The Dam Busters: Flight Sim and Combat Flight Sim Add-On (PC CD)

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2003-05-17 rating:
Celebrating Wallis's Bomb Inventions, after 60 Years.
This is the flight sim of the film of the book of the TRUE event, or something! THis is actually a whole lot more than representing the low level raid over the German lakes immortallised in the Film with Michael Redgrave. This is really a 617 Squadron celebration, and one of the only RAF Bomber Command simulations available. The whole package in CFS2 contains pretty much all the major raids this squadron of elite RAF crews undertook.

There are 5 aircraft for you to fly , 3 types of Lancaster: in standard B.1, stripped down "Dam Buster" special, and a daylight camoflage coloured (unlike the film!) version, carrying the largest bomb of WWII in a removed Bomb compartment. The Moquito (high speed Bomber version) is included as 617 Sqn moved onto this type the year after the fampous Dam raid (and Sqn.Leader Guy Gibson went down in one in 1944). Finally there is the othe Barnes Wallis invention, the Vickers Wellington, included only because he mangaed to get hold of one for testing the bouncing bomb over Dorset.

THese planes all have authentic cockpits and sounds, with a high-vis cockpit onclded as a vast improvement over the CFS HUD for actually making the bomb-runs. Not only this, but the Lancaster has 2 bomb aimer postions for greater target run realism! The dam buster raids (2 included, with training missions too) even have the hand-held target sight to line up on the twin dam towers when flying at 195 Knots and at 60 feet. The under belly spot lamps to gauge the height are also included. The Mosquito bomber doesn't have such a bomb aiming capability, neither does the Wellington.

Many of the raids are at night, so the manual recommends taht you play these missions in a darkened room! Actually this helps alot, but may ruin your eyesight if you do it too much! The greater proportion of missions are, thank God, by daylight.

THen there is the extensive manual, almost a product in itself. It has all you need to know about how to fly the planes (though with careless inaccuracies, such as informing you that the plane has a large engine in front of the cockpit and to beware of propeller torque - none of the planes have either proplem!). The raids are covered in detail, though also with careless mistakes such as the wrong bomb type (Grand Slam instead of Tallboy) and overall the missions all start from Woodhall Spa instead of Scampton or Coningsby, which is historically false.

Then there is the chapter on the strategy of the RAF in bombing Germany, which in their eyes was a fully moral thing to do.

Apart from the overkill of British propoganda (evidently believed by the producers) and the inaccuracies in the manual, this is a great add-on with an unusual yet effective subject for Combat FS. It is rather ordinary add-on in FS2000 since there are no situations or missions.

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review by: date: 2003-05-17 rating:
Celebrating Wallis's Bomb Inventions, after 60 Years.
This is the flight sim of the film of the book of the TRUE event, or something! THis is actually a whole lot more than representing the low level raid over the German lakes immortallised in the Film with Michael Redgrave. This is really a 617 Squadron celebration, and one of the only RAF Bomber Command simulations available. The whole package in CFS2 contains pretty much all the major raids this squadron of elite RAF crews undertook.

There are 5 aircraft for you to fly , 3 types of Lancaster: in standard B.1, stripped down "Dam Buster" special, and a daylight camoflage coloured (unlike the film!) version, carrying the largest bomb of WWII in a removed Bomb compartment. The Moquito (high speed Bomber version) is included as 617 Sqn moved onto this type the year after the fampous Dam raid (and Sqn.Leader Guy Gibson went down in one in 1944). Finally there is the othe Barnes Wallis invention, the Vickers Wellington, included only because he mangaed to get hold of one for testing the bouncing bomb over Dorset.

THese planes all have authentic cockpits and sounds, with a high-vis cockpit onclded as a vast improvement over the CFS HUD for actually making the bomb-runs. Not only this, but the Lancaster has 2 bomb aimer postions for greater target run realism! The dam buster raids (2 included, with training missions too) even have the hand-held target sight to line up on the twin dam towers when flying at 195 Knots and at 60 feet. The under belly spot lamps to gauge the height are also included. The Mosquito bomber doesn't have such a bomb aiming capability, neither does the Wellington.

Many of the raids are at night, so the manual recommends taht you play these missions in a darkened room! Actually this helps alot, but may ruin your eyesight if you do it too much! The greater proportion of missions are, thank God, by daylight. All the raids are unusual, as the 617 Squadrons remit was to do the special missions, such as destroying the Tirpitz in Norway, or attempting to hit Hitlers house in the vacinity of Salzburg (joining the USAAF in daylight for this raid). Other raids included are bombing a munitions factory in France without hitting the (innocent?) French workers canteen next door, and wrecking the Viaduct at Bielefeld withz Tallboy and Gran Slam bombs. There are a few more "normal" raids,bombing Munich etc. Thes scenery id cool, with both summer and winter textures to fit the time of year of the raids.

THen there is the extensive manual, almost a product in itself. It has all you need to know about how to fly the planes (though with careless inaccuracies, such as imforming you that the plane has a large engine in front of the cockpit and to beware of propeller torque - none of the planes have either proplem!). The raids are covered in detail, though also with careless mistakes such as the wrong bomb type (Grand Slam instead of Tallboy) and overall the missions all start from Woodhall Spa instead of Scampton or Coningsby, which is historically false.

Then there is the chapter on the strategy of the RAF in bombing Germany, which in their eyes was a fully moral thing to do. This is where history is misrepresented, in that the Dam raids are presented as a glorious success, disregarding the fact that 700 Russian Power station workers were killed as their camp was directly under the dam. The raid is also presented having a massive effect on Nazi war production, when the truth is that the dams were working again in under 2 months. At least they are honest about the bombing of the Tirpitz, which by the 3rd raid was already a white elephant as it was damaged beyong repair before it sank. None of the raids actually shortened the war as promised.

Apart from the overkill of British propoganda (evidently believed by the producers) and the inaccuracies in the manual, this is a great add-on with an unusual yet effective subject for Combat FS. It is rather ordinary add-on in FS2000 since there are no situations or missions.


review by: paul_atkinson41 date: 2003-05-10 rating:
The Dam Busters
This was the first Add on I had bought for a MS Flight Sim, and did so for personal interest in the subject and due to the fact that it had been used recently in a TV documentary of the same name.
Visually the game is excellent. It seems as accurate as anything else I have seen. The audio content compliments the visuals.The engine noise in particular seems to me to be very realistic. For a challenging Flight Sim, this could so easily be right up there with the best of them. Unfortunatly, I have experienced several occasions when the programme just decides to exit itself, usually on the "warp" feature inherited from its mother platform, Combat Flight Sim2. Just to keep you on your toes, this never seems to be on the same mission, but hits you randomly on different missions, and at different "warp" points.
This does tend to get a little frustrating after a time. The 3 star rating is only given because of the excellent visuals and sound.

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