Hello everyone,
I thought I'd share a set of 18 missions I put together chronicling the Dieppe raid from the perspective of the allied pilots who took part. The disastrous raid on the small French port town that began in the pre-dawn hours of August 19th, 1942 is one of the most infamous chapters in Canadian military history, however a lesser known fact is that what was possibly the largest single-day air battle in history raged above the beaches.
After months of ineffectual and costly sweeps against the French coast, jubilee presented to fighter command a rare opportunity to draw the Luftwaffe out into a decisive battle. To this end, fighter command committed 48 squadrons of spitfires to secure air superiority over the battlefield, and along with the other close support and bomber squadrons present the total allied strength in the air numbered 74 squadrons. Opposing them were the two German
jagdgeschwader in France, JG2 and JG26 as well as various Luftwaffe bomber units mostly stationed in Belgium and Holland. At the end of the day's fighting, in which the RAF flew over 2500 sorties, they had lost some 100 aircraft and 62 aircrew killed, while claiming 91 Luftwaffe aircraft destroyed. However, Luftwaffe records admit to the loss of only 48 aircraft over Dieppe. So while the RAF (as well as several USAAF squadrons and the various commonwealth and exile units) more or less succeeded in keeping the Luftwaffe from interfering with the landings, they paid a heavy price in doing so.
This Campaign is unique in that it takes place over the course of a single day and is played from multiple perspectives. In one mission you fly a fighter sweep in a spitfire, and in the next you're in a hurricane providing CAS to the troops on the beaches. I've tried to be more or less accurate in terms of each sortie being flown by the correct squadron from the correct base at the correct time, as well as to the disposition of the German defenses around Dieppe. All missions save for a couple will have you taxiing to takeoff, often from an unfamiliar base, so pay attention as to where other aircraft are taxiing to know where to go (or just switch on autopilot, it'll get you to the runway just fine
)
Anyways, hope you enjoy this Campaign, I am still fairly new to IL-2 mission building so any feedback is welcome. To anyone further interested in reading about the air battle over Dieppe, I highly recommend the book The Greatest Air Battle: Dieppe by Norman Franks, which was an invaluable resource in building these missions. This campaign was built in BAT v.3.8 and tested in v.4.1, It should work fine in either. I cannot guarantee it will work with any other mods or earlier versions of BAT.
Enjoy!
Download:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/15vki6oe138ya7m/Dieppe.zip/file
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Topic: Operation Jubilee: Dogfights over Dieppe (Read 3096 times)
