FSX Martin MB-2 Bomber

Martin MB-2 Bomber. The Martin MB2 was the first all-American bomber design produced in quantity. It first flew in 1920. This is the plane Gen. Billy Mitchell used to prove an airplane could sink a battleship. It saw service until it was replaced by the Keystone Bombers in the late 20's. This is a native FSX Acceleration project. It has the usual animations and DXT5.dds textures. The VC is based on a real photo and has animated flight controls. The gauges are default except for some original 3D switches. There is no 2D panel. The livery is for the 96th Bomber Squadron based at Langley field. By Paul Clawson.

The Martin MB-2 was the first All American bomber to be produced in quantity. It first flew in 1920 and stayed in service until being replaced by the Keystone bombers of the late 1920's. This was the airplane Gen. Billy Mitchell used to prove an airplane could sink a battleship.

Only about the first 5 were labeled the MB-2; later serial numbers were called the NBS-1 which stood for Night Bomber Short Range. I found this interesting because none of the drawings or photo's I have show hide nor hair of nav lights, landing lights, cockpit lights, etc. The one photo I have of the cockpit does not show any light switches.

I enjoy designing vintage aircraft that are full of struts and guy wires. However, the MB-2 had so many it got a bit tedious. I developed a real appreciation of those early airmen that flew this bomber; it had no windscreen what so ever. Even though it had a top speed of only 99mph one would hope their standard kit included floss to remove bugs from the teeth! Perhaps this explains why the only flight picture I have that shows the front gunner , he had his back to the slip screen.

This is a native FSX Acceleration model. It has the usual animations including some control wires. The textures are in DXT5.dds format. The VC is based on a real photo. It has animated flight controls. Some of the switches are original 3D jobs (I am still learning at age 78) and the rest are default. There is no 2D panel. Please note that the pilot sat on the right side, but the throttles are on the left.

The livery is for the 96th Bomber Squadron based at Langley field.

Airplanes like this are usually not of universal interest to the flight sim community, but, it meets my criteria of interest in that it has never been modeled before and it is one I wiil fly long after finishing the project.

INSTALLATION: Unzip MB-2vX.zip into a temporary folder. Copy the folder Martin MB-2 into the Airplanes folder of FSX. Open the gauges folder and copy the one file into the Gauges folder of FSX. There are some 3D swithches; a couple of "push to start" and 4 ignition switches as shown in the cockpit photo I have. These switches are all mouse clickable. Please note that if you kill the engines with the ignition switches you must click them back to the "On" position before starting with the "push to start" switches.

Enjoy! Paul Clawson

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