ReadMe - Fading Sun: The 14th Air Force in China v1.0

April 2001

"In December of 1943, Lt. General Shunruku Hata, commanding officer of the China Expeditionary Army, ordered an immediate aerial offensive against American installations to be followed by a massive land offensive in the spring of 1944.  Operation Ichi-Go...was expected to realize several purposes.  Chennault's airfields would be neutralized by the novel approach of capturing them with ground forces, a reliable land transport route would be established from northern China to Indochina, potential bases from which B-29[s] could strike the Japanese mainland could be destroyed and, finally, Ciang Kai Shek's Nationalist government could well be overthrown...

"...By December, 1944, the railroad from Hanoi to Hankow was operating again...The very low priority accorded the China-Burma theatre ...restricted the Allied response to the Japanese offensive to a more or less ineffective air interdiction of supply lines.  

"It was not until Gen. Albert Wedemeyer replaced Gen. Stilwell that the principal Allied focus shifted from Burma to China...

"The first task facing Wedemeyer...was to halt the Japanese advance and, if possible, seize the initiative with a determined counter-offensive...

"Wedemeyer was given permission to make some use of the B-29s before they departed for the Pacific. 

"...The 14th Air Force mustered some 700 serviceable aircraft together with an adequate level of munitions, replacements and gasoline.  They were at least on par with their adversary.  For the first time in their operational history, the Flying Tigers could not use chronic shortages of manpower and equipment as the excuse for their troubles.  They had the tools to get the job done..."
-From "Operation Alpha" by Malcolm Power in SSG's Run 5 Magazine.

This is the setting for Fading Sun.  The campaigns cover air combat in Southeastern China from December of 1944 to the end of March of 1945 (the P-47 campaign starts in January).  On the American side, the P-47 and P-51 missions are mostly fighter-bomber duties, with some sweep and escort and an occasional interdiction.  The P-40 missions are mainly sweeps and escorts.  The Japanese missions are mostly intercepts with some sweeps and escorts.

Installation Instructions:

FIRST- Set your ECA panel to the following settings:

P-51B: P-51b
P-47D: P-47d Thunderbolt
Tempest: Kittyhawk II
B-24: B-24J Liberator
B-26: B-25J Mitchell
B-17: B-29 Superfortress

Bf109E - Ki-43 Oscar
Bf109K - Ki-44 Tojo
Bf109G - Ki-61 II Tony
FW190D - Ki-84 Frank
Bf110c - Ki-44 Nick
Ju-88a - Ki-49 Helen
He111 - G4M3 Betty

2 - Load all your skins and terrain.  I suggest the Asian Mainland terrain from the Hangar but whatever looks like China to you will work.  Be sure to have no skin files or 3dzs for the Ju88a or Tempest slots installed.  I have included two skins/3dzs in the Fading Sun .zip- Rob Der Fuchs' P-40 for the Tempest slot and my own Ki-49 Helen.  If you do not wish to use these skins, do not extract them in step 3.

3 - Unzip the contents of the Fading Sun zips into your EAW folder.  Optional: If you use a separate install like I do, make a shortcut to the eaw.exe you're using, right-click on the shortcut to get Properties and select "change icon."  The chinaicon2.ico file is a tiger's head icon you can use for this campaign if you wish.

4 - Run EAW and select a German (Japanese) campaign or an American campaign for 1944.  There are no British campaigns nor any 1940 or 1943 campaigns. 

5 - Shoot straight :)

Comments

The idea for Fading Sun came from a scenario for SSG's Europe Ablaze called 'Flying Tigers: Operation Alpha.'  I ran across it looking through my old Run5 magazines and thought it would make a very interesting EAW campaign.  The Japanese developed some very good planes toward the end of the war such as the Ki-84 and Ki-44 and I thought pitting them against the P-51b/c and P-47 would make for a challenging campaign.  For those who consider yourselves real hotshots, try the P-40 campaign-I think you'll have your hands full :)    

There were a few problems I just couldn't solve in this campaign and I'll address them in a patch if I ever find a solution.  First, the US bombing missions should really be interdictions (according to the USAAF chronology, there was a lot of train and convoy busting), but I couldn't get EAW to assign an interdiction despite a lot of experimenting with loadouts, target types and plane settings.  The same goes for bombing missions for the P-40.  The P-40 missions should be very much the same as P-51s, but EAW would not assign bombing missions.  Also, if the P-40s were assigned ANY intercepts, EAW would make ALL the missions intercepts so I had to leave them out, giving P-40s escorts and sweeps only.  When flying the Tojo and Tony, they will not perform sweeps.   I hope you will agree, however, that these issues are minor in the scope of the entire campaign and do not detract too much from the enjoyment of the game. 
   
Thanks:

To Rob Der Fuchs for his P-40 skins and 3dzs

To Moggy for help with the aircraft selection sprites and other screen-based help

To PipsPriller for info on IJAAF units and other issues (Pips, I had to compromise between the data you gave me and the data from the book I have)

To Ghost Boy for the Japanese medal names

To anyone else who answered my never-ending questions and offered support at the SimHQ board

To my girlfriend, Melissa, for understanding how much time this took me and for not minding that I think Gwyneth Paltrow is hot

To anyone who takes the time to download and play this campaign :)

Send any questions to rockhpi@hotmail.com

RockHPI April 2001
