B-17 F Hires updated version # 2 for European Air War.

This skin represents "Wulf Hound", a captured German B-17 F-27-BO, S/N 41-24585, Formerly from the 303rd BG "Hell's Angels", 360th BS, based at Molesworth, December 1942.  This aircraft is only 20 Serial numbers younger than my "knock out dropper" skin, which I have used as a base. 

"Wulf Hound" was the first 'intact' Flying Fortress captured by Germans.  During the bombing run over Rouen on 12th December 1942, it was damaged by German fighters, and heavily damaged during the return flight by Bf 110's from NJG 1. The pilot, Lieutenant Flickinger was forced to land on Leeuwarden airfield in the Netherlands. The aircraft was repaired and two days later (after adding German national insignia), with the cover of two Bf 110's, it flew to Rechlin. It was tested and later joined "Rosarius' Flying Circus", a collection of captured allied aircraft, which toured different fighter units in Germany and France so that pilots could recognize strong and weak points of the aircraft.  The white lines on the wings and engines mark the areas of the fuel and oil tanks - good spots for the luftwaffe pilots to aim.  It was exhibited at Lrz airfield in 12th of June 1943 during exhibition of captured Allied planes. Together with this B-17F other planes such as B-24, P-47D, P-51, P-38, Avro Lancaster, DH Mosquito, Typhoon and Spitfire were shown. "Wulf Hound" come back to Rechlin in July 1943 and was used in trials with DFS 230 glider. German engineers still examined technical data and  engineering. It was transferred to KG 200 in September 1943 and coded A3+AE.

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This is the latest update for the High Resolution B-17 F.  The last HR B-17G mod I made had non mirror patches, which always pissed me off because inevitably the NM patches never covered the area I wanted, which meant doing most authentic B-17 skins was impossible, and some of my B-17 skins were thus abandoned.  +mia enquired about the possiblity of some 3dz changes for on of his projects, and things got back on track again.  Changes to the model include :-
- Engines and props now shut down correctly
- Fully non mirrored fuselage
- "Illu" type radio wires
- Transparent shadow.

In order to free up a 3dz to allow total non mirroring, I had to shift the Ball turret's textures from the B.3dz on the F.3dz.  This has worked out OK but there are still some minor rendering problems with the ball turret.  Hopefully you can put up with them.  Note that this model still has the prop shutdown problems associated with the HR-B17.

Instalation.
Extract all the .tpc and .3dz files to your EAW folder, making sure that winzip's "use folder names" box is UNCHECKED, or if using a skin/file manager, refer to it's instructions.
- For OAW users, this skin zip is 'OAW ready' - ensure that the 'use folder names' box is ticked, unzip everything to your OAW folder, and the skin will be unzipped ready to go in the "A-06 Wulf Hound" folder.  
- For EAW Stab users, extract the zip to a temporary folder, rename "skinpic" to "B-17F.jpg", and "contents.txt" to "Stabskin.ini", then manually point Stab to that folder.

Extras included but not needed for instalation -
I've included both the batchfiles for PCX to TPC, and TPC to PCX for any prospective skinners out there, as well as a screenie.

Credits -
Alessandro Borges for his invaluable 3DZ Studio!
Thanks to Col. Gibbon for the original HR-B-17, some of it's textures are used.
+mia for the use of some textures, and the BUMP I needed to finish this.
Mosi for another timely BUMP,
Illu for the radio wire idea,
Charles, Andy + Pobs for the transparent shadow idea.
Sandbagger (in advance!) for hosting the skin.
Migge and Redeyes for the MEX file which is mostly their work.
Junkersmazzo, Fran_zee, Crashin' Jack and Dumoulin for references.
3dz mods and skin done by myself.

If you have any problems, questions, comments or hatemail don't hesitate to contact me, either at the SimHQ EAW message board, or by Email.
Enjoy!

John "Chompy" Masters,
3rd July 2005.
jdmasters@ozemail.com.au
http://www.sandbaggeruk.com/chompy.html
