Gravity-Assisted Gear Deployment
 

Was flying a mission the other day with the B24. It was a long mission, and my bomber got shot up pretty good.

Back at the base, in the pattern, my gear only partially deployed. I believe the port side gear came down only about 45 degrees. I was forced to raise the gear and my first thought was to manually deploy it. That didn't work. I tried deploying it again and the same thing occurred, only about 45 degrees on the port side deployed.

Then I remembered either in 4.11 or 4.12.2 the "gravity assisted" method. (Featured int his video at around the 6 minute mark) I didn't have much altitude to work with, but I had an idea (as we know, you don't want to run out of both at the same time). I was able to establish maybe about 2.5 Gs and at the same time deployed the gear. I had 3 green. All came down and locked into position. I was able to successfully complete the mission.

Good show, TD.

Fast foward about a week, a different mission in a B25 this time. The same thing happened to me.

The good news is I have a snippet of the track for your enjoyment (see attachment).

Thanks for sharing.
When I returned to IL2 recently after 7 years "vacation", I noticed that landing gear damage/malfunction has become more realistic. Now we have some remedy for that - and it is historical, as I know. Cool.

Pretty neat feature. :)


Wheels