Fortress Malta Campaign

[_AH_DarkWolf]

S! chaps, our next campaign will be Fortress Malta, so I figured I'd start posting some information about it.

Campaign Overview:

The island of Malta lies in the central Mediterranean. After the fall of France and the declaration of war by Italy it became almost completely isolated with hostile shores all around but was also perfectly positioned as a base to interdict axis supplies heading to North Africa. The war in North Africa was very much a war of supplies, they dictated when offensives were launched or ground to a halt. With British control of the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean, Axis supplies had to cross it just east or west of Malta. This made it the perfect place to base reconnaissance and strike aircraft, submarines and surface naval vessels to stop these shipments. The downside was that Sicily to the north was only a 15 minute flight away, meaning these assets were very vulnerable to air attack. Great effort was made by axis forces to neutralize Malta from the air and it's considered to be the most heavily bombed place in history.

So this is where we come in, we will be flying as the fighter squadrons deployed to Malta to defend the island. The nature of the missions will be much like the Battle of Britain, scrambling to intercept incoming raids. The briefs will not give us much information, we will scramble and then get instructions via in-flight messages from the ground controller. The campaign will start in the late summer of 1940 and will skip rather rapidly through the rest of 1940, 1941 and the early part of 1942 with the majority of the missions being set during the critical months of March-October 1942.

Interestingly, the difficulty will bounce around a bit at first. Initially the attacks on the island were being made by the Italians, who predictably did so somewhat half-heartedly and were given a bloody nose. As happened in so many other areas of the war, the Italians were then reinforced by the Germans and Malta was in for a tough time. But after a few months the Germans left to go invade Russia (I'm sure that will work out well for them) and neutralizing Malta was once again left in the hands of the Italians. Malta's offensive capabilties began to grow once again and they were taking a large chunk out of the supplies being sent to North Africa but later in that year the Germans returned in full force and things became much more difficult once again.

Aircraft Types:

The beginning of the campaign will see us flying Hurricane Mk.Is, over time those will give way to the Hurricane Mk.IIa, Mk.IIb, Mk.IIc and eventually to the tropicalized Spitfire Vc. Despite Malta's importance to the war in North Africa it remained somewhat of a backwater until the spring of 1942 and was forced to soldier on with the Hurricane well past it's best before date. The specific in game designations are :

Hurricane Mk.I, 12 lbs, 1940
Hurricane Mk.IIa, 1940
Hurricane Mk.IIb, 1940
Hurricane Mk.IIc, 1941
Spitfire F Vc(2) trop 1942

Squadrons:

Initially all of AH all be flying as the same squadron from the same airfield but after about 4 missions the three AH Squadrons and HQ Flight will fly as different squadrons that fought on the island. This will correspond with the three squadrons being split up amongst the three main airfields on the island, so each squadron will eventually have it's own airfield. HQ Flight will spend some time on two different fields. When this split happens :

1st Squadron will fly as 185 Squadron who flew out of Hal-Far.

2nd Squadron will fly as 249 Squadron flying out of Takali.

3rd Squadron will fly as 126 and later 1435 Squadrons and will fly the whole campaign from Luqa.

HQ Flight will fly as 601, 603  and then 229 Squadrons. They will be based initially at Luqa with 3rd before moving in with 2nd at Takali.

Skins:

I will post up a skin pack in the future with a set of generic and blank skins for the Hurricanes. As we'll not be flying the Hurricane for very long I'm not going to do any personalized skins for them. For the Spitfires I will do personalized skins for those who want them but the options for customization will be quite limited. There will be a seperate post and more information about this in the PaintSchemes Requests forum in the future. Part of the pack will also include more accurate blank skins for some of the other friendly and enemy aircraft we will see during the campaign.

Campaign Length:

36 Missions

Start Date :

December 1st


Here is a map of the island with some of the major landmarks and localities listed:



The main point of interest is Grand Harbor and Marsamxett Harbor on either side of Valletta. You have Marsaxlokk Bay to the south-east where the Sunderland flying boats land. Filfla is a little rocky island often used as a target for bomb and torpedo practice. The Dingli Cliffs extend up the southern side of the island to Ghajn Tuffieha Bay with St. Paul's Bay just opposite. (St. Paul's Bay is where the RAF rest camp is) And of course the 3 main airfields of this period at Takali, Luqa and Hal-Far. And of course the smaller island of Gozo to the north-west with Comino in between.

You should be familiar with these landmarks as they will be used by the ground controllers to direct you towards the enemy.

If you have any questions so far, feel free to ask.

DW


https://www.dropbox.com/s/vaud18yvhyb79tg/FortressMaltaPracticeRooms.zip?dl=0

Here are two practice rooms, an early version with Hurricanes and a late version with Spitfires. They are dogfight maps so you'll have to put them in a folder in your Missions\Net\Dogfight folder in your main game directory. There are no enemy aircraft in these missions, they are simply to practice flying the types of aircraft we'll be using and to familiarize yourself with the map and airfields.

[_AH_Col._Hogan]

 Looks awesome!

[_AH_Jack]

I am really looking forward to this!

[_AH_Autorotate]

excellent. i plan to be apart of this.  :drinking-43: :drinking-42:

[_AH_Lippy]

As seperate squads in our own a/F will we be on seperate comms and control.

[_AH_DarkWolf]

I'm not sure what you mean by control but as regards comms I suppose that is up for debate. It can be done either way as far as I'm concerned. We've long gone with the everyone on one channel approach, either option has it's pros and cons.

DW

[_AH_Lippy]

Maybe I should sit back and wait and see before I speak to much.

[_AH_Hollywood]

Christmas comes early.... drool....

Any way start times can be 30 minutes later? West Coasters you know.

[_AH_Bear]

Looking forwards to this.,...  :happy-112:

[_AH_Col._Hogan]

I don't know if a full 30 minutes will fly with the uptight, cranky, rude and self entitled east coasters. We might be able to get 15 min if we're lucky.

S!

[_AH_taldrg]

~S~
  Just maybe _AH_Gonzo will be one of the ground controlers. That would be scary..eh!

[_AH_DarkWolf]

~S~
  Just maybe _AH_Gonzo will be one of the ground controlers. That would be scary..eh!

Well there would certainly be more swearing, that's for sure!

DW

[_AH_DarkWolf]

I added a link to some practice maps at the bottom of the first post.

DW

[_AH_Nimble]

Thanks DW... as usual I see youve put alot of thought into this campaign and I am personally looking forward to it.....why its almost like a birthday present ..thanks DW  (wavey)

[_AH_DarkWolf]

My plans for repainting this room are encountering delays so the 24th won't work. The start date for this campaign will be December 1st.

DW