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

This skin represents a B-17 G-30-DL, S-N 42-38109, from the 305th BG, 364th BS, based at Chelveston, February 1944.  It's pilot 1st Lt. William R. Lawley Jr. was awarded a Medal of Honour after returning the aircraft from a mission to Leipzig on the 20th of February 1944.
As I could find no photos of this particular aircraft, the skin was made from descriptions of the a/c, and other B-17's of the same BS and period.  It may not be exact, but is the best I can do with the available references. 

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Taken from "The Mighty Eighth" by Roger A. Freeman

Turning away from the target, the 305th Group's formation received a sudden head on pass from enemy fighters.  One bomber, that had been unable to release its load because the rack activating mechanism was frozen, received a cannon shell in the cockpit.  The pilot was killed and the co-pilot, 1/Lt William R. Lawley, was badly wounded in the face; another seven crew members were wounded and an engine was set on fire.  The aircraft had dived steeply out of control but Lawley, recovering from the initial shock, quickly forced the co-pilot's body off the controls with his right hand, while pulling the bomber out of the dive with the other.  A broken and blood spattered windshield obscuring forward vision, added to his difficulties.  With the full bomb load aboard and imminent danger of an explosion if the blazing engine fire spread, Lawley gave the order to bail out.  

Immediately  one of the waist gunners reported that two other gunners were so severely injured that they could not leave the aircraft.  Lawley then tried to bring the Fortress down safely for a crash landing.  Crew members, who had the option of bailing out, all stayed.  The engine fire was put out and there seemed a good chance of bringing the ailing bomber home, until another fighter attack was experienced.  Using skilful evasive action, Lawley managed to lose his new tormentors although not before another engine had apparently been hit and later caught fire; in time, this too was successfully extinguished.

Meanwhile the bombardier, 1/Lt Harry G. Mason, had managed to free the racks and jettison the bombs.  On the slow long journey home, loss of blood and shock brought Lawley to a stage of collapse, and Mason took over the controls until he revived.  Over the English coast one engine spluttered as it ran out of fuel.  The first airfield seen was Redhill and as Lawley made his approach one of the damaged engines again burst into flames.  With only one sound engine and the risk that an error in judgement could precipitate a stall, Lawley skilfully brought the crippled Fortress in for a crash-landing without further hurt to his crew.

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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 305thBG" 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.

The skin uses an experimental "dithered" base layer to achieve the faded olive drab look.  This will cause some rippling or 'moire' effect at certain angles, but I think it's not a huge problem, and the 'new' colour makes it worth some hassles.  Thanks to Andy, FreddyB, Skylark, Claudio, VonBeerhofen, Tachyon and Crashin Jack, who all helped with suggestions aiming to fix this problem.

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.
Mr. Johnson for discovering how to fix the engine shutdown problems.
3dz mods and skin done by myself.

References-
"The Mighty Eighth" by Roger A. Freeman

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
