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

This skin represents "Gold Brick", a B-17 G-20-DL, S-N 4237972, from the 100th BG, 349th BS, based at Thorpe Abbots, November 1943.

Gold brick had it's share of mishaps - the right stabilizer was blown of by flak on 20th April 1945 (See the pictures attached in the zip) , but is still managed to return safely to base.  Tail gunner Leon Barnes who had shared credit for shooting down a fighter on that day, was killed by the explostion.  As always, it was repairable, and at the end of the war managed to return to the US with 100 missions to it's credit.

"The Bloody Hundredth" was one of the poineer Bomb groups who flew their first European mission in June 1943, and flew the last of their 306 missions on April 20th, 1945.  Along the way they gained their name following several missions where they suffered appalingly high losses, losing 10 aircraft 17th August 1943 against Regensberg, 7 against Bremen on 8th October, and two days later 12 of the 13 100th BG aircraft flying, were lost over Munster.  Although they did not have the highest losses of all the BG's over the course of the war, missions like Munster cast a dark shadow over Thorpe Abbots, and the 100th was known as a 'hard luck' outfit.

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This is the latest update for the High Resolution B-17 G.  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 :-
- Fixed engine shutdown problems
- Fully non mirrored fuselage
- "Illu" type radio wires
- Transparent shadow.
- Staggered waist guns.
- Chin turret at last!

As it is a mod of the HR B-17 F, it inherits some of it's RS problems, plus a few others I added while painfully getting the chin turret RS to work again!  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 and chin turrets.  Hopefully you can put up with them.  Note that this model still has the prop shutdown problems associated with the original HR-B17.

Instalation.
Extract all the .tpc and .3dz files to your EAW folder, or if using a skin/file manager, refer to it's instructions.  This zip has been optimized for OAW use - simply ensure winzip's "use folder path" is checked, then extract the files to your OAW folder, and the skin will be put in an "A-06 HR G 100th Gold" 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, and a screenie.  To use the Batchfiles, just place the files you want to convert, the Batchfiles, and the Picpac / gpmtpc2pcx.exe's all in the same folder, and double click the batchfile.  If you don't have Picpac.exe or gpmtpc2pcx.exe, they are available at my Ad-ons page at Sandbaggers.

Credits -
Thanks to Col. Gibbon for the original HR-B-17 3dz, and for some of it's textures.
+mia for the use of some textures, and the BUMP I needed to finish this.
Paulo Morais and Binni for the original work on the chin turret.
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.
Mr. Johnson for discovering how to fix the engine shutdown problems.
3dz mods and skin done by myself.

References-
"The Mighty Eighty" by Roger A. Freeman.
The 100th BG website http:\\www.100thbg.com

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
