33LIMA

'I don't really care how wide a circuit you make, just stay well away from those bloody RDF masts, got it?'

I reckon the attempt to make this Ju88C look more like a bomber would have worked a little better if they had also painted frames on the nose... ...but it didn't seem much hindrance to their combat effectiveness...

This crew, on the other hand, called it about right...

An illustration of the dividing line between 'persistent' and 'dumb'. Theresa May to note :)

Why bother with pesky airfields? A 'floatplane fighter' seemed like such a good idea... ...we even tried it again, later. Banzai!

'Do not dogfight with the Zeke 52' (from a US comparative assessment, c.1944).

Don't mess with Tempests...

Whoops-a-daisy...go on, admit it, we've all been there...

This creature would look quite at home in Crimson Skies...

Do heat-seeking missiles work in Il-2 CUP? Looks like they do...

Possibly. Not sure where that one came from - might have been a QMB job. Looks like a Finnish Moko Morane or whatever they called them, with Armée de l'Aire roundels, but they look part of the skin, not decals.

Scenes from the 'Battle of France':

Meanwhile - or rather, somewhat later - on the Ostfront...

I take it he said as he walked away, 'You should see the balloon!'

I dunno...I might have to soften my dislike of the AI in CloD. Just a bit, since it shows occasional signs of being able to fight as well as fly, though sometimes, in the same mission, it seems to be able to do neither. Next mission in the RAF redux campaign is a transit flight from Hawkinge to Manston to join my new squadron and swap my Hurricane for a Spitfire. The chap who is supposed to come with me appears reluctant to take off. While an incoming section from my old squadron loses a machine which crashes near Hawkinge, for no apparent reason. Perhaps my companion was wise to stay on the ground. I carry on alone after a few circuits, and my companion eventually shows up. We run into some scripted bandits - just a couple of 109s, apparently - and in the ensuing tussle I get one, but another crashes. Not to be outdone, my companion, whom he was chasing, crashes too. Who made up the other losses, I have no idea. I actually manage to shoot down a 109. They have an odd way of flying when chased, constantly adjusting their bank angle with what seems excessive ease, which if nothing else makes them a more difficult target. Perhaps the reason you do not see anything like that in real gun camera footage is because the ones that didn't do that are the ones that didn't get shot down. Though the laws of aerodynamics may have more to do with the apparent absence of the odd banking behaviour. Soon afterwards, I run into a couple of Messerschmitt 110s. I nail one of these, too. Their evasive moves seem more realistic, with little or none of the continual changes of bank angle that 109s exhibit. Here's my victim just as he bites the dust. I then have a go at this 110's wingman... ...but predictably, I run out of ammo. I find it takes a while to 'get your eye in' with the gunnery any new sim you play, and it doesn't help much if you're jumping between at least two (CloD and BoB2, in my case). I confess that my shooting in CloD is pretty dire at the moment, for which this fellow was doubtless grateful. I then decide to resume my transit flight and head for the deck while throwing in a few changes of course. This is where I learn the hard way not to write off the CloD air-to-air AI. The next thing I know, there's this 'whomp-whomp-whomp' sound - apart from some of the R/T calls, sound is one of CloD's strengths - and tracers and their smoke trails are whizzing overhead past my canopy. My effort to get out of the way fails miserably. The only results are a missing wingtip... ...and a dead pilot. Here's the beggar who got me and avenged his comrade. The thin trail of fuel or Glycol shows that I did him some damage before I ran out of rounds. There were several other 110s in the air... ...as well as these Wimpeys, which although apparently over friendly territory, were taking a bit of a chance beettling about over southern England in daylight at this point in the war. As in the Battle of Heligoland Bight in '39, the 109s and 110s would have probably had them for breakfast. Happily, I see that you can re-fly failed missions such as this, and that's what I'll be doing. I'm still very disappointed that the obvious effort that has been put into CloD by the original developers and later helping hands has left so very many rough edges. Had all the included features worked well, or even adequately, Cliffs of Dover could have been the contender for sim greatness that some of its adherents rather blithely claim. But in anything like its current form, it lags very far behind Battle of Britain II as an effective and convincing simulation of flying air combat in the Battle of Britain. Still, CloD has enough redeeming qualities to keep its place on my hard drive.

Some more pics. First from a stock 110 mission to Manston. Nice, but they do tend to show up CloD's trademark AAA (Awful Anti-Aliasing). This Hurricane seemed harder to hit again, after I shot off his fin and rudder. Next, another couple of pics from another stock mission - intercepting the non-dive-bombing dive bombers which level-bomb Tangmere. The next few are from the most recent missions I've flown in the RAF redux campaign. This one is basically a re-worked version of the stock mission involving an intercept of a Heinkel 115 floatplane, complete with new briefing based on a different backstory. It still has some rather unlikely elements, like the scramble being prompted by a Sunderland flying boat spotting its Luftwaffe opposite number off Calais - in daylight. In the second pic, there's a 109 slipping past on my right, which I happily ignored, because (i) I was out of rounds (ii) I had no way that worked of ordering my wingmen to go get him and (iii) I bet, successfully, on him ignoring us too, knowing that he was probably programmed to do something else and interrupting that 'did not compute'. Or maybe the Sunderland was in the next mission, which involves a squadron scramble against a raid implausibly identified as Bf109 fighter bombers, the most implausible bit perhaps being that the briefing identifies their sub-type, their German 'jabo' designation, and their unit (Erprobungsgruppe 210). Evidently, Fighter Command has some kind of God Mode we knew nothing about at the time, something much more potent than mere RDF/radar. Like most missions involving fighter combat - I never saw a bomb-laden 109, just regular ones - this tended to highlight CloD's indifferent air-to-air AI. And the awful and repetitive calls of 'I've got your six', 'I'll fly your wing', and 'Pass the sick bag' (ok I made up the last one but it would not have been out of place). Oh, what a pity it is, that this one doesn't play anything like as well as it looks - which is pretty good despite having tree-rows not hedgerows, lunatics driving motor transport on airfields and that 'AAA'. Lack of any visible ability to control wingmen when flying as a section leader is another big issue. These two dutifully followed me around until I made it too hard for them during the dogfight, rejoined when I returned to base, and then seemed at a bit of a loose end when I got bored with several refusals and landed. On a subsequent hop, my surviving wingman did get down when I landed, but in the form of the proverbial smokin' hole in the ground.

The visuals in CloD can be nice, although object draw-in range is inadequate even on high settings (Dover's prominent jetties are invisible in the pic below and pop into view - in sections! - as you come close)... ...apart from that and the poop antialiasing, which seems immune to tweaking... ...and the AI is mostly notable for being awful, illustrated by these Heinkels breaking formation when attacked and then throwing their planes about like they were fighters, not laden bombers - note the two He111s, top centre, in a sustained c.45 degree climb. This is with the Feb 2019 TF update, too, so is bang up-to-date. 'A' for effort, but whatever the opposite end of the scale is for achievement, from a single player perspective anyway. A long, long way from the classic status I reckon Rowan's Battle of Britain and A2A's BoB II have earned.

You don't need to be able to mod FE or FE2 to be able to fly several times the number of planes in OFF or WoFF (and in different theatres, not just the Western Front). Just how to install other people's mods :) The drill is different between FE and FE2 but second nature after doing it once or twice, just get a mod with a decent readme covering installation. Gets a bit more complicated only if you need to install an FE mod in FE2 or vice-versa, but nothing more complicated than moving files in Windows Explorer or editing an file in Wordpad. The benefits of making the effort to learn the drill speak for themselves... IIRC, in FE or FE2, Alt+N 'warps' you to the waypoint before your target area (which waypoint you can drag about in the briefing map, to give you a longer run-in if you wish).

A mission later, and the convoys are still all tankers. Only one of them, in this case, with five destroyers for escort. Which it will need badly if it holds its present course, which is straight for occupied France. 'Red' McColpin is now a section leader but still getting mostly improbable missions, this one being to rescue 111 Squadron who are in trouble with some 109s, further south over the Channel. Why they're in trouble I soon found out, since in CloD the 109s seem to be able to climb like F-16s from level flight, and fly on forever while streaming fuel or glycol. I shouldn't be surprised, really, as the 110s can roll like FW190s. And of course all aircraft employ a Klingon Cloak of Invisibility when more than about a mile or so away, and are hard to identify when you can see them due to the terrible anti-aliasing. It's a wonder I ever hit anything. This time out, the only thing I managed to shoot was screenshots of my aircraft. For lil 'ol single player me, CloD Blitz Edition is a really nice plane simulator, with some promising but half-built or poorly implemented air combat features. Perhaps the TF 5.0 patch, or more interim updates, will make a significant difference, whenever it arrives. Apart from seemingly-drunken airmen careering wildly around the airfield in any available vehicle, and that the aircraft operate from the hangars not 'dispersal' with blast pens, the airfield ambience is pretty good, complete with realistic fly-by sounds. Speaking of sounds, as it seems impossible to eliminate the stutter every flipping time somebody opens his mouth on the R/T (believe it or not, the recommended solution is to delete, move or rename the radio traffic sound files!) I will have to see if I can identify and eliminate at least the worst of them, including the awful and repetitive 'I'll fly your wing!' and 'I've got your six!'; phrases that might fit Top Gun nicely, but I doubt that any self-respecting WW2 RAF pilot would have used.

Meanwhile, back over the Channel, apart from the escorting destroyer, the convoy is composed of...yes, you guessed, tankers.

74 Squadron knocks down a Heinkel in the London intercept mission. I'm not sure if the February 2019 TF update changed this mission, but the small formation of bombers seems to break up more readily than the last time I played it, with the Heinkels throwing themselves all over the sky when attacked, in rather unrealistic fashion. I lost interest in this performance after knocking down a bomber and went sightseeing instead. Fields and trees instead of warehousing around much of the Royal, East India and Millwall Docks looks very silly, and the only cargo ships I've seen anywhere in CloD so far are tankers. The main landmarks are reasonably well done, though, and the CloD Blitz engine and flak sounds are really good.

Red McColpin's Hurricane, 607 Squadron, in the RAF Redux campaign.