Why Spit Girl is good.

[BigC208]

This is all great stuff. Anyone interested in picking up Mussolini with a Fiesler Storch, on a mountain top? Renegade pilot runs off with prototype FW190. Stop him before he reaches Brittain and lands. Or intercept him and defend him from his pursuers. The options are endless. Reminds me a bit of Origins Strike Commander. Maybe not interesting for the diehard flight simmers but it will get a lot of new blood into the genre. Looks also good for the future of a more inhabited airport enviroment. All the pieces are there it just needs to fine tuned and activated in the future.

[Testus01]

I love these; hope to be able to play them someday...

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In late 1944 American P-51-''Mustang'' fighter pilot, Captain Bruce Carr USAF was on a fighter sweep over Austria from St. Dizier, France, where he and his 353rd Fighter Group were based when his P-51 was hit by 20mm cannon ground fire and the P-51 mortally wounded.
Succesfully parachuting into Austria, Captain Carr avoided being captured and went on the lam in enemy territory. More by accident than design Captain Carr stumbled across a Luftwaffe airfield where from his hiding place in some bushes he watched Luftwaffe ground crew fuel up and service an FW -190 FIGHTER.
Carefully avoiding the sentries and succesfully climbing the barbed wire perimeter fence , Captain Carr crept into the FW-190'S cockpit and after a while figuring out the plane's engine starting instructions in unfamiliar German he succesfully started the FW-190 and took off, heading back to St..Dizier, France.
Arriving over his home St. Dizier base but unable to lower the FW'S undercarriage, Captain Carr successfully belly landed the ''Butcher Bird'' and became an instant hero to his fellow 353 Fighter Group buddies.
Now, I've previously read of other allied escaping airmen trying the same stunt but failing for various reasons so the question is -was Captain Bruce Carr the ONLY ALLIED AIRMAN to succesfully heist an Axis powers aircraft from an enemy airfield and make good their escape to allied territoery?.
I know about the British POWS picked up by an Italian Cant flying boat in the MED sea who took over and overpowered their would-be captors and who then forced the Eyties to fly the Cant back back to Malta but were there any other ssuccesful individual Axis plane heists beside that of feisty Yank Bruce Carr.?

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Robert A. "Bob" Hoover
In 1944, on his 59th mission, his malfunctioning Mark V Spitfire was shot down by a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 off the coast of Southern France and he was taken prisoner.[5] He spent 16 months at the German prison camp Stalag Luft 1 in Barth, Germany.[6]

He managed to escape from the prison camp, stole an Fw 190, and flew to safety in the Netherlands.[7]


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Just read this article in Military Officer, December 2004 about Capt
Howard Ellsworth
http://www.moaa.org/Magazine/Current...f_holidays.asp

Wondered how many documented cases there are of Axis planes being stolen
(or for that matter Allied planes being stolen)?

Capt. Howard Ellsworth, U.S. Army Air Corps, 1944.

I had just dropped a load of napalm on a rail yard east of Aachen,
Germany, when antiaircraft fire struck the left engine of my p-38,
forcing me to bail out. I landed safely but was taken prisoner by German
soldiers and marched to a small airfield called Sohie Bslad. I was
interrogated, then put to work filling the craters made by Allied
bombers.

On Dec. 26, my fifth day of captivity, a group of German Me-262s landed
just as Allied b-17s began bombing. A German pilot leaped from his
cockpit and sprinted for cover, leaving his plane running. Quickly I
climbed in and pushed the throttles full open. The engines began to
scream and the plane accelerated as guards shot at me. I lifted the
plane off the ground but kept it low to avoid fire.

I couldn't read the instruments or raise the landing gear, and the
canopy, which was open when I got in, had torn away. Luckily, the
compass was readable, and I soon crossed into friendly territory. Almost
immediately I came under heavy fire. I closed the throttles and landed
on a small hillside.

I was greeted by an Army truck filled with troops. The second lieutenant
advised me I was under arrest for impersonating an American pilot.
Several soldiers suggested I immediately be shot as a spy. I quickly
explained my situation, asked to use the phone, and called the 474th
Fighter Group Operations. Eventually, I was retrieved and returned to
base. After being debriefed about the German jet, I returned to my
squadron on the evening of Dec. 31.

H. Ellsworth lives in Alexandria, Va.

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[Les]

From what I can tell, mission building in CloDo will have more options, in terms of how missions are put together and how they can be made to appear and run. And I agree, the more story-oriented elements we've been hearing about are meant to be indicative of the sims new potential. But realistically I don't think the end results will be, overall, a lot different to what can be done in IL2 1946. Mostly because of the inherent limits of the genre itself.

Triggers, I think, are the biggest game-changers I've heard about so far. But it's still unclear what triggers can be applied to. For example, can I build a mission where I can make the players engine fail at a certain specific pre-determined point in time or space, or have something trigger a particular, user-made, in-cockpit radio communication?

I ask this because it reminds me of a mission I was thinking about the other day, based on something I read in one of those interviews with a veteran Russian pilot that FPSOlkor posts on the forums here.

In the interview the veteran pilot mentioned an episode where he was at the end of a runway about to take off on a mission when he noticed his engine behaving oddly. He tried to take off but had to abort and go around to try again. At the same time he had a ground controller who was a non-flying political officer ranting nationalistic rhetoric in his ears and berating him for not taking off. After several failed attempts at taking off the pilot gave up, parked his plane and had to be restrained from shooting with his pistol the clueless ground controller who kept threatening him and insisting he take off in a plane that wasn't running properly. Anyway, the plane was checked and it was found the propellor was about to fall off, and if I remember correctly the political officer who was acting as ground controller was punished for his ignorance.

With the right kind of triggers, you could recreate that episode. In that particular case, you complete the mission by defying orders and not taking off in your malfunctioning plane, parking it instead. Then at the start of the next mission you're informed of the consequences (as above) of having done so.

That's just one small example of what could be done with the right tools. Obviously there are lots of other episodes, based on actual or fictional events, that could also be depicted.

The other new feature we've been told about is the more in-depth pre-mission briefing screens. I seem to recall seeing something where you could include things like recon photo's. Not sure how in-depth that will go, but that has the potential to be used for the telling of a more engaging story.

To bump it up to a whole other level though, how about cut-scenes?

What if you could trigger cut-scenes during a mission? At a certain moment in time, or upon the players completing of a certain action, you cut to a scene recorded previously using the games track-recording facilities. Now that would open up some possibilities.

Combining the mission-building and movie-making aspects of the game to either tell a story or just set a scene. You could watch air or ground actions taking place at the start of your mission, then go join in. Or see the consequences of your in-game actions from vantage points that would otherwise be unavailable to you while stuck in the cockpit. Could be something as simple as zooming out to show you the ground target you're supposed to go find and destroy. Or watching an enemy convoy get destroyed by other planes after you complete your mission of destroying the bridge they were about to cross. Or watching, instead of just hearing, as your wing-man gets taken out by flak. Or seeing some parallel action type detail that drives the story you're partaking in, forward...

Imagine for example, watching in a series of short cut-scenes, a squad-mate getting chipped away at by an enemy on his tail as you, some distance away, race to the rescue. As you get closer, another cut-scene kicks in and you watch, helpless, wondering if this will be the one where you see your squad-mate get killed. Then, finally, you see them from your cockpit and make the last mad dash to intercept...It's all about keeping you involved in the events unfolding, by showing them to you as they happen, or by providing you with some sort of context that makes you feel like your in-game actions are significant and will have some sort of consequence. Enhancing single missions or a whole scripted campaign. Anyway...

I'm just dreaming out loud really. I'm not asking for it to be done, or if it can be done, and I'll be happy with whatever new things are made available. But in terms of off-line story-telling and/or mission building, triggers for everything, and cut-scenes, would blow the doors wide open on the whole genre.

[Novotny]

I'd just like to say that I appreciate the excellent formatting. As I am also drinking, I have failed to read the actual message, but hey! I do appreciate some good form. Will probably read it tomorrow.

[winny]

Originally Posted by Testus01

the question is -was Captain Bruce Carr the ONLY ALLIED AIRMAN to succesfully heist an Axis powers aircraft from an enemy airfield and make good their escape to allied territoery?.

I'm pretty sure a Russian VVS pilot also managed to steal a LW aircraft and escape, I remember reading it because he was put in prison in Russia when he returned, nobody believed his story and he was treated a spy (I think he got out in the 60's), I can't remember the details though. I'll have a look.

[barbalaappa]

Originally Posted by Novotny

I'd just like to say that I appreciate the excellent formatting. As I am also drinking, I have failed to read the actual message, but hey! I do appreciate some good form. Will probably read it tomorrow.

The format is everything! Darn shame I'm not there as I'd be willing to buy a pint to a person who knows the falue of well formatted forum post Have a good one!

[barbalaappa]

Originally Posted by Les

Triggers, I think, are the biggest game-changers I've heard about so far. But it's still unclear what triggers can be applied to. For example, can I build a mission where I can make the players engine fail at a certain specific pre-determined point in time or space, or have something trigger a particular, user-made, in-cockpit radio communication?

Exactly. This is what the whole thing depends on. Flexible triggers & scripting with possibility of in-mission cutscenes, like you mentioned, would go a long way towards more detailed storytelling. Such options probably won' make it to the 1st release, but hopefully we'll something like it in the future.

With the right kind of triggers, you could recreate that episode. In that particular case, you complete the mission by defying orders and not taking off in your malfunctioning plane, parking it instead. Then at the start of the next mission you're informed of the consequences (as above) of having done so.

An excellent example of simple, yet interesting story. Could be used as it is, or as a beginning for a longer plotline. Wouldn't be too complicated either, with suitable triggers. Previously, Oleg has told he's hoping to surprise us. We will see, what we will see

<Edit> BTW, CloDo is a great acronym for the game. That's what I'll be calling it from now on