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    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!

    SABOW - M60 night attack
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    On campaign in the classic US Main Battle Tank!     Having throughly enjoyed fighting in SABOW's Iran-Iraq War campaign in a T-62, I decided it was time to swap sides and have a crack with the M60A1, fighting now for the Iranians. The latest (May 2015) patch adds some graphical and other improvements, including some new training missions. Such is SABOW's considerable and admirable depth as both tanksim and tactical wargame, I'm still a relative novice and in particular, have had little 'tread time' with the elegant US MBT. This is something which the recently-once-more-expanded set of training or single missions would have allowed me to rectify. But no, impatient as always, I decided to jump in at the deep(er) end and go straight on campaign!   The SABOW Iranian M60 campaign is actually chronologically ahead of the Iraqi T-62 one I played first. Both take place during the battle near Sousangerd, where, in difficult terrain, the Iranians mounted a large-scale armoured attack designed to roll back the Iraqi offensives which had started the war. This was ultimately unsuccessful, but that is yet to come. For now, the ball is in the Iranian court and we are about to launch the big counter-offensive.   The campaign opens with the player in command of strong Iranian tank forces, massed to the east of the Iraqis. And my first battle in this new campaign was to be a night action! On the map below, the green tank icons represent playable M60 platoons, the red ones other player-controllable friendly forces, and the pink ones (actually yellow, against a pale red background) denote friendly, non-player-controllable units. The blue areas and icons represent Iraqi (enemy) territory and forces. As yet, the lack of markings on the enemy side indicates that we know little or nothing of the forces arrayed against us. The blue circles I believe mark 'key points' which, depending on their relative importance, represent points (in the other, scoring sense) that will contribute to determining who is winning, depending on who is left in possession of the positions they mark.   SABOW allows you some scope to move units about at this 'operational' stage but there seemed to be little need here. Besides, the SABOW wargame element was already offering me two imminent battles on the map and I decided to accept one of them now - the more westerly one, IIRC. The map screenshot below was actually taken after the battle, because I I forgot to take one beforehand; but the dispositions it shows are essentially the same, as far as I can recall.     In SABOW, you have the option of disabling night battles. Although I’m not especially scared of the dark, I do like to see what I’m doing! But I had resisted the temptation to turn off night fighting. It’s an important part of the SABOW campaign experience, groping around in the dark with only first generation night fighting aids. There’s none of the modern thermal imaging (aka passive Infra Red, forming images from the heat emitted by vehicles or personnel) which makes night-fighting in sims like M1 Tank Platoon II or Steel Beasts relatively easy. In SABOW, you have instead active IR: headlights or spotlights whose light, invisible to the naked eye, can be seen by anyone – friend or enemy! – with an IR-capable sight.  And whose range is much more limited than thermal imaging.

    Having selected a prospective battle on the operational map, I entered SABOW’s tactical phase. This zooms you into a smaller section of the map, with a correspondingly smaller sub-set of the your forces on it, at your disposal. This smaller, tactical map starts in ‘Unit deployment’ mode, presenting you with a set of icon-based commands which you can - and should - now use to adjust the starting position of the platoons to whom you can give orders – in this case, no less than four platoons of M60s and two armoured recce platoons with APCs. After a quick Combat Appreciation, I decided my aim, consistent with our Armoured Brigade's declared mission, would be to take and hold the enemy position marked as ‘Abbasides 1’. to achieve this, I would mount a concentric attack by my tank platoons, while the recce troops would watch and guard our flanks, about which I was rather nervous. 'Time spent in reconaisance is never wasted' they say; but our Brigade's mission, if not also our violated country's honour, seemed to call for early offensive action at all levels. 'One engages, then one sees', as Bonaparte reputedly said. Ever noticed that there seem to be military axioms or bons mots in support of most potential courses of action? Anyway, to business. working from the map (rather than the relatively new 3-d option) I dispersed my platoons in covered positions, out of line of sight of the enemy, distributing them over an arc from the north to the east, like a concave mirror focussed upon the objective. And with a watchful recce platoon at each tip of the arc.   You can skip most or all of this next bit if you're getting bored waiting for the first rounds to be fired; but looking at the map below and working clockwise, from the top: the group of 'pointy rectangles' left of our position 'Mithradates 2' (note the green/white/red Iranian flag) is one of my two mech infantry/recce platoons, in M113 APCs.   Clustered either side of 'Mithradates 2' itself are six red diamonds, representing my two right-flank M60 platoons, backed into the same woods and also facing south, ready to jump off.   To their east, concealed in a patch of scrub nestling in a right-angle bend of an irrigation channel, are the five red diamonds of my strongest tank paltoon, near our position 'Xerxes 3' and also facing south.   South-east of them is my fourth and final tank platoon, facing east from a strip of wood on the eastern margins of a larger forest, the green triangle amongst the red ones denoting that's the tank I will occupy when I start (which I forgot about).   And finally, to their south-west, marked in orange because I have currently selected their unit icon (seen bottom centre of the screen) is my second mech infantry platoon.     Ok pay attention again now, please. Here's how my plan was going to work. As is done in real life, I tend to divide these things into successive phases. In Phase 1, the recce platoons would sit tight and watch the flanks. The two tank platoons to the west and north-north-west of ‘Abbasides 1’ had further to go to that enemy position, so they alone would start moving.

    Phase 2 would kick in when the first two tank platoons were roughly half-way to the objective, having perhaps drawn the attention of the enemy in their direction. At this point, the other two M60 platoons to the north, closer to the objective, would begin their attack. I intended that all four tank platoons would hit the objective at roughly the same time. I had further decided to play the tactical phase mainly from the platoon to the north-north west. This was the one with five tanks, rather than the usual three and as it neared the objective I intended to slow it down. Its role would be primarily as a reserve, uncommitted and therefore ready to deal with anything unexpected; but also ready to provide a base of fire, to cover the other three platoons as they closed in on to the objective. This was the bit where things were most likely to go awry, and so it proved.

    In Phase 3, with ‘Abbasides 1’ occupied and the defenders destroyed - I hoped - my tanks would ‘go firm’ on the objective while the recce troops, in their thinner-skinend APCs, moved up to rejoin and provide some 'boots on the ground' to help us hold onto the key point we had just secured.

    For whatever reason, in all the missions I’ve so far played in the Iran-Iraq campaigns, I have yet to see or be given any air or indirect fire support, which seemed to be absent tonight, too. Artillery and aircraft icons remained resolutely greyed out, on the tactical map. I would have quite liked to put in some artillery preparation and perhaps lay some smoke to cover open flanks, but it this option was anywhere available, its presence eluded me.

    SABOW has a good set of tools to give units their orders, but I’m not sure to what extent you can ‘layer’ these. In M1TP2, for example, you could give each platoon quite elaborate sequences of instructions, like ‘Move fast from here to there; on arrival, face this direction, fire at will and wait for 60 seconds; then move over there, face that way and halt’. Quite capable, but co-ordination between units could be tricky, even though you usually had only between one and three platoons to worry about. Anyhow, for this SABOW mission I decided I would issue each unit's orders at the start of each Phase. 'Keep it simple, stupid' often works quite well for me, for some reason I've never really paused to ponder.

    As for tools for marking up the map with your planned moves and actions, I may be wrong but I don’t think SABOW allows me to draw phase lines or place other markers on the map, as if on an overlay, the way the Steel Beasts Mission Editor does for its scripted missions. However, it would have been helpful if, having clicked on a spot to designate it as the objective or a waypoint, it didn't just flash briefly; I'd have liked it if both the target and the unit's route there were marked on the map, so you could see the paths you had set for each unit. Maybe this can be displayed and I have somehow or other turned it off, I’m not sure! Something to check, ahead of next time.   Ok, ok, it's getting boring again. H Hour. Tme to cross Start Lines, marked or not, and get the show on the road. I kicked off Phase 1 by giving my two left-hand tank platoons the order to attack. Everyone else would wait in cover, for now. The tanksim element now loaded up and I found myself in the command tank of the left-hand platoon, not the other, 5-tank platoon that I had decided to concentrate on. It being pitch dark, it took me a little while to notice and switch to the 5-tank platoon. See anything in the screenshot below? No? Neither could I, hardly. But there are at least two M60s in that shot, one right in the middle. They are from my left-hand platoon, seen before I switched to the 5-tank platoon, further north.     That platoon now needed to advance south-south-west alongside an irrigation channel, then swing right at a right-angle corner in the channel and attack ‘Abbasides 1’, due east from there. Lots of good landmarks en route equals less scope to get lost in the dark. As I‘m not sure how to set up routes with a dog-leg or intermediate waypoint(s) and didn’t want to use the faster but less cautious, less tactical ‘Move’ order, I ordered this platoon to attack their intended ‘waypoint’ first, at the corner of the irrigation channel. When they got there, I’d re-direct them, to the east. I was keenly conscious that I might be setting myself up to be smack in the middle of some careful co-ordination of platoons right about the time the enemy might decide to make a bid for some of my attention. But I decided to crack on.   To be sure, in the 3-d world I could see diddly much of the time. But various tank noises - and the fact that the little vehicle symbols in the map view started almost impreceptibly to come to life - suggested that Phase 1 had in fact begun. It was time to check out the view through my active IR systems and see (hopefully literally) how things were panning out, on the ground.   ...to be continued!

    IL-2+CUP - Flying Tigers
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    To war in the China-Burma-India theatre with the American Volunteer Group!   There can be few more famous flying units in the Second World War than the group of volunteer fighter pilots recruited in 1941 by retired US Army Captain Claire L. Chennault to help China turn the tables in the beleagured country's air war against the Japanese. Flying Curtiss P-40B Tomahawks diverted from planned deliveries to the RAF, the three squadrons of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) soon found themselves pitched alongside RAF and Dutch comrades into a desperate, losing battle against the post-Pearl Harbour Japanese flood tide, notably in Burma. The AVG and RAF initially mounted a spirited air defence of the capital Rangoon. But as enemy ground forces swept towards them, capturing airfields closer and closer to the city, their task became increasingly hopeless and in the end, abortive.   Nicknamed 'Flying Tigers' from the insignia devised from them by Disney, the unit was of course famous for a different marking - the gaudy 'Sharkmouth' on the noses of their P-40s, inspired it is said by a similar marking seen on a photo of a 112 Squadron RAF Tomahawk, itself supposedly inspired in turn by the 'Haifisch' marking carried by Bf 110 heavy fighters of ZG 76.   Fame came early to the Flying Tigers, not least thanks to the 1942 film starring John Wayne, no less, that many of us will remember from later screenings on TV. The characterisations appear but crude stereotypes today, but at the time, the desperate and destructive war in the Far East was at its height.     Thanks to Chennault's experience in theatre, the Flying Tigers were early pioneers of the sort of 'hit and run', 'boom and zoom' tactics that soon became widely adopted, for combating the more nimble but less powerful Japanese fighters. The AVG fought shoulder to shoulder with British and Commonwealth comrades in Burma and after the latter's fall, to defend China's vital lifeline of supplies flown over the 'hump' from India. But those battles and others against Japanese offensives in China, were fought mainly by the AVG's USAAF successors, who inherited the nickname and the fighting reputation of the original group, which was disbanded in July 1942.   The campaign There have been several AVG campaigns for IL-2 over the years but the one I'm flying here is SAS_Monty's, which was designed for the modified 4.12 version of the sim, which is what I'm mostly flying at the moment, since the arrival of the Combined User Patch (CUP) mod. You can find the download link, a campaign video and some more info, here. Another attraction for me is that the campaign features the defence of Burma, which I had read about in the detailed and generally excellent first volume of Grub Street's aptly-named South-East Asia air war history, 'Bloody Shambles'. Fans of Kipling will relish the opportunity to fight (altogether now) 'On the road to Mandalay/Where the flying fishes play/And the sun comes up like thunder/Out'a China, cross the bay'. It ain't half hot, mum!   But enough of references to now politically-incorrect writer-poets and BBC TV comedies about the vital role of Concert Parties in the war in the Far East.   If you are expecting to be pitched straight into desperate dogfights against Nates, Oscars and Sallys - to use the Allied reporting names for the Imperial Japanese Army's Ki-27 and Ki-43 fighters and Ki-21 bombers - well, steady there, (flying) tiger. Battleship Row at Pearl still lies undisturbed and the war in the Pacific, unstarted. Your first job - after watching the neat black & white opening video 'track' which accompanies a narrative intro to the AVG -  is a ferry flight in a C-47, from Rangoon up to the AVG's real-life training base further north, at Toungoo.     This starts well enough, with time to admire the plentiful scenery at busy Mingaladon airfield, just north of capital Rangoon.     Like the P-40s you'll be flying later, the two C-47s on this flight - we should probably call them DC-3s, in keeping with the secrecy necessarily surrounding this surrogate US intervention - may be ex-USAAF; but for now, they're the property of the Government of nationalist Chiang Kai Shek's Republic of China. And marked accordingly. The USA isn't in this war, officially...not just yet, anyway.     I'm not a big fan of civvy flight sims but I must admit I got a certain amount of fun out of flying my Dakota, as the C-47 is generally better known in the UK. It took a lot of key tapping - no fancy HOTAS setups here - but in the end I was able to trim her nicely to climb 'hands off', although what I expect was a bit of a crosswind, or maybe a bit of aileron trim she needed, made occasional corrections necessary to keep wings level.       The flight up north in a heavily-laden transport was actually like one of those civilian flying challenges in FSX. The tricky bit was...well, not my pet hate, formation flying, since you don't especialy have to fly in close company with the other aircraft on this trip, though he will tell you off on the radio if you become too independent. It's first, (slowly) climbing through the clouds - a good idea, to avoid colliding with the Pegu Yomas which rise across your fligth path.       You get radio becaon fixes displayed every so often but if like me, you generally 'cheat' by leaving switched on the minimap path and your aircraft's icon, such things aren't really needed.   Having got above the darkening clouds, all was well, for a while. I tried to listen in to radio stations duing the flight, as the mission brief recommends, but though I tuned into both BBC World Service and Radio Honolulu, reception seemed basically non-exstent. So much for listening to Vera Lynn's latest number, to while away the dull bit of the flight.   The next fun comes when it's time to descend through the cloudbase. At first all looked well, with the tree-covered foothills falling away beneath usand paddy fields appearing ahead. There's a great new Burma map included with CUP and I'm assuming this is it.     The cloud ceiling was quite low and when I got to that level, the weather was suddenly awful, with visibility to match and lightning flashing, in and below the clouds, as the rain lashed down all the while.       Then, in the deteriorating weather, there's the challenge of finding my destination. Finally, I actually had to land there, which was going to be tricky enough in the pouring rain, not least because the layout of Toungoo airfield was unknown to me and was going to be invisible in the murk, until i was pretty well on top of it.     in the circumstances, I decided to let the autopilot handle the last leg and I'm glad that I did, because two interesting things happened, that I might otherwise have missed. First, during a spell of slightly clearer weather, we suddenly did a supply drop, which I hadnt been expecting.     Next, I had a great view of Toungoo itself, the town not the airfield. At first, I thought this was Fort Dufferin, famous for a 14th Army battle to evict the Japanese in 1945. But that's in a different part of Burma. It was quite a sight, nevertheless, worth seeing, if not worth going to see, as the famous diarist Dr Johnston once said of the Giant's Causeway (sorry, to anyone from the Burmese or Northern Ireland tourist boards, who might happen to be reading this).     Happily, the AI co-pilot to whom I had turned over our aeroplane seemed to know the area well enough, for despite the murk he made a faultless, if somewhat unorthodox, partial, circuit, followed by a fine landing which I would have struggled to match, at the best of times.     His ground handling was pretty good, too, and we were soon stopped next to the other C-47/DC-3/Dakota.     Now, perhaps, we could get down to business! But, as in real life, Claire Chennault had other plans for his newly-arrived tiger cubs.   ...to be continued!

    Il-2+CUP - Spitfire Scramble
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    Some Battle of Britain action in Il-2's new supermod!   Well, I said I would and I did. After stooging around in the dark (in both senses of the expression!) with a few missions in a Lancaster campaign in the last IL-2 mission report, I decided that I would transfer back to Fighter Command, for my next campaign with the recently-released Community User Patch (CUP) for Il-2 1946. In fact I also turned the clock back, from the winter of 1941-1942 to the summer of 1940, famous for the Battle of Britain. The resulting mission report features SAS~Monty's 'Spitfire Scramble' campaign, which you can find out about here. Though made for the former's earlier TFM mod, I'm indebted to Griffon_301 over on the SAS CUP forum for reporting that 'Spitfire Scramble' seems to work fine in the new CUP mod.   Neither the aircraft nor the campaign need any introduction here, so let's get down to the detail. I'm flying with No. 152 (Fighter) Sqaudron, based until Spring 1941 at RAF Warmwell, close to the south coast of England and part of 10 Group, covering the south west of the country. There's a good squadron history site here.   The first mission is a familiarisation flight that starts with one of the formation takeoffs that are one of the trademarks of the 4.12 version of Team Daedalos's modded version of IL-2, on which CUP is based. No need to wait in the traditional Il-2 conga line, to take off, now...at least, in campaigns or missions that are designed to take advantage of this feature.     Our aircraft for this campaign seem to be the Mark II version of Reginald Mitchell's classic, with a more powerful Merlin engine but still with eight .303 machine guns rather than the later Hispano 20mm cannon. Anyway, they carry the Sky Type S spinners (previously black) and rear fuselage band in that same light colour, which if I recall right were introduced in late 1940, which would also be right for the Mk II.   While my Spitfire looks great, RAF Warmwell is another visual highlight of this campaign, which the first, familiarisation missions gives you an opportunity to appreciate. Details abound, as you can see in the screenshot below. If you look closely enough, you can see that there are some airmen 'fell in' on parade (or 'formation' to use the US term), just to the right of the flagstaffs.     The first mission also gives you the chance to 'suss out' the local topography, which is also nicely rendered. For example, you can make out the little port of Weymouth in the screenshot below, nestling in the distinctive local coastline. Part of our role will likely be the defence of the major port and naval base of Southampton, which is not far along the coast to the east and it's good to see the local landmarks accurately represented.     This report features the campaign's second mission. Unfortunately I seem to have done something wrong during installation, because the usual text briefing panel is completely blank. However, the campaign's instructions make it clear that you are a lowly Flight Sergeant and your job is basically to follow your leader. Besides, anyone with even the slightest notion of what went on during the Battle of Britain doesn't need to be told what to expect: 'Get one up!' as Robert Shaw's gruff Squadron Leader character put it, during the eponymous movie, and get stuck into the Luftwaffe.   The mission loaded and I wasted no time starting up, while I tested my controls and set my flaps. The others didn't waste any time either and were soon away, leaving me roaring after them in a virtual haze of burnt high octane aviation spirit and relishing the realism of a decent formation takeoff in this classic air combat sim, still at the top of its game, over thirteen years from its first release.       That was the easy part, done and dusted. But this Spitfire scramble was for no cross-country jaunt, I knew that much. This time, I knew we'd be up against Goering's finest.   ...to be continued!

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


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