High Res B-17 G skin for European Air War by Microprose.

This aircraft represents "A bit O' Lace", B-17G 40-VE s/n 42-97976, from the 447th BG, 709th BS, based at Rattlesden, April 1945.

This Updated version has the prop shutdown problems fixed.
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
This famous B17G crossed to England on 18th June 1944 shortly after D-Day and began its combat flights in the afternoon of 6th July leading the 447BG to a target in the Pas de Calais region of France. It was the first of many lead roles for the Fort -- at least 20 have so far been recorded including one leading the 4th 'A' combat wing to St Dizier airfield on 18th August. The group commander Col Wrigglesworth also took the plane on 5th September to attack Brest harbour installations.

When newer aircraft took over the lead roles in mid October, "A Bit o' Lace" settled in to regular missions and was assigned to a number of pilots. Lt Warren Bates' crew completed 15 of their combat missions in the plane between late February 45 and the end of March. Shortly after this run of missions, Tom Mustaleski took the plane to Kiel on 4th April and suffered serious flak damage in the tail but managed to bring the ship home. It was back in combat four days later. In those final two months of war, the veteran B17 rarely missed a mission and finished out hostilities with a total of 83 mission markers painted on the nose above the artwork. In all of these not a single one was aborted due to any mechanical failure -- a remarkable achievement for its hard worked ground crew. When the Fort was finally flown to the breakers yard at Kingman, Arizona, Cpl Fingelly was amongst the skeleton crew on board. It must have been a particularly sad day for him.


The plane was named by Milt Caniff who responded to a request by Lt John Bauman for permission to use his popular comic strip personality "Miss Lace". Caniff sent a sketch entitled "A Bit o Lace" and Nick Fingelly used his considerable skill to apply it to the nose of the Fort. Long after the war was over and the plane melted back into ingots of aluminium, the popularity of "A Bit o Lace" lived on. Airfix Kits, well known to the baby boom generation of aero modellers, produced a 72nd scale kit of the plane complete with decals in glorious colour. It remained a big seller and favourite well into the 1980s ensuring that both plane and Fingelly's magnificent nose art were appreciated by thousands of keen aero enthusiasts.
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
This skin randomly uses six different noseart pieces, so instead of the single Hires nose-art piece as in my previous B-17's, you now get a bit more variety.  Thanks to Red Swinger for some motivation to get this happening!
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------

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" option is checked, then extract the files to your OAW folder, and the skin will be put in an "A-06 HR G 447 Lace" 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 Add-ons page at Sandbaggers.

Credits.  Big thanks go 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.
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.
Skylark for providing me with reference material
Mr. Johnson for showing the way to fix the engine shutdown problems.
3dz mods and skin done by myself.

References-
457th BG Website.
"Warbird Modeling" magazine, Sept 2003.

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