Building an Il-2 Mission: Step 1 Location and subject

After building my first mission (Bob – Sqn 74), it is time to design my second mission. Although I have some limited Internet source material for the Battle of Britain, I don't want to make my second mission another Battle of Britain mission. I want to make this mission about another theater of war.

A good source for material is the Air Force Historical Studies Office. Their site contains several on line and pdf books and reports which might be useful to build missions. One of the books I downloaded is “The Army Air Forces in World War II: Combat Chronology” (pdf download).

It contains a day by day overview of all the combat operation from the USAAF during WW2. Reading through the different days shows me what kind of missions were flown.

The history of the USAAF in WW2 starts off course with Pearl Harbor, yet I don't want to make another Pearl Harbor mission. Instead I read about the Japanese attack on Clark Field in the Philippines. Although the basic concept of the mission is a lot like my other AAR “Pearl Harbor '41”, defending an airfield against a Japanese attack, I think I can add some twists to the mission.

So now I have a subject for my mission: The Attack on Clark Air Base. Next step is to find extra information about the base. Wikipedia offers a general overview of the base (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_Field), a bit of history of the original attack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Clark_Air_Base) and there are still some books on the Air Force Site, like “The Army Air Forces in World War II”.

For now I will have to catch up on some reading to have background information on the attack. Meanwhile you can read my latest AAR: Kondor Legion at Simhq or on this blog.

Until then happy reading and flying.