I have a question about entering enemy airspace at night and fooling enemy sentries with flares

[jokash]

First time playing a almost full realism campaign with Ju52.Starting with Moscow theatre.Anyways for some time now we have been infiltrating enemy airspace droping paratroopers and supplies at night.The mission briefing informs you that if you are challenged by enemy searchlights your gunner will launch a green or white flare to try to fool them that you are a friendly aircraft.Now considering the situation and all,is this historical.Would it work the other way around...that Soviet planes can just cross into German airspace and just fling a flare.

[MAJ_stug41]

IRL flares and other systems were commonly used for communicating. If one could determine the enemy signals, no reason not to exploit that.

 

I would actually like to see further integration of this stuff in to the game, like having ground forces designate drop areas by lighting fires, or shooting their own flares.

[Gambit21]

I could code an "on fired flair" trigger to the enemy guns and pipe in a randomizer to determine if they're fooled or not. However I doubt that the career has such sophisticated logic. If it did, this would be new. So my question would be if such logic has actually been implemented. 

 

 

[Yogiflight]

3 hours ago, MAJ_stug41 said:

IRL flares and other systems were commonly used for communicating. If one could determine the enemy signals, no reason not to exploit that.

 

I would actually like to see further integration of this stuff in to the game, like having ground forces designate drop areas by lighting fires, or shooting their own flares.

When escorting Ju 52s, I saw green smoke to show the drop area to the Ju 52s. So it is in the career mode already.

[jokash]

Quote

I could code an "on fired flair" trigger to the enemy guns and pipe in a randomizer to determine if they're fooled or not.

Once you fly into enemy territory,searchlights start looking for you,if they spot you,you get a yellow text that your gunner is launching white/green flare (as indicated in briefing).If the searchlights turn off you get message that you have been recognised as friendly aircraft,if not searchlights stay fixed on you and you get the message that you are identified as enemy aircraft - so that part is already ingame.I was wondering if historical it was like that - since it seems like an easy system to fool (instead of having maybe 2 color system with changing time interval every day or what not.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

I haven't heard of any such cases and to me it seems like a bit of a far stretch that it would work. Either you're not lit up and you'd generally not want to give your position away by shooting flares, or you are already in the searchlight cone in which case the enemy can simply recognise your aircraft - perhaps even the national insignia on your wings.

 

I do know of similar deception the other way around though - from ground to air. This seems to have been pretty common, and it was a well-documented practice that if you'd see a close by enemy unit shoot a flare, you'd shoot a similar-coloured one to confuse any onlookers. One specific case I know is in the final stages of Stalingrad. Ju-52s were dropping supplies over the city at that time, with German troops shooting flares to indicate the intended drop point. Of course, Russians all across the city would immediately start shooting flares as well with the result that many supply drops were straight into the hands of the Soviets.

[Sandmarken]

Reading a norwegian book called "we flew the catalina." A historic book about  norwegian squadrons flying Catalinas. 

In the book its mentioned multiple times that they during night operations into norway woud send morse signals with their lights to fool the germans to think they where friendly.  Ofc very different place and situation but it seems that someone somewhere in ww2 atleast managed to fool the enemies with signals at night. 

[Juri_JS]

Bombers using flares to fool flak or night fighters did happen in reality. Sometimes it was also done by ground units to avoid getting attacked by enemy aircraft. It was one of the reasons why the Germans used multicoloured signal flares. The colour combinations were changed regularly, which made it much harder for the enemy to use such deceptions.

[LukeFF]

5 hours ago, jokash said:

Once you fly into enemy territory,searchlights start looking for you,if they spot you,you get a yellow text that your gunner is launching white/green flare (as indicated in briefing).If the searchlights turn off you get message that you have been recognised as friendly aircraft,if not searchlights stay fixed on you and you get the message that you are identified as enemy aircraft - so that part is already ingame.I was wondering if historical it was like that - since it seems like an easy system to fool (instead of having maybe 2 color system with changing time interval every day or what not.

 

Friendly AA batteries will also home in on you with their searchlights until the gunner fires off a flare to signal to them you are a friendly. So far I've not seen any instances with those where the player is mistaken for an enemy.

[Gambit21]

10 hours ago, jokash said:

Once you fly into enemy territory,searchlights start looking for you,if they spot you,you get a yellow text that your gunner is launching white/green flare (as indicated in briefing).If the searchlights turn off you get message that you have been recognised as friendly aircraft,if not searchlights stay fixed on you and you get the message that you are identified as enemy aircraft - so that part is already ingame.I was wondering if historical it was like that - since it seems like an easy system to fool (instead of having maybe 2 color system with changing time interval every day or what not.

OK, interesting. So there’s some basic logic that has been implemented for this then.