Some of the screenshots are a bit dark (of course!) but a full screen view may help.. 

Despite the weird issue with winds aloft making the plane uncontrollable at altitude and thus having to spend most of the flight just over 3000 feet, it appears that in the sim anyway - the idea of a Messerschmitt Me-264 Amerika Bomber reaching the USA from the Azores and returning to Lajes AB without refuelling is possible. Good job the Amerika Bomber never got beyond prototypes, and the war ended. I do however suspect that such an aircraft would have had a hard time penetrating any US air defences at that time.

Here's my photo recon flight (6000 lbs of cameras loaded into the bomb bay). Why 6000 lbs? Because that represents the weight of "something else unthinkable" to see if this simulator experiment works out.

Lining up and taking off in the wee hours at Lajes AB.

 

Ideally we would like a 3 mile long runway please! Just made it!

 

Many hours later, passing by Nantucket I believe.

 

KJFK

 

Verrazzano Narrows Bridge

 

Statue of Liberty

 

High rise buildings in Manhattan

 

Back to the Azores.. close the camera bay.

 

Moonlight over the Atlantic

 

There's the runway except I should land at the other end.. 9% fuel remaining.

 

Here we go..

 

Phew! 8% fuel remaining.. Given the issues I had with the weather and thus not being able to fly up around 20000 feet, then I was quite surprised to have some fuel left in the tanks.. I'm not sure if the crew oxygen would have lasted for the whole trip though, had I been able to fly at altitude.

Cheers!

Amazing, great flight, Mark. Were you able to use an AP, I can't remeber, whether there is one availble, as I haven't flown the 264 for some time--I have moved to XP11

Thank you, sir! I did manage to use the autopilot, but I reverted to keyboard commands (Z - on-off, Ctrl-Z for altitude hold, Ctrl-H for heading hold) rather than the switch in the cockpit. Once the AP was on, I moved the compass rose on the instrument paneI for heading changes as per the manual.

I cannot recall why I ended up doing this, but probably it was, at first, due to the plane exhibiting screwy behaviour at altitude & me thinking the autopilot had gone haywire.

Very interesting trip images and commentary, along with this nice (freeware) plane.....! Loved the ("haunting") Moonlight shot, btw...!

Also, liked the surreptitious ("nocturnal") start to the mission, and then flying over NYC/Manhattan airspace, in broad daylight...ready to be intercepted by those Tomcats and Eagles...🙂...

Thanks!

Pre-dawn start to make sure I got to NY in daylight :) A shame the plane goes squirrely at high alititude, but I rather think that's when 2 adjacent metars don't agree and FSUIPC has a hard job smoothing out the winds - the status display (called up by SHIFT-Z) shows the windspeed and direction flickering up and down...