Surviving a ditching

[Toonice]

So you get all shot up out at sea in your Wildcat and you're too low to bail out, so you ditch, just like it says in the manual. And then you sink, explode and die. Is there a dismount key? A climb out on the wing and inflate life jacket key? The ooo option doesn't work for me when I'm on the water. My pilot just sits there and takes what's coming. Any pointers?
Thanks for the help.

[kevib1]

I have noticed the same but have been unable to find a 'way out'.
A similar thing happens on land if you land with damaged undercarriage or belly land. After lots of bouncing and scrapping along the ground the plane stops. after about 10 secs you get a message that the plane will blow and the nsure enough 10 secs later it does.

There I am yelling at the screen for the pilot to get out and run for it but he just sits there. Again I tried all buttons I can think of. Even openned the canopy and switched off engine prior to 'landing' but he just sits there. I'm usually in a Hellcat so I guess the pilot is American. Does this explain why  ;)

[Tequila Sunrise]

at see I dont think theres anything you can do, but on land if you bring it in gently enough you'll grind to a halt in one piece and survive

[tralfaz]

As captain of your ship, you are required to go down with her.  If you fly Japanese aircraft, the order is a little different (ditch, disembowel, sink, blow up).
    The only way I know of to 'survive' a ditching is to end the flight just before the 'blow up and die.'   If the plane stops and slowly settles, that's a successful ditching.
     Missions can be set to end with a 'successful' ditching (fade to black).  There are a couple of 'practice' ditching missions on Netwings.

[Lizard Jockey]

Yes you're all correct, the sim designers didn't think this one all the way through or maybe they just didn't care what happens to us after we go in.  My guess on this is that we are just supposed to exit the mission immediatly after the plane comes to a stop as has been suggested earlier.

In reality, an average WW 2 fighter didn't sink quite as fast as CFS 2 and they certainly didn't always blow up after submerging.  A pilots biggist hazard was being knocked unconcious on impact. Even though they were strapped in, they often hit their head on the gun sight.

As for the best chances of surviving a wheels up landing or "Watering" as the case may be, I've found that applying some flap then turning everything off: Main Switch, Gas, Mags, Feathering the prop so it comes to a complete stop then  taking care to set it down under 80 knots with the nose up will usually assure servivability and at least on land, it won't blow up at all.  Nothing I've tried seems to keep the ship from blowing in the water which strikes me a pretty stupid but then I could go on for a few pages about what I think is wrong with M$'s approach to military flight sims.

L.J. Over...

[Ivan]

use eject button or something to get out perhaps (just a guess, i don't have CFS3)

[Woodlouse2002]

Well lads in CFS2 you can survive a bail out a very low level. You just gotta hit O 3 times very very fast.

I also find that having the canopy open in a scrap helps you to live. As it saves time and altitude. As long as your parachute is opening your fine to fly another day.

[Lizard_Jockey]

Correctamundo on the canopy issue.

In fact, it was standard proceedure to open the canopy for all landings weather they were land based, carrier or crash landings.  In the event of a hard impact the slides tended to jam shut and the pilot would be traped. That's why you see so many open canopys in the old photographs.

One other problem with canopys was that they also could be jamed shut after the impact of enemy fire to the cockpit area. Many pilots in any number of different types of planes died because they couldn't get the lid opened to bail out.

War is Murffy's Law in Steroids.

L. J. Out.

[bertie1]

You might want to play around with this file.
Cfs2 warp n' ditch by C.Burgess. It's over at Flightsim.com goto search and file exact is:

warpitch.zip

It's a .dyn but can be inserted into missions (not free flight or qc)

Hope this helps. Bertie

[Smoke2much]

Just a thought but unless you are really close to a carrier when you ditch I think blowing up would be the most merciful way out.

Imagine finding yourself alone in the water, surrounded by sharks.  Possibly wounded and 200 miles from the carrier.  That's a HORRIBLE way to die.

I suppose you could simulate it but most players would, I imagine, prefer to skip it and get on with the action.

Will

[Ridge_Runner_5]

If you are gonna belly in and land, you should try to get your prop to stop moving. That is what causes the mortal prop strike. Stop the prop, save a life!

[firefly]

I found that, just before you crash or ditch on the water or land, tap the bail out button and once you are stuck in the water, the bloke simply jumps out. I've only tried this in multiplayer and free flight, so i dont know what the outcome of the mission will be.

[michaelmichael]

to all you flyers out how do you open the canopy without bailing out????  what  key needs to be pushed.

michaelmichael

[Tequila Sunrise]

shift + c opens/closes canopy
shift + w folds wings

[RichieB16]

Actually, it is possible to survive a ditching in the missions, But you must modify each mission in order to do so.  A while back I used to build missions for CFS2 and I released a set which I called the "Ditch Test" which included 3 missions where the objective was to ditch the plane under certain circumstances.  I managed to do this creating a set of "triggers" and "events" in the mission which allowed the mission to end if the plane came to a complete stop at an altitude of 0 (in the water).  The mission would end simular to if you had bailed out over the water.  If you would like to see these missions I made (feel free to open them in mission builder and incorporate the technique into the stock missions-if you want to spend the time).  The mission is located here: http://www.simviation.com/cfs2missions5.htm.

I plan to modify all the stock missions and release them with this ditch modification when I get the time.