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As World War II was drawing to a close, the Allies in the west staged a major air assault, whose necessity is still being debated today by historians. The mission was proposed by British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery and was given approval to be staged for March 24, 1945.
The Allies had already breached the Rhine River at two bridgeheads, Remagen and Oppenheim. Still Montgomery argued for one more big airborne push to seal the fate of the all but doomed Nazi war machine.
Sixty-four years later, almost to the day, pilots for DC3 Airways are staging a recreation of this huge show of air power in two weekend flights. The first was staged Saturday March 21, 2009 and the second recreation will come this Saturday March 28.
The project involves pilots from several countries, and is the third World War II recreation undertaken by DCA. The first, last summer, took several weeks to duplicate in the mammoth post war Berlin Airlift. The second, more recently, was a simulation of Operation Market Garden, made famous by the film, A Bridge Too Far.
Both projects were proposed by DCA pilot Glen Broome. Nominally an accountant who lives with his wife and family in south east England, Broome is an avid football fan, cricketeer, husband and father, and last but not least, an amateur World War II historian who has brought that expertise to his fellow DCA pilots. Broome and several of his fellows researched Operation Varsity. Then using a variety of tools available to flight sim enthusiasts, he proceeded to create the ways and means to make Operation Varsity virtual reality.
As Broome wrote to fellow pilots while planning the project:
"There are many airfields, in UK and France, from which either paratroop transports or gliders were flown. At some American bases in France the double tow was used for the first time which involved a C-47 towing two Waco CG-4a gliders. The British used worn out four engine bombers to tow many of their gliders, the Horsa, using Halifax and Sterling bombers. Due to the shortage of British Dakota aircraft, the British paratroopers, as in Market Garden, were transported in American C-47's. This operation was the first use of the C-47 in front line operations (i.e. under fire) in Europe, and although it could carry far more paratroopers and could have them exit on both sides (facilitating concentrated dropping ability), its lack of self sealing tanks caused heavy losses of these aircraft, flying as they did at low level in daylight. B-24's came in 15 minutes after the gliders to drop supplies, flying low as 200 feet. Thirteen of these were shot down and scores of others badly shot up."
With that historical context, Broome used the popular freeware utility FSRecorder to create almost 200 separate flights. He distributed them to DCA pilots who expressed interest in taking part. Realizing there were some 20 airfields in England and France from which Varsity planes would take off, Broome created the corresponding FSRecorder files. Each file took hours to create and fine tune, with each segment running about 33 minutes.
Next came scenery creation to make existing stock FS2004 and FSX airfields look a bit more as they did in the early and mid 1940s. The target area was around the German industrial town of Wessel, and there it was necessary to create simulated flak, air and ground explosions, fire and smoke, all the detritus of war.
Additionally there were paratroop and equipment drop simulations to work out, as well as more FSRecorder files of airborne gliders being towed and released.
Broome was assisted by another talented DCA pilot, Tim Cook whose talents were used to create a virtual canvas of elements. These included the actual weather conditions at the time, the haze and fog of war from fires, building smoke and the release by the German ground forces who were ready and waiting, of smoke screens across the Rhine. Even more pilots were involved in beta testing all the routines and software for the final staging of the event.
The work additionally included creation of historically accurate short range NDBs to help the dozens of virtual DCA pilots find their way to the target area and then safely navigate away. For this purpose, Broome used the payware flight plan programs, FSCommander and FSNavigator, as well as the built in FSX and FS2004 .pln files. Then, written flight plans were developed for pilots who took off from six separate war time airfields. Each of those squadrons had designated flight leaders who were briefed, and in turn briefed their pilots.
The actual coordination of the flights in virtual real time was accomplished through two other excellent freeware programs. DCA pilots routinely fly multi play missions several times a week. We use the marvelous FSINN from the French Development Team and the equally respected TeamSpeak software.
Pilots were in visual contact on FSINN by way of our own dedicated server channels and by similar dedicated channels on TeamSpeak. This enabled every pilot to have a visual idea of where other squadrons were in relation to their squadron, by watching them on FSINN's radar scope. At the same time, sub channels were created in TeamSpeak for intra-squadron communication as well as for overall synchronization and coordination.
Timing was down to the second, so that each stage of a given FSRecorder stream could be triggered by each pilot, as they approached designated, and planned positions.
DC3 Airways stages several multi player events each week. The Operation Varsity recreation has been by far the most widely attended and flown by fleet pilots.
The airline is actively recruiting new pilots, even when other airlines are laying of staff because of economic conditions. Our recruitment program includes training for those who need it, and immediate placement for those who are already familiar with the mechanics and flight characteristics of the DC-3 aircraft. Our fleet in company colors is flight ready for both FS2004 and FSX. Some pilots are also experimenting with X-Plane.
Many of our pilots are using the even more accurate DC-3 available from the Mid Atlantic Air Museum team. We welcome you to our future and yours with DC3 Airways.
A Concise Hustory Of Operation Varsity
Teamspeak Communication Software
FSNavigator (not available for FSX and no longer being updated for FS2004)
Sherman Kaplan
DCA 662
shermank@comcast.net
Photos by Glen Broome and Alexis Spain
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