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    Villers Bocage - minus the Tiger!
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    Fighting the famous WW2 tank battle in a rather less-well-armoured panzer!   At last, Steel Fury has arrived in Normandy! This welcome development with the Steel Tank Add-on (STA) mod for Graviteam's superb WW2 tanksim comes in the form of three new missions, based around a well-known action in June 1944 between elements of several German armoured units and a spearhead of the British 7th Armoured Division, the famous Desert Rats. The best known part of the Battle of Villers Bocage on 13 June is of course the attack on the leading 22nd Armoured Brigade by the Tiger tank of panzer ace Michael Wittmann. The latter is widely credited with destroying the British spearhead single-handed and while the truth is evidently a bit more complicated, there's no doubt that Wittmann and the other German forces involved succeeded in halting a potentially very dangerous penetration that could have had serious consequences for the German's ability to hold the key town of Caen, a lynchpin of their defence of Normandy after D-Day.   Even if you're not new to the story, you'll probably enjoy the recent re-telling of the tale, available as a free online book by Akhill Kadidal, here.   Thanks to the STA team - notably Lockie & Deviator for the missions, Deviator for the map/landscape and Will73 for Bitish AFVs, sorry if I left somebody out! - we now have a small set of missions based on the battle. All (so far) are from the German side; two for the Tiger I and one for the Panzer IV. I think it's fair to say that all are 'inspired by' episodes in the battle, as opposed to exact reproductions of any given action.   I'll save the Wittmann fight for a later mission report, as it's still being worked on, based on feedback. For now, I decided to go with the last mission in the set, playing the late-model Panzer IV. Armed with a long 75mm gun and protected by spaced armour plates around the turret and (until they got knocked off!) either side of the hull, this was in 1944 still the backbone of the Panzerwaffe and in skilled hands, a dangerous enough opponent for Allied tankers. Earlier versions of the Panzer IV, both short- and long-gunned, come with vanilla Steel Fury but the Ausf. H version we'll be fighting in here is courtesy of SF's modders. As in fact is almost everything else in the mission, from the terrain to the buildings and their fittings.     The Villers Bocage map is new for this mission set, and it's not only quite different from SF's stock eastern European terrain, it's also one of the very best seen in the sim so far. For whatever reason, you won't see the close rows of houses that lined the real main street in Villers Bocage, but the lie of the land is close to reality and the general effect is most convincing, for 1944 Normandy...even to the way your tanks will slow down and struggle to crunch noisily through thick hedgerows!       The terrain looks best with the recommended 'scorching summer' terrain mod, for which there's a version specific to the STA mod. All you need is available via the STA forums, here.     The mission This was my first play-through, so while I'd previously tried out the Wittmann mission and seen the terrain, the Panzer IV mission itself was entirely new to me. It's called, rather melodramatically, 'Last Nazi Chance'. Here's the start of the briefing, which, as you can see, is bi-lingual:     You are cast in the role of panzer Hauptmann Helmut Ritgen. I'm not sure which of the participating German units you are supposed to be with - Panzer Lehr, 2nd Panzer or Wittman's unit, SS Schwere Panzer Abteilung 101 - but your tank will carry the 'shield and keys' emblem of 1st SS Panzer, the Leibstandarte, as also carried by the Tigers of the 101st.   In short, as you'll see when you scroll down the briefing, your mission is in two phases - first, attack and destroy the British advance guard on Point 213, the high ground on the N175 road overlooking Villers Bocage to its east. Then, you are to attack and clear Villers Bocage itself, finishing with the Hotel de Ville. You're told that - prompted by a radio message you'll issue (this is actually triggered automatically, when the time is right) - some panzer grenadiers will join in and help you clear the built-up area.   The bad news is that you've only got two Panzer IVs in your platoon and a glance at the map shows there's only a single SPW (Schutzenpanzerwagen, armoured half-tracked APC) of grenadiers. The better news is that there are two other pairs of tanks which seemed to be lined up for a concentric attack. The even better news is that you will discover that the other four tanks are Tigers. My impression is that the briefing could be a little clearer on the composition and tasks of your force. In real life, orders are given by your commander, at the same sitting, to you and all the other participating platoon leaders, so that everyone knows what everyone else's part in the battle is to be. For this operation, we seem to have an under-strength and hastily-assembled force thrown into battle with little time for preparation or even thorough orders.   I know enough about Normandy 1944 not to expect any help from the Luftwaffe on this mission but I'd have hoped that the divisional artillery would have put in some shooting, or at least our ever-present German mortars would have softened up the enemy for us. But perhaps the idea is to take the English by surprise. As to how that turns out, we'll see soon.   I took a last look at the map, before moving off. It showed Point 213 to be the wooded area we will be able to see to our front, when we leave the briefing phase and start the mission itself. You can clearly see the distinctive contours in the pic below, with the text briefing panel suppressed. My two tanks are the blue diamonds, top right; below and behind them are the grenadiers in their single SPW. Below that are two more friendly tanks: Tigers, as they will turn out to be. Off to the left (west - north is blue, in the SF compass indicator, top left) are two more Tigers, in a hedgerow. It looks like we're nicely set for a concentric attack on Point 213, with the Tigers to the west, closest to the objective and therefore likely to go in first. Not a bad idea, from the standpoint of a Panzer IV commander.     I kicked off the mission and as I usually do, immediately ordered the loading of a suitable round - AP seemed best, for this party. Switching to the external view for a good look around, I unbuttoned my tank commander. I then switched to the gunner position and started swinging my gun left and right, scanning for targets. Shooting started almost immediately, tank cannon fire by the sound of it, but both shooters and targets so far 'not seen'.     Hastily, I switched back to the map, gave my platoon - sorry, my other tank - the order to conform to my movements and stay close, then back in the external view, ordered my driver to move off. On we went, speeding up as we crossed the open ground towards Point 213, our first phase objective.   ...to be continued!

    Mudspike: DCS WORLD 2 PREVIEW – WWII AIR COMBAT
    Dave
    By Dave,
    Mudspike has a great preview of the WWII module for DCS World 2. Thanks to Migbuster for finding the article.    http://www.mudspike.com/dcs-world-2-preview-wwii-air-combat/  

    Mudspike: DCS WORLD 2.0 – THE ENEMY WITHIN
    Dave
    By Dave,
    A great read with good pics too. Thanks to SilverDragon for pointing it out.    http://www.mudspike.com/dcs-world2-the-enemy-within/  

    IL-2+CUP - stock Soviet fighter
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    Flying a vanilla campaign in the classic WW2 sim's latest mod!   You can say what you like about the newest addition to the Il-2 line, Battle of Stalingrad (BoS) - and many of us do just that! But one thing it has done for me, is stimulate my interest in its predecessor's original, Eastern Front campaigns. No mean achievement, that, for until relatively recently, I'd regarded Il-2 as mainly offering planes I didn't especially want to fly, in places I didn't especially want to fly them, to adapt another simmer's comment.   At the moment, I have two installs of Il-2 1946 - one for Dark Blue World (DBW), the other for the new Community User Patch (CUP). Due to different files, units and other factors, it seems likely to take a while, before many campaigns that work in DBW or other versions of Il-2, also work in CUP, though some already do and the list is growing steadily.   Both to check out the compatibility of some stock Il-2 campaigns with CUP and to indulge my new-found interest in the Eastern Front variety, over the last month or two I've been running, on and off, a standard Soviet fighter campaign, flying one of the aircraft available in BoS - the rather sleek but not especially high-performing LaGG-3. Like other aircraft before and after, this seems to have been a basically decent design which needed a more powerful engine to turn it into a competitive fighter - which it got, when its inline engine was replaced by a radial, creating the Lavochkin La-5.   From this campaign's timeframe, though, the La-5 is about a year away. It's July 1941, just weeks into Operation Barbarossa, and I'm flying a LaGG-3, defending our dearly-beloved Union of Soviet Socialistic Republics against the fascist hordes of Nazi Germany. And an interesting challenge it's been, keeping my virtual neck intact, up against superior numbers of superior planes and - historically, anyway - superior aircrew.     So far, courtesy it seems of some Soviet Socialistic miracle, I have not only survived, but knocked down some enemy aircraft. I'm on my fifth mission, no less...but wondering how much longer my good fortune can possibly continue.   Here's the latest briefing. As you can see, it's a fairly straightforward escort job, with a hint that we might want to shoot up some stuff on the ground at some point, too. Maybe it's a difficulty setting I applied when I created the campaign, but the usual Il-2 red and blue front lines aren't shown on the map. But I'll be able to gauge the whereabouts of the enemy from the front-line target the bombers we're to escort will hit. Happily, the target's not too far off, so I can fly the mission in real time with no need to use 'warp'...which as just as well, as Il-2's never had that, relying on autopilot and time acceleration.     The briefing doesn't tell me how many are in our flight, or the type and strength of the bombers. Nor do we get their or our altitudes. I put this down to a level of uncertainty, even confusion, in an air force with its back against the wall...or perhaps, against a Commisar with a small-calibre pistol and a willingness to employ it, in stiffening our resolve, should that become necessary.   At the flight line, I find that there are in fact three of us on this hop. Having chosen a high enough rank to avoid the (to me) hateful chore of formation-flying - and to enjoy the extra challenge of flight leadership - I'm at the head of the queue. This being a stock mission, there's none of the newer formation takeoffs. Happily, the default Il-2 conga line is a short one, today.     The current LaGG-3 I find is a nicely-rendered bird. More rounded contours in some places, inside and out, would be nice but I'm not complaining. Her authentic, subtly-weathered camouflage and national markings are convincingly-applied. There's no sign of the original opaque Il-2 markings, which looked like the over-thick waterslide transfers you used to get on plastic kits, guaranteed to blot out all but the crudest surface detail. And the cockpit, though clearly well behind the latest self-shadowed, finely-curved marvels, is still quite serviceable.       One new feature the LaGG does enjoy are more rounded wheels, and very welcome they are, too. Soon, I was aloft and retracting the gear. After the crazily finnicky ground handling of BoS, takeoffs in '46 are...well, whether more realistic or not, more what I'm used to.     Another, older improvement to Il-2 that the modders have wrought is the engine sounds. I absolutely loathed the dreadful external engine drone of the original sim. That's a distant memory now, so I can admire my bird in the external view without feeling that I need to turn down the sound.     In fact, so much was I enjoying the external aspect of my LaGG sweeping over the Steppes, that I decided to let the autopilot fly, for a bit. There was now sign of the bombers and I thought, rightly as it turned out, that my alter ego would have a better idea than I, were they were and at what height we should be.   My number three lagged (sic!) for a bit but my number two wasn't long in catching up. We perhaps tend to take for granted these days such Il-2 wonders as different planes having different individual numbers but even now, not all sims have this and it's still a fine thing to behold.     Three of us had left our airfield. How many would return, and would I be amongst them? The answers would not be long in coming.   ...to be continued!

    Wargame: European Escalation
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    Fighting a Cold War gone hot with Eugen Systems' classic PC wargame!     Once upon a time, in a world before PCs...   Although never a really serious player, back in the days before home PCs, I'd long been interested in wargames with miniatures - not the boardgame variety, as the model-making or collecting aspect was important to me, too. I still have the 1/300 scale metal WW2 AFVs and basic little rulebook I bought back in the 1970s. In the late 1980s I dabbled with the Cold War era and acquired a modest set of 1/300 and 1/285 miniatures from Davco, Heroics & Ross, Scotia and GHQ, basically a Soviet tank battalion with T-72s, a couple of Motor Rifle companies with BMPs, plus US and British tank/infantry company combat teams in sufficient strength to give them a fair fight, with a variety of Abrams, Bradleys, Chieftains and 432s etc. Even tiny 1/300 items like Ferret Scout Cars could look quite well when painted and were much more suitable for decent wargaming than larger models (I don't really see much attraction in skirmishes with quite large models, which seem to be having something of a resurgence of interest in the form of the 'Bolt Action' rules)   For my own Cold War forays, I used an adapted version of the Wargame Research Group's 'Rules for All Arms Land Warfare from Platoon to Company Level' (June 1988) for 1925-1950 because they were the first I'd found which really tried to replicate the way armies actually operated, instead of providing (in effect) a chess game with different pieces and rules, usually underlaid with an obsessive attention to armour thickness and penetration and other theoretical weapon characteristics rather than real-world tactics and capabilities. It was like, suddenly, a  set of rules had been written by real army officers, rather than by enthusiasts who can only get so much understanding of how armies really work by reading books.    As I wanted to play solo, I adapted methods from the same publisher's solo wargames booklet, adding a system of drawing cards from a deck, as my force advanced, to generate realistic enemy units ahead of us. It worked quite while and while I never had enough space - and thus had to use too small a ground scale for my 1/300 units - the results could be quite pleasing, visually, played out on a grass-mat laid out with my home-made modular terrain system.   In the pic below, a platoon of US Army M60A3s, sited to fire hull-down from a flank, burns as a Soviet T-72 platoon, backed up by a BMP-1, approaches a village defended now by mechanised infantry in M113 APCs and mortar carriers.     In the different scenario below, a company of BMP-2s is closing in on a ridgeline objective, backed up by T-72s. BMP-1s and another pair of T-72s wait in a field in front of the village church.     Below is what was likely an earlier pic in the same battle, with a T-72 platoon leading a company of BMP-2s which has yet to shake out from platoon columns into line formation for the assault. Ahead, MiG-27s flash low over smoke screens laid by supporting SO-122 SP guns, whose observation and support vehicles can be seen in the foreground.     You'd think that I'd have jumped at the chance to play wargames on the PC. I have tried a few, notably the original Combat Mission and the more recent Theatre of War. But good though they could be in their way, to my mind they suffered from the same failing as some earlier paper wargame rules. They gave you a force equivalent to something like a company but allowed (or worse, effectively compelled) you the player to move around individual tanks, vehicles or soldiers. That's a chess game with different pieces and rules, not the way military operations work. If you're commanding a company-sized force, your 'pieces' are your platoons, be they tanks or infantry, certainly not individual soldiers, guns or vehicles. By and large, you deploy, move around and give your orders, not to individuals or individual vehicles, but to the commanders of each platoon. The latter carry them out, by and large using 'canned' tactics like battle drills and 'Standard Operating Procedures' or SOPs.   If you're playing a wargame, in command of a force comprising maybe three or more platoons of one or more different troop types, it may be fun to pick out and send that high-morale, expert-rated fellow with the panzerfaust along that hedge to stalk that pesky Sherman. But while real-life company commanders do sometimes have to organise such things, it's not the approach a proper tactical simulation of platoon, company or battalion-level operations should take by default. Instead, your forces should come pre-organised into platoons. Barring rare exceptions, you should give your orders only to these platoons (in effect, to the platoon leaders). They should carry out your orders using standard tactics, with an absolute mimimum of player micro-management. This is the missing factor which those 1988 WRG WW2-era rules at last implemented.   Having found this factor rather lacking in the PC wargames I had so far tried, and having meantime also found that simulations rather than wargames amply satisfied my interest in 'blowing [virtual] stuff up', I left it there. Until last week. On holiday in Spain's Costa del Sol, I wandered into a Game store in Malaga in search of a bargain and came across a copy of Wargame: European Escalation as a 'Super Oferta' for the princely sum of one Euro. Having an interest in both wargames and the Cold War era, I had been vaguely aware of Eugen Systems' sweet-looking 2012 PC wargame (and its 2014 development, Airland Battle), in part from watching videos like this one:     For a price that wouldn't have bought me a platoon of 1/300 T-72s 25 years ago, you get hundreds of nicely-crafted AFVs and other units on a range of different maps (with a proper ground scale), set in the same era I had tried to wargame all those years ago. And with visuals aproaching that of a simulation. It was worth giving another PC wargame a try, I decided. That was a week ago. Safely back in the rather less sunny UK, this mission report describes how it worked out and what I've made of it, so far.   And The Lord said, let there be pixels...   Having decided to have a crack at Cold War wargaming in the computer age, I found that while my copy of W:EE came on a DVD, it was Steam-based. So installation involved downloads from that provider, which happily included some free DLC, in the form of several 'expansion pack' campaigns. The base sim provides four basic campaigns or 'operations' which constitute the main single player element. The nearest thing to a 'quick mission bulder' is a 'Skirmish' mode within single player, which enamles you to set up player -vs- AI battles. Excluding the expansion packs, the 4 campaigns comprise 22 missions, set during the period 1975 to 1985.   The bad news is that if like me you thought the unlock system that came with a certain recent WW2 combat flight sim was not a good idea, W:EE will kind of put that into perspective. Yes, you can play as one of 8 different national armies, distributed between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Yes, you get a great selection of nicely-rendered playable units for each, from MBTs to IFVs to APCs and a range of support vehicles and helos. And yes, you get an impressive variety of moderately large and impressively-detailed maps, ranging over several parts of the potential World War Three European battlefield. But no, you can't actually play anything but a tiny segment of all this super content, until you have unlocked it, by playing and accumulating points.   With my 1/300 miniatures, I could set up and fight a battle with any of the units I'd bought. But in creating a PC equivalent with vastly greater scope in about every respect conceivable, they decided to let you have access to almost none of this vast potential, a design decision which beggars belief...my belief, anyway. Perhaps it's somehow tied into anti-cheat measures for the W:EE muntiplayer component. But for now, all I can do is grit my teeth, swallow any sense I have of good and proper game design and begin the aptly-described 'grind' to unlock more of the things I really want to play with. Sensibly, it appears that Eugen Systems have dispensed with this concept for the follow-on wargame series - Wargame: Air Land Battle - which, as well as somewhat better graphics and fixed-wing air support, reportedly and thankfully bins the unlocks. If that's so, I would definitely consider investing in it, although the fixed-wing element can reportedly be a bit too lethal, when in a real WW3 the flyboys would on most days either have been grounded by the bad weather or attacking targets beyond the immediate battlefield...until their airfields were nuked, anyway.   As for W:EE, I've tried to find some sort of cheat to unlock the content but no dice. Creating a 'private' multiplayer battle just for youself was said to enable you to get at unlocked units, possibly functioning much like a mission editor, but that didn't work for me. That would be some compensation; but at the minimum, what is really needed is for you to be able to begin any of the available SP campaigns from the get-go and to do so with a much less restricted set of available units.   The alternative to playing campaigns and unlocking stuff is the aforementioned 'Skirmish' mode. This is ideal to practice, and lets you do so on any of the many maps available, like this one, for instance. These big, beautifully-rendered virtual environments are the sort of thing that would have massively exceeded my wildest dreams (not to mention my available space and my modelling abilities) as a dilletante 1/300 wargamer, back in the day.     Maps galore and great warfighting terrain to boot, but as for the actual weaponry, even in this Skirmish mode, you still seem to be restricted to the kit you have unlocked at any point in time. So the darn unlock system is pretty pervasive.   Anyhow, if you're now asking 'Apart from that Mrs Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?', well, that's coming next!   ...to be continued!

    SABOW - M60 day attack!
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    An uncertain turn of events in a later round in my Iran-Iraq War campaign!   My first M60 campaign in SABOW is proving to be something of a roller-coaster ride. And an expensive one! Back in daylight after the opening mission during the hours of darkness, we seemed to be doing quite well in mission #2, playing our part in the Iranian counter-offensive against the invading Iraqis. The culmination of my plans in that mission was a combined tank-infantry attack on a Iranian defended locality. With no artillery support and therefore no chance of a smokescreen, the risky part was a final dash over a stretch of open ground, to reach the objective. We had got about half-way across, when a tracer round zipped in from our right.     Next thing you know, our little force is being torn to bits by fire from an enemy T-55 platoon, which had decided to flank attack our flank attack. No matter how many times you have read accounts of battles like Operation Goodwood, it's still shocking just how fast a formation of tanks can be converted to scrap metal, But that's what happened. Most of the APCs survived the subsequent fire-fight, but most of our tanks didn't. Though the surviving Iraqi tanks withdrew and our objective was gained, it was at considerable cost.     Despite all that, the next mission, also in daylight, started promisingly enough. Overall, it seemed that our Iranian counterattack was going well and my formation, the 3rd Armored Brigade, was playing its part.     The next battle was a bit of a teaser, though. Intelligence apparently indicated that the enemy had decided to counterattack our counterattack, which of course they are perfectly entitled to do. This intention is shown by the large, triangular ,blue enemy arrow, pointing north-north-east. However, from the red, friendly arrow going the other way, it seemed we were also expected to attack, in the opposite direction, towards the enemy position marked 'Babylon1' - generating a meeting engagement. The smaller red and blue (more rectangular) arrows to the right apparently denote pre-battle moves, during the prior 'operational' phase, though why there are both enemy and friendly moves starting and ending in my territory, I do not know.     Anyhow I decided to try to box clever, resulting in the dispositions you can see above. I would stand on the defensive first, and destroy by fire from covered positions the anticipated enemy attack as it crossed the relatively open ground to the north of the central irrigation channel. After that - or if the enemy didn't attack, after all - I would then go over onto the offensive. This plan seemed more sensible than driving forward to meet an advancing enemy somewhere in 'no-man's land'. I always like to start a battle with a plan, even if it may be a bad plan and even if it doesn't survive contact with the enemy. They say that a bad plan is better than no plan at all. I tend to agree.   I had just three platoons, two of tanks and one of mech infantry. I put the latter in the woods to the west, to cover my right flank where the battle lines ran north-south. A tank platoon with three M60s I set up in the same woods, further east, placed so as to fire out over the open ground towards the expected enemy advance. Not very subtle but we had a key point, 'Xerxes 2' in that spot and I was determined not to lose that.   The more subtle part of this plan was the placement of my other platoon - which had five M60s - in a strip of wood over to the east. Their position had an irrigation channel to its rear whose banks might provide them with cover to move north or south if need be; but above all else it had a good overlapping field of fire with the other tank platoon, covering the open ground in front of 'Xerxes 1'. An enemy force attempting to advance across that ground would be destroyed by concentric tank fire from 'Xerxes 1' and from its right flank. As usual I had no artillery or air support, so this battle would be won or lost by the marksmanship and battle drills of my eight tanks. I felt reasonably confident that the combined fires of eight 105mm guns would make life very difficult for any Iraqis who ventured into my chosen killing ground.     I had made my plan and deployed my troops. Now, it was time to wait and see what the other guy had in mind.   ...to be continued!

Portal by DevFuse · Based on IP.Board Portal by IPS


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