1944 ARDENNES CAMPAIGN
======================    

INTRODUCTION
------------

The 1944 Ardennes Campaign replaces the 1944 original ETO Campaign with one starting
on 16 December 1944, when the German attack "Wacht am Rhein" takes place in the Ardennes
and ends at 2 February 1945 as the German ground forces are fully defeated.

The aim of this campaign is to simulate the air and air to ground war in Belgium,
the Netherlands, France and Germany during the "Battle of the Bulge" between the Luftwaffe, 
the 2nd Tactical Air Force and the 9th Air Force. All German, American and British aircraft
will participate in an equally divided amount of escort, sweep, bomb, intercept and
interdiction missions.

Selecting a normal campaign you fly a mission every 2 days with a total of 25 missions.
Unfortunately it is not posible to fly a long campaign as flying a mission every
2 days seems fixed.

When you play this campaign DO NOT select Limited Supply or you may not have bombs to carry.
I would like to quote Charles Gunst on this : "Did you join up to be a fighter pilot or 
a supply clerk anyway?" :-)


 
UNITS available for the 1944 Ardennes Campaign:
-----


	- German 			Aircraft	Slot		Base

	II/Jagdgeschwader 11            Bf 109G-14	Emil		Deelen
	IV/Jagdgeschwader 27            Bf 109G-10      Gustav    	Bonn  
	III/Jagdgeschwader 77           Bf 109K-4	Kurfurst	Dusseldorf
	I/Jagdgeschwader 4              FW 190A-8       Anton        	Deelen
	I/Jagdgeschwader 2		FW 190D-9	Dora		Dusseldorf	
	II/Schlachtgeschwader 4      	FW 190F-8       Hurricane      	Bonn
	I/Kampfgeschwader 51            Me 262A-2a      Me 262        	Dusseldorf
	
	
	- British 2nd TAF

	No. 126 Wing                 	Spitfire IX	Spit 1		Sint-Truiden
	No. 127 Wing			Spitfire XVI	Spit 9		Le Culot
	No. 131 Wing               	Spitfire XIV	Spit 14		Florennes
	No. 124 Wing			Typhoon IB	Typhoon		Sint-Truiden
	No. 122 Wing			Tempest V	Tempest		Le Culot
	No. 138 Wing			Mosquitb FB VI	Bf 110C		Florennes 		       0   0  33  33  33 %
	

	- American 9th AF

	48th FG				P-47D		P47C		Sint-Truiden
	405th FG			P-47D		P47D		Saint-Dizier
	362nd FG			P-47D		P51B		Chievres
	367th FG			P-38J		P38H		Juvincourt
	474th FG			P-38J		P38J		Florennes
	363rd FG			P-51D		P51D		Le Culot
	416th BG			A-26		Bf 110G		Reims


Other non flyable planes participating in this campaign are :

B-17G		B-17 slot
Mitchell III	He 111 slot
B-26B, C, G	B-26, Me-410 and Ju 88C slot 
B-24J		B-24 slot
Ju 88S-1	Ju 88A and Mosquito slot
P-47D		Ju 87 slot
V-1		V-1 slot



INSTALLATION
------------

I recommend to make a new clean EAW install for this addon. This way you are sure that no
files from other campaigns/addons/skinpacks are 'contaminating' your new EAW installation.
Patch EAW to version 1.2a.
ECA 1.4 and ECA Panel are not needed for this addon. Having ECA 1.4 or ECA Panel installed
before installing the files of the addon will not have consequences. Do not use ECA Panel
after installation of this addon or all campaign specific files will be overwritten.

To install copy the files in the following .zip files into your EAW main directory : 

Campaign.zip contains the campaign files, mainscreen and single mission screens.
Flight.zip contains the Planes.dat and flight model files.
Skins.zip contains the skinpack and the cockpits.
Hangars.zip contains the hangars and sprite disabling files.

Say yes to overwrite files with the same name in your EAW directory.



REMARKS, PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 
-------------------------------

1) 

This Ardennes campaign is not 100% historically correct, but it is a good representation
of the air war during the winter of 1944. Since on the original map of EAW there are no
targets at all in the Ardennes, the fighting doesn't exactly take place in the Ardennes.
Maybe in the future there will be ground targets placed in the Ardennes so that missions
can be flown above the actual battlefield.

By choosing airbase locations near to the historical front, removing all droptanks from all
the airforces supplies and limiting the fuel content in the American fuel tanks of all
fighters and all medium and heavy bombers, I gave the aircraft a limited range : 

Flyable American planes : 250 miles (400 km), A-26 375 miles (600 km)
Flyable British planes : 140 - 240 miles (225 - 390 km), Mosquito 310 miles (500 km)
Flyable German planes : 270 - 340 km (170 - 210 miles)

By doing this the EAW engine is obliged to search for targets around the historical frontline
during the Battle of the Bulge. So the action takes place in the area formed by the eastern
half of Belgium, the southern half of The Netherlands, a small part of north France and a
small part of west Germany around the Rhine.

2) 

Flight models and plane characteristics are based on the superb ECA Panel by Charles Gunst.
However I made some adaptations as I also did in Pacific Tide and the Battle of Britain.

Defensive guns on bombers are given the same rate of fire, muzzle velocity and range as the 
offensive guns of the same type on the fighters. To compensate for their increased power the
dispersion factor is larger and so results in less accurate defensive fire. The Ju 88S-1
retains accurate defensive fire together with high speed treetop hugging flying behaviour.
If I didn't do this it would be considered murder to send these planes into combat against
those heavily armed and armoured Thunderbolts.

To prevent what the makers of the ECA Online flight models called "Shot off tail syndrome"
I applied their solution : doubling the tail hit points while halving the tail hit bubble
size, both for fighters and bombers.

The great Rendermod by Max188 is applied so that planes retain better visibility over larger
distances.

The fuel burn rate is 1.75 (in the original EAW it is 1.0). Completely correct fuel burn rate
would be 2.0, but this leads to major problems with computer controlled planes as they cannot
conserve their fuel. The value 1.75 leads to really nice dropping fuel gauges while on
mission, but retaining enough fuel reserve to reach your homebase safely. Alt-N also
conserves fuel.

3)

The homebases are not 100% correct mainly for German an British units. Eindhoven and
Woensdrecht cannot be used to prevent British planes to fly mainly missions over north
Holland and north Germany. The historically correct German airbases around Frankfurt and
Rheine are too far away to reach the front without droptank. EAW seems not to assign
interdiction missions if you cannot carry a bomb. So the Germans are moved to Deelen,
Dusseldorf and Bonn.

4)

I could not include the Ar 234 jet bomber, because EAW seems not to be designed for jet
bombers. The sound is disturbingly wrong, the plane does not fly fast enough to escape 
interceptors and often it crashes into the ground at the rendez-vous point.


CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
----------------------------

Microprose for giving us the best flight simulations in years : 1942 Pacific Air War and
European Air War.

Paulo Morais for all his genius in designing the necessary tools to work with all EAW files.

Charles Gunst for providing basic addons as ECA 1.4, ECA Panel and the EAW Editing Notes.

Mosi for the single mission selection screens and the mainscreen.

The skinpack and hangars are compiled by using high quality work by the following
artists in random order. It is impossible to list what specific improvement is made by
every single artist as the whole EAW experience is becoming more and more a community
achievement.

Artists:

Marco Bonafede, PO Prune, Redeyes, Migge, Mosi, Captain Manduca, Woolfman, LLv34_Doc,
Claudio Wilches, Allessandro Borges, Steve Belanger, Toni Deu, Binni, HarryM, Mr Johnson,
Serb, Paulo Morais, Stewart Nunn, JWC, Stanley99, Fabio Mele, Stag, Dan Shaw, Winger69,
Charles Gunst, Col. Gibbon, Moggy, other members of 'The Firm', Papa Romeo and Dominique
Legrand.

I really hope I did not forget anybody. If you see elements of your work in this addon and
your name is not mentioned, warn me and I'll update this readme file.


Dirk 'Emil' Schoorens
emil@pandora.be
http://emil.free.fr/
25 November 2001