Note: this is an EXE installer that creates shared texture folders and adds paths to your autoexec.cfg.
A-4E: US Marine Corps Attack Squadron 211 (VMA-211) "Wake Island Avengers" for DCS World with the A-4E Community Mod installed.
This skin pack has two VMA-211 low visibility grey liveries circa 1981 and 1989.
Marine Attack Squadron 211 (VMA-211) was commissioned in 1937 as Marine Fighter Squadron 2 (VMF-2). In 1941, VMF-2 was redesignated as VMF-211, transitioned to the F4F Wildcat, and in December of 1941 five aircraft from VMF-211 defended Wake Island from the Japanese over a span of two weeks. VMF-211 was credited with eight air kills, and Captain Henry T Elrod was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions. VMF-211 continued to fight in the Pacific campaign, eventually transitioning to the F4U Corsair.
In 1952, the Avengers were redesignated VMA-211 and transitioned to the AD-4 Skyraider. In 1957, VMA-211 transitioned to the A-4 Skyhawk, which it flew until 1989. During this time, VMA-211 conducted four combat deployments in Vietnam.
In 1990, VMA-211 transitioned to the AV-8B (N/A) Harrier II, which it flew until 2016. The Avengers were redesignated VMFA-211 in 2016, and have since transitioned to the F-35B Lightning II.
For Compact Installations - A Note About Autoexec.cfg:
Rather than copying texture files to their respective livery folders, I prefer to use a series of common texture folders along with unique filenames. This allows a single instance of many of my common textures, and keeps the hard drive footprint to a minimum (especially nice if you run a SSD for your system drive).
The installer will add a series of folders to the DCS Texture path; if you do not have these folders created, then it is no problem. The autoexec.cfg included will automatically point to the Texture folder in your Saved Games\DCS folder, and regardless of whether you run the Open Alpha, Open Beta, or Release version of DCS, the path will always point to your Saved Games\DCS\Texture folder. Again, this saves space on your hard drive.
If you use your own Autoexec.cfg, then when prompted to overwrite you can click "no". This will create a file called autoexec.new, and you can manually make the updates as you like. Just don't modify the top line with the file date; this is used by the installer for version control. However, feel free to include it in your existing autoexec.cfg, so you don't get prompted to overwrite until there's another update to the autoexec.cfg.
If you inadvertently overwrite your autoexec.cfg, it is actually backed up as autoexec.old. Just open it and copy the appropriate information to the new file.
For Traditional Installations or JSGME Compatible Extractions:
If you don't wish to use the shared texture folder and custom autoexec.cfg, you have a couple of other options available. Selecting the Traditional Install copies all textures to each livery folder, then copies each livery to each version of DCS detected (up to three versions, including release, open alpha and open beta). As a result, the listed hard disk space requirement assumes all three DCS versions are installled. Each skin is independent and portable.
If you wish to install to a location other than your Saved Games folder, you must select the Single JSGME Extraction, or else the installation will fail for not detecting existing Saved Games\DCS folders. Selecting this option will create a JSGME compatible install that can be dropped directly into your JSGME _MODS folder for installation. Each skin is independent and portable.
For either of these installation options, if there is an issue with textures not displaying, then it is likely a problem with the installer. Please let me know what textures are missing so that I can troubleshoot the issue.
Change Log:
1.00 Initial Release
1.10 Added 1989 skin
Minor improvements to 1981 skin
1.20 Updated for A-4E-C 2.0
Improved fuel tanks
Improved 1989 skin
Applied default VMA-211 pilot texture
Special thanks to Gospadin (RIP), Gyrovague, Plusnine, Kryb/Archimaede, Merker, Jones, Farlander, and Dr. Manius for the outstanding A-4E Community mod.
If you have any squadron requests, please PM me. If possible, provide top and profile views of the aircraft, preferably line art (much easier to extract color), and for CAG/CO birds, a close up of the tail fin is greatly appreciated.
You are free to use any of these skins in other projects as long as proper credit is provided in the readme file.
Fly Navy!
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