This is a collection of five skins representing the Second Squadron, 17th Cavalry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam (1969). The skins included represent five Troops (the cavalry name for "companies"):
Headquarters Troop (has a guidon by the pilot's door)
A Troop (Identified by the red band on the tail boom)
B Troop (White band)
C Troop (Blue Band)
F Troop (Orange Band)
Note: The B Troop skin in this pack is slightly different from the 2/17 B Troop skin in my Medal of Honor Skin Pack. Be sure to get that pack as well if you want even more varied skins for the 101st Airborne Division.
All reference imagery was taken from
http://vietnam-hueys.tripod.com/2-17th%20Cav%20page.htm
Skinner's Philosophy:
Because the 3D models used for the aircrew utilize modern flight gear I have chosen to model the skins as "modern aircraft with nostalgic patterns", as opposed to actual Vietnam era skins.. The significance of this is that I have chosen to skin the aircrew in contemporary flight uniforms. I felt that this was more fitting in a setting that involves modern orders of battle, and is also less of an immersion-killer than seeing Vietnam era "uniforms" on clearly modern objects.
A note about the Crew Chiefs & Door Gunners:
Since enlisted US troops don't wear rank/rate insignia on flightsuits, their rank/rate is displayed on their nametag. Since there are no specific nametag textures for the crew chief/door gunner texture, I have
added a nametag to the velcro on the chest armor (as is standard practice).
In choosing names for the textures, I opted for US servicemembers who received the Medal of Honor. SFC Paul Smith received the Medal of Honor posthumously in the Global War on Terror, and represents the United
States Army in these skins. Here is his Medal of Honor Citation:
Sergeant First Class Paul R. Smith distinguished himself by acts of gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action with an armed enemy near Baghdad International Airport, Baghdad, Iraq on April 4, 2003. On that day, Sergeant First Class Smith was engaged in the construction of a prisoner of war holding area when his Task Force was violently attacked by a company-sized enemy force. Realizing the vulnerability of over 100 soldiers, Sergeant First Class Smith quickly organized a hasty defense consisting of two platoons of soldiers, one Bradley Fighting Vehicle and three armored personnel carriers. As the fight developed, Sergeant First Class Smith braved hostile enemy fire to personally engage the enemy with hand grenades and anti-tank weapons, and organized the evacuation of three wounded soldiers from an armored personnel carrier struck by a rocket propelled grenade and a 60 mm mortar round. Fearing the enemy would overrun their defenses, Sergeant First Class Smith moved under withering enemy fire to man a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on a damaged armored personnel carrier. In total disregard for his own life, he maintained his exposed position in order to engage the attacking enemy force. During this action, he was mortally wounded. His courageous actions helped defeat the enemy attack, and resulted in as many as 50 enemy soldiers killed, while allowing the safe withdrawal of numerous wounded soldiers. Sergeant First Class Smith's extraordinary heroism and uncommon valor are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, the Third Infantry Division 'Rock of the Marne,' and the United States Army.
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 Release, Open Beta, or Legacy 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, legacy 1.5, 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:
1.0 Initial Release
1.01 Updated for DCS World 1.2.6
1.1 Updated for DCS World 1.2.7
1.2 General Texture fixes and improvements
Optional US Army improved flightcrew textures (TempTextures)
1.21 Pilot/Gunner dedicated USA textures
1.3 Added "slick" specific textures to all skins
1.32 Fixed left door gunner texture
Added USAF Adversaries to available nations
Updated installer for DCS 2.5 and DCS Legacy 1.5
1.32a Bug fix with B Troop slick
Special thanks to upuaut for assistance with the more "exotic" material names, as well as the assistance with custom rotor colors.
You are free to use any of the textures (e.g. 101st door gunner) in other skins or projects as long as proper credit is provided in the readme file.
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