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[Lisek]

Hi guys 

Recently I've been playing some offline campaigns and noticed annoying thing: when flight approaches an airfield, all planes damaged and not are landing in sequence they have arrived to the first landing point. I've had few times a situation, that damaged plane crashed into the ground while waiting for landing.

So the question for java coders is: Is it possible for you to code a little something that would make all planes on the approach circle wait till all damaged ones land? By damaged planes I mean something like leaking fuel tanks or smoking engines, not f.e. one wing part with D1 holes.

Thanks
Lisek

[Pursuivant]

This has been requested many times before.

Planes with wounded crew should also get priority landing, as should planes which are critically low on fuel.

There should also be some mechanism for planes with certain types of damage to hold off until the end. For example, planes with landing gear damage which must crash land. This would help them burn off fuel and possibly fix the problem.

Planes which crash on the runway, but which aren't destroyed should also disappear some time after the crew bails out, simulating ground crew managing to drag the plane off the runway.

[HundertzehnGustav]

you want to have a plane wetting the runway with fuel, so it is nice greasy and slippery, and can go up in flames when the next one with... engine trouble?... lands, and some spark will ignite the whole runway?
(and the flames will reach the leaking plane, and he will explode on the taxyway or in the parking area... damaging other planes... hollywood style.)

...and the third one in line will be... you. waiting for the firemen to put the flames out... come on guys, hurry up... i don't have all day... its been a long fight... i gotta pee...

hmm?

[Pursuivant]

Often badly damaged aircraft were diverted to nearby airfields or were ordered to land on different runways. That way, if they did crash, they didn't interfere with other plane landing.

I think that the order of landing priority was:

1) Planes with wounded crew.
2) Planes with critically low fuel.
3) Planes with mechanical problems which have a high chance of landing safely, e.g., one engine out for a 4-engine bomber.
4) Planes with mechanical problems which might cause them to crash when they landed, or which caused a risk to life and property: landing gear failures, ordinance that can't be released, stuck flaps.

Also, keep in mind that a plane with a mechanical failure was likely to straggle in after the undamaged planes had landed. Also, for planes with serious damage or seriously low fuel, the crew could divert to a forward landing strip, crash land or ditch at sea. And, least in the ETO, the USAAF and RAF maintained a number of emergency airstrips right along the coast so that planes returning from missions from occupied Europe could land immediately if necessary.

So, if you wanted to be ultra-realistic for, say a 1944-era U.S. heavy bomber squadron, you'd have the main formation of lightly damaged or undamaged bombers returning to base in something approaching their original formation. Once they were near the base, planes with injured crew but which were otherwise only lightly damaged, would get priority landing. In some cases, planes with injured crew would be diverted to nearby bases with better medical facilities.

Next, planes with critically low fuel would get landing priority, assuming they hadn't landed at a forward base or hadn't diverted to another airfield.

Then, sometime later, stragglers with serious damage would start coming back. The most seriously damaged would have their crew bail out over land while the pilot and co-pilot attempted a crash landing or a landing at an emergency airstrip. If that wasn't possible, the plane would alert air-sea rescue and then ditch just off the coast (aircrew avoided bailing out over water if they could avoid doing so, and a B-17 or B-24 with mostly-empty fuel tanks could float for quite a while, giving the crew plenty of time to get into their life rafts). If that wasn't possible, the crew would attempt to bail out over land or close to the coast, after pointing the aircraft away from land.

The less seriously-damaged stragglers would attempt to land at their home base if at all possible. They'd alert air traffic control as to their situation, so that fire trucks and ambulances would be ready next to the runway in case of a crash. If there were multiple planes attempting to land, it would be likely that one of them would be diverted to another airfield. (By 1944, the UK was covered with military airfields, especially in the South and East, so the nearest alternate airfield might just be 5-10 miles away.)

Planes with damage which made landing risky would often hold off landing. They'd attempt to jettison ordinance, burn off fuel and allow crew other than the pilot, co-pilot and engineer to bail out. Then, once conditions for landing were as good as they were going to get, the remaining crew would attempt a landing. Several U.S. airmen won the Medal of Honor for attempting risky landings in attempts to save badly injured crewmen who couldn't bail out.

[Razgriz_37]

On another note, those AI pilots usually decide if they're going to come in regardless of if they were waved off. Sometimes you'll here "Red 1, WAVE OFF WAVE OFF!!!" "No, I'm coming in rather you like it or not."

So if they feel it's urgent to land they'll make that decision.

[Cage]

Just a side note here.....Badly damaged aircraft with wounded on board would normally land in the grass and not the runway.   This would allow the bombers not damage to land, and not have to wait while they pushed the wreckage off the run way.   Landing on a concrete runway with heavy damage was a sure way to explode if there was any fuel leaks, and should the landing gear collapsed.  There are film clips out there that show bombers landing both on the grass and runways.   Most that landed on the runway either exploded or burst into flames when the landing gear collapsed. 

[(-battlemaster-)]

Just make them land not on the runway but beside the runway.
This is also used by the USAF in the modern times, when they intercepted an small aircraft.

Succes all.

(-B.M-)