User manual GAMES PC BATTLE OF BRITAIN

[. . . ] Rowan's Battle of Britain ontents C Chapter One OVERVIEW AND GETTING S TARTED . . 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 C Chapter Two THE MAIN MENU, PC CONFIG MENU AND SIM CONFIG MENU . . 73 i Contents Chapter Six FLYING THE AIRCRAFT IN BATTLE OF BRI TAIN . . 129 . 130 . 131 . 132 . 133 ii Rowan's Battle of Britain ter One Chap OV E W RV I E AND GET 1 C S TA TING RT E D he Battle of Britain started on July 10th 1940. [. . . ] Each group is assigned a geographical area rather than a specific set of squadrons. Squadrons can move from group to group to fulfil the objectives of Fighter Command. Although a squadron can have more pilots and aircraft assigned to it, a complete squadron in the air consists of twelve aircraft. You have 53 fighter squadrons at your disposal: 34 Hurricane and the rest are Spitfires. 11 Group covers the south-east of England and so it is in the front line. Squadrons in 13 Group do not take part in the Battle; they use the time in the north to recuperate. 10, 11 and 12 Groups are further divided into sectors, which are again based on a geographical area. Each sector has its own control room at an airfield in the sector from where ground controllers 'vector' RAF fighters to their intercepts. Most of the intelligence about enemy movements is gathered by either Radio Direction Finding (RDF) methods or the Royal Observer Corps (ROC). Fighter Commands had two coastal systems in operation during the Battle of Britain. The Chain Home (CH) system was capable of detecting aircraft at a distance of up to about 150 kilometres (90 miles), but this reduced by about 30% for an aircraft at 15, 000 ft. This type of radar had a range of about 30 kilometres (20 miles) at low altitude. Neither system could be used to track aircraft once they had passed by the system and flown inland. The job of detecting aircraft over England fell to the Royal Observer Corps. Groups of two or three people were stationed all over the south east of England and they reported all aircraft movements to a central station. This system worked remarkably well - however heavy cloud did have a large effect on its effectiveness. All the information generated passed through a filtering stage so that the information presented on the map was consistent and as error free as possible. This is the information that you will see presented on your campaign map. 61 Chapter 4 RAF DIRECTIVES Note that to avoid repetition, many of the topics covered in the Luftwaffe campaign in Section Three above are assumed when discussing the RAF campaign. From the main menu screen, choose the Campaign option, and request a campaign as the RAF Commander during the 'Eagle Attack' phase of the battle. At the start of the morning time period on August 12th 1940 you are presented with a directives dialogue box. You'll notice that it is substantially different from the Luftwaffe directives dialog. It is more concerned with defining how missions will be launched later if the situation and need arises, rather than specifying missions to launch immediately. [. . . ] Nevertheless, Fighter Command lost just 28 aircraft destroyed, and was able to sustain such losses for longer still. On Tuesday, September 17th, British Intelligence intercepted a German signal ordering the dispersal of invasion facilities: Seelöwe had been postponed indefinitely. 124 Rowan's Battle of Britain The Battle of Britain did not end, however, with the fires in London on September 15th, although clearly that date represented a climax and it provides an ending to this simulation. Attacks on London continued, during daylight for a while longer yet, although by smaller formations. Successful attacks were made on various targets connected with the British aircraft industry, although on September 30th, KG55's He 111s took a beating during an ill-fated raid on the Westland Aircraft Factory at Yeovil in Somerset. [. . . ]