Hi all,

I have taken a short break from the Med and I thought some of some of you might be interested in a project I have been working on for a couple of weeks.
It is a Pacific US Marine Corps campaign titled "Cactus Diary". A historically based account of the "Cactus Air Force" on Guadalcanal where you will be a 2nd Lieutenant just out of Flight school. It starts with training in Hawaii, moves through deployment to the Pacific, & then you become a witness to history. It is written from a very different viewpoint from what I have tried before. Here is an example of one of the mission briefs:

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Mission Name ~ Cactus Diary 3
Carrier takeoff from the USS Long Island

Somewhere in the Pacific
August 20th, 1942

Dear Diary,

We have been at sea since August 2nd and it is just as bad as I thought it would be. After we loaded on the USS Long Island and sailed west, we crossed the equator and all of us "Pollywogs" got the royal treatment. I got herded out of my quarters in my underware and put through all kinds of hell on the flight deck by the other officers and men who had sailed across the equator before. Now I am an official "Shellback" and next time, I will be the one dishing it out!

We stopped at an Island called Suva and some of the more junior guys were traded to VMF 212 at Efate for 12 of their guys who have a little more flight time including a new XO, Captain Marion Carl. They must really be worried about this "special mission" because they are throwing everything but the kitchen sink at us. The best guys they can find, new fighters and now replacing some of the others just because a guy has 50 more flight hours than they do. Oh well, it's not my problem to figure it out. Semper Fi.

At least I have a good idea of where we are going now. We got word at Suva that 1 Australian and 4 American Heavy Cruisers were sunk by the Japanese Navy just off Tulagi while they were supporting the 1st Marine Division. The Marines have taken over an airfield on an Island called Guadalcanal and the Navy guys pulled out and just left them there with no back up at all! According to the crummy charts we have, it is across a wide channel from where we thought we were going.

We have been ordered to gather our kits and stuff them in the radio compartment of our Wildcats because we are about to take off from the Carrier and land at "Cactus". That is the code name for the airfield the Marines have captured and we are going to protect. That's all for now, time to pack.

******

My Dad was a Marine and this is the first US offensive of the war so ..... here we go.
I have a couple of screenies to see if you are interested too.

A shot of Henderson Field in the early days...



Taking off past The Pagoda & the USAAF P400s...



Meeting the Bettys head on...



And coming back for more...



Bye bye...



I have the first 2 weeks done, but who knows when it will end. More later.

Any chance this will be for ver. 3.04m? It looks like a lot of fun. And that shellback initiation, BRUTAL.

I am doing it in 3.04m, but it may work in PF standalone as well. I have not tested it yet. I don't think I have used any objects that are not in PF, but???

Great! I would love to try it when it is ready.

Looks good mate. Looking forward to it.

Bird Brain, I am looking forward to this campaign. I used to work with a nephew of Major John L. Smith. He had asked me to find information about his uncle. For a war hero with his accomplishments there isn't much information to be found. I would guess he wasn't that chariamatic. This got me just more interested in him, even though I am still stymied about finding a good biographical source on him

Looks good, can't wait until it comes out.

quote:

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Originally posted by telsono:
Bird Brain, I am looking forward to this campaign. I used to work with a nephew of Major John L. Smith. He had asked me to find information about his uncle. For a war hero with his accomplishments there isn't much information to be found. I would guess he wasn't that chariamatic. This got me just more interested in him, even though I am still stymied about finding a good biographical source on him

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I have read just the opposite. Great leader, excellent pilot and obviously a good shot. He got 19 kills over Guadalcanal & won the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Alot of the pilots from the early days were quite traumatized by the pace of action and getting bombed every night, maybe he just didn't want to revisit it after it was over.
If I find anything interesting, I will let you know.

quote:

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Originally posted by TWC_DARKANGEL:
Looks good, can't wait until it comes out.

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Sure you can, it may even be before the patch....

Telsono, are you still in touch with Major/Colonel Smith's nephew? If so, ask about access to his personal diary, which is cited in the bibliography of "The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign" by John Lundstrom (an excellent read on the Navy and Marine groups fighting on and around the island in 1942). The biblio indicates that the diary was accessed by the author through Smith's family.

Let me know if I can help, Jay

Saunders, I'll give that a try. Its possible that Tom didn't know of its existence. Like Bird Brain said, many who were in combat don't talk about their experiences. My father's uncle is an example, he landed on Omaha Beach with the first wave motorcycle messenger for a combat engineer battalion). I should say, attempted to, his landing craft was hit by artillery about a mile offshore and drifted into the British Zone. His Captain, sergeant and himself were the only non-causualties of their company. Later he was ambushed in the Battle of the Bulge and rescued a crew from a burning tank. All this I heard from my father, but not a word about it from Uncle Joe and he lived next door to me for several years.

quote:

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Originally posted by Chuck_Older:
Let me know if I can help, Jay

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Thanks for reminding me C_O. I have a job for you. I will send you a message when it is time.

I'm looking forward to this...
I have the book 'The Cactus Airforce' and have read it several times since PF came out...
hope the patch comes out before you are finished... there must be some useable stuff in it....
don't cramp your creativity by trying to make it for the standalone... do it for the full combined version first... then change or remove bits to make it for the standalone afterwards

it is easier to downsize than upsize... that's what I did for the main mission in my 7th December 1941 mini campaign... to make different versions

Interesting you mention that book. You will be able to follow right along with the campaign. I am about 1/2 done and almost ready to have Chuck_Older test it for me. He owes me one.

Here is the splash screen.....


This is turning out to be quite fun to put together. I noticed the tractors in the update and the Seebees are going to be busy building the new strip in "the cow pasture" with them. I am not worried about having it run in PF standalone, I figure I will just install PF and open it in the FMB & save. That should delete all the objects that don't work and there aren't many anyway.

I am about to switch to the later Guadalcanal map with Fighter 1 on it when it became operational in mid-September, but the coordinates are all different so I have to redo the whole template on the new map!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: bird_brain,

I see you put the palm plantation(s) in. What does that do to the frame rate?

I added the fighter 2 airstrip on the coast next to Bomber 1. I hear that they will provide "flat" airfield objects in the future that we can taxi on and off of.

Looking good so far

quote:

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Originally posted by bird_brain:
I am about to switch to the later Guadalcanal map with Fighter 1 on it when it became operational in mid-September, but the coordinates are all different so I have to redo the whole template on the new map!

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look at my new thread in the mission builder forum ref cloning..

Wow...thats really fantastic! I was planning to do a mini-campaign about the RNZAF P-40s at Guadalcanal at some point. We'll have to compare notes on the airbase or something...great attention to detail!

Just make sure you balance performance of the game against all those various structures. Gotta be smooth as well as pretty

There aren't really that many trees on the field, maybe 200 at the most. I have not noticed any frame rate issues, but then again I am running it on an Athlon 3200+ with 1GB of 400mhz dual channel ram & a 128mb Radeon 9800.

I think more the issue is the air intercepts where 14 to 16 Wildcats run into 18 Bettys and everyone opens fire. There were a few comments about one of the bomber intercept missions in Chuck_Older's WTCF Campaign regarding frame rates and it may be an issue, but I don't want to dumb it down just for that.

These missions can't recreate history, but I am trying to replicate the circumstances as much as possible regarding #s of planes, squadrons, time of day, altitude, area, etc.

Fabianfred: I will check into the cloning objects thread.

Edit.... I did some experimenting and it turns out I cut & pasted the objects into the later Guadalcanal map with no problem. I just had to move a few items off the Marston Mat.... Good to go.

You guys working on the November NZ missions will want the map with fighter 1 on it.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: bird_brain,

I recently finished reading 'Guadalcanal: Starvation Island' and was very much taken in by the happenings in that area. Looking forward to this campaign a lot.

To those interested in the airfield, here is a front line map:



and here is my rendition:



As far as placement of objects on the field, I interpreted the photos I have seen like this:



I think it would be great if you guys want to use this template for your missions as well. It may not be 100% accurate, but it is close, and it is frame rate friendly. I left out alot of jungle on purpose. You can't see it from 1000 meters anyway.