Those of you who still have time to read might seek out "Utah Beach" by Joseph Balkowski (Stackpole Books, 2005). A very detailed explanation of the planning and first days' action at the Utah Beach DDAy invasion, lots of maps with real scales for a good feel for the thing.

As far as CSF2 goes, the book has many details of the extensive bombardment missions (B26 numbers, bases, flight times and paths, ordinance, etc. etc.), plus the Troop Carrier missions that deposited two airborne divisions and gliders behind the lines, all again with bases, flight paths, altitudes, speeds in cruise plus plane handling during the drops, etc. etc, all you need to know for a good simulator mission build.

Lots and lots of stuff I never saw elsewhere but I am no scholar.

There were two navigation devices used that might be nice to duplicate in CSF2. One is the Gee nav device which I take to be a system that uses signals from several radio transmitters to locate the aircraft (maybe like a ground based gps). And the use of Rebecca/Eureka equipment close in to the drop zones where earlier pathfinder parachutists would set up the Eureka unit on the proposed dropzone which allowed the Rebecca usit on the C47 to home to the zone. I think it provided both heading and distance to the target but the range was limited, maybe 15 miles. But I am guessing. (There is also details of the ground lights used to direct the main force C47's to the dropzones.)

Jimski

All true enough. No arguments.

I point out the "Utah Beach" book because it has the info a fellow needs to simulate a mission with some historical accuracy.

I think one of the "historical" problems with CSF2, and all the combat simulators that I have tried, is that they gloss over navigation. I suppose most of us travel over a long navigation leg with the "X" key and as a last resort with the tactical window to give us distance and heading. But back then in reality none of that was reality (although you might have a navigator who gave you distance and heading). There was no gps or vor or ils to get you home. (One would assume that adf transmitters were not turned on all the time, although perhaps in England after mid war it was possible to leave them on.)

Anyway, a little surfing showed that Gee was the same as what we called Loran when I was young (I'm old). Look at it as a ground based gps with stations emitting syncronised pulses. Your receiver measures the time difference between the pulses of the different stations and that will place you on a hyperbolic arc on a special map that has the station locations and the arcs drawn in place. Add a second pair of stations and you get a second set of arcs and you can thus locate yourself on the intersection of the two arcs. Quite accurate even back then, within 1/4 mile in England and within 1 mile over German targets if all goes well. By 1943 they say the Germans had it figured out by collecting bomber wreckage so were able to jam the radio pulses (or use the system themselves). Takes a very special map so I'd say this won't be copied in csf2. This system is sometimes called a RADAR navigation system by books that should know better, but it is not.

The rebecca/eureka device I saw while surfing had a cathode ray tube with a graduated face. The system showed a blip on the screen. The location of that blip told you to turn left/right to home to the eureka transmitter and also distance to the transmitter. Not sure if it was reliable enough to be used for bad weather landings but it was used in the DDay parachute drops. If you look at the old films you will sometimes see pathfinder troops with tripods with a gadget on top and those I assume to be eureka units. Range was said to be short, 15 miles maybe.

Jimski

The Griffon Aviation Mosquito has a gps based gauge that recreates a radio navigation system by which you can select any airbase in you're CFS and fly there on two dials keeping the pointer at zero. I would check it out as it seems just the thing you're after.

Thanks for the tips and the links. The Bournemouth site certainly gives the info in a nutshell for the major nav systems that I am aware of.

The Griffon Mosquito i had in storage, having found a different Mosquito that was more frame friendly to my video card. Anyway, I unzipped it and copied the instructions for the nav set which is supposed to be a copy of the Oboe system. But per the Bournemouth site, and others, it is clear that Oboe worked in a totally different way. But that nav panel is, as you say, probably a reasonable simulation of the Gee system in that it works at long ranges and maybe to the same degree of accuracy. Gee was probably fairly easy to use given the right equipment, a lot easier than say celestial navigation.

By the way, back to the topic of good books, you might try to find "The Bomber Offensive" by Anthony Verrier. Mostly about things that led to the big fire raids over Germany by the British heavies. He points out that night bombers were always lost until the use of Gee and other gadgets and techniques came along a few years into the war.

Jimski

PS: Polish Tragedy 1939 is also called Operation Weiß. There's a Fall Weiss (or Weiß) campaign for CFS2 but I've never tried it before, pro'lly 'cos it's pretty big on file size. But I do wish to try it one day.

BTW, ß is also ss or SS. It's German.

Quote:

It's Gryphon Aviation so you might have problems finding it. Gryphon is one of the sites generously hosted by Pete like my own Lair so you can get the package direct from their own website here. http://www.simviation.com/gryphon/cfs2/panels.htm

I don't remember ever trying it myself & don't know quite what they mean about having to set it up depending on the aircraft. Quote:


PS. Oops. Sorry, the link to the file seems to be dead so you can download it here. http://www.simviation.com/cfs2aircraft16.htm

Here's what I was on about:
http://www.simviation.com/cfs2aircraft22.htm

Download it and see for yourselves. I was wrong about most things in it's operation, but it works.

Just took another Oboe test flight.

Oboe worked with two radar stations (all in southern England but I haven't found exactly where yet) that tracked the bomber out to 250 miles (big transponder in bomber). Let's say one station was 200 miles from the target and the second 250 miles from the target. Bomber would fly towards target but not directly, let's say he heads south of target. Oboe station one tells pilot (by dot-dash-tones in headset) that he is approaching 200 miles from station and he turns north to put radar station one off wing and maintain that 200 mile distance, flying in an arc that will take him over the target. Second station also monitors him and when he gets 250 miles from station they tell him with dot-dash in headset that he is exactly over target and to drop bombs. He need never see the target.

Now...

...if you put two old "cfsgps" gauges in your cockpit and give them lat and long of two mythical Oboe stations, your aircraft will always have the distances to those stations. So you can easily simulate the Oboe mission. I just tried it. It works.

Supposedly it was very accurate, in fact they would compute the bombs drop path into the assembly so the pilot need only push the button when he got the tone from station two. Had to be done at about 30,000 feet too so radar could see him out to 250 miles. (Doesn't sound too accurate to me.)

Oboe was used also by the US bomber forces.

Now on to Gee.

Jimski