OPERATION MARKET GARDEN 2020

1st flight - Saturday Feb 1st  2020 19:00z
2nd flight - Saturday Feb 29th 2020 19:00z


DC3 Airways re-enactment:

This will be perhaps the 4th Market Garden event, the first having been staged with 2 other organisations back in October 2002 with 31 participants covering all 3 airborne divisions in their drop zones near Arnhem, Nijmegen and Eindhoven.

September 2019 saw the 75th anniversary of the operation and many events were held across the Netherlands to commemorate the event, with mass paratroop drops, moving commemorations and parades and various historical convoys, one of which I was privileged to be a part of thanks to Piet DCA2480 in his WW2 Dodge weapons carrier.

In the packages offered, we have provided the historical routes, waypoints and drop zones.  Included also are short range NDB's to simulate the Eureka beacons that were used in September 1944 to indicate waypoints. Flak effects have also been placed accurately based on 1944 maps of flak concentrations and the eye witness accounts of aircrew, so the location and desity of the flak is as accurate as we could make it.

The drop zones have the coloured smoke markers placed by the pathfinders that arrived some 10 to 15 minutes before the main paratroop serials arrived.

Our event in 2020 focuses on just the 82nd airborne and just 2 of the airfields that they used. We will be using RAF Balderton and RAF Cottesmore to deposit our airborne troops on drop zones 'O' and 'N', located to the south and south west of Nijmegen.

All we ask of participants is to fly in formation with their assigned flight leader, maintain the airspeed and altitude assigned for the mission and try to drop their paratroopers on the correct DZ.  Therefore we request that participants try to utilise a C47 with a military livery and have the necessary package installed and tested to include the effects for the paratroopers and the necessary changes to their aircraft.cfg within the smoke section, details of which will be included in the installation instructions.

There is a re-worked C47 package from Aeroworx for X-Plane since we last did a WW2 event.
The best C47 available for P3D is of course the MJ C47 v3.1.6 and there are several military textures available at Flightsim.com. I would recommend 'Whiskey 7' or 'Drag em Oot' or 'Argonia' or 'Thats all brother'.

FSX and XP pilots will depart RAF Balderton and P3D pilots will depart RAF Cottesmore.
Don't forget to update your scenery library in Little navmap (or whichever flight planning package you use so that the NDB's show up.

Cruise altitude is 1500 ft and cruise speed 135 knots. please stay tight on your flight leader so that the troopers are dropped in a tight pattern.
Ensure crash detection is inactive. The flak does cause damage otherwise and may well shoot you down!
On instruction from your flight leader reduce airspeed for the actual drop to 115 knots and make the drop at 1000 ft.

After the drop climb to 5000 feet and increase airspeed to 140 knots asap.
Fly a reciprical route or as directed buy your flight leader.
Flight leaders are hoped to be 1161 ray, 1620 Bill and 1026 Johan.


The package is of a small size and includes small scenery, effects and sound files to be installed and activated within your software program.

Should anyone have any difficulties in installing or activating the package, a couple of sessions will be held in early January to assist and test things out.

The following are very useful sites to get a better understanding of the sequence of events of this operation.

https://youtu.be/EejtTsIeLHU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F437QdxfHE&t=1500s

http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/battles_arnhem.html

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a280653.pdf

Glen Broome
DCA996
VP Flight OPS
DC3 Airways