Dante, I just wonder there is posible to fly the pucara and the Super Etendard or is a IA plane?, making a exocet attack would be nice

I´m from Argentina, and this game is very important from my! so if you need any help just mail me.

You can see the Pucara that I make for SFP1 is nice...

Cheers

FoxMonter, don´t worry the Pucará will be flyable i belive. Nos os sure about the SUE (SUE is the Argentinian designation for the Super Etandart).

Cat actually I would like it to be a toggle option, since I would like to have to face the same obstacles that our pilots had to face in 1982.

Regarding the bombs, just make two versions of the same bomb in the weapons database, one fused for low-alt fused and one for medium-alt.

Then mission/campaign designers can make one or the other available.

Actually the problem with the fuses was Not the altitude of releas nor the timing, but the hardnes of the intended traget.

Airforce bombs did not explode becouse they used a contact Fuse that was not being ignited when coliding againts soft aluminum targets. Usually MK-117 went all the way throug the ships, coming out on the other end making a nice big hole on the boat, but not doing any meaningfull damage.
The Air Force solved this in two ways:

1) they got hold of Spanish electronic fuses, and then later developed locally several other fuses wit different mechanisms (electronic, impact but more sensitive, retarded by timers, etc, etc)

And 2) they began using more, smaller bombs. So instead of carrying 1 250lbs bomb they took 3 125lbs, that where lighter and tended to stay on board more than the penetrating 250lbs ones .

So you see altitude of release had nothing to do with the problem.

Hmm I've read the story about the incorrect altitude settings as well... so is it an urban legend then?

Overall that's an interesting "gameplay vs. historical accuracy" problem. After all, who wants to go on a mission knowing that the ordnance is (potentially) useless. Then again, if that was an important factor in the real conflict, ignoring it would give the Argentinian side a non-historical advantage.

I guess an option to enable/disable dud bombs would be the best solution, although it could be hard to determine how often a bomb should fail or detonate.

i tended to think this happened:

the BBC showed footage of the dud bombs hitting the ships, then the bombs werent duds anymore.

All I have is hard data for the Argentinian Air Force, and none whatsoever for the ARA (Argi Navy)
But I can research and find out when exactlly the new spanish and israelli fuese and later home made fuses came into availability.

Then based on that you could have a 30% chance of detonating from March 1st 1982 (for what if scenarios) to the date of the first fuses being available, and increase the numbers exponentially as the conflict progreses.

And another Historical vs playability factor should be to determine if you can choose to arm your plane as you want (thus being able to take smaller bombs) or if you should use the standard configutration for that "weapons system" (plane) at that time in the war.

Since Argentinian pilots did not determine what loadout they could use, but it was part of the "Orden Fragmentaria" or mission orders. This orders determined weapons type and numbers, fuel tanks and flight plans.

So in a historical mode you shouldn´t be able to change the loadouts nor the Flight Plans.


And someone should find out what armament did the ARA (Argie Navy) had and how efective it was.

I got the item about the Argentine bomb fuzing out of Hastings & Jenkins's book The Battle for the Falklands. If I'm wrong, I blame it on the source....though I've always been surprised that the Argentines weren't using dedicated hi-drag munitions like Snakeyes for that application...one wonders.

Miao, Cat

@cat

I don't know where you got the idea that the argentineans didn't us the Snake Eye. The canned A-4Q carrier launched attack was to have use the US weapon.

In fact HMS Ardent was known to have been hit by several Snake Eyes. I guess they were used according to what stocks were available.

That´s the big problem for us (Argentina), the stock of weapons was very limited, for that we used bombs that is not for that purpose.
We don´t have enough bombs, planes, missiles... only we have our BRAVE pilots, that´s make history against a much more powerful airforce.

Cheers

The issue with the bombs is fusing. The most common mechanical fuses for the MK82 are M904 and M905. Both these fuses are Vane type fuses. Minimum setting for the MK904 is 2 seconds. (In addition to set the fuse to less than 4seconds a stop screw on the fuse body also needs to be removed). In the case of the M905 tail fuse the minimum fuse arming time is 4 seconds. On top of this is a timing tolerance of +-10% for the 904 and +_20% for the 905.

It is typical to dual fuse MK82s to increase realiabilty of the total fuse combination. In any case the minimum time of flight then is 2 seconds, with a desired min time of flight of 4 secs to cater for the 905.

A slick release with 2 sec arming time say at 480Kts zero dive angle requires a minimum release altitude of 310feet to allow fuse arming. However a release like this will surely damage the attacker. The Safe escape tables show that for a slick release level with 5G recovery the minimum release altitude is 580feet.

Looking at the High Drag Snakeye. The most common tail fuse is the FMU54. It has a min fuse arming time of 0.75 seconds with a tolerance of +- 20%. In this case with a 480Knot release level at 100feet gives a time of flight of 2.68 secs. The Minimum safe escape release altitude for this delivery with 5G recovery is also 100feet.

So its not a simple solution. In the case of the Slick bomb the minimum 2.0 second fuse arming time poses fairly major restrictions on the attacker in terms of Release altitudes and dive angles. These restrictions in the environment faced by the Argentine pilots would have been lethal. I respectfully suggest thats why their deliveries were done at so low altitudes. They had a chance at surrvival but little chance of fuse arming.

As to the Britsh bombs also employed I dont have enough Fuse information on these to comment. Other than to say Safe Escape problems would be similar.

Baco release altitude is a huge player in any Bomb delivery. The Safe escape issues are Real. The Tables published also only account for the primary weapon detonation and not secondaries. Safe Escape is fuse independant. You cant just go simply dropping bombs willy nilly without regard to Safe Escape and Fuse Arming.

Then if it were possible to obtain a fuse that you can set to 0 fuse arming time (and I doubt it since then its not a fuse ) you would be a truly brave operator to employ it!

can a slick bomb be relative safe though presumedly drag will have at least moved it back a bit, and by the time it explodes? aircraft shield by the warship it passes low over.

Perhaps Scary but a very big perhaps !

The quoted Blast raduis for the primary charge of a 500Lb MK82 Static burst is 3000feet horizontaly and 2520 feet vertically. This doesnt count for secondaries.

In a static blast its a circular frag pattern however with a high speed delivery the Frag pattern becomes an ellipsoid... that makes the issue worse. Then dont forget in co ordinated attacks you need to deconflict qwith the other guy, since he does want to fly through your frag as well. The Frag envelope described still has debris in the air up to 1000feet till T+19 seconds. Consequently 20seconds in considered the minimum interval between attacking aircraft. The alternative is for the second aircraft to do a higer angle release to keep him out of the first attackers Frag envelope ... but that then puts him in the SAM envelope... Tricky stuff

Releases inside the frag envelope is invariably seriously detrimental to the attacker. I have witnessed an ejection as a result of a HD bomb going Slick and arming with subsequent detonation with the release aircraft in the frag envelope ... ugly.

Envelope sent to Dante

you seem to know what you're saying i was imagining.

boat
_
/ - a bomb
---the sea

it hits the hull and the hull would tend to send the blast towards the sea and up at mostly the angle of the ship.

ships are pretty big. seems safe as houses. :-)

but then, i'm not expert on that.

Hi Ivan. Yes a few years ago I also thougth that argentinians bombs did not explode becouse the fuse didn´t have enouth time to activate due to the low altitude that the bombs were released from. I even had heated discussions about it.

Then recentlly I bought the book "Daggers y Finguers en Argentina 1977-2004" I read that fuses were lowered to minimun 2 sec. The problem seemeed to be that even thow the fuses had libertaed the "ingnition mechanism" (I don´t know the technical term for the thingy that strikes the fulminant that ignites the explosion), the impact did not result in an efective explosion given that at the beggining of the war we used the fuses in the cone (front) of the bomb, thus needing to hit soemthing hard in order for the bomb to ignite. (the Air Force was using M-117 general porpouse bombs designed to hit ground targets, not soft aluminum ships. So even thow the retarding mechanism was liberating the fuse all right, the impact did not ignite the bombs.

I don´t have all the data, but from what I read, the problem was solved using electronic fuses and tail and side fuses combined. So that would indicate that the problem was not in the releas altitude but in the moment of impact. The Electronic fuses were set to detonate at a certain altitude, so there would have air detonations (or on impact) causing more damage to ships and later ground targtes on land.

The book also talks aboput wooden fuses taht would brake more easilly that the iron ones. That leadsme to belicve that thge problem was teh impact moment, not the retarding mechanisms.

The British tend to belive that becouse of the reasons that you state, it was imposible to bomb ships at taht low altitude. Fact that was proven wrong by the argentinian pilots, when finally succesfull bombing runs were made, and altitude of releas or tactics were not altered at all, becosue we knew that it was the onlly way to atack a modern missile frigate. So the weapons had to work inside this tactic, instead of tactics beig altered to meet weapons parameters


Remember that bombs exploded between planes in the argies atacks on ships, and the planes had a separation of a few seconds, so the retarded fuses were set to the very minimun. Ussually the wingman told the plane infront if it had hit or not, since no one looked back. Once the ordinance was expended, the onlly thing in their mind was to get away from the missiles...


And You say you need a very brave operator to bomb in such complex and dangerous parameters. Well we had exactlly taht. We did not have fanatic kamikazes, but we had people that were convinced that If they had to die for their country and to perform their duty, they were more than willing.

They did not take unnecesary risks since they new their plane was needed for the next sortie. But they would not go home with their bombs still hanging under their planes And they would not releasthem other than over an enemy target.


I had the wonderfull experience to talk personally to some of the argentine pilots that flew during 1982 : Isaac and Carballo, and they both agree that the most important thing to them when flying to the target was to get the job done. Nothing else was in their minds once the gear left the ground.... To get the job done or die trying. Even if that ment to have to drop ordinance below 100 mts. with very little retard set on their bombs.

Carballo talked to me about one of his wingmans that got really angry at him beocuse in a sortie, he ordered him home becouse of a mulcfuntion on his aricraft... This man was angry becouse he was not being alowed to go to a place where he would most propbably die....

And if you are interested I can translate a letter form an argentinian pilot to his familly. He was KIA.

Sorry I get carried away talking about argie pilots .

Greetings Baco ECV56.

I too have the book but struggle with the Spanish . The section on fuses is fascinating especially the newer fuses.In many other images the MK904 and MK905 are clearly visible also.

Regarding Frag seperation another alternative is a close formation release. As long as the Wingman remains inside 400feet from the lead then he has a reasonable chance of escaping the leads Frag. This does however reduce the wingmans aiming ability as he needs to concentrate a lot on formation as well as sight handling. In the case of straight out manual (depressed sight line bombing A4 and Dagger) sight handling is demanding as the solution is only valid if the release parameters are those used in the calculation of the site setting.
Minor errors especially in Lo angle deliveries mean big impact errors.

ECV56 Send me an Email (ttail@internode.on.net)

Even the British thought the Argentine A-4 pilots had nerves of steel. One of the best parts of this game will have to be recreating their feats of derring-do and bravery on the battlefield. They rank right up there with the most epic flights any air force can tell about.

They're U.S. trained, you know. They even do exercises with and off of American carriers.

Miao, Cat

The Argentine airforce had a real problem with their fuses and there are a number of points I disagree with in this thread.

A conservative estimate is that 2/3rd of the bombs dropped failed to fuse correctly, i.e. the didn`t go off.

Of the weapons that did fuse correctly (Ardent, Coventry,Sir Galahad and Sir Tristram)they were all marked by no effective AA fire from the ships.

In all these cases the attacks took place at a higher altitude(200" plus) than had been possible. Cachon leading the skyhawks against Galahad and Tristram states that when they were not met by the usually hail of missiles and AA fire they were able to attack from higher.

Regarding the claim that bombs didn`t fuse because of soft aluminium ships, this isn`t backed up by the evidence. Of the ships deployed by the Royal Navy only the Types 21 employ aluminium in any quantity and that was restricted to the superstructure and not the hull. These ships were design as a private venture by Vosper and to save wieght and money used aluminium.

Of the ships hit by bombs that didn`t explode (Glasgow,Argonaut,Antrim,Broadsword,Plymouth and Sir Bedivere) were all of traditional steel construction.

Ironically the ship hit with the most number of correctly fusing bombs was Ardent a type 21!

If the Argentines made any effort to solve their fuse problems it didn`t yield any results. On the 8th of June when the Galaham and Tristan were hit by correctly fusing bombs (dropped from the correct altitude) Plymouth was hit by 4 1000 pound bombs that didn`t fuse.