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    'Central Atlantic worse than Biscay'
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    U-105 off Freetown, Sierra Leone, September 1941 One of my favourite U-boat books is Robert C Stern's Battle Beneath the Waves (Cassell, 2002) which tells the stories of selected boats in both World Wars. He recounts that shortly before she was lost off West Africa after an unusual surface slugging match with USS Buckley in May 1944, Type IX boat U-66, harassed from the air, signalled to Befehlshaber der U-boote 'Central Atlantic Worse than Biscay'. The latter bay being traditionally where air power made life most difficult for U-boats by about 1942. Well, that's how I felt, not long after my role-played Flotille Chef at the online Doenitz Elite Flotilla assigned us to return to the seas off Freetown for all of two weeks, for our second full patrol. The full story of the first patrol, written in the form of illustrated extracts from U-105's Kreigstagebuch or war diary, you can find here: http://www.donitzeliteflotilla.com/forum/index.php?topic=3368.0 (this was recorded as two patrols as it involved a refuelling stop at a covert supply ship in the Canary Islands - all very hush-hush, or sehr Gekados if you like). Second patrol, things started happily enough at Lorient. Crew on deck, we slipped out of our berth, to the accompaniment of the quayside band playing and the nurses throwing flowers. Clear of port and with the open seas ahead, we bade farewell to our minesweeper escort. There was nothing much to tell for the next ten days or so, as we ploughed our way southwards at economical cruising speed, increasing revolutions to transit the Bay of Biscay and the seas west of the big enemy naval and air base at Gibraltar. Sometimes the weather was good; other times, not so good. Other times again, it was a bit of a mixture. Our first encounter came en route and in darkness, when our alert bridge watch spotted a steamer showing no lights and sailing independently. She was unarmed, so we sank her with our 10.5cm deck gun. A few days later, also in darkness, the tables were turned. We were surprised on the surface by two escorts, obviously radar-equipped, who drove us down and depth-charged us mercilessly. But fortunately without serious effect. All we could do was track them on the hydrophones, while creeping away. We escaped eventually, and ran into a second freighter a few days later. It didn't go well for her... ...and she slipped below the waves soon after desperately firing off some futile distress flares. About the time we arrived in our patrol area SSW of Freetown, the weather finally improved again. So, why 'worse than Biscay', then? Well, that'll come next! ...to be continued!

    Il2 DD Update Dev Blog 281 "Typhoon Mk.Ib, Ju 88C-6"
    76.IAP-Blackbird
    By 76.IAP-Blackbird,
    Dear Pilots!

    Behold the mighty Typhoon Mk.Ib in action! Coming soon to Battle of Normandy! It is now in Beta and is scheduled for release in June. It's another beauty by our talented team. This beast is armed with 4 x 20 mm Hispano cannons and can carry multiple rockets like the RP-3 in HE and AP flavors or a pair of 250 lb. or 500 lb. bombs. The cockpit is another tubular framework popular with British designers of the period. It just looks angry with those rockets slung under the wings!

    The Typhoon Mk.Ib helped pave the way for the Allied invasion of Normandy and soldiered on throughout the war pounding German ground units at every opportunity. We will feature no less than 21 Typhoon squadrons in our Normandy career with 4 of them flyable initially. 

    Jason has created another special poster. This time inspired by the beautiful emblems of Typhoon equipped squadrons. These emblems were created by our artwork partner (and newly minted rocket engine engineer) Isaac "SolidKreate" Chavira. 

    Full Size Poster HERE.



    We hope you enjoy these screenshots. They were a blast to make.

        
        
        
      

    Also in the works for Normandy is the solid nose Junkers Ju 88 C-6 which will make for an interesting maritime patrol and ground attack aircraft. Is it as effective and versatile as the American A-20B has proven to be? We shall find out!

       

    And finally, we have built a big 380 mm gun that was known as the Todt Battery. In BON it will try, and in real life it really did try to pound the Allied invasion forces into oblivion. During the real invasion it stayed operational until late September 1944 when it was finally captured by Canadian troops. Check out this short video as we test its animations.   

     

    In other important news - next week, we plan to make an announcement about some additional content we plan to add to the Great Battles series, we hope you will be happy. Stay tuned!

    See you in the sky and on the battlefield!

    The Sturmovik Team

    You can discuss this post HERE.

    WOFF BH&H II PATCH 1.11 RELEASED
    Polovski
    By Polovski,
    Hi all, today we have released an update for WOFF BH&H II to V1.11. Version 1.11    20 May 2021

    1) Fixed a ground unit collision avoidance issue for aircraft that would occur under certain circumstances when landing.
    2) Aircraft fixes; - Sopwith Strutter A2 - fixed none working compass in VC, fixed broken pulsator.
    - Sopwith Camel & Camel Bentley version - improved rear wood combing texture seen from cockpit view.
    - Sopwith Camel Bentley - fixed underneath cowl plate. See our website downloads page for more - BH&H II Download Page

    Il2 DD Update Dev Blog 280 "BON Edition"
    76.IAP-Blackbird
    By 76.IAP-Blackbird,
      Dear Friends!

    Today’s DD is pretty straightforward, we’d simply like to show you some shots of content that we have in the works for both Battle of Normandy and Flying Circus: Volume II. 

    First, we have multiple renders of new objects, vehicles and ships that are being created by a development partner of ours. They are coming along nicely as you can see. They will be fully integrated into the engine very soon. 

        
         
     

    Next, we have the first shots of the Fokker D.VIII which is development by our friends at Ugra Media. This awesome high-winged monoplane will grace your installs next month assuming everything goes to plan. We plan to release it along with the Typhoon Mk.Ib (which we showed in a DD269) in our next update, which should happen by mid-June. Again, assuming final preparations go well. 

      
      

    Also, our great friend Luke 'Requiem' Campbell has created a very helpful video on how to operate the GAZ-MM 72-K and improve your accuracy when shooting at planes and vehicles. Check it out! Thank you to Requiem for making another great training video!

    GAZ-MM 72-K Steam Release!


    Additionally, we have added the GAZ-MM 72-K to our Steam store today where it along with the official webstore will have it on discount for another week. You can pick it up HERE. 

      All other work continues and our efforts to expand the team a bit so we can finish Normandy as planned continues. Stay tuned to our DDs all spring and summer long as we continue to build out BON and FC2! 

    See you in the skies!

    The Sturmovik Team

    Grey Wolves Expansion - OneAlex Edition
    33LIMA
    By 33LIMA,
    A new standalone mega-mod that brings all that's best to Silent Hunter 3 SH3 got justifiably rave reviews when first released in 2005. Arguably (and I'd be one of those arguing it) it's still far the best U-boat simulation. And can be much improved by the huge number of user-made mods available for it (many of which you can find in the Doentiz Elite Flotilla mediafire SH3 archive http://www.donitzeliteflotilla.com/forum/index.php?topic=1.0 ) . Notably, as every SH3 aficionado will know, there's a number of mega-mods available which provide a single major overhaul, often with optional submods included. One such, and possibly the most popular, is the Grey Wolves Expansion 3 (aka GWX) whose Gold edition is what I've been playing until very recently. Now available is a comprehensive further development of GWX - the OneAlex Edition. You can see the mod's intro video here - the download link is in its description: Silent Hunter 3 - GWX Onealex Edition - YouTube  This comes as a compressed file of just over three meg and unzips to under nine. While nominally a mod, it's self-contained and fully functional when unzipped - it doesn't need enabled or installed onto an existing installation. You may need to use a utility called Multi SH3 to create the dedicated subfolder it needs in 'My Documents' for career files but that can also be easily created manually eg 'My documents/SH3' if you unzip the mod to its default folder. Could hardly be simpler. GWX OneAlex Edition comes with:       - the features of the GWX mod, including harbour traffic;       - the German U-Boat Compilation mod (GUC) which greatly improves the boats themselves, including enabling off-duty crew to be assembled on deck in harbour, the battle flag flown or taken down, and victory pennants to be flown from your periscope on return;       - many other improvements, including better crew and uniform textures;       - an already-inbuilt widescreen mod so it's 1920x1080 compatible out of the box;      - Jonesoft Generic Mod Enabler (JSGME), plus a set of submods including a range of skins for Type VII and IX U-boats;      - Silent Hunter 3 Commander (SH3C), optional but regarded by many as a must-have utility for the sim. As an indication, this is a typical stock boat, a Type VII in this case - Nice, but the skin is relatively low-resolution and some details are simplified, like the insulators and tensioners on the jumping wire This is one of the OneAlex, GUC-based Type VIIs... ...and this shows the conning tower detail, albeit it's a larger Type IX... Skins are higher resolution and detail is much better. The next pics show the 'crew on deck' feature and harbour traffic, either moored like the destroyer... ...or moving like our minesweeper escort... ...which we will follow until we get into open water. Another nice feature, shared with some other recent mods, is the addition of animated water streams from the holes in the boats' free-flooding casings. The seas are often much less calm in SH3 and OneAlex Edition does a particularly good job of bringing them to life. Bridge detail is excellent. A nice touch is that unlike in stock SH3, the UZO binocular sight is not permanently fixed to its mount (lower right in the pic below), and when you do fit it, the UZO is animated, and rotates. Internal detail is also up to a high standard. In this control room view, you can just about see the open circular hatch (closed in stock SH3) into the commander's compartment... ...opposite which is the radio room. I'm not sure but I think OneAlex deliberately left out the extended interiors made for the Type VII boats, which in the base GUC mod include engine rooms, crew accommodation and bow/stern torpedo rooms. Torpedo impacts are also very well done, with debris flying and splashing into the sea. Amongst the many included optional skins is this one for a late Type IX, which has the two-tier flak platform (but kept its deck gun as many Type IXs did) and GEMA 'rigid radar' on the upper front of the conning tower. Apparently it is likely that U-boats, unlike surface ships, always had dark grey, not red, anti-fouling paint below the waterline. But red certainly looks good! GWX Onealex Edition also includes a fully-updated sound mod, which fans of the great movie 'Das Boot' will recognise! What's not to like? So far my biggest gripe is that in the 'follow your boat' external ('Ship') camera (key <), mousewheel or tab zoom doesn't work, and can't be made to, it seems. You can move the camera closer but your perspective becomes exaggerated and less attractive the closer you get, unlike 'true' zoom'. in action, the mod looks and feels great! The author is still releasing updated versions (I'm at 1.46 at time of typing) in the light of experience and is obviously very committed. There are other good mega-mods out there, but this new effort really has a lot going for it already! Highly recommended, but somebody, please fix the Ship Camera mousewheel zoom!

    WOFF BH&H II PATCH 1.10 RELEASED
    Polovski
    By Polovski,
    A new update for WOFF BH&H II is now available. Version 1.10    14 May 2021

    1) SPAD VII - fixed mirrored mapping on the left horizontal.  Also improved horizontals and elevators mapping.
    2) N17 Bis - fixed duplicate backplate for airspeed indicator in external view. Also added some cockpit parts into lower level of detail (LOD) model.
    3) Revised rain effects for some heavy rain types. See our website downloads page for more - BH&H II Download Page

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


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