their B-25 bomber and T-6 trainer were already in steadily increasing demand and well thought of, so a proposal for a fighter design from them would undoubtedly have been listened to with great interest by mid-1941, when the US was finally tooling up for the war on their own behalf. The Mustang was the next best thing to inevitable; I believe that only the timing can be credited to the British, and that due to their desperation in the early months of the war; the men who signed that contract had no idea what they had accomplished. However, I agree that the timing was absolutely critical. cheers horseback

Correction: ...our first two years, during which US forces sank five or so Japanese carriers, fought the Guadalcanal campaign on the proverbial shoestring, invaded North Africa on the other shoestring, began an enormous buildup in Britain, the Mediterranean, the CBI and the Pacific, and oh, by the way, contributed significant percentages of the food and clothing consumed by our allies (military and civilian), not to mention the munitions, ships and aircraft provided via Lend-Lease across the longest logistics trains of the entire war, all while going from third rate military power to one of the first rank powers (at our own expense). Happy now? cheers horseback

Let's point out one little fact. If the British have only one aircraft, it's their own fault for having a war-winning basic design from the outset in the Spitfire, while we Yanks muddled through the first two years with P-39s and P-40s, with a precarious trickle of P-38s and P-47s until we finally settled on the P-51. That said, I still need to hear which variant of Mk IX we will be seeing. 'The Spitfire MK IX' is a pretty vague description, with all kinds of possible flavors. Big pointy rudder or classic rounded rudder? 'e' wing (2X20mm + 2X.50") or 'c' wing (2X20mm +4X.303)? Basic elevators or the horned type? Will it have a fuselage tank (why should the Mustang drivers have all the fun of a displaced CoG)? What kind of Spitty are we getting? cheers horseback

Bravo. When in doubt, go with integrity. cheers horseback

A cheap joystick is a lot harder to use in a study type simulator than a keyboard and mouse is for a First Person Shooter or Role Player, and that cheap joystick is quickly revealed as inadequate for anything more advanced than an online game of AirQuake (or whatever the heck they call it when it's just a free-for-all). You want to get good controllers and be competitive? Then pedals and TrackIR are the next steps--at $150 US each. That is a steep curve upwards for someone in his teens or earning his own living at an entry level job (hell, it's close to three months' supply of decent beer). A young person who has to convince his parent(s) or choose between them and other less expensive entertainment options won't count the longterm value of goodies like that against the immediate costs the same way most of us might. I'm just sayin'...this is One Expensive "Hobby". By the way, the XBox360 I got my kids a few years back came with a pair of controllers. Made me The Best Dad Ever for almost a full three weeks :thumbup:. cheers horseback

Ditto. The P-47 isn't exactly an entry level aircraft, but it will allow people access to DCS WWII and tempt them to carry their own weight financially if they want the 'sexier' aircraft. Actually though, I think that the real barrier to the new user of flight simulators is the need for a twist-rudder joystick for the very minimum level entry. I started playing Red Baron 10-12 years ago with a 20 dollar USB stick and now I look around my seat here at my computer and I see well over 800 US dollars worth of gear dedicated to flight simming (not even counting the computer itself that I built with an eye mainly on flight sim enjoyment). That can be pretty intimidating to the person casually considering the purchase of a flight simulator who realizes quite quickly that the keyboard or the gamepad that came with his XBox isn't going to cut it. What may be needed is a new user-friendly method to virtually fly in an entertaining semi-realistic way using either the keyboard or some sort of common interface that wouldn't have to be just for flight simming. cheers horseback

Actually, it might. Check out the FOV for the Corsair or Hellcat from the Sim That Cannot Be Named (<cough!>IL-2 '46<cough, cough!>) and see how the slight nose down attitude in high speed flight and the sloping nose from the windshield sill improve your firing solution. It will be partially dependent upon where they place your aiming point/crosshairs, but deflection isn't always strictly a matter of straight up and down... cheers horseback

I think that you will find that any combat critical equipment that entered the production lines probably reached units in the field (or at least the forward depots) in kit form either just before or just after the production upgrades. This was certainly the case for the fin fillets on the D/K models and with the early issue of the paddleblade props and water injection kits for the P-47s in the Eighth AF (and as usual, the 56th FG got them first). As for the double antennas, the only place they seem to have been commonly seen was with the ultra long range escort groups out of Iwo Jima and the Western Pacific theater. I don't think I've seen any pictures of them on Mustangs operating in the ETO or Med. cheers hosreback

Are we at the point where somebody cites the Eric Brown book (or various magazine articles taken from it) when he describes flying the various types of 190 yet? According to CAPT Brown, At the higher speeds at which air combat generally took place, the FW 190 (at least the Antons) supposedly 'nosed down' a few critical degrees, which improved the forward view a good deal. If this was also true of the Dora versions and it is modeled in the DCS Dora, the bar controversy could turn out to be a tempest in a teapot. Personally, if there's going to be a bar in my DCS 190, it better serve Johnny Walker Black. cheers horseback

I'm generally in favor, but for the sake of historical accuracy, I will point out that convergence/harmonization settings depended on whose air arm you were in, and often whose group or squadron. Most of the Allied air forces had enough airplanes to give everyone an assigned aircraft, but a cursory glance at the captions of photos of various aces' aircraft will tell you that an awful lot of those aircraft were lost or destroyed with somebody else in the cockpit. Generally US units tended to settle for a common setting for 1000', or close to 305m; in the USN and USMC, this was rarely deviated from, since all gunnery training was based on that distance from Day One. Naval aviators were already accustomed to that range, and few if any wanted to change something that clearly worked. US Army air forces tended to be more individualistic, and most of the time, discretion was given to group commanders. The USAAC did not have the intensive prewar gunnery training and gunnery doctrine that the Navy had, so some free-lancing was bound to occur. Some groups had a common setting, some allowed (productive) individuals to choose for themselves. The RAF and associated Commonwealth air arms originally started with a 400 yard/365m official range, but that was found to be ineffective with the standard 8 X .303" armament of the Hurricane and Spitfire early in the war. Pilots and Squadron Leaders quickly adjusted harmonization ranges down to as little as 100 yds with or without official blessing in order to obtain maximum effect from their rifle caliber armament. I suspect (don't know for sure, but the Brits tended to operate this way) that once a standoff weapon like the Hispano 20mm was added that the boffins got to work with their sliderules and figured out the most effective ranges for sighting and hitting your target and the official information reached squadron level a week or two before VE Day, or three years or so after the pilots learned about it at their favorite pubs. In practice, I suspect that RAF allowed Squadron or Wing Commanders to set the standard harmonization for their aircraft for most of the war. I cannot speak to German or Japanese practices in this area, but having most of your armament on or near your nose must have simplified things for them... cheers horseback

Recently, I've been going through my old Detail & Scale books along with several Squadron Walkarounds...a nephew dropped my CH Yoke and trashed the yoke handle, which led me to consider using it to make a 'generic' US WWII throttle and (possibly) stick or trim panel setup (I never cared much for it anyway). However, it seems like each of the USAAC's various WWII fighters had its own unique throttle setup, while the Dash-1 Corsairs and Hellcat shared a basic throttle layout--but one quite different from the Army birds (prop pitch control lever juts out of the rear of the quadrant). Naturally, all of them differ radically from the Spitfire Mk IX and FW 190D throttle layouts. It looks to me as though each type will require its own very specific design. Now I have to decide which one I'll go with...:cry: cheers horseback

I won't get really concerned until I have to deal with aircraft with rear or side gunners; I've been thoroughly traumatized by the supersnipers unaffected by high G maneuvers, accurate counterfire or distances in excess of 700m in That Other WWII Sim that Oleg and Luthier made. Add in the obvious hierarchy of which aircraft get hit and how badly, and it goes well past the excusable. Given the steepness of the learning curve just in flying aircraft of this complexity and faithfulness to the original will make it hard enough that real flaws in the AI fighter routines will not be obvious to the average dedicated simmer for several months. As long as they don't violate the laws of physics, aren't blatantly omniscient and don't go into an infinite slow roll routine once you come within 420 meters, it will be a good start for most of us. cheers horseback

Who doesn't love big Jugs? Absolutely agree about getting the DM right. Nobody has yet... cheers horseback