33LIMA

Flying a sortie in the RAF campaign This is my second mission report from my new (or at least, new-found) toy - A2A's Battle of Britain II - Wings of Victory. In case anyone's wondering, I didn't set out for them all to be called 'A bad day for...' - that's just how it's working out, so far. A bit of a give-away, or spoiler if you like, but I trust it won't last, and that future mission report titles will be a tad more cheerful. Anyhow now that I've made a start with a BoB2 campaign, I'm wondering why I didn't take to it years ago, when I first got Rowan's original, or A2A's remake. Especially since both are so much better with the BDG updates. Now, you can even play a more conventional campaign, as described in the comprehensive BoB2/BDG manual, which enables you to have a log book-carrying, squadron-based pilot persona. This uses the underlying dynamic campaign 'wargame' to generate your missions. But for now I'm doing a conventional BoB2 'commander' (not 'pilot') campaign. The main difference is that the commander version allows you to act as any and all of the Air Vice-Marshals commanding 10, 11 and 12 Groups, Fighter Command, plus jump in and fly any squadron scrambled or tasked to patrol, either on takeoff or on meeting the enemy. Also at other points but the latter is the most interesting, and enables the player to jump in just before the start of any air fight, in any of the aircraft in the squadron about to engage. I opted to start at the beginning of the first phase into which the Battle is conventionally divided - the channel convoy phase, starting 10 July 1940, just after the fall of France. Among the many options, you can set things so that the AI Luftwaffe you will be facing starts the battle mainly by attacking British coastal convoys ('historical' tactics), or using 'optimal' ones - which likely involves going for more beneficial targets earlier, like your airfields or aircraft factories. I opted for 'historical' and as expected, ended up with the RAF campaign AI flying standing patrols to protect convoys, plus scrambling squadrons to intercept raids as they come in. This campaign AI presents you with 'directives' which set rules your deployed forces will follow, and allows you both to vary these or create your own. It also takes decisions on what and when to scramble, abiding by these directives. The BDG manual gives excellent, detailed and illustrated advice on how to do all this, but the AI is quite good for the RAF anyway. I opted to accept all the defaults and let the AI fight the Battle, so that all I had to do was wait for something to happen and then dive in to any action that developed. As each campaign day accelerates and decelerates time as needed, you are not kept waiting staring at the map for long. And even while you are, it's a not uninteresting experience; you can watch convoys moving, patrols orbiting, raids developing and squadrons scrambling, while listening to reports as they come in. 'Hostile seven zero one is now a hundred plus' sounds positively sinister, even though spoken softly in the polite tones of an invisible but obviously efficient and very possibly pretty virtual 1940s WAAF at the plotting table. Above is my campaign map near the end of the first of three sections the campaign day is broken into - morning, afternoon and early evening. The aforementioned raid Hostile 701 is near bottom right, returning to base after attacking Convoy Jaunty (authentic convoy and squadron reporting names are a feature), which is the grey ship marker in the Channel between the headlands at Beachy Head to the west and Dungeness to the east. The blue and white markers are RAF fighter squadrons, either the convoy's standing patrols or those scrambled as the raid came in and now heading home. During this raid I jumped in with 79 Squadron as the leader (the top right blue/white marker) when it intercepted Hostile 701. Here I am contemplating the incoming raid, from a not-terribly favourable position... ...and here I am dealing with a Messerschmitt 110 which objected to our presence... But this mission report is about a sortie I flew the following day, 11th July. A convoy had left the dangers of the channel behind and sought safety off the North Sea port of Felixstowe. Not so safe, as it turned out, for Luftflotte 2 decided to have a go at them. Once again, we were up against a raid reported as 'a hundred plus'. Being keen, I accepted the first offer of combat that the campaign AI offered me, for the first squadron to sight the enemy in the air. This was no less than 242 (Canadian) Squadron, commanded by no less than Squadron Leader Douglas Bader. BoB2 being the stickler for unit-level historical detail that it is, it was no surprise when I therefore found myself in the cockpit not only of a Hurricane, and not only of one bearing authentic squadron codes ('LE') with each aircraft in the squadron with its own unique individual aircraft letter; but my mount was no less than the boss's own machine, LE-D, with my blue and red leader's flash below my starboard cockpit and the unofficial unit emblem, Adolph getting a kicking, adorning the nose. My Corgi diecast 1/72 has the leader's flash on the opposite side, the mirror image A (camouflage) Scheme, and is serial V7467 not P1966, but such minor details apart, BoB2's version is a pretty good replica. Would I do the illustrious pilot justice, whose flying boots this sortie had found me filling? Well, yes and no... ...to be continued!

Yes, that's what I'm worried about! They'll be 'marching up Whitehall' any day now, and it'll be all my fault!!!

Now you see them, now you don't... Unfamiliar with how to get the best from BoB2’s radio command menus, I had ordered everybody to get stuck in, of their own accord. As by that time our four vics - three Hurricanes each - was closing with the German raid from behind, I sort of expected they might open out a bit. But – the shortest distance between two points being the straight line I was flying – that the boys would stay more or less with me. My plan, such as it was, being that we would all wade into the enemy formations ahead, more or less together, just not in rigid formation. Alas, a quick look behind revealed that this plan had pretty well evaporated. I was alone. The rest of 242 had spread out behind me, the dispersed specks and white contrails indicating that the escorting 109s had arrived and that a general melée was in full swing. The airwaves had already begun to fill with the usual excited chatter. What to do? I don’t think there’s a way of recalling just your own section (3-plane vic), BoB2 not having the nested commands enabling you to choose whether the order you want to give is to your wingman/section. to a particular flight, or to the whole squadron. And anyhow, it looked a bit late to recall anybody. Either I rejoined them, and pitched into the air fight behind, or I took the opportunity to carry on and come in behind the now possibly unescorted bombers. I considered briefly, then chose to carry on. Keeping a wary eye on my tail. I edged out towards the right of the mass of contrailing enemy aircraft, picking out the right-hand Stuka for my attack, from below and behind out of his gunner’s field of fire. As I closed in, I noticed that my chosen Stuka had neither fixed undercarriage nor cranked wings. I was closing in on a bunch of snappers – Me 109s to be precise. All on my own. Well they hadn’t seen me, so I decided I’d press on and try to clobber one of them before the rest woke up to what was going on. My target first knew I was behind and below him only when I pressed the t*t and let fly with a short burst at eight times a thousand rounds a minute. Evidently somewhat put out by this, the 109 broke down and right towards some clouds, with me hard on his heels. The cloud cover didn’t save him but it may have saved me from his friends, whose reaction I could not see. After some more hits, the 109 went down towards the North Sea minus a significant part of his outer right wing. No need to follow that one down, he’s out of the fight if not doomed. In the circumstances, it’s more important that I avoid target fixation. That need was sharply brought home when, looking around, I suddenly saw a falling Spitfire, just above and to my right, emitting gouts of burning fuel as down he went. I hadn’t seen any Spits to that point, nor did I see his attacker. Not wanting to be the next victim, I pulled up and broke hard right and towards the nearest clouds. Finding myself alone again, I pulled clear of the clouds. Heading south again, I saw ahead of me that the rest of 242 was still hotly engaged, about where I last saw them. I could still hear their radio calls, including a few reporting that they were pretty well out of fuel. They must have been my boys, as I think that in BoB2, as in Fighter Command at that period, it’s one squadron per radio net. But how could they possibly be low on fuel? Damaged, perhaps? Either way, hopefully they tried to get down onto terra firma somewhere, while they could. Catching a call for help, I raced over to the scene of the action; but broke hard when sharp plinking sounds indicated hits on my airframe, from an unseen 109 behind me. He must have been moving a lot faster because he promptly overshot me and turned left. With me now after him. I got a couple of good bursts into him before he drew out of range and saw what might have been his canopy fly off, before he too went down somewhere below. Again, on my own in a dangerous place, I had better things to do that try to confirm his fate. Soon after, I spotted a second lone 109 over on my left, headed towards the coast, and again tried to catch him. He was too far away and going too fast - I could not gain any ground. I don’t have manual engine control active, but nevertheless I was trying to keep my engine boost gauge in the red only for short periods, concerned at seeing my oil temps up near that gauge’s limit. Eventually the 109, now just a speck, joined up with three or four others headed south. Together, they disappeared into the upper reaches of a cloudbank and I grabbed this opportunity to take my leave of them. I levelled off and came back onto a northerly course, just out to sea, now much lower of course from where I’d started. Where was everybody? The airwaves seemed to have gone quiet, no more cries of ‘Shoot him!’ or calls for help. At this lower level, all this bloody cloud very much limited one’s field of view. Where indeed was everybody? After a bit, I spotted a bunch of distant specks, which looked to be the raid making its way back down to the south, perhaps a little diminished in numbers and with one machine trailing smoke. No point going after them, I was low on ammo and my concern now was for my boys. Time to order a recall, which I did. I orbited, but no-one showed up. A request to report in produced a response from Blue 2…then silence. ‘Go home’ I ordered, and then set my own course back to Coltishall, up to the north-west.It wasn’t a long flight but it gave me plenty of time to wonder what I had done with the rest of the Squadron. I made a careful half-circuit on arrival... ... and, as if in mockery of my recent, lamentable performance as a squadron leader, I made the best landing I had ever managed in BoB or BoB2, in which getting down without lots of rattling, bouncing and maybe even a nose-over is much more difficult than in about any other sim I have played. On the ground as I came in, I could see Blue 2, rolling very slowly towards the hangars amidst a cloud of smoke, with no help from the fire truck or blood wagon. So that was it, just two out of twelve had got back. Crikey! And all I’d got in return was a couple of Probables. The debrief confirmed we had lost ten aircraft and nine pilots, all for claims of three Destroyed and another three Damaged, all 109s. BoB2 provides other status reports and I consulted the Squadron Diary for 242, which added the shocking detail that we reckoned we'd been up against over a hundred 109s, more than seventy 110s (which I for one never even identified) and thirty Stukas. That’s a really big fighter escort, especially for such an early phase of the Battle – equal numbers of fighters and bombers might be more usual in July. No wonder we got hammered! Goodness knows what happened to the convoy. Worse still, a look at the overall summary of claims and losses (‘Review’) indicated that in the first three days – it was actually July 12th, not the 11th as I mentioned originally – we had lost over 120 fighters, nearly four times what we’d claimed shot down! Such extremes seem to indicate I had messed up more than merely running the campaign or a squadron. It’s as if I have invoked hidden AI skill settings so the Luftwaffe are all set to ‘Nazi Superman’, while the RAF are all at ‘English Nanny’ – a bad illustration perhaps since though unable to speak from experience, by repute one English nanny is a match for any number of supermen, Nazi or otherwise J Apparently older versions of BoB2 had a bug whereby 2d (campaign) results might not match what was experienced in 3d (flying), but that was fixed and seems not the issue here anyway. Odd things can happen if you load a campaign from an old version of Bob2 into a more recent one, which I don’t think I did, although I confess to restarting the campaign at least once, not following the manual’s advice on naming conventions when saving, and loading saves indiscriminately between the two default names offered (BoB and Savegame). Anyhow, disaster after days via massively lopsided losses not being commonly reported from players, there’s something amiss here which I will need to troubleshoot and fix. Perhaps deleting my saved campaign files and starting one afresh would be worth trying. I’ll make some enquiries over at A2A, before I resume campaigning. In the meantime, there is plenty for me to do flying BoB2’s historical and training missions. And as experienced players have advised, that’s really the best way to build up before you pitch into the deep end, actually flying the Battle itself.

I finally come to grips with a classic, and realise what all the fuss is about! For some reason, train simulators do not make good subjects for combat reports. Though getting into them at last has been a lot of fun, which together with stuff outside of sim-land have kept me from doing more than very casual air combat simming...until now. Hence the long gap in mission reports here at CombatAce. For World War 1, I'm back with First Eagles 2, not least for its combination of good looks, very wide scope when modded, many very good features, and being fast to get back into, thanks to some of those aformentioned good features. For World War 2, it was time for something I hadn't seriously tried before...which applies to more than it should of the titles I've accumulated over the years, the good, the not-so-good and the relatively awful - anyone else remember Nations - Fighter Command? Nice planeset, pity about the flight models...and a few other details. The recent launch of OBD's follow-on to Wings over Flanders Fields, namely the first installment of Wings over the Reich, got me interested anew in one of my pet subjects of many years, the Battle of Britain. But not sadly in WotR, due to issues like very small German raids, limited comms including little or nothing from ground controllers (big raids and ground control should really be de rigeur for any self-respecting simulation of the Battle) and various lesser niggles, like some unmilitary scripting of what R/T traffic there is. I still have European Air War on my system but while it covers the Battle, it's only fired up for very occasional nostalgia trips, these days. I actually moderately enjoyed the Warbirds-based History Channel Battle of Britain - ok it's not one of the greats, but as well as flying a reasonably historical mission-set campaign in many BoB types, you can shoot at the ones with crosses from a destroyer's Oerlikon Gun.... And of course, I have played some missions from the Battle in modded Il-2 '46, this one being from the Spitfire Scramble campaign... But I have so far not invested in IL-2 Cliffs of Dover, with its strange planeset, strange-looking landscapes and most of all, limited single player content - coupled with high system requirements for what there is So I decided it was time to make a serious effort to get into Rowan's Battle of Britain (I still have the original boxed version, printed manuals and all). Or rather its more recent incarnation, A2A formerly Shockwave's Battle of Britain II - Wings of Victory, or BoB2 to its friends - who naturally include the Battle (of Britain) Development Group, who have done a great job ironing out wrinkles and adding features in a series of patches. Despite making my own map-based Battle of Britain wargame in the 1970s, I never more than dabbled in BoB or BoB2. Not so much because of niggles like planes in close formation sort of jiggling at times, more because I wanted a conventional pilot career, not a combat sim within a wargame. Having since tried that approach with tanks in Steel Armour Blaze of War and found it not unrewarding, I decided it was time to give BoB2-WoV a serious go. And so I discovered two things. First that all the good things they say about BoB2 are true, notably that it captures the Battle like no other sim before or since. In other sims, a German raid might be a staffel, so you're fighting the Minor Skirmish of Brtiain. In BoB2, a raid is typically and realistically at least a gruppe in strength - 20-30 bombers, like these boys from I Gruppe, Kampfgeschwader 54, on their way to knock the spots off Portland Naval Dockyard, with II Gruppe for company and a large close escort of Bf110s. The latter about to be hit from behind by the Brylcreem Boys of the RAF. My second, less welcome discovery was that I'd chosen a bad time to make the first discovery - having just got a replacement PC with Windows 10, which is fine with about every other sim I've tried it with, but with which BoB2 suffers CTDs when ending a mission, and sometimes earlier. However, I have been able to play many training, historical and campaign missions up to the end, and so pleased am I with the experience that I plan a dual boot drive with Win 7. So that I can get proper debriefings and not have to re-start crashed campaign games every time I take to the air in one. And spend more time enjoying the authentic 1940s southern England landscapes and scenery, recreated with extreme attention to detail. For example the first time I saw Brighton Pier on a test flight in a Hurricane, I thought the 3d model had a problem, the pier head being unconnected with the coast. Then I remembered...they disconnected pier head from land during the invasion scare of 1940, so as not to provide the expected visitors with convenient ad hoc jetties. The graphics aren't stellar - there are no dynamic shadows for example - but they are still pretty good. What still sets BoB2's visuals apart is more of that attention to detail. For example, aircraft not only carry accurate camouflage patterns, and the proper squadron codes (JX seen above is No.1 Squadron), but Spits and Hurris have realistic variations, including different fin flashes and undersurface treatments. And the weathered Dark Earth and Dark Green 'shadow shading' RAF day fighter camouflage is to my eye more authentic than the efforts of the flashier competitors. I'm not sure how, but the rather blurry aircraft textures I recall from the first time I installed BoB2-WoV are now sharp and satisfying, complete with readable stencils. Notably, the air-to-air AI is the best (most human-like) I have ever encountered, the flight models feel good (including controls becoming heavier at high speeds). The radio traffic is simply best of breed, complete with the use of authentic radio codes and, it seems, also realistic radio voice procedure, for both sides. Planes rattle like they should when near the stall (I have in front of me a Spit Mk1 Pilot's Notes facsimilie and it describes just that '...there is a violent shudder and clattering noise throughout the aeroplane'), there are clickable cockpits if you like to fiddle with knobs, and as well as flying the four major fighters, you can also go dive-bombing in a Stuka or man and switch between nose, dorsal and ventral gun positions on the three types of German twin-engine bombers. Which is what I'm doing in the mission featured in this report - one of the included historical missions, the major Luftwaffe raid on the Filton aircraft factory near Bristol, on 25th September 1940. This caught out Fighter Command's 10 Group, who had deployed their interceptors to defend the Westland works at Yeovil, instead. As the mission intro describes, this let the attackers in unmolested and probably doomed many of the 200-plus victims who died when the raid hit its real target (my parents-to-be were in a city badly bombed by Goering's boys, and I well remember the 'bomb sites' in the streets where I was brought up, where gaps in rows of houses still marked the effects of the raids; so I don't say any of that lightly, lest anyone think otherwise). I could have opted to fly on any plane making, escorting or belatedly trying to catch the raid. But I opted to fly as an air gunner on the lead He111 of the second attacking gruppe, I/KG55. We had about fifteen aircraft - by mid September, some bomber gruppen were well below strength: the morning raid on London on Battle of Britain Day, 15th September, consisted of just 25 Dorniers which it took two gruppen to put up, an incredibly small number even allowing they were essentially lockvogel, bait to lure up 'the last fifty Spitfires'. Anyhow, here we are approaching Bristol, having just flown through a noisy but for now, ineffective flak barrage. As I was soon to find out, enjoying the ride, taking pics like a good war correspondent and actually defending my aircraft, did not mix terribly well. ...to be continued!

Tally Ho! Here we are, on a vector to the bandits. When I say 'we', I realise that I mean both 242 Squadron which I'm leading in LE-D, but also the chaps down below and to our right. The eagle-eyed will have noticed that these Hurricanes carry larger fin flashes and fuselage roundels - and different squadron codes: GN, indicating they are from 249 Squadron. I had thought from the campaign map when I took over 242 that we were on our own, ahead of the pack of three or so squadrons scrambled to intercept the raid on the convoy off Folkestone. Must pay a bit more attention to that map in future, I told myself, like pausing and zooming in (to uncover markers hidden beneath other markers). Before I jump into the hot seat. The BDG manual does recommend that when taking over a flight about to hit contact, you pause the game once in the 3d to re-orient yourself. In fact there's a setting that does that by default. As with any new sim, I have a lot to learn, perhaps more than most as, like Steel Armour - Blaze of War, BoB2's sim-within-a-wargame approach repays taking time to learn the greater number of ropes. Not jumping straight in, like me. My first inkling that this very lesson was going to be mercilessly drummed into me came when I got my first clear view of the raid, coming up from the south. Gave me a right good sense of what Dowding's boys felt like, that did; scrambled in individual squadrons to intercept raids of a hundred or more. Yes there were almost certainly others on their way but the sense of being outnumbered was brought home with a bit of a shock, when I saw that little lot up there. OK I've got a fully functional rear view mirror, but do I miss the dynamic shadows or higher-res cockpit textures of more modern sims? They're nice to have, but no, not really. As in IL2 '46, you have much more pressing things to be aware of and indeed, appreciate. Not least the 'Now, THAT'S what I call a raid!' moments, coupled with the sense that you are not fighting in the Minor Skirmish of Britain. Much more important. For a while, I flew dumbly on. There was Jerry, and there was I, wondering what the Hell to do about it. For a while, I couldn't think of anything better to do, than take some more screenshots. So that's what I did. While I climbed hard and watched this armada go sailing past on a reciprocal course, up above us. Wisely, 249 seemed to have decided to do something different, for they were gone. Straight home, if they had any sense. I was fearful of being bounced of course, but I recalled enough of my WW2 air combat tactics to know that turning in under a higher enemy to force him to make a head on-steeply diving pass was a defence in this situation. Here, I didn't even need to turn. But no attack came. Perhaps wisely, Jerry resisted the temptation and ploughed on. Feeling a bit less scared, and still climbing, I began to lead 242 around and after them. Soon, we were coming up behind the beggars, still with a bit of catching up to do. The Huns looked like single seaters, possibly Stukas, but likely also with 109s for escort. Very likely, since I could see some contrails peeling off to the left of the main formation. Probably snappers (fighters) turning to come in on us from abeam or astern. It was at this point that I finally had to admit to myself that I had not practiced nearly enough squadron-leading using the BoB2 radio command system. This is different but quite sophisticated, coupled as it is with what they call an 'auto vectoring' AI which aids control - after giving certain combat orders, you can actually hear yourself on the R/T translating that into some sort of drill or tactical response, which might be 'Pick your own targets - there's dozens of them!' Or something a bit more sophisticated. But of course I had read and dabbled, but not practiced sufficiently. So I basically ordered a free for all, and that's what I got. ...to be continued!

Open Rails, mainly. 'Tis a train simulator without trains. Although now available with some trains, as in a sample route. Main reason for the interest is that it's designed so as to run the massive amount of content made for Microsoft Train Simulator (which it does with better realism, visuals and performance), including the UK routes, payware and freeware, that I favour. Like these: In the freeware category I have this one called appropriately enough, La Belle France: Also have Trainz 2009 and the London-Brighton route on TS201X.

First RAF campaign missions are going well, too - this is part of my vic at the head of 79 Squadron, on our way to intercept Hostile seven-oh-one, a hundred-plus raid heading for a channel convoy near the Straits of Dover, 10 July 1940... Now, THAT's what I call a raid... The escort objected to our interruption, but after a tussle with me which ended amongst the clouds, this one came unstuck... One of his mates took exception to that... Although I got away, I wrecked my engine by over-running it flat out. Unable to make even the couple of miles to the nearest airfield, I ended that particular sortie belly-flopped in a cornfield, damaging, though not quite wrecking, both aeroplane and crops...

Just to wind up this one, I can report that for about £50 - around the cost of a new sim with nicer eye candy but a fraction of the content, I now have a legit (just activated fine) copy of Win 7, a 120 GB SSD, the SATA and molex adapter (power) cables I needed for it. And I now have a new install of BoB2 sharing the new drive, updated of course to 2.13 with multiskin, running apparently flawlessly. Easy BCD, free version, installed in Win 10, has enabled me to set things up so if I boot into Win 10, I get the Win 10 dual boot menu even though Win 7 is on a separate drive - which is a bit more convenient than using the BIOS/UEFI boot menu when I want to switch. I've now also copied across First Eagles 2's mods folder and Open Rails onto the Win 7 SSD so I can play those from Win 7 too. Still have plenty of spare capacity on the new SSD, so that's a bonus. Screenshot from my first test in Win 7 shows a Do17Z in which I'm manning the guns, in the instant action 'Interceptions - single fighter -v- single bomber' training mission, as we try to get away after dropping our eggs on a south coast target and waking up the flak people. Even though BoB2 was mostly playable in Win 10, eliminating the CTDs and being able to play the campaign missions in particular without the hassle and limitations imposed by the CTDs, makes this a very worthwhile investment.

Got it Olham! I usually remember that one, by the pronunciation - if it's an 'e' sound, like 'kreeegs', the second letter in the pair is 'e'; if the second letter is an 'i', it's an 'i' sound, like 'mein'. Usually works for me, anyhow!

'Acthtung, Schpitfuer!' Here we go, the gruppe reversing direction in formation, with the Bristol Channel behind us and the smoking airfield and factory complex at Fillton somewhere below. The flak has died away and the Spitfires which attacked us from the front, on the bomb run, seem now to be otherwise occupied. We have a long way to go, however. And the intercom begins to come alive with fresh reports of Indianer, enemy fighters. The Spitfires are back, and the flak as well! A bunch of the former come in from astern, and I can't get a decent shot till they break away after hitting the boys behind. Even then, trying to man the camera as well as my MG, I end up mostly drilling empty skies, caught out by the speed and suddenness of the attack. The fighters seem to be queuing up to hit us, now. Next in are some Hurricanes. Tracers fly back and forth. Without warning, there's a shocking sight - an outer wing breaks clean off the Heinkel directly behind us. Down and away goes the plane. I can't see if anyone gets out. Was it flak or fighters? I can't tell. Where's our verdammter escort? No time to look for them, either. I snap off a series of short bursts at a Hurricane now coming up astern, more in the hope of putting him off than anything else. To my surprise, he breaks up and away early, trailing smoke. Who hit him, me or one of the others, I have no idea. But no matter, hopefully that one, at least, won't be back. Taking the opportunity to look out to my left, I can see an air fight going on, which seemingly answers my question as to the whereabouts of our absent kamaraden in the Bf110s. No help to be had from that quarter, then. More ominously, closer in, I can see a line of specks moving across left to right as if to come in behind us, to join the bunch that are already there. It seems that we must now face, alone, a constant stream of fighter attacks. Here they come! More Spitfires. Hits tinkle on our airframe, and my heart sinks as smoke begins to trail astern of us. But our fire returns the favour, sending one of our tormentors around and down in a sort of wide barrel roll. Got him! But he's got us, too! I get a nasty shock as, to the right of our fuselage, I get a sudden glimpse of a uniformed figure as he leaps from or past the plane and immediately slips down and away, out of my field of view. It was surreal and gone in a flash; did I imagine it? Where did he come from? Was it really from our plane? I look up and see that the bomb-bay doors of the Heinkel above and behind of us are open, and have the wild thought that somebody may have bailed from it through them. But then I realise they are overtaking us, all of them - hit hard in the last attack, we are dropping out of formation! I dread the thought that we will now straggle behind, easy pickings for the fighters queueing up back there to chop us down. But we're not even going to last that long. Our Heinkel's left wing dips, and down we go! Our downward spiral steepens. I try to bail out but nothing happens. The rest of the gruppe holds grimly on to its formation as more stern attacks come in. But we are done for; nobody gets out before our bomber, plunging ever more steeply, meets the ploughed fields of England. Crikey! That was an experience! And it is just one of the playable planes in just one of the many single missions that come with BoB2, on top of the many, many more that the campaign system generates as it takes you, day by day, through the various phases of the Battle, raid by raid, from start to end if you wish. Truly, this is some package, a credit to all concerned, from the original Rowan crew to the current publishers who brought it back to life, to the chaps in BDG who have truly polished the gem. Above all else, Battle of Britain 2 - Wings of Victory recreates the real Battle with a respect for and attention to its history which no other sim I have played or seen even approaches, let alone surpasses. And I'll be enjoying it to the full, now that I have made the very modest investment needed to get Windows 7 up and running. Expect further mission reports - if not, sadly, from this particular crew!

Hi and thanks Silberpfeil, yes I think I must have read everything I could find on BoB2 and Win 10 including that thread. There may be a few who are running fine in Win 10 but the most common experience seems to be that you have a good run and think you're done, until the CTDs start happening again. I found they didn't stop me flying all the instant action missions and apart from the odd early CTD, campaign missions too, but I got a cheap but legit copy of Win 7 and a second 120GB SSD for it, now joined there by BoB2, after all the usual fun getting everything working after a clean O/S install. Anyhow, the end of mission CTD niggles seem a thing of the past. Having opted for a separate drive dual boot I am currently using the UEFI/BIOS to choose O/S which is fine but I'm also looking at ways of making that even less of a chore eg NeoSmart's Easy BCD; but I'm happy already to have got BoB 2 fully operational for less than the cost of many a new sim.

Thanks for the comments guys, and the tips on EAW in Win 7, Skyhigh, my copy has arrived, the SSD it will live on is wired up and working so time to take the plunge.

'Bomben auf Engeland!' Here I am in our lead Heinkel's dorsal position. The RAF's Fighter Command's aircraft being elsewhere for now, its Anti-Aircraft Command is doing its best to get us. We are flying in three vics of five aircraft, stepped up from front to rear. Somewhat understrength gruppen of fifteen or twenty bombers seem to make up the basic building block of many raids in BoB2. Still no sign or warnings of fighters, so I drop down and move to the nose position. Below and ahead, lies the city of Bristol, with the Bristol Channel to our left...technically I suppose it's the estuary of the River Severn at about this point. I can't yet make out our target, which is on the city's northern outskirts somewhere. This is a broadside view of our aircraft. Like other planes in BoB2, it carries authentic markings - in this case, including the correct geschwader code letters - G1 - for KG55 'Greif', and our unit badge, a red, black-winged griffon on a white shield. The 3d models and textures are not of course up to the latest standards but more than good enough...although to my eye, while the splinter pattern is accurate, the upper surface colours are a little light for Schwarzgrun 70 and Dunkelgrun 71, even allowing for weathering and 'scale effect'. I recall my c.1970 Kookaburra Aircraft of the Battle of Britain said some bombers were field-repainted in lighter shades they call 'woods and meadows' for better summer airfield camouflage, but that may be an urban myth. Anyway we make a fine sight as we run in towards Filton. Ahead of us, the leading gruppe of Heinkels must be at the target by now. However, the English flak seems to be concentrating on what I believe is the leading part of our Bf110 fighter escort, as it turns away to port. I didn't notice at the time, but more worryingly, there's a gaggle of aircraft sliding across from the right in this picture, coming up from the south. You can also see the text at bottom indicating that the target has been sighted and called in. Filton's aero works is actually at an airfield, which is the large grassy area a few mils right of where the text string ends. Nearly there now! The leading gruppe has hit an area of buildings on the south-western edge of the target area. At this point, a lot of things happen at once, not all of them good. Our bomb bay doors open, but we are near-missed by flak, while being suddenly attacked from head on by Spitfires! Where they came from I don't know, but they're gone as suddenly as they appeared. Belatedly, sighting reports come up on the intercom, of aircraft and air fights up ahead. It's hard to make much sense of what's going on up there. It looks like our lead gruppe may have got away on the left, but our 110 escort is hotly engaged with enemy fighters, slightly right of our current course. Possibly, the Spits who attacked us were a few who managed to break through. Hopefully, that will be the last we see of them. Meanwhile, more sticks of bombs can be seen to have fallen on the complex to the east of the airfield. Not from us, we haven't dropped yet. Finally it's our turn to let fly. Our bombs also fall on the buildings to the east, exploding as we make our turn to get away. Well, we have earned our Reichmarks for the day, flight pay included. Time to go home! The question now is, whether or not the Tommies will let us get away scot free. ...to be continued!

Being a bit of a stick-in-the-mud - not an entirely inappropriate condition, for a player of WW1 air combat sims - all the recent modding activity for the Italian front hasn't yet lured me away from my Biggles-based but still dominant affection for the Western Front (all quiet or not). My Jasta 4 Cambrai campaign came to a nasty end when I collided with a comrade attacking the same enemy; first time that has happened in a while. So for a change of pace, I started off an Armchair Aces campaign with KEK Douai in August 1915, flying the Fokker E.I. I'm staying alive and racking up a surprising number of kills, including several on a single sortie. This is all the more surprising because the E.I is a truly awful fighting aeroplane. Rate of climb is nearly non-existent, while turn rate and radius are nearly as bad, with a tendency to judder on the point of a stall at the drop of a hat and to fall into a wild spin if you don't ease back or push the nose down when duly warned. Recovery is do-able but only after a lot of height is lost, so tight turns at low level are right out. Still, the varied and smaller-scale air fights are a lot of fun and modded FE2 brings all its inherent virtues to the party, including the ability to 'warp' and avoid transit flights, the rarity of uneventful, contact-free missions, the reliability of flak in indicating enemies, and the unequalled variety of aircraft types. Here are some scenes from recent missions. Illustrating the continued superiority of FE's pilot animations over all comers, I look down soon after take-off, despairing at why the earth is taking so very long to drop away below me. After finally managing to get above a few hundred meters and reach my patrol area, a more agile French-made and flown Morane 'Bullet' goes down, after I eventually managed to put enough rounds into him. Bringing on your flight-mates is a strong point of FE/FE2, so I am happy to keep watch above, as a comrade knocks down a Vickers two-seater. Not to be left out, on a later flight, I knock down a BE myself... ...and on another mission, I too clobber another hapless Vickers... Sadly, no pics were taken of Nieuport 10s doing what they do best, namely, bursting into flames after a few hits. I think I will edit the campaign files for that period as I am seeing too many of these (the British didn't use them apart from the RNAS near the coast, not where I'm flying, and a handful briefly loaned to the RFC 'for special duties'). And we must by now have shot down an entirely disproportionate number of the forty-nine Morane Bullets produced. The Morane Type L 'Parasol' would probably be a decent substitute for one or both, and I have seen none of these so far. Anyhow, for the sake of historical accuracy, I'm resisting any temptation to put more than two or three Fokkers into the air at once. Thankfully, the equally small enemy flights make this no particular risk, although we have lost one pilot due I think to a mid-air collision. Despite the pretty hopeless performance of our machines, we are usually well able to beat up one enemy flight before moving on to the next. So life with Kampfeinsitzerkommando Douai is pretty sweet...at the moment. And I'm reminded why I still reckon modded First Eagles/FE2 is at least as good, if not better, than any other WW1 air combat sim.

Am having mixed results in the RAF campaign, worse that single missions, since campaign missions seem always, not just sometimes, to CTD on quitting, plus they sometimes CTD during the mission. So I'm going to get a second, inexpensive 120GB SSD , a cheap but legit copy of Win 7, and boot into 7 from the BIOS when I want to play BoB2. Using a separate drive seems a step or two simpler than creating a partition on my Win 10 SSD, which in any event I don't want to fill up. Apparently the trick is to disconnect the Win 10 drive before installing Win 7 (from the DVD drive), so that you don't get messed up boot files. Worth the modest trouble and expense to get less interruptions...assuming it all works. In the meantime, after switching BoB.exe back to XP SP3 compatibility, I have had decent run with fewer CTDs until I choose to quit, including as an air gunner on one of the Ju88s from one of two gruppen of KG54 making a co-ordinated attack on Southampton and Portland docks (one of the included historical missions), and later an RAF campaign mission during the 'convoys' phase, leading 249 Squadron (Hurricanes) chasing after some determined high-flying attackers who were trying to get a convoy which had sailed up the coast, NE of the Thames Estuary.

Well, I've tried many things recommended elsewhere, including running the sim in windowed mode (which produces a c.14" screen display in 3d) and I still get Alt+X (quit mission) CTDs about a third of the time. I tried the RAF campaign and got Alt+X about every time ie no way back to the 2d campaign map. Plus a CTD during a couple of the missions. All shown in crashlog.txt as the ntdll.dll exception error. Haven't tried the separate RAF squadron campaign that one of the BFG updates added, but have no reason to believe it would be any different. I'm quite keen to play at least the RAF campaign. What seems to work tolerably well is if I let the 2d campaign play normally. I can take over a squadron when prompted to 'Fly' and then fly the mission normally in 3d (apart from the odd one which occasionally CTDs mid-flight) and enjoy the variety and the action. Then, when I quit, I get a CTD. Because the sim auto-saves before you take over a flight, I can restart BoB2, reload the saved campaign where I left off, and this time let the wargame fly the mission I flew, instead of taking over. So the wargame determines the results, not my flying the mission. As BoB2 doesn't have a pilot persona-based campaign anyway, I reckon I can live with that, for the sake of flying in Windows 10 what is still much the best BoB sim. Appreciating the radio chatter, the highly-realistic landscapes and unit markings and camouflage schemes (including the infamous variations in RAF Sky Type S), clickable cockpits if you want them, the generally great AI, realistically big and tight formations, and sights like these, which I was never able to enjoy on my previous, lower-powered rigs. Incidentally the shot of Spits under AA fire is down to a serious map-reading error when I took 610 Squadron (squadron code DW) too close to the French coast, to defend a convoy under attack! In other pics, I'm flying Al Deere's famous 'Kiwi', KL-B, leading 54 Squadron against a raid by Stukas escorted by 109s, against channel convoy 'Jaunty' that thought - mistakenly - that it had reached safety in the Thames Estuary. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck when I heard the raid announced as 'hundred plus' - gives you some idea of what it was like for the real pilots. Of course you can't hear the radio chatter looking at screenies, but as any BoB/BoB2 player will confirm and like many other aspects of this sim, it has never been equalled, let alone bettered, with squadrons and 'Control' using authentic period radio code names, calls from leaders to take safety catches off and so on. This is the one that truly recreates and brings to life the Battle, with unique attention to historical detail.

The next mission, on 30 November, was uneventful until we came across a couple of Camels in a fight with some Pfalz. I somehow got my aircraft identification mixed up and had a long-range rattle at one of the latter whom I thought was an Englishman shooting at one of my Albatrosses, not the Camel both were chasing. Happily I missed, the Camel went down minus the outer portion of his upper mainplane. The Pfalz then climbed up to the west towards the cloudbase, reforming as they went. I could see no signs of other enemy aircraft and after calling my own flight to heel, I led us home. With nearly half my staffel killed or prisoners, my offensive spirit is clearly at a low ebb. This is where I find that FE's squadron management feature gives the player a much keener sense of what it was like to fly in the attritional air war of WW1 than any other such sim I have 'flown'.

More often, we meet Bristols, often just in pairs; but just as in real life they are well able to look after themselves, faster, very agile, and with stout gunners who will lace you with their tracers if you give them half a chance. Most of the time, they disdainfully run rings around us. We sent this one down smoking eventually, but only because I was able to damage him with a deflection shot as he whizzed past across my nose, setting him up for stern attacks from a friend as he tried to make his side of the lines.

It's proving a tough war for Jasta 4. The opposition is not much more numerous that us, but determined and well-equipped, so I'm taking four, sometimes five other pilots with me, inevitably a mix of successful and less so. We have a good run for a while and get a couple of victories between us on a mission or two, then we have one where we get split up in a fight and more enemy scouts turn up. Sometimes I manage to shoot an enemy of a comrade's tail, other times I don't, or only see him go down after it's too late anyhow. We're lucky if we catch a couple of R.E.8s on a recce...

...then, by the time you get to your patrol area (where the 'next encounter' facility saves many a longer transit flight), the sun is up...or the moon is out, depending on the time you started...

I like how you can be taking off for a dawn mission in low light...

I have edited Missioncontrol.ini to increase the default mission heights, so now often get some at 10,000 feet, like this one escorting AEG G-types. The weather is about 8/10ths cloud as you can see. With the November sun low on the horizon, FE2's lighting effects can be rather beautiful, and winter version of the stock terrain, though lacking railway lines, is still pleasing to my eye.

Some more pics from my current Jasta 4 campaign. This is the stock Cambrai one, modified to add some additional planes eg Jasta 10 flies Pfalz D.IIIs (my own staffel probably should have at least some too, this being late November 1917, not sure if there is a way to get mixed formations). Also the Hannoverana replaces some DFWs in Schlastas, and the Bristol Fighter is now serving with at least one RFC squadron opposing us. There are of course Camels about, difficult targets but my flightmate (I will not use the later term wingman for WW1) managed to get this one. First flamer I have seen in a while, the impact was quite dramatic (likely I'm using an effects mod).

Particularly like that Yugoslavian skin! ALMOST as nice as a Big Ack... :)

Well I played several more training missions with no CTDs, even managed to put in a bit of sight-seeing... ...but I got another Alt+X crash after flying as an air gunner in an He-111 in the 'Single fighter -v- single bomber' interception training mission. Our tormentor, a Spitfire, chased us all the way back to the French coast and even had a go at us as we were trying to land. But he kept sheering off when I engaged him from the dorsal position. Anyhow we got away with it, so I wasn't too unhappy with the CTD!