I thought you were channeling Heinz-Dieter Kallbach.
Wheels
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Time for the final two intercept lessons. I finally started to figure out the radar symbology thanks to a fantastic video by Devin Horner:
I had been struggling with figuring out the closure rate display…his video explains it very well…
Ready to head out to the range with my wingman…
Smokey Phantom…
The aforementioned closure rate indicator…
This time I wanted to mess around with the wingman commands. I’m going to have to dig around in my other SF2 installs because I had a really nice wingman control setup that someone had made that had some very useful custom commands like “ORBIT HERE” and “FLY TOP COVER” or something along those lines. The default SF2 install does not feature those commands…
Wingman drops tanks when I give him the “ENGAGE MY TARGET” command…
The drone goes down…
Mission 10 is a simple night intercept…not much to show there…
I believe that completes the 10-mission training portion. Obviously a lot left on the table (bombing / SEAD / RWR / flight tactics…)…so we’ll see how the rest of the missions evolve…
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This thing really looks impressive.
Our first combat mission is a Civil Air Transport (CAT) C-119 supply run to the besieged firebase at Dien Bien Phu. There are some fascinating books about this siege…an early glimpse into just how resilient and tenacious the forces the French and eventually United States and other countries would be up against during the protracted war.
It will be a long flight in the slow “Flying Boxcar” to the drop site…
The CAT airbase at Cat Bi…
Off we go…
Joining up into formation - two flights of three aircraft each for a total of six aircraft…
After twenty minutes or so of flying we start approaching the French firebase at Dien Bien Phu. A few light puffs of flak start blossoming in the sky around us…
As we draw closer though…the fire amps up in volume and soon it does literally feel like you could walk on lead across the target area. It is awesome to behold…!
I want to bend the throttle forward and get out of here. At the designated drop point I select the cargo pallets and hit the pickle button three times…
The crisscrossing fire seems impossible to fly through…
The besieged troops on the ground are putting up a noble defense…encircled and cut off from advance or retreat…it must have felt like certain doom…
As we pull off to the southwest…the volume and intensity of fire decreases…
Suddenly the radio comes alive with the sound of an EPIRB (or ELT?) beeping its plaintiff tones. A C-119 from the follow on flight has been struck and is going in…
On egress I spot the divert field - the one used by McGovern and Buford during their emergency landing in Laos. Unfortunately, they clipped a tree and the aircraft tumbled, broke apart, and caught on fire killing both crew.
French forces would surrender the next day as Viet Minh troops overran Isabelle.
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Wow, it has transport missions?! I might need to try this.
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That was epic. Love me some Flying Boxcar. Lady luck was with you Bech! Nice flying.
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Our second combat mission will be in the T-28 Trojan…providing close-air support near the village of Ben Cat just west of Bien Hoa airbase. The briefing is interesting…and I was kind of hopeful that the mission would be more epic than it turned out to be…but it was still fun…
Preparing to depart…the T-28 is a bit of a pig with a heavy load…
I was hopeful that the illumination aircraft would launch flares similar to what you see in DCS World…that float down under a parachute and illuminate the ground at a certain radius. Unfortunately…at least in this mission…the flares must be preset to just be burning on the ground already. So not really an attack “under” flares per se…
I’ll admit…I’d never see crap if not for labels and padlock. I’m playing for fun…not to immerse myself in realism in this case…
After a couple of bomb runs I find the rockets and guns are much more effective against the small Viet-Cong targets…
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Labels aren’t that unrealistic, when you think about it. If we had them when flying for real, I’d use them constantly!
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Interesting mission flying B-26Cs…supposedly training the South Vietnamese but Americans were engaged in combat before they were officially engaged in combat. This mission we are to stay on our lead’s wing and drop where they drop…
Following lead down on the initial strike…
It was a different kind of war…
Coming back around for my run…
Out of bombs…switching to some napalm cannisters…
Rendezvous for the short flight back to base…
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cool plane , would it be also cool if its more popular with the devs of other sims
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Helijah has an A-26 in his hangar of free planes. FlightGear
I’ve reached out to him to see if we can get the blend file for Vietnam War Vessels for DCS 
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I seem to recall Air Warrior had an A-26, it seemed incredibly overpowered in that game but it was probably the usual “1951 airplane with the same name as a 1945 airplane flying against a 1942 airplane” 
I miss SF2 in general, The community was simply superb, especially the modding community.
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Things were simpler in those day… if the jet was recognisable it was good enough, and there was almost no systems modelling…
I keep preaching that SF2 with VR and multi-player would be one of the best sims ever made.
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unfortunately, we never even got the SF2 Windows 10 Remaster we were promised.
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Tonight we are off of our PSP runway in the B-26 to find some campfires and bomb them. This represented a shift as the Jungle Jim / Farm Gate morphed into a more direct (and acknowledged) role as U.S. airman become more involved in direct actions against the enemy in South Vietnam instead of just providing “advisor” roles…
After taking off…we head down the coast and start picking out likely targets based on the campfires (and the obligatory RED target box SF2 provides…hey…ain’t gonna lie…)
Bombs…rockets…napalm…gunfire…
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So something I did not know about this series…you will also fly for “the other side” in the air war. Today’s mission loosely replicates a mission where a VPAF (Vietnam Peoples Air Force) T-28 that was put into service after a defection takes down a US C-123 Provider…according to the briefing for the mission (which is very interesting) the first American plane downed by the VPAF during the Vietnam War.
Off we go…interesting in that the communications is in Vietnamese.
Flying the waypoints. When I first tried this mission…apparently the C-123 was missing from the YAP install…so I simply inserted a C-123K that I had from an old install and the mission worked fine…but might not be technically quite as accurate (aircraft markings for instance)…
Enemy spotted…heading down to take out the C-123…
I pull in behind and start plugging away. Soon two engines are smoking…but I manage to run out of ammo and the Provider is still staggering along…
Out of ammo…I’m pretty much resigned to give up…when apparently a nearby VPAF MiG decides he has seen enough of my incompetence and he swoops down from above and his cannon finishes the job…
Mission accomplished…
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Mission 06 will take us on a long, fast-dash recon mission in the RF-101C to investigate Pathet Lao forces near the Ban Ken bridge. This was a portion of “Route 7”…a heavily used supply route from North Vietnam.
Off we go…
We accelerate to about Mach .9 for the flight…and a short rendezvous with Zebra flight - a tanker that we simulate refueling from…
Closing on the target area…we drop down to 8,000’ and push the throttle forward to accelerate past Mach 1…cameras on…
Welcome to the party…!
The flak is pretty intense. We make a single pass by the two recon areas. I hear a thunk and a red light comes on in the cockpit. No idea what that is about.
Mission complete…cameras off and buster out of the area…
Hit the tanker on the long flight back…
Mission accomplished…
The CIA will take a look at the recon film and formulate a plan. The recon photos are a bit too fuzzy to see if Oliver North’s signature is on the shipping labels…
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I manage the VR part, using an old 3d software tridef3d, virtual desktop and opentrack. It looks pretty good
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