That video was awesome great kill on the 110, the splash was 10/10.
Quick tip, reduce your mixture at high altitudes to get full power, the higher you go the lower you have to run, in real life I believe the spit only had auto rich and auto lean as an option, but that's how it works here.
Also use war emergency power on takeoff and in the dogfight to get the full 12lbs of boost!
The Sqn got into it over London at least 2 flights of bombers Ju's and He's + Snappers 8- 12 e/a. Myself and wingman ( Roger More ) We were able to make 2 passes then Roger's Hurricane caught fire and he road it down ( No Chute ) I took at least a dozen hits . G for George stayed in the so I air tried to make Hendon AF. On short Finale, the Hydraulics went out so hit hard and skidded all over the field. Sgn total 0 for 2 Hurricanes destroyed.
The Sqn C.O. assigned aircraft " H " for Hauling @@# as my kite. B flight had the standing Patrol over London Factories. Vectored into Bandits near the East End. The e/a turned into 8-12 Me 110's below at 15000. I called line abreast and down we went nicely done drill. The Flight destroyed one a/c. Mine was heavy damage I hit him and my wing man hit him on the first pass then I came back around and him again The 303's Roared Dust popped up along his wing, engine, and fuselage, then he wobbled and flipped over after that I lost sight as his buddies hit my machine with fire. I split SS ed out of the fight and landed at Biggin Hill to check damage. Nasty looking holes along the tail and port wing with a larger hole near the wing Roundel The Sqn's second flight that day was worst as they lost 2 Hurricanes from A flight.
The Sgn knocked down three of the buggers today. One of them was mine. My 3rd e/a destroyed a Ju 88. We caught them after the Raid was hit by a Spitfire Sqn, A few straggling Spites came out of the direction as we went in. Spotted a few Yellow nosed Boys higher up, but they didnt come down to play. The Sqn lost 1 Hurricane destroyed 1 pilot wnd + 2 a/c damaged.
I say, smashing day. Scrambled for a 30+ Raid on London. Pinetree called ( Our flight of 8 Hurri's )Rumba Leader , the Raid has split up steer due North , Angels 15, buster. Soon below us were 9-12 Bombers. No Escorts anywhere so into the mix we went guns blazing in a echelon left . I got a few hits but nothing good, Even my 2nd pass was bad then the guns hissed empty. During the melee, I spotted 2 bombers going down. The Sqn claimed 5 e/a for 3 damaged. The C.O. in the mess said that I was awarded the Air Force Cross for my 3 confirmed e/a.
Smashing day. I was off ops for the day attending a tech meeting ( by Jove they are going to put camera's in airplanes ) some thing about claims over at Biggin Hill. I ran into the American War Observers group watching how the RAF went thru its paces. They had a bloody marvelous little Lorrie that they called a Jeep to run about in.
Bit of a cockup. The Sqn was vectored into a flight of 9 0r 12 He 111's S.E. of London. A good interception. I went down with Yellow section and hit the e/a then made a climbing turn to get above and hit them again. I spotted a good target and closed only to get shot at by A Spitfire that appeared out of the dark clouds firing at me or my target. Went into a tight starboard corkscrew and kept going. Sqn claims 5 e/a destroyed for 2 hurricanes damaged + mine with holes in rudder.
F/O Thurston Turner 'B' Flight, 32 Sqd Biggin Hill AF
17 July 1940- returned from six days in hospital. Convoy Patrol north of Margate. Flight Leader spotted several JU-88's approaching Convoy Tango One at 13000'. 'B' Flight ordered to intercept. Several enemy aircraft damaged and were forced away from Convoy. Patrol briefly resumed when the squadron was bounced by a large force of enemy escort fighters. Badly damaged, I dropped to 1500' and dragged my two ME 109 pursuers over East Church AF where the ack-ack gunners threw up a fierce screen of discouragement. Landed back at Biggin Hill. 71 minutes flying time. Squadron decimated, eight pilots dead, eight machines destroyed. Waiting for stand-down orders. Have a feeling the orders aren't coming. Bugger.
F/O T.W. Turner Acting Squadron Leader, 32 Sqdn, Biggin Hill Air Field.
Currently dabbling in; WOTR/BoF, Naval Action! also Run 8, IL2BOS/BOM
"Once again we have failed to die."-- old naval toast
F/O Thurston Turner 'B' Flight, 32 Sqd Biggin Hill AF
17 July 1940- Group has assured me of replacement pilots and machines within the next few days. I've sent the current 'spare' fitters and riggers to help with the defensive preparations. I'm sure they are thrilled with me. Dispersal scrambled us at 1400h to defend the Chain-Home station at Beachy Head. Patrolled between 12000' and 17000', no enemy spotted during the fifteen minutes we were kept overhead. Ordered home at 1445h, all four of us made it back at 1500h. P/O Ross complaining his engine is not firing correctly. Ground crew will pull it apart this evening. Right, I'm off to sit outside the hut, so damnably stuffy in here eh.
F/O T.W. Turner Acting Squadron Leader, 32 Sqdn, Biggin Hill Air Field.
Currently dabbling in; WOTR/BoF, Naval Action! also Run 8, IL2BOS/BOM
"Once again we have failed to die."-- old naval toast
18 July 1940- Dispersal scrambled ‘B’ Flight to intercept enemy headed towards Convoy M11 at 1500h. We were airborne in six minutes much to Skipper Park’s annoyance (“Do it in three, Thurston. Three minutes, not six.”). Over coast at 1515h, altitude 15,500’. Convoy visible 1 minute later. Intercepted several ME 109E’s of 1JG3 over convoy. Fierce dogfight, down to 4000’. Got one with several squirts at 150m, shot it’s right wing off and he spun into the Channel. We were all split up, was chased inland but managed to damage another ME 109E over Chain Home site. Landed at Swingate Airfield, damaged rudder, 1542h. Down to three fit pilots and four machines now. Right, off to meet with AVM Keith Park.
It's 10 July 1940, the date some brass hat or pen-pusher in the Air Ministry would later decide that the Battle of Britain officially started. For Flight Lieutenant Richard Hughes - that's me! - it's his first operational sortie with No.1 (Fighter) Squadron, operating Hurricanes out of RAF Tangmere, close to England's south coast.
And here's our squadron roster, complete with unit badge, top left.
These badges are a sore point with me. Or rather, their mottos (mostly in Latin) are the sore point. On my visit earlier this year to Fighter Command HQ in Bentley Priory (now a museum), in the rotunda, there were little consoles where you could take a quiz about the Battle. Naturally, I opted for the 'expert' version. And did rather less well than I had hoped, because an awful lot of the questions were about these flipping mottos.
But I digress. You can see from the roster that there is no-one of Squadron Leader rank, so presumably the outfit's being run by the senior Flight Lieutenant. Namely me, as I have 'Always lead' selected in the Workshop option. Unusually, though, we have no NCO pilots - there should have been a few.
Not to worry, there's a war to be won and western civilisation to be saved. Today, the mission briefing shows that our part in this noble endeavour is a patrol. Despite this being labeled in WotR as it subsequently became known the 'Convoy Phase' of the Battle, our patrol area is to factories set well back from the coast, not a convoy. Not quite right, as inland targets were covered by scrambling, not by resource-intensive patrols. Anyway, ours is not to reason why. Note that the map is the replacement one from Hangar 22, the stock one being beyond dire.
This is version 1.18 of WotR so it still operates the convention of its WW1 predecessor sim in that the player leads or flies in the squadron's B Flight while A Flight, as today, flies the mission independently, nominally as some sort of cover. This is planned to change in a future update. Here we all are on the runway at Tangmere, waiting for the 'off'. Our aircraft have the 'pointy' spinners used with De Havilland props, which had slender blades, but we have the more angular blades seen on Rotol props, which had more bulbous spinners (made for Rotol-fitted Spitfires but fitted to Rotol Hurris too until, from about the time the Mk.II Hurricane appeared, its Rotol got its own spinner, with an elongated, bullet-shaped profile).
I'm not yet au fait with how/to what extent WotR handles unique unit and aircraft markings. You can see that there is a realistic mixture of A and B Scheme mirror-image camouflage pattern variations. And that my kite JX-B, nearest the camera, has authentic squadron codes (technically, identity letters) for 1 Squadron. The others seem also to have the squadron's JX code, and unique aircraft letters too, but the two to my right have YO, which seems to have been used by 1 (Canadian) Squadron. Strange.
Anyway I start up rather lazily and am soon overtaken on my right. The AI pilot is using his flaps to take off, which is not really right for Hurricanes, which the April 1941 pilot notes for the Mk.I reproduced in Osprey's 'The Hurricane Pocket Manual' say flap, at 28 degrees down, is only 'if taking off from a small aerodrome', which Tangmere is not. We should all have our canopies locked open, too, if I'm reading this right, but I forgot my key assignment (and the last time I took pot luck in WotR, with 'O', I bailed out, and most embarrassing it was too).
You can see that I have Hangar 22's camouflaged-look hangars installed - the bright stock ones are not on for wartime service. Even brick and wood buildings were camo painted when war broke out, some runways too.
By the time I have my gear up I've begun to drift well to my left. which I had to fight against for the whole flight. Looks like I'll need to learn to use the rudder trimmer! Incidentally, WotR newbie I may be, but I already know that like some planes in Wings over Flanders Fields, coarse rudder application in WotR's Hurricane can make it pivot nearly on the spot, like a weathercock. Most odd, this looks, but Hangar 22 has a flight model mod for it, which I must install, too.
Having taken off roughly to the east IIRC, there being no wind reported, I come around to the west and begin climbing. Meanwhile, A Flight's aircraft, in single file, are slipping past me below and on my right.
And this is the view from the office. Very nicely done, though I get a bit of shimmer from the writing on some of the instruments, having only 2xAA set at the moment.
I have to level off and throttle back a bit to let the boys catch me up, which they do rather slowly. I have glossiness turned well down in settings, as I dislike the 'thick satin varnish' look, it being said by one of those who saw (and felt) it that 'Close examination of the aircraft showed the camouflage paint to be very rough when touched, thick and very matt so that the aeroplanes gave the impression of being very badly finished, this seeming to be more true of bombers than fighters (MJF Bowyer in Airfix Mag Guide 11 'RAF Camouflage of WW2').
They close up and off I go again, banking right to counter what feels like a strong crosswing forcing me left. You can see that the WotR Hurricane's rear fuselage 'spine' looks rather flat or angular on top. More rounded would be better. There's also a large 'bite' of Dark Earth missing on the starboard wing's leading edge, but I gather a fix for that is in the pipeline. The subtle weathering is a lot beter than the awful semi-sandblasted finish on one of CloD's Hurricanes. WotR's Sky undersurfaces are a bit clean and bland, though.
Here I am a bit higher up, having passed Portsmouth, which looks a bit devoid of port-type features and rather agricultural in places. There is no R/T chatter which is fine, but I would have liked to have been able to ask the controller, back in the Sector Ops Room, if there was any sign of 'trade' for us, be they Bogies (unidentified) or Bandits (the ones to worry about). A Flight had been visible ahead, above and right, but slowing down for my own lot to catch up means I've long lost sight of them. Turn on labels? NEVER! I use the radar-like Tactical Display when I feel I need to, but even then generally keep its range set to about a mile.
At about Angels 11 (a bit lower than the nearly 15,000 feet briefed, a mistake I neglect to correct) the rest of B Flight are lagging again so I slow down again.
And this time they catch up, and stay there.
We're flying nearly into the sun so few worries there. My rear-view mirror is hazy like it's got a film of oil, and I'm not sure it'll be much, if any, use.
On we go. I had hoped that turning down glossiness would have reduced the tendency of the water surface to reflect clouds, which I find pretty but unconvincing for open water, as opposed to millponds. At least the others are keeping close now. I have the Hangar 22 closer formation mod enabled, which is much more realistic, at least for RAF and bomber formations. This facility is apparently to be incorporated in a future official update.
The airwaves remain silent. Still, this is a patrol not an attempted interception. Perhaps it will be uneventful?
Waypoint reached, I begin the turn inland. Not too tight, mind, those close RAF vics need reasonably careful handling as we're not flying Gauntlets or Furies for the Hendon display. My number two comes a bit close but there's no real drama. Throttling back a bit helps the chaps on the outside of the turn keep up.
Did I mention I love the engine sounds? The idling sound maybe kicks in a bit earlier than I was expecting but otherwise, rather good, and you do get the audible effect of negative G cut-out in Merlins (haven't checked if the revs drop too, but hopefully so).
In real life it seems that even if you exclude the local variations like 'Sailor' Malan's sections of four in line astern, Fighter Command squadron vic formations varied a bit. I have seen vics in a flat wedge (such as used in BoB2) described as 'cruise and search formation', and vics in line astern labelled 'battle formation' and 'climb formation'. And the latter is illustrated as such in several photographs and in Gordon Olive's post-war paintings of his operations with 65 Squadron during the Battle. A useful source on the subject can be found in 'The Spitfire Pocket Handbook' (I have the original Conway edition) which reproduces an historical 'tactical paper' on air fighting tactics which describes the evolution of fighter formations during the war.
At this point, I hear somebody on the R/T reporting Bandits. By this stage in proceedings, I have the text display enabled, in case there are some messages displayed but not played. The audible message gives a relative direction in the clock code, two o'clock I think, but I don't hear that important part clearly and can't ask for a repeat. I turn on the TAC but I had it pre-set to a mile which isn't much use.
Frustrating, although it was the case that reception on the High Frequency TR9D radios used for much of the Battle was by all accounts pretty awful, with one fighter leader wondering how the foreign pilots coped because he frequently had grave difficulties understanding messages himself. And the Pipsqueak radio location system blasted out a tone for 14 seconds every minute, rendering the radios (on those aircraft with it active) useless for R/T traffic anyway, during that period.
I can see nothing and from this point it all gets a bit confused. I begin to orbit nervously, looking up and down, as the warning didn't indicate relative height. I'm new to WotR and I need to work out how best to use efficiently the tools it does provide for this sort of situation - the tactical display aka TAC, and labels - to work as an effective substitute. For example, responding to a Bandit call by instantly turning on the TAC with the range pre-set to a reasonable visual limit like three miles, would compensate nicely for the fact that single player AI is never going to allow realistic real-time radio conversations. And having pre-set some realistic (longer that TAC) range and removed all but friend or foe detail from labels, I could have turned labels on and used that as a proxy for getting a 'picture' from the Controller. I think it's perfectly reasonable and not counter-immersive to use TAC and labels in this fashion, provided realistic limits are applied to limit the information to what you could expect from squadron mate sightings for the former, and ground control reports for the latter, turning both on and off again to represent the request and arrival of the respective report.
I see no AA fire, nothing, and I'm fearful of being jumped after I see a single speck far above heading south. At which point it dawns on me that I'm flying below my briefed altitude, idiot that I am. In the end I do what I should have done immediately - I turn on the TAC and increase the range beyond the mile I'd set it to. I see various aircraft markers which soon disperse, leaving us alone in the skies. I don't hear any R/T chatter so it doesn't seem like A Flight is in action. All very baffling.
In the end the skies seem to clear of other aircraft, whatever they are, and I lead the boys back towards the Solent (the body of water between the Isle of Wight and the mainland) and home. You can see at this point I have the TAC turned on and the range increased to just over 4 miles. Too late, alas!
Each to their own, but one thing I wasn't thrilled about in WoFF and now in WotR is the high-colour-contrast patchwork quilt effect from the sunlit cornfields, which - to my eye - are bit too sandy yellow, and the fields, which are a bit too blueish and thus not yellow enough. The wonderful John Finch 1942 painting of Ventnor RDF station (after it had lost one of its four transmitter towers) looks about right to me, albeit it lacks fields of ripe corn: http://www.ventnorradar.co.uk/CH.htm
Keen to apply what I had learned, I quit the flight without flying back to base, the debrief confirming that A Flight's sortie had been equally uneventful, with not a round fired by any of us. But in best Blue Peter tradition (UK readers will get the reference) I'll throw in these pics of a landing I made earlier after a Quick Combat sortie in a Hurricane with the ID letters of 32 Squadron, GZ.
The individual aircraft letter is in a slightly rounder font that the other letters, and the 'G' used by 32 was actually quite square, but it was common, as shown, for this letter to run onto their type A1 fuselage roundel (whose yellow ring looks a bit wide, as it should usually be the same width as the blue one).
And here I am safely down - at Gravesend I think. You can see what I mean about the WotR Hurricane having the DH 'pointy' spinner but the triangular (wooden) Rotol prop blades. The Spit in the background is sensibly dispersed away from the sheds aka hangars, but there seem to be just hardstandings for the aircraft, not blast pens. The Hurricane's Sky undersurfaces could usefully be a bit more grimy and the rear fuselage Dark Green band should sweep up onto the fin and rudder. If I can get the hang of Gimp and with help from Robert who's done sterling work on WotR skins, I hope to do a bit of skinning myself.
As there was no combat in this mission - I'll pay more attention to the briefing next time, and set up TAC and labels as described - here's a few from Quick Combats, including a tussle with 109s in GZ-C...
...and a Heinkel being downed, flying JX-B.
The later illustrates something that really does call for improvement, namely the aircraft shoot-down animation. As often in WoFF, aircraft fall like they've tripped up, pitching sharply nose down and instantly disgorging parachutes, which fall like stones. The planes fall like shot birds, that have suddenly lost all lift. And the chutes pop way too quickly. And in a flight attack against a bomber formation in Quick Combat, some users, regardless of spec it seems, get brief but fairly brutal stoppages of the action about the time the first rounds hit.
There are also some cosmetic issues, like that rather square Hurricane spine, and the Heinkel needing a much more streamlined front end to its dorsal gunner canopy (which slides forward too far) and its supercharger intakes should both be on the RH side of the engine nacelles (for the 111H's Jumos, LS side for the 111P's DB engines). Some target areas could also use a bit of work eg Tilbury Docks exist, but just as inlets in the countryside - a grey-ish local ground texture and a small number of simple, low-polygon, long rectangular quayside shed objects would go a long way, here and for the East End docks -which at least have lots of buildings, unlike their CloD equivalents. Hopefully these areas will get some TLC, but the shoot-down sequences and the performance hiccup during formation actions do really need attention ASAP. Fingers crossed! I'm looking forward to future campaigning with the next patch, which for sure has an impressively long list of improvements.