The E15K 'Shiun' floatplane is a rare bird to see in a flight-sim, and even rarer among exotic prototypes that it actually saw active service (of a sort)
At the Japanese base on Palau the 61st Air Flotilla's 12th Recon Squadron received (on paper) 6 E15K 'Shiun' floatplanes, of which only 3 would ever arrive. From June 3rd to August 12th 1944 these aircraft would perform 23 sorties primarily attempting to locate/destroy American submarines, until the encroachment of the US Navy forced the unit to disband and it's remaining aircraft to withdraw to the Philippines.
In this semi-historical campaign, you will fly 21 missions in the 'Shiun,' flying recon and ASW missions out of Arakabesan North. In real life, no action save for a single day's encounter with F6F Hellcats was seen, I've elected to make the missions randomized, with a chance of encountering enemy forces on each mission. Autopilot flying on the player's part is not recommended, as enemy units may lay enough off the waypoint path that active observation will be required to locate them/achieve recon objectives.
Link:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/uiwu8uome25wlrr/E15K_Palau.7z/fileRecords and documentation regarding the E15K are very limited, but two sources provided me with enough information to put together this campaign:
- Wikipedia user TFR_BIG_MOSA, who provided an English translation of the 61st Air Flotilla's sortie records (as well as links to the Japanese Historical database they presided in), allowing for the dates, outcomes, and educated guesses of the mission times to be used for mission-making
- Kyushuj7w from the WW2Aircraft.net forum, who presented much of the hard-to-find Arawashi magazine article written on the E15K, which was valuable in shaping a number of briefings, as well as connecting some dots as to the fate of most of the E15Ks that saw service on Palau
- In addition, memoirs from Haruo Yoshino, an IJN recon pilot who saw service from the beginning to the end of the war, provided insight into standard recon flightpaths used by the IJN in the stages of WWII before dedicated ASW tactics were developed, which was also useful in making these missions (these can be found in the excellent book 'The Last Zero Fighter' by Dan King)
In future, I may make a campaign based on the intended role of this aircraft, that being as an observation aircraft off of the Oyodo-class cruisers for the purpose of leading large submarine 'wolf-packs,' as it might have done had the aircraft's development gone more favorably (and the development of the war allowed for the use of the Oyodo as she was intended)
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Topic: Violet Clouds over Palau - An E15K campaign (Read 1364 times)
