in June .... 70 years ago ... (FSMPA Early Summer 2012 Event)

[salt_air]

FSMPA's "Good Times Gang" has ... over the last 9 years ... celebrated a lot of real historical events in multiplayer.

A recent example was Gunter's (teson1) series of events commemorating the early days of trying to establish US Air Mail routes using his in depth research of the actual routes and matching as closely as is possible ... within the restrictions of the simulator ... the same types of aircraft using the same type of navigation.



Using this same event structure I am going to host an event(s) that will commemorate the 70th Anniversary of not only what has been deemed as the turning point of WW II in the Pacific Theater, but one of the most significant naval battles ever.



It has been dubbed by historians as The Battle of Midway .... 4 thru 7 of June 1942 ... only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.

No time or space here to document the details of the battle or to let you see how it developed and what it lead to ... enough of that is readily available on the internet and at nearly any library in the world ... not to mention the huge contribution(s) to our knowledge on these matters made daily by the Military History Channel for any of you that are fortunate enough to have it offered by your cable TV provider.

Basically that battle rendered the Japanese Navy such a powerful blow that it took back the position of power as the strongest navy in the Pacific that Japan had gained after smashing the US fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Attrition from the series of battles at sea from that point in the war on was much greater than everything Japan could do to try to muster and recover .... the Kamikaze effort just made matters worse by further depleting nearly all of it's resources.



Besides the decisive butt whoopin' the Japanese Navy was handed there, a milestone in the history of naval warfare was set.

The Battle of Midway was the first time ever that 2 navies had engaged in battle at sea and were not close enough to see each other ... ship to ship.

Naval Air Power, superior strategy and as always a little luck is what won the battle ... the ships never fired at each other and the huge Battleships thought to that point to be the center of anyone's fleet were suddenly and at once obsolete as the US Navy sunk 4 of Japans aircraft carriers with the use of aircraft alone.



MSFS is the wrong platform to use to recreate any sort of air battles ... air to sea, sea to land, or sea to sea as that's more for the Combat Flight Simulator platform ... we won't be doing any of that here.

Instead we will try to simulate ... in multiplayer ... what it may have been like to train for carrier duty immediately after Pearl Harbor.



Participants ... who decide to "Join" ... will be trained in both the skills of navigating carrier borne aircraft at sea as well as what it takes to land those aircraft back on the carriers from which they were launched.




TIMETABLE:

After your virtual basic training and flight school you will report to our Teamspeak 3 server for navigational training at either one or both of the two sessions that will be held on the 2nd and 3rd of June 2012 at 1945 ZULU.

A subsequent announcement will be made here by the end of this weekend with all of the details and what you will need to bring.



Upon completion of your navigational training you will be ordered to report for carrier landing training at an undisclosed US Naval land base on the following weekend.

Again there will be two sessions to help with real life schedules .... as with the navigational training sessions you may attend one or both of the sessions on the 9th and 10th of June at 1945 ZULU.




As a sort of basic training your are encouraged to make handy a list of Morse Code signals.

I would like to suggest becoming better acquainted to the point of memorizing at least the alpha equivalents in Morse Code.

Sounds like a lot of work, but it's no more of an effort than what it took to learn the ICAO phonetic codes we use all the time.

I highly recommend downloading and reading .... studying if you will ... a course on this that was put together as a tutorial by our own Fred Young some years back and package by Norm Hancock to upload on DC3 Airway's server for their use.

Fred (NikeHerk76) has dissected the alphabet and it's Morse equivalents into a very logical and methodical grouping that will make memorizing Morse Code much easier ... very simple and yet very clever, Bravo Fred!!

Find it here: http://www.dc3airways.com/useful/dow.../downloads.htm

Their downloads list is full of other valuable files too, but for our purpose Fred's zip is about halfway down the list ... the list is alphabetical ... just go down to the M's.

You can of course just print a Morse Code chart ... there are several out there, but I think you loose the feel of situational awareness when you have to go back and forth between printed notes and tasks in the cockpit while also maintaining a fresh idea of what is happening outside the cockpit.




That's all for now Gentlemen ... I will make another post(s) with the particulars for each session ... for now just learn Morse Code .... it's not just for this event, but we will be using the code in the future as well.




Cheers,

[PRB]

Sounds interesting. Assuming we will have to be in the same sim for this to work? Meaning if I'm in FS9 and everyone else is in FSX this wouldn't work, correct?

[salt_air]

Sounds interesting. Assuming we will have to be in the same sim for this to work? Meaning if I'm in FS9 and everyone else is in FSX this wouldn't work, correct?

As you know we can all be on the server at the same time and see each other fairly well depending on chosen textures when entering the session.


Main trouble as always is time ... never enough ... and that would be a find a common scenery for both sims.

FSX is THE sim for carrier events with it's ability to support a landings on a moving carrier.

The radio transmitter that is the center of part 1 is stationary ... it can be moved, but has to sit still when in operation.



Paul I'm very happy to see you expressing an interest ... also open for any sort of suggestions that would allow both sims to function in the same scenery ... right up until the day of the event.

As it stands now we'll do this one in nine and another in ten ... hopefully by the time the later is ready to go I will have ciphered a way for both sims to be able to participate.

[darrenvox]

Would love to but can't, got an air show to volunteer at...have fun...

[salt_air]

Gee Darren ... that's too bad ... enjoy the Airshow, we'll catch ya another time.