So I got Il-2 Sturmovik 1946

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-12-24 08:14am

It's good fun, though I don't see the point of the whole 1946 thing. There's not that many planes I really want to fly among them. The MiG-9 and Yak-15 just aren't my cup of tea. I've still got to try the La-7R though.

Mainly, I got it because it's a compilation of all that's come before, including Pacific Fighters. I mean shit, they've even got an RAAF dynamic campaign! With Aussie voices! Cool.

I think Oleg needs to make a Korean War game.

Post by **K. A. Pital** » 2006-12-24 10:35am

Why do you dislike MiG-9 anyway?

The Il-2 engine has been used in various games, but as far as I know Maddox/1C aren't planning for a Korean War game... yet.

We have to wait till 29 Dec to get '46, shame.

Although I'm sort of into "Dungeon Cleaners" right now, and my next set of tryout games will be "World War II" and "War Tomorrow", so it's not as if I'm going to play it anytime soon.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2006-12-24 12:27pm

Does it have nazi wank projects?

I hope Oleg actually did do his math and made the wank projects perform like they should have, e.g. Ta-183 is a death-trap.

Post by **K. A. Pital** » 2006-12-24 12:45pm

Nazi wank? I don't remember the Nazi real or projected jets being "wank" in Il-2, instead, they're a major pain in the ass like all early jets were.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2006-12-24 07:53pm

The Ta-183 Huckbein should be a flying death trap, prone to stalling out at the slightest whim, because nobody back then knew how to build a swept wing right. Plus, the Hukbein performs like shit. A P-80 Shooting Star outperforms it; to get the full advantage from swept wings, you need a 4000 lb class turbojet, anything less than that, and the drag, and unstable characteristics of swept wings aren't worth it

Sephirius · Post by **Sephirius** » 2006-12-25 01:10pm

It's close to your 4000 lb turbojet, it's a 3500.. as far as I can tell, it's not that stallable, will try putting it into spins and stuff and check on recovery.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2006-12-25 02:58pm

Sephirius wrote:It's close to your 4000 lb turbojet, it's a 3500.. as far as I can tell, it's not that stallable, will try putting it into spins and stuff and check on recovery.

Stuart wrote:The Russians first started work on jets in the early 1920s. They set up a specialized gas turbine engine reserach group in 1926 and in 1930 the group was headed by V Oovarov. At that time, the primary focus was on turboprop engines and, in 1936, the group developed the 1,150 shp GTU-3 turboprop that was proposed as a powerplant for the TB-3 bomber. The prototypes of the GTU-3 were first test-flown in 1938. That year, the group split into two parts, one of which developed turboprops, the other of which started work on turbojets. That part was headed by Arkhip Mikhailovich Lyulka. By 1941, he had developed the RD-1 jet engine that delivered 1,100 pounds of thrust. Meanwhile, the Oovarov group were assembling a turboprop that could deliver 4,400 shp.

When the Germans invaded Russian all that work came to a halt. Development design continued but all actual production capacity was devoted to war production. When work restarted in 1944 Lyulka was responsible for the production of the TR-1 turbojet engine that delivered 2,866 pounds of thrust. The prototypes flew in 1946 and were installed in the Il-22 bomber in 1947.

In 1944, the USSR established two specifications. One was for their production jet fighter. There were three primary requirements for this aircraft, these requirements were called "whales" by the USSR because it was recognized they presented an enormous challenge. These whales were (a) the use of a turbojet rated at over 4,400 pounds thrust, (b) the use of swept wings and (c) the use of an ejector seat. In addition the aircraft had to be equipped with a heavy armament and be easy to both manufacture and maintain in the field.

Why swept wings and high power? In elementary terms (please remember I'm not an aviation engineer) there is a shockwave that stretches outwards from the nose. At slow speeds, this is a straight line but as the aircraft gets faster, that line starts to form a V with the nose at the front and the shockwave angled backwards. Eventually, the shockwave angle gets so acute that the shockwave itself touches the wingtips. that causes a dramatic increase in drag and it gets worse as more and more of the wing becomes immersed in the shockwave. If the wing is swept back, the tips are kept clear of the shockwave longer so the sudden increase in drag is delayed. The sharper the sweepback, the longer the delay. By the way, one can get the same effect by havinga long fuselage and short, razor-thin wings. Now you know why the F-104 looks like that.

The original work on swept wings was done by a German, Dr Alfred Busemann in around 1935. There was nothing secret about it, the work was published in open literature and everybody knew about it. It was of theoretical interest only since nobody could get up to speeds where the effect mattered. What wasn't in the open literature was that a Russian, V Stroominsky had carried on with research into swept wings in the early 1940s and made some discoveries that Busemann had missed completely. One was that if wings are swept, the airflow over the wings had two components, not one. The air flowed from the leading edge to the trailing edge as normal but also flowed spanwise along the wing causing the tips of the wings to stall. Another aspect of that was that the airflow along a swept wing significantly reduced the effects of the aircraft's controls. The other discovery was that the swept wing is much less efficient at generating lift than a straight wing.

So, unless the aircraft had a powerful enough engine to drive the aircraft up to the point where the drag reduction characteristics of a swept wing were significant, the advantages of a swept wing were much offset by its disadvantages. The critical speed turned out to be around 600mph; if a fighter could get up to 600mph, then the benefits of a swept wing kicked in and the aircraft got a lot faster (or, more precisely, it didn't show the dramatic increase in drag exhibited by straight-wing aircraft). If it couldn't get that speed, it didn't get the benefits and was a lot nastier to fly - and, by the way, since altitude performance is directly related to engine power and lift, underpowered swept-wing aircraft suffered severe altitude penalties.

By 1945, the basic layout of what would become the MiG-15 were already determined. A 35 degree swept wing, a single engine generating enough thrust to push the aircraft over 600 mph, a tail that was high enough to keep the tailplane out of the turbulence form the wings but not a T-tail (that suffered problems all of its own). This aircraft was known as the object I-310 and models of this configuration were test-dropped from Tu-2 aircraft in 1945 and 1946. Those test-drops validated the configuration of the I-310 (which became the MiG-15) and the La-160.

However, it was also apparent that the engines available didn't develop enough thrust to push the airframe fast enough to gain the advantages of a swept wing. So the Russians decided to build an intermediate generation of aircraft using whatever engines were available. At that time, these were the BMW-003 which the Russians built as the RD-20 (it generated 1,750 pounds of thrust) and the Jumo-004 which the Russians built as the RD-10 (it developed 1,950 pounds of thrust). They mated these with interim airframes, essentially converted piston-engined fighters and they were a stopgap until The Real Thing (TRT) arrived.

The Russians also captured a whole load of experimental aircraft, a lot of dirty paper that purported to be 'advanced designs" and some prototypes. They made an interesting discovery; the Germans had lots of swept wing fighter designs but no engines to power them. They had the BMW-003 and the Jumo-004 and that was it. 2,000 pounds of thrust, tops and that was nowhere near enough to push a plane fast enough so that it would benefit from the swept wings.

There were three "more" engines. They were the Heinkel-Hirth He-011 that was to be rated at 2,800 pounds of thrust, the Jumo-012 that was supposed to be rated at 6,600 pounds of thrust and the BMW-018 that was supposed to generate 7,700 pounds. None of these engine sactually existed; they were all nothing more than designs on paper. (Note, in Wikipedia it states that the Jumo-012 was test flown in 1944 and was "the most powerful jet engine in the world". This is untrue; only a few non-critical metal components of the 012 had been made and the engine was far from completion. Likewise claims that the BMW-018 whad been test flown were also false; the engine was even less advanced than the Jumo-012).

The Russians spent a lot of time trying to get those engines working and couldn't. There were fundamental design errors in them all that made it impossible that they could work. None of them were practical and the Germans (now the Russians) were stuck with the BMW-003 and the Jumo-004). The Rusisans decided to solve the problem by buying British Nene and Derwent engines which they built as the RD-45 and the RD-500 respectively. Important note that - the Russians were forced to buy British engines because German ones couldn't cut the mustard. Mikoyan selected the RD-45 to power the I-310 and he was in business.

The Russians also captured a semi-complete Ta-183 prototype. They looked at it, compared it with their I-310 and decided that the German aircraft was already obsolete. It was grossly underpowered - less than 2,000 pounds of thrus - and the Russians had already realized that 4,400 was inadequate - and it was structurally much inferior to the MiG being badly overweight and complex. In addition, the russians realized the germans had no idea of the problems caused by spanwise drift and the aircraft would have viciously bad flying characteristics. What was even worse, the Russians couldn't put their new RD-45 into it because the RD-45 was a centrifugal flow engine and had too great a frontal area for the Ta-183 that was deisgned around an axial flow engine.

It got worse, as the Russians experimented with swept-wing fighter models, they found something very interesting. Before the drag reduction benefits of a swept wing cut in, the aircraft would drop one wing, stall and spin out. A vicious flat spin that prevented the pilot getting out. the reason was that the complex airflow over a swept wing was such that both wings had to be exact mirror images. Even slight differences caused tip stalling and the loss of the aircraft. Swept wings couldn't be built the same way as conventional wings and a different manufacturing technique was needed. The Ta-183 had its wings built the older way and would have suffered from wing-drop.

The Russians concluded that the Ta-183 would be a slow, clumsy, treacherous dog and they rejected any possibility of proceeding with it. (By the way, the Argentines did build the Ta-183 and found the Russians were quite right; the aircraft was a flying death trap.)

The I-310 with a 5,000 pound thrust RD-45 was completed in mid-1947 as the S-1 prototype and was test-flown by the end of the year. It became the MiG-15. Later, it was re-engined with the 6,000 pound thrust VK-1.

Yefim Gordon wrote the definitive history of the MiG-15; its published by Aerofax. Worth getting - in fact all Yefim Gordon's books are.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-12-26 09:08am

I started playing a standard Soviet fighter campaign from the start of the war on 22 June 1941.

I've played one before, but numerous things have always conspired to prevent me finishing it- the furthest I got was early 1945 on my old campaign back on Forgotten Battles. Not exactly short, in other words.

This time, I'm resolved to finish my Soviet campaign, then play VVS 46 for laughs, then some Pacific Fighters (play as the US, should be interesting).

But goddamit, have I forgotten how annoying the first few early campaigns are.

Where to begin?

Soviet aircraft. The fucking I-16 fighter. It's controls are touchy as hell, it's slower than a Bf-109, it cant' climb for shit, and finally- but definitely at the top of my list- the anemic armament. Four 7.62mm machine guns- I might as well be shouting profanity at the enemy, for all the good those peashooters do me. It takes forever to kill an enemy fighter, and you simply must hope for an engine hit to do any significant damage at all.

Most of the time, you won't get a clean kill against the Bf-109s- their engine will start to smoke and they'll bug out home, and you're too slow to catch them- they normally won't make it home, and you might get lucky and they'll make a poor crash landing, but most of the time they'll do a survivable crash landing

It's easier to kill Bf-110s (my favorite fighter to kill), He-111s, Ju-88s etc, since their twin engine wing-mounted arrangement makes it easy to score good hits on their engines.

I swear- I'm on the Smolensk campaign now and if I don't get a Yak-1, a MiG-3, or a LaGG-3 in the next campaign, I'll scream. I can't take this I-16 shit any longer. If they had given me the variant with 2x 7.62mm and 2x 20mm, then maybe, but it's just too crap.

Still, I'm the best pilot in the VVS. I've got 27 kills, the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Star, The Order of the Red Banner, and I've been awarded to Hero of the Soviet Union. Twice. I got the second a week after I got the first

It's early-July 1941 ... hehe.

God help the fascists when I get a proper aircraft ... my lovely La-5FN, and then an La-7. A late-model Yak wouldn't go unappreciated either.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-12-26 02:14pm

Is there some sort of compilation that includes all of the expansions? I loved Il-2 but only have the original. Sounds like it's a completely different game with all the expansions.

Sephirius · Post by **Sephirius** » 2006-12-26 07:53pm

okay, I'm back with some observations on the TA-183.

doesn't bleed speed as fast as others in turns, and is very stable throughout. doesn't do the one-wing stall, just slows down and slowly falls sideways if you overdo it. rudder is near useless, and the engine overheats quickly. not much ammo. god help you if you do a climbing turn, you WILL stall the plane and you WILL end up in a flat spin, which you will need at least 3000m of sky below you to pull out of. Poor lift characteristics, nose will drop if you're doing anything under 300 kmh. Engine won't flame out if you move the throttle quickly like the P-80. I still like how it doesn't do the high wing stall, that's great for turn n' burn pilots like myself.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-12-27 01:09am

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:Is there some sort of compilation that includes all of the expansions? I loved Il-2 but only have the original. Sounds like it's a completely different game with all the expansions.

This is it. It has everything that's ever come out. It also comes with a bonus DVD, including a 450-page .pdf with hints, cockpit labelling etc for every aircraft.

Rekkon · Post by **Rekkon** » 2006-12-27 05:17pm

Is this out in the US yet? I picked up an IL-2/Pacific Fighters/Lock On bundle this semester, but I am missing all the add ons.

Vympel, if you think your Russian fighter is bad, try playing the Japanese Army campaign in PF. Oscars are the biggest piece of crap imaginable. Two piddly machine guns with insufficient ammo, and the thing bursts into flame if an enemy fighter so much as looks at it funny. Sure it can turn on a dime, but speed and climb are poor. The gunsight also sucks badly, and as I discovered while plunging toward an unpleasant (flaming) encounter with the ground, it has no emergency canopy jetison. No radio either.

The problems are managable if the fight is relatively even, but the first campaign mission is a scramble. Bad enough the way it is, but your six Oscars are facing around (literally) fifty Allied fighters. It took me forever to get past that mission. I finally cut and run immediately after takeoff, sulking out off the coast, climbing for the heck of it. It seemed safe, but four of them came after me. I got a piece of one. He broke off smoking, and I later got a kill notice. Stalemate with the other three. I could outturn them, but never close to firing range before another got on my tail. Out of ammo, I climbed to max, then dove for speed and ended up circling my airfield until AA drove them off. Another pilot from my flight got a kill, but all five others were KIA.

We need a thread for IL-2/PF stories...

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2006-12-27 07:01pm

Sephirius wrote:Engine won't flame out if you move the throttle quickly like the P-80.

A German turbojet being more reliable than a US turbojet?

US test pilots after the war flying Me 262s had a nice handy indicator for when engine life was up. They burst into flames and exploded, spreading fan blades.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-12-28 06:57am

Ok, I'm stupid. I forgot that you preset all the aircraft you fly from 1941-1945 in the dynamic campaign before you start. And by not presetting any, I stuck to the defaults, which are all total crap- ie. in none of the campaigns is the La-5F/FN/ or La-7 selected as default.

So I deleted my old campaign and started a new one. Flying a LaGG-3 (Series 4) from the very start, sticking with that for the next three theatres because there's nothing better, changing to a Yak-1B for Stalingrad, then a Yak-9, then La-5F/FN and La-7 (with 3x B-20 cannons) for Berlin. I'm going to be the highest scoring ace in history, they can go take a flying leap if they think I won't fly a Lavochkin.

Not to say the Yaks aren't cool, but their armament just isn't my style. I don't ... do ... machine guns. Cannons. That's where it's at.

It's a pleasure watching enemy fighters disintergrate under the extremely heavy armament of the LaGG-3. And it's so much faster and more stable than the crappy little I-16.

FSTargetDrone · Post by **FSTargetDrone** » 2006-12-28 02:27pm

Vympel wrote:This is it. It has everything that's ever come out. It also comes with a bonus DVD, including a 450-page .pdf with hints, cockpit labelling etc for every aircraft.

How does the cockpit labeling work? Is it sort of a pop-up context thing like with Flight Simulator? Or do you mean the PDF has that information?

I'm gonna have to buy this through Amazon UK or some such to get the whole package, including the book.

Does it have the "Pe-2" expansion? That was a download-only, AFAIK, and it's a pain because it installs all this extra garbage that you have to take some effort to strip out.

MKSheppard wrote:Does it have nazi wank projects?

I hope Oleg actually did do his math and made the wank projects perform like they should have, e.g. Ta-183 is a death-trap.

There can never be enough Nazi-wank, as far as I am concerned, but I also want to see a freakin' Meteor, XP-55, Kyūshū J7W Shinden (prop AND jet versions) etc., etc., etc...

Actually, what I'd really like to see is a P-61. That would be fun, with full gunners' stations and radar displays. Frankly, I wish they could incorporate pilot-visible radar equipment for the single seat night-fighters. I'm thinking of the variants of F6F's, F4U's, etc that had the radar pods on the wing. Bring it on!

(Edited with various questions, etc.)

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-12-28 11:40pm

FSTargetDrone wrote:
How does the cockpit labeling work? Is it sort of a pop-up context thing like with Flight Simulator? Or do you mean the PDF has that information?

It's in the .PDF.

Does it have the "Pe-2" expansion? That was a download-only, AFAIK, and it's a pain because it installs all this extra garbage that you have to take some effort to strip out.

Yeah, it includes Pe-2 "Peshka". Why's it a pain? I've encountered no problems.

Sephirius · Post by **Sephirius** » 2006-12-28 11:54pm

MKSheppard wrote:
Sephirius wrote:Engine won't flame out if you move the throttle quickly like the P-80.

A German turbojet being more reliable than a US turbojet?

US test pilots after the war flying Me 262s had a nice handy indicator for when engine life was up. They burst into flames and exploded, spreading fan blades.

262 used Jumo engines, whereas the Ts-183 used a Heinkel, which was much more reliable.

and the P-80's armament is kinda weak.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-12-29 01:39am

On 28 June 1941, I shot down 6 Ju-88 bombers in one mission in my LaGG-3- I only stopped because I ran out of ammo. I was immediately awarded my first Hero of the Soviet Union award. I knew I'd be doing much better in this campagin

Post by **weemadando** » 2006-12-29 01:50am

What variant LaGG-3. The LaGG-3IT is made for shooting down Ju-88s. Hell, pretty much anything is. I must get il-2 1946 now so I can play. I'm currently having to play either Sturmovik or PF as I lack FB and AEP. Boo.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-12-29 01:51am

weemadando wrote:What variant LaGG-3. The LaGG-3IT is made for shooting down Ju-88s. Hell, pretty much anything is. I must get il-2 1946 now so I can play. I'm currently having to play either Sturmovik or PF as I lack FB and AEP. Boo.

LaGG-3 1941 (Series 4). Remember- 1941! No LaGG-3IT.

So yeah, a bit weak. But I'm a crack shot and have balls of steel, so I don't care when I see the tracers from their gunners flying by me and I'm only about 10m away from their engines and opening up with everything.

Post by **weemadando** » 2006-12-29 01:54am

Oh, of course. Just ignore me.

I'm disappointed that I don't get kills for "maneuvre kills". The amount of times I've been out of ammo and forced Japs to crash (not bail out or land, but just get completly out maneuvred and slam into the ground/ocean) in Pacific Fighters is truly amazing.

FSTargetDrone · Post by **FSTargetDrone** » 2006-12-29 01:03pm

Vympel wrote:
Does it have the "Pe-2" expansion? That was a download-only, AFAIK, and it's a pain because it installs all this extra garbage that you have to take some effort to strip out.
Yeah, it includes Pe-2 "Peshka". Why's it a pain? I've encountered no problems.

It's not the expansion itself, but the "Boonty Box" software that gets installed along with it:

As we are all by now aware the western market Pe2 uses software called boontybox to download and validate. This software adds itself as a service and scans your system for compatible games (and other more private stuff). I am not sure if you are all aware of this but boonty.exe is loaded and run in the background everytime you run the new il2fb.exe. This is not something I want happening on my system and I am sure most of you feel the same. The only way to stop this is to use the older 4.04m il2fb.exe.

Here is a longwinded but verified method of installing the Pe2 addon and cleaning up unwanted files and boontybox stuff. If you have already installed the addon your new exe files will have overwritten the uninfected versions (I use that word deliberately). If you have already installed the addon you will need to remove the files listed in step 4. You will then need to reinstall the merged game to get the uninfected il2.exe and il2fb.exe.

<various steps snipped here>

These files are not added from the multiple PF+AEP+FB CD install or the new complete edition DVD. The il2.exe and il2fb.exe are new versions infected with boonty.exe It is safe to delete these files. After deleting these files you should have a list of the following files and folders.

File.1
file.2

These files are the Pe-2 single missions. You need to move these files to the Pe-2 missions folder and rename them to Pe-2_1.mis and Pe-2_2.mis (Credit to Akdavis for this one).

Intros (folder)
Missions (folder)
Paintschemes (folder)
Training (folder)
fb_3do15.SFS
files.SFS
ReadmePe2.rtf

<more steps snipped>

It is quite long winded but it does work. Fortunately for me I am a Computer Technician so I know how to get shot of this kind of crap. Most people aren't even aware that this boonty.exe is working away in the background telling the boontybox people how often and for how long you are playing 4.05m. I must stress that Maddox Games are NOT responsible for this, it is purely an Ubisoft thing. It is not a big brother is watching you type thing and there are no conspiracy theories. This software looks like it aids market research by taking a note of your personal details and takes a list of the games on your system.

Creating a system restore point, then installing the addon followed by a restore of the backed up restore point will not stop boonty.exe from running. Everytime you use the infected il2fb.exe or il2.exe boonty will load and add more registry keys. The only way to stop boonty from doing this is to use the 4.04m il2fb.exe and il2.exe.

There's also an issue with some installs misnaming and improperly locating mission files in the wrong folder, mentioned above and further explained in detail at the link. I'm not sure if every download of PE-2 has the Boonty Box stuff, but mine did and I managed to take it out.

<edited for clarity>

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2006-12-29 01:08pm

Sephirius wrote:262 used Jumo engines, whereas the Ts-183 used a Heinkel, which was much more reliable.

Except that engine never worked at all!

Stuart wrote:
The Russians also captured a whole load of experimental aircraft, a lot of dirty paper that purported to be 'advanced designs" and some prototypes. They made an interesting discovery; the Germans had lots of swept wing fighter designs but no engines to power them. They had the BMW-003 and the Jumo-004 and that was it. 2,000 pounds of thrust, tops and that was nowhere near enough to push a plane fast enough so that it would benefit from the swept wings.

There were three "more" engines. They were the Heinkel-Hirth He-011 that was to be rated at 2,800 pounds of thrust, the Jumo-012 that was supposed to be rated at 6,600 pounds of thrust and the BMW-018 that was supposed to generate 7,700 pounds. None of these engine sactually existed; they were all nothing more than designs on paper. (Note, in Wikipedia it states that the Jumo-012 was test flown in 1944 and was "the most powerful jet engine in the world". This is untrue; only a few non-critical metal components of the 012 had been made and the engine was far from completion. Likewise claims that the BMW-018 whad been test flown were also false; the engine was even less advanced than the Jumo-012).

The Russians spent a lot of time trying to get those engines working and couldn't. There were fundamental design errors in them all that made it impossible that they could work. None of them were practical and the Germans (now the Russians) were stuck with the BMW-003 and the Jumo-004). The Rusisans decided to solve the problem by buying British Nene and Derwent engines which they built as the RD-45 and the RD-500 respectively. Important note that - the Russians were forced to buy British engines because German ones couldn't cut the mustard. Mikoyan selected the RD-45 to power the I-310 and he was in business.

Post by **Vympel** » 2007-01-03 02:21am

Ok, two of the most annoying things that can happen in Il-2:

1. You and your squadron, after a perfect mission where all four/eight of you killed all the opposiiton, with no losses, heads back home. In the process, two of your moron wingmen crash into each other and both fucking die. This just happened to me. Lost two Lieutenants- one of whom who actually had kills.

2. You start off a mission and two German fighters are inexplicably right over your base. They successfully strafe one of your wingmen on the flightline, killing him without a chance.

montypython · Post by **montypython** » 2007-01-03 03:32pm

Are Me P.1101 jets available to fly?