Battleground Europe Paratrooper Guide By

Korbelz [email protected]

16 December 2006 1st edition

Introduction Welcome to my para guide! I made this guide to attempt to change axis paratroop drops from cowboy style drops with dubious results to a repeatable “checklist” that will give better results than cowboy jumps and it will always turn out the same. This guide covers all the aspects of a paratrooper mission from the theory behind airdrop planning to planning and execution for both the pilot of the JU52 and the Jump master. As you read this some you are going to think “how the heck does he know all this useless crap”, well i'm C-130 aircrew in the USAF and currently in a training unit so i have to take part in 12 to 16 airdrops per week...every single week...trust me this stuff works in real life it can work in game, in fact as you see later its MUCH easier in game than in real life to score a “PI”. I'm always open for input to improve this guide and will for sure be planning future editions to keep making it better, even if no new info is put in i'll keep trying to present it better or in a more organized fashion. 16 Dec 06 1st edition......Dry verision, straight copy and paste from fourms.(no pics yet)

Background/Theory When doing airdrop for real we have what is called a Computed Air Release Point(CARP), the navigator uses some crazy math stuff and comes up with a number like 200M Left, 600M short of desired Point of Impact...so if you drop right at that location in the air the airdrop should land perfectly on target based on winds, type of parachute, weight, placement in the aircraft, speed of aircraft, height above the ground of aircraft, etc.... being as this is a computer game most of that info is static only factors which change are: Speed of aircraft, Height above ground of aircraft and release point of the paratroopers(CARP)...so if i get control of these 3 factors and make them the same every time in theory every para on the plane would always land exactly on the target. Controlling variables is a huge part of getting good and repeatable results, doing a perfect jump by luck is nice, but doing 10 perfect jumps in a row because you've identified and control the variable factors is money!

Factors of airdrop These are my “controlled” factors of airdrop, the more factors we control and execute properly the better our overall results will be time after time on airdrops. While reading keep in mind goal here is to control as tightly as possible anything at is a variable during airdrop.

Speed of aircraft: In the past my theory on paras was if i go slow the paras will be in a tighter drop group which will result in less forward travel of the troops, hence all around better dropping. Through my testing I realized while my IDEA was excellent, implementation was poor. no matter how good of a pilot someone is they can't fly EXCALTY the same speed over the target ever time....unless.........you fly at the max level speed of your airplane because well....its the MAX as long as you are a full power and level. as long as the plane is level in time to let the speed get stable you'll be dropping at the SAME SPEED each drop and thats the goal here is making everything the same every time. Speed is also the BIGGEST factor in how far forward the paras will fly once they drop...this "forward throw" varys a huge amount based on speed from as little as 100M to 600M

Height above the ground: when i got back from Iraq someone told me the drop height Above Ground Level(AGL) was 500M so i based all my planning off that...till this weekend i lost a wing and went below my drop alt some but the paras reported they lived....so did some testing and found out 300M(!!!) is the proper drop alt. biggest issue with dropping above the MIN drop alt is hang time. at 500M paras hang in the air for almost 30 seconds!, i found at 300M its closer to

ten seconds because the paras land nearly as soon as the chute opens up and dont have time to drift down. thats a 1/3 reduction in the time the enemy has to react to the para drop. thats means no more pans drving to meet our paras before they land and amazingly enough sometime no one will even see you, I did a solo para drop on a hot town this morning korbS landed 10M from their bunker, i knew for sure i was going to die...but after a few seconds no one had killed me and I realized NO ONE SAW ME JUMP!, so i got up and pranced out of the ab straight to the spawnable and capped it...not a shot fired Smile

Paratrooper release point(CARP): this is the X-factor(or WAS), because while I, as the pilot, can hold a prefect height and drop speed the success of "my" para mission was totally depend on the Jump Master's Jump call and 80% they didn't do a good enough job for me and sometimes people would miss the jump call etc or just drop late for random reasons...or in polocks case drop 5km before town when he was the JM(??). so i ran about 20 drop alt test on the wiltz airfield to try to make a "guide" for jump masters(I'll still post the info here for reference), but I quickly found during my 10 combat jumps I needed to standardize things for the jump masters to make sure it went smoothly.

PLANNING THE JUMP Pilots:

1. KNOW THE ALT OF THE TOWN! if you are gonna to fly people to their quick death at least take a few seconds and go to www.battlegroundtools.com (even better save the .pdf to your computer) and look up the town alt you are dropping on. once you know the town alt add 300M to that and then i normal round up to the nearest 100 or 50 to add a buffer zone and it makes it easy to read on the alt gauge.

Town alt+300M=drop alt

2. Know the target CP. you need to ask the jump master what the target CP is(even better just step up and TELL the JM what target CP is...quit waiting for people dumber than you to make the call and do it yourself)...none of the carpet bombing towns with paras thing anymore, I think thats dumb, want max firepower all arriving at the same instant at the same CP. also if you know what CP you are dropping on it helps you plan your run in. *tip* ask the JM to put a 'danger' mark on map in the same place as his jump mark and put a waypoint on your map(make it active) to help guide you to the paratrooper release point, or if you plan the jump(idoit JM), put a danger mark on the map for him to place a jump mark for paras.

3. THE RUN-IN/route of flight this is a big one that NO ONE ever does while flying(except me duh). first off EA highways...EA 99% fly straight to the target town from the airfield before you fly you need to zoom out the map and find the 3 closest airfields for EA mentally draw a straight line to town u are dropping on DON"T CROSS THESE! and if you MUST cross, do it as low and as fast as you can and do it at a 90 deg angle straight across to get out of view of EA ASAP! Roads: roads the enemy will use to get to town...don't cross them unless you must because you WILL be seen and most likely reported. AI: NEVER DROP PARAS IN FRONT OF AI MG...it just retarded and can be avoid every time by taking 10 seconds to look at the map and find the AI towers/pits AB!! AAA AI is killer for paras, not to mention the 10+ aa guns allies like to have in AB run-in should keep you and your paras as far away from the AB as long as possible(DONT FLY OVER AN AB TO GET TO A CP...thats dumb and gets people killed needlessly) Flying the run-in: goal he is standard....standard and stable. this normally means at 10km out you want to be at drop alt and drop airspeed. drop airspeed will be max level speed(around 305 kph or so), alt will be the alt you figured out during your mission planning. in thoery if you do this right and can put on the autopilot at this point and let it fly a super stable drop for you. *TIP* on my screen my chat bar blocks my alt gauge and my mini-map blocks my climb/desend gauge...so MOVE THEM, press alt to bring up mouse then click and drag them out of the way...you can put them right in the middle of the screen if you want because you should never be looking out the windows if you are flying right all you need is your map up and cockpit gauages. you'll have to click the mini-map twice to get rid of that compass thing.

JUMPMASTER: 1. PICK A TARGET CP! dude..quit being lazy and do your job, pick a target don't just say lets drop on town... take a look at your map and find spawnable/fallback CP and make it your target. 2. PLAN CARP. this is the most important of your job as a jump master, the days of eyeballing drops are over. dropping at 300m AGL, and 305kpH forward travel for a para is 450-500M. you have to talk with the pilot and find out his planned RUN-IN, then measure out 500M from the CP for your drop and put a mark their titled JUMP..500M is going to seem REALLY FAR the first time you do it but it pays off when you watch yourself land on the roof of an enemy CP. even after 1 day i've found this is still the biggest factor in drop errors, but its based off my slightly flawed marks and the error amount is small...i did 5 test drops on enemy FBs trying to land on the INF spawn and error was about 10-20m..which isn't bad at all.

*TIP* to plan 500m you need to get good at using the map, its easy if its straight e/w on the map but most drops aren't so you need to find a way to mark 500m, i use my headphone cord, i hold it up to the screen and pinch it at 0 and 500m, then i can spin it whatever way the drop is coming in and place my mark on map the the drop. you can also take the edge of a piece of paper and a penicel, hold that up to your screen and mark 0- 500M then spin that around where you need it to place mark on map 3. EXPLAIN THE DROP. your jumpers need INFO, you need to make sure everyone on the plane knows to jump as they are flying over the JUMP MARK!, in thoery everyone will jump at nearly the exact second they pass over the mark...no more lag delays for jump calls etc...as you pass the jump mark you can also make a jump call to remind those on the plane that were paying attention. also make sure your jumpers know the target CP...goal is max firepower to overrun that CP, if everyone runs different places on landing that does NO GOOD. Paras are serious killing machines when used accurately and en mass like we can now do, everything i outlined here only takes a few seconds to do. pilot-wise i can do all mission planning and get a shot of whiskey in under 60 seconds...it takes me longer to type the drop info in chat than it does to look it all up. also for pilots and jump master, TALK with the jumpers, I've found JU pilots that aren't informing their paras of whats going on and EXCATLY what they are doing don't have a clue what they are doing. NO MORE COWBOY JUMPS that scatter paras all over the place and 400M from spawnable CP, axis is about to re-invent what it means to para drop by making them highly accurate and enmassed firepower, already today me and two other paras jumped IN TO a tank formation that was near a town...those ETS FREAKED OUT when we landed less than 10 feet away from some of them and had our saps out, we all died but it forced those tanks to scatter away very quickly so they were not having massed firepower on 1 CP anymore. I'm sure in a few weeks allies are going to learn to fear the axis and our paras.

Drop data/drop info

DATA FROM DROPS: to remind pilots and jump masters standard drop is MAX LEVEL speed(305-ish) and 300m AGL....forward travel of 500M 200 kph...300M....FT 290M 300kph...300M.....FT 450M