Hello everybody,

The time has come to tell you more about the historical timeframe of Battle of Bodenplatte.

As we said in our previous Dev Blog #192, we're making all four different seasons for this map. Some might think that we'll model only 1-2 days of the actual Bodenplatte operation when the Luftwaffe made the all-out attack on the Allied airfields near Brussels and Antwerp. However, our “Battle of” series is much more than that! The Career mode for this new theatre of war will last from September 17th, 1944 to March 28th, 1945 – 188 days of war in total.

Historically, 11 significant engagements took place in this area during the given timeframe. In the Career mode, you'll see your area of operations, mission types, acting air force units, their home airfields and other details that correspond to the historical data. You'll be flying in and around many famous operations and battles. Of course, we can’t model every skirmish or battle on the ground, but we will have an exciting Career spanning this later stage of the war when the Allies were fighting their way into Germany. 

• Operation Market Garden (September 17 – 26, 1944)
• Battle of Aachen (October 2 – 21, 1944)
• Battle of the Scheldt (October 2 – November 8, 1944)
• Operation Queen (November 16 – December 15, 1944)
• Operation Watch on the Rhine (December 16 – 25, 1944)
• Allied Counter-Offensive (December 26, 1944 – February 7, 1945)
• Operation Bodenplatte (January 1, 1945)
• Operation Veritable (February 8 – March 10, 1945)
• Operation Clarion (February 22 – 23, 1945)
• Operation Grenade (February 23 – March 10, 1945)
• Operation Plunder (March 23 – 28, 1945)

As said above, we won't be able to recreate these ground operations in super detail, but the overall situation, mission tasks, home airfields and mission targets will change as they should historically just as you experience with Stalingrad, Moscow and Kuban. This, along with the corresponding features of the Career mode like pilot biographies, squadron histories, newspaper articles, videos, squadron rosters, medals and rank progression will create an authentic experience of flying on the Western Front during the late war period. The whole timeframe will be divided into 5 chapters

• Chapter 1: Fighting in Holland (September 17 – October 1, 1944)
• Chapter 2: Autumn Offensive (October 2 – December 15, 1944)
• Chapter 3: Battle of the Bulge (December 16 – 25, 1944)
• Chapter 4: Allied Counter-Offensive (December 26, 1944 – February 7, 1945)
• Chapter 5: Battle of the Rhine (February 8 – March 28, 1945)

To create this new theatre of war, a thorough research will be done on where the units of both sides were based, their tasks and what aircraft they used day by day. Two new award systems for the US and Great Britain are to be created from scratch, as well as the late war pilot models for Luftwaffe, RAF and USAAF along with their chutes. The Newspaper articles is a huge task on their own and takes several months to complete. If you’d like to help with this contact Jason. We also plan on making additional mission types for this unique location and timeframe. All in all, this will be a lot of work for us, but progress is already being made. For example, we have finalized the map boundaries and the airfield locations. This map is bigger than we initially planned (flyable area is 401 x 324 km - it is 129.900 sq.km) and several compromises will have to be made to make it a reality. It will stretch us to the limit of what is possible in our development schedule, but as with our other maps it will be really cool when it’s done.