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Guest Javis

C-47 update

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Guest deKoven

Hmmm, the repaint I want is the "L4" paint used by the 101st Airborne. I have that Band of Brothers DVD and am in process of wearing it out. I'd really love to have one painted like the one in the movie. Guess it'll be time to get out the paintbrush. :D

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Actually, 'Sugar Blues' did fly 'Screaming Eagles' into Normandy, though perhaps not the Easy Company 506th Regiment troopers of the B of B. In fact, it was 'Sugar Blues' and her sisterships of the 438th TCG that led the invasion, carrying the very first 101st Div. units. Check this page out... http://www.rb-29.net/HTML/75ArivdsonMem/04...haplndiary.htmlA number of different Troop Carrier Squadrons, designated by those large letters and numbers on the nose, carried the 101st Airborne Division. L4 designated the 91st TCS stationed at Upottery with the rest of the 439th TCG.http://www.avsim.com/~maamdev/bofb2.jpgHere's a great page with the Order of Battle for the 9th USAAF for Normandy. http://www3.sympatico.ca/angels_eight/9tac.htmlIncidentally, we will have a couple of the real E Co. Band of Brothers, Forrest Guth and Ed Shames, present at WW2 Weekend again this year, so if you would like to meet the genuine heroes, make plans to attend the first weekend of June.I often miss a lot of what is going on at the show, being tied to our MAAM-SIM demo set-up in the hangar. But last year I took the time to line up to get an autograph from SSG Bill Guarnere, who as you will remember from the movie, lost a leg at Bastogne. Bill looked up and spotted the small Combat Infantryman's Badge I was wearing on my cap and beckoned me to come on up to the head of the line. He stuck out his hand and I took it, asking, "Will you forgive me for being just a 'straight leg'?" That's the paratroopers derisive term for non-airborne troops. Bill grinned at me, paused as he thought about it, then said in his gravelly Phillie accent, "Nah, not really." I'd have been disapointed with any other response. The spirit of Airborne is alive and well in "Wild Bill" Gaurnere. Here's the picture he signed, a prized article that hangs in my den...http://www.avsim.com/~maamdev/bofb1.gifIncidentally, the actor who portrayed Bill in the mini-series, Frank John Hughes, nailed his mannerisms and voice, and resembled him quite strongly. Mark will be producing a repaint kit for the C-47, so portraying your favorite Gooney Bird should be a "piece of cake". Bill RambowMAAM-SIM http://www.fssupport.com/maam/maamsim_neon.gif


Bill Rambow

MAAM-SIM

www.maam.org

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PilotPeter, you might do better to look at Pierino's original file. Heather has them all done up in orange with fancy chute colours too ... don't think you'd find that in the 101st Airborne! Pierino has his jumpers in German paratrooper gear, so you'd need to recolour those slightly ... but the chutes are right.I've just modified them myself for my Rothmans Skydivers Dragon Rapide repaint (GAKIF2.zip) but I have them in dark red suits and advertising cigarettes on their chutes, so those won't do either!Mark

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Guest SWA2873

Hi Jan;Looking good.You contacted me by e-mail and I replied just before suffering a major system crash. If I remember you were looking for information regarding markings for other aircraft in the 89th? Do you still need this info?Anyway the aircraft looks great. Are you gonna add para racks in future?Sam

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Guest SWA2873

Hi Peter;I looked at some of the images of the effect and am thinking of creating some appropriate WWII textures for the paratroopers.What do ya think. Sound interesting?Sam

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Guest SWA2873

Well here is what they look like:Trooper1.jpgTrooper2.jpgThere's only one problem! When they exit the aircraft the black square surrounding them does not dissapear.Anyone have a fix for this.Sorry about the off topic nature of the reply!Sam

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Hi Sam,Looks pretty good to me. Make sure the black surround is 0-0-0 RGB, rather than 1-1-1 or any other setting. 0-0-0 is interpreted by FS as transparent, while anyhting else will show as black of varying shades.The chute canopies look a little too dark to my eye. I was in the 509th Airborne (Mechanized) in Germany for a brief time in 1966 before shipping to Vietnam and witnessed a couple battalion strength drops from the ground. The chutes were then, as they are now, much lighter in color.Don't ask me what a straight-leg grunt was doing in an Airborne unit - you'll have to ask the Army personnel system that one!. I had to promise my platoon mates that I would go through the 8th Division jump school at Wiesbaden to survive among them. One night before one of these jumps my roomates in the old Robert E. Lee Kasserne in Gonsenheim taught me to do parachute landing falls from my top bunk. The brilliant plan was that one of my buddies would go by the deuce and a half truck twice and draw an extra T-2 chute for me and I would make my cherry jump from a C-141. Fortunately, all of us had sobered up the next morning from the effects of the powerful Maintzer Gold Bier we had been guzzling the previous night. Otherwise I would have probably splattered myself all over the field at Baumholder and my roomies would have ended up in the stockade. That;s as close as I ever got to being a paratrooper. Those guys were crazy!! God bless 'em.Anyway, if you get this effect perfected, perhaps we can include it in the C-47 add-on package, if we can get the necessary permissions.Jan has definitely been trying to reach you. I think he sent you an e-mail through the forum, if you want to check that out.Bill Rambow MAAM-SIM http://www.fssupport.com/maam/maamsim_neon.gif


Bill Rambow

MAAM-SIM

www.maam.org

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Guest SWA2873

Actually I agree, and you busted me, regarding the canopy issue. It looks more like a zero density T-10 Mod or MC1-1 series canopy to me but is even a little dark for those.The T-5/T-7 main canopy was a spotted camouflage. and indeed much lighter than the one portrayed here. guess I'll have to change it.The trooper is depicted in the M-1942 parachutist uniform, with an early T-5 harness and reserve, brown jump boots and M-1936 horse hide riding gloves.The white type-eight webbing of the parachute harness is not typical of the Normandy operation but not unheard of either. I figured that this would be appropriate for pre Normandy to Normandy jumps. I can do the figure in M-1943 modifieds with a YT-7 harness for Holland and afterwards if anyone would like that version too.So you were with the 509th? Hey, straight leg or jumper, if you did your job and contributed you were still part of the team. PLF'ing is best taught from the "drunken-stagger" exit from a chair, table, or moving vehicle I have found. LOLIf you ever get a chance to watch old film footage of the 503rd's drop at Corrigedore you will see what I mean. Great story.Sam KimptonHHC 3/505th PIR (AHA)

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Thanks, Sam. There is legitimate Airborne blood in the family, though. My Uncle Paul Rambow, the toughest man I ever met, who is still farming in Iowa in his late 80's, made the Rhine jump with the 11th Airborne. He was a Platoon Sgt at the time, but quickly stepped up to platoon leader when his LT bought the farm. He was later transferred to the 101st at war's end and recommended for a battlefield commission, which he wisely declined in favor of a ticket home. My paratrooper nephew, Tim Rambow, served in Bosnia during the nastiness there.I could tell you some stories about the craziness pulled by some of the Mainz troopers against our hosts, but there may not be a stutute of limitations in Germany. :-) Carrying the inebriated PLF technique just a tad too far, one of our A Co. 2/509th guys launched himself off the top of the two-story barracks roof onto the pavement. His technique was a little off, and he managed to break both legs. They were a screwy bunch. The favorite pastime of one of my room-mates was hurling empty bier bottles (the big liter ones with the porcelain caps) like grenades out through the tall windows of our room. The intended target was the leg artillery battery across the parking lot and any unfortunate cannon cockers who stumbled within range. About half the bottles actually made it through the windows. The others, impacting against the solid stone and plaster walls of our former Wehrmacht barracks room, gave me and the others, taking cover beneath our wool blankets, our first taste of incoming shrapnel! The EM Club was actually IN the barracks, right down the hall from our 8-man room, so his ammo resupply was close at hand.Anyway, MAAM-SIM would like to call on your expertise as we are putting this package together, Sam. If you wouldn't mind, shoot me an e-mail at maam-sim@maam.org and I'll respond with a few questions, and more as they come up. Your pictures and info have already helped a great deal.Bill RambowMAAM-SIM http://www.fssupport.com/maam/maamsim_neon.gif


Bill Rambow

MAAM-SIM

www.maam.org

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Guest SWA2873

Alright Bill.The e-mail was sent. I will try to answer what questions I can and if I don't have the answers may well be able to point you in the right direction to find them.Also, I have worked a little on the canopy. Not entirely satisfied but getting closer.Trooper3.jpgAlso I changed the background to rgb 0,0,0 but still get the black squares when the stick exits the door.Which outfit in the 17th was your uncle with?Sam

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Hi Sam,Got the e-mail and will be answering soon. The new chute looks great. I have another possible reason for the transparency problem that I will discuss in the mail.That 17th AB Div. reference was the second typo/brain-####/senior moment you have found and corrected without directly pointing out my goofs. The other was T-2 for T-10. You are a diplomatic gentleman, my frend.I am not sure which Company Uncle Paul was with. But an intriguing tale was related to his three sons some years back when a couple of his wartime buddies visited the farm in Winterset. They told the boys that they believed their Dad had been the first American to jump and land across the Rhine in Operation Varsity. My brother, Tim, who was a Huey door-gunner with the 1st Cav three years after I was in-country with the 9th Inf., and I had both spent summers of our youth living with Uncle Paul and Aunt Dorothy on the farm. Last winter we made the trip back to Madison County (as in "The Bridges of Madison County") to visit them on the farm for the first time in all those years. Much had not changed about the old place, and it was almost like traveling back in time. But one thing that had changed was Uncle Paul's willingness to talk about the war. We were now fellow warriors and he told us tales that his three sons had never heard. Most were wild and funny tales about the outfit and his troopers. We laughed so hard during those three days that our ribs ached as we flew home to Maryland. But he would not take credit for his buddies' claims of first to parachute into the Fatherland. When asked about it he shrugged it off, then launched into another hilarious anecdote about the SNAFU Army.So, if you know which company hit the ground first on the Rhine jump, that was probably his. I want to make a point find out, as one of the scheduled WW2 Weekend honored guests this year will be another Rhine Jump veteran from the 17th.Bill RambowMAAM-SIM http://www.fssupport.com/maam/maamsim_neon.gif


Bill Rambow

MAAM-SIM

www.maam.org

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Guest SWA2873

"You are a diplomatic gentleman,"Hey,...Lets keep the name calling to a minumum :-)Will look for the e-mail.Sam

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Guest SWA2873

There are a couple of things about the effect that I think will require a little tweaking. 1. The canopies don't open fast enough.2. There are two textures. One is for the jumper as he exits the door. The other is the jumper suspended under a nice open canopy. In the case of the former the figure is positioned exactly as he would be while suspended and not as properly positioned for the opening shock of the canopy. In addtion they might be a little large in relation to the size of the aircraft. I think I can redraw the texture to make it right.3. The postion, relative to the altitude of the aircraft, at which the descending canopies appear is too high. I think the effect can be edited to fix this.4. The descent rate of the canopies might be a little slow. If the government could figure out how to deposite troops on the ground by shooting them from a pneumatic cannon without injuring or killing them they would. The name of the game here is speed.I think these things can be fixed with an edit of the effect. For now however I am going to concentrate on the textures.Sam

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Guest Javis

Hi Sam,>You contacted me by e-mail and I replied just before suffering>a major system crash.Sorry to hear that! >If I remember you were looking for information regarding>markings for other aircraft in the 89th? >Do you still need this info?I was just looking for a subject to base the C-47 textures on. Internet search for photos didn't produce much really to fit the initial C-47 model. "Sugar Blues" came closest eventhough the photo is of a model not the real one... shows how 'desperate' i was! ;)If you happen to have a photo of the real Sugar Blues please don't hesitate to post it.Bill showed me a drawing (possibly from a Squadron Signal book ) with which desert scoops are fitted while the model seems to feature small scoops. In the mean time i got my copy of " C-47/R4D units of the ETO and MTO" book so choosing subjects for any further C-47 itterations seems no prob anymore. >Anyway the aircraft looks great. Are you gonna add para racks>in future?As depicted in the photos you posted here ? If the poly count allows, sure ! The completely stripped cabin makes this C-47 model the highest on polys yet..Good to see you 'back in the loop' again, Sam ! cheers,Jan

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Guest SWA2873

The most comprehensive information I have for Troop carrier aircraft by unit is the 316th TCG. These ships were devoid of nose art during Normandy.I also have some scattered information on ships from other units. And will check on "Sugar Blues".Another very good source is Jan Boss.Thanks for the warm welcome back!Sam

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