33LIMA

Big City Blues, World War 1 style... Well, as intended. I flew a second mission with the armed but underpowered Nieuport 4. There's definitely an art to making your takeoff roll in one of these, without engine start being followed by a wobble and a nose-over; so far it's still hit and miss for me. Anyway here's the mission briefing - and it sounds exciting. We are to escort some Farman recce aircraft - and opposition in the air is expected. I managed to get moving - after a couple of attempts and restarts, I admit. After that, takeoff was uneventful, for me and my number two. For the Farmans, it was a different matter. The leading machine, taking off on a strip parallel to mine, went ass over t*ts about 50 metres into his takeoff run. The two Farmans behind him had plenty of time to abort or avoid, but they did neither. Instead, they started their runs blindly and ran straight into the wreckage, one after the other. Not a terribly auspicious start to the mission. It soon got worse. I slowly climbed away and looked back to check that the other Nieuport was still following me. He wasn't. Instead, a second clound of dark smoke had appeared, this time on the edge of the mountainside plateau on which our airbase sat. Now I was really on my own! I continued the mission; what else was I to do? The honour of France demanded no less! As it happens, I had left turned on, the display of aircraft icons. So on the mini-map, I could see the blue icons whose presence confirmed that the Boche were in the air, having seemingly experienced no comparable difficulties. Aircraft icons aren't too unrealistic for WW2 ,where you are often operating with the assistance of a radar-assisted ground controllers; but they're hugely unrealistic for WW1, or course. Normally in WW1 sims,you can rely instead on friendly AA bursts to mark at least some possible targets. But not this time; looking around, the skies were devoid of 'Archie', as far as the eye could see. Having said that, I might have spotted the first enemies to appear on this mission unassisted, because they were lower and their plain linen finishes showed them up nicely, against the greenery below. The briefing had advised me to avoid attacking from the rear enemy 2-seaters whose observers had good fields of fire over that arc. Not in 1914 they didn't - the 'C-type' 2-seater, which moved the observer to the rear seat and gave him a machine gun, didn't appear till 1915. Few if any B-types, such as fomed the main complement of the German air service in the first year of the war, would have carried such weapon. At any rate, with my own MG pointing diagonally upwards to clear my prop arc, I decided, to hell with that advice. I'd attack from behind and below, von unten hinten, in the manner of Schrage Musik-equipped German night fighters a World War later. I let the enemy formation slip underneath me and began a tight spiral descent, calculated to being me down into approximately the right position. I came out of my corkscrew descent a little further behind and below than I'd have liked but my momentun carried me steadily up towards the enemy formation. As I approached, another four aircraft, also German from the cut of their jibs, sailed past, in the opposite direction. Ignoring the newcomers, I selected the left-hand machine in the first German formation. Soon, tracers were coming my way. Even if I stayed under my target's tail, the others in the enemy formation could probably clearly me. I needed to knock my target out of formation, preferably quickly! Lacking any form of gunsight, my first bursts were fired purely to judge, from the tracers, by how much I needed to adjust my aim, to get my rounds heading my target's way. This didn't prove as hard as I'd thought and my third or fourth burst got some hits. I was delighted to see that exactly on cue, my oponent turned right, to get out of my fire - out of formation. Naturally, I turned after him. I should have turned away then back in, to stay out of his sight under his tail, but I didn't have enough of a speed advantage. Instead, I tried to cut the corner and turn inside him. Things seemed to be going tolerably well, when suddenly the screen went black. Switching to the external view confirmed my PC hadn't died - my virtual pilot had. My machine went down in a dive, completely unresponsive to control inputs, then zoomed and fell off into another dive. Finis. I hadn't seen any fire coming from my target, so maybe it was one of his kamaraden who got me. The air in that particular part of France seemed to be fairly full of Avaitiks and they probably had a jolly good row in their mess afterwards, sorting out who would get the credit for shooting me down. Determined to get my own back, I decided to carry on as planned and switch to flying a proper fighting aeroplane, a Nieuport 11 in defence of Verdun in early 1916, which is a later mission set campaign in this series. This started well, with the same excellent aircraft and airfield representations, but ended badly. This time, the problem was the city which lay across my route. The numerous buildings, once they popped into view, slowed my framerates to a crawl. So I stepped back in time, to an earlier campaign: this time, Summer 1915, with the Fokker Scourge. This started with the same promise... ...but ended with the same result. Chasing a distant enemy aircraft northwards, I came in sight of a town near the channel coast. And down went the frame rates, faster than a BE2c under a hail of Spandau fire. So regretfully, I turned for home. Similar problems with airfields in the Dark Blue World 1916 module had been solved by applying 'Vertical synch - adaptive (half refresh rate)' in my Nvidia Control Panel. I checked this was still set, which it was. Perhaps I need to set it separately, for my separate, CUP install of IL-2. Until I find some fix, this set of campaigns doesn't look to be playable for me, which is a pity, because they look rather good. Hopefully, others will have better luck!

Strangely enough, for someone who's always been very interested in the Battle to the extent I once made my own map-based wargame for it, I've never really got into BoB (Rowan's or the WoV revamp). The sim-within-a-wargame element, far from being an attraction, rather turned me off. By the time I came to BoB/BoB2 I had become accustomed to more conventional single-player campaigns, where you pick a squadron flying the type you want to fly and track your virtual pilot's career via some form of pilot record or logbook. Good old European Air War being the Gold standard for such things, added features like a between-mission bunk for your pilot with creaking bedsprings, tune-able radio playing hits of the time, and exiting the campaign treating you to a screen made up like a leave pass, complete with show tickets. In BoB you can opt to fly with any participating unit with flyable (or gun-able) planes but you have no virtual pilot. From what I can see, the available method of approximating a conventional pilot career or campaign simply sets things up so you get prompted to fly when the squadron you choose to fly with is scrambled. Not bad, but not really the same. There are also some glitches like invisible Stuka bombloads and formations which bank in a robotically-synchronised and jerky fashion. High points seem to be the fantastic air combat AI and the excellent range of historical missions. Clicakable cockpits will also be a plus for folk who like such things. Having found that the wargame element actually added to my appreciation of tanksim Steel Armor Blaze of War after making the effort, I will one day make a more sustained attempt to get into BoB2, for as a sim of the Battle it has so much going for it. The Just Flight BoB add-on for CFS3 was one of the few add-ons for that sim I never tried; nor have I tried that freeware one for the ETO Expansion. One of CFS3's worst features to my mind is the bombers using fighter-type formations. Plus I was unimpressed by fighter-vs-fighter because the AI was not especially good and flew at empty weight (I found a Bf110 could pretty well escape Spits or Hurries in a turning fight); so I always thought it played better if you stuck to its core, fighter-bomber scenarios. CLoD I have not tried yet; it's SP campaigns don't seem to be well regarded and it seems more of a simulator of BoB planes (with some unusual planeset choices) rather than a sim of flying boB planes in the BoB. Now that Il-2 '46 has decent channel maps and a good selection of period aircraft, my own starting point for decent BoB campaigns - as indeed, for decent campaigns for any WW2 theatre and beyond - would be some of those available at mission4today for Il-2 '46 (preferably with a good mod like DBW or CUP), like 'Spitfire Scramble' which I reported on here: http://combatace.com/topic/86059-il-2cup-spitfire-scramble/

That was my reaction. I'm no expert but I was surprised, at how low he started the loop. And the manouevre itself seemed sluggish from quite early on, as if he didn't have enough airspeed going into it. Maybe the engine faltered. What a mess.

Yes, the A Team DIIIa is the preferred solution. It's not just a matter of data files, the A Team DIIIa replicates the latter's distinctive features - guns on top of the forward fuselage rather than buried in them, rounded lower wingtips and deeper, more rounded horizontal stabiliser:

Shooting's too good for 'em! ...but thanks for sharing!

'We're the D-Day Dodgers, in sunny Ital-ee...' It's an eloquent testimony to both exceptional design and the skill of its mod community, that Panzer Elite, first released in 1999, is still one of the best tank simulators you can play, sixteen years later. Sims like WW2 Battle Tanks (despite the awful AI) and Steel Fury (the only other WW2 tanksim in the same class as PE) can boast much better graphics and some other points of superiority. But good old PE still beats them all, in some important fields. Not the least of these are decent representation of both radio and intercom traffic; very good platoon command and control facilities; and a superb, linked set of single player campaigns, which enables you to start in Tunisia, move on to Italy and then finish off in Normandy, fighting for either the US Army or the Wehrmacht. And that's before the modders added France 1940, Libya 1941-2 and the Eastern Front, plus new playable nationalities like the British and Red Armies. Modder Slomo's Panzer Pack 2x (PP2x) has recently been enhanced by the addition of a vehicle update, which you can get along with the mod itself, via the links here, on the PE Development Group PP2x subforum. The update adds new M4 Shermans, which have 3-d wheels and suspension and better animation, including tank commander figures which can close hatches. There are 75 and 76mm-gunned versions and if you want something that will keep out more of the German weapons, there's a 'Jumbo' M4A3E2 heavy version, too. The 'x' in 'PP2x' signifies that the mod uses Brit44 Aldo's new PE executable, whose latest version adds smoother movement of vehicles to the other improvements, the most significant of which is probably proper 'time of flight' and ballistic trajectories, so that you can see your tracers arc towards the enemy, and more to the point, see their tracers arecing towards you! It's hard to over-state the improvement this mod brings to PE. Anyhow, to try out the Shermans, I decided to join 'the D-day Dodgers', as the Allied troops in Italy sardonically referred to themselves. You can start off a PE campaign in any of the three 'sub-campaigns' (as well as playing any individual campaign mission, via the 'Single Mission' option) so you don't have to play all the way through the Tunisia segment, if you want to begin 'in sunny Ital-ee'. As I did. In fact, the first missions are on Sicily, where the British and Americans first landed. As usual in PE, you start at a nice rendering of your platoon waiting to move up, here set in a typical Italian plaza. PE often starts you with a mix of vehicles for your platoon, but here, I have already replaced an M5 light tank and an M10 tank destroyer with Shermans. I chose a mix of the round-hulled M4A1 and the original M4, which would have been found in the same units as they had the same engine. Seventy-six millimetre-gunned versions didn't arrive until Normandy, so we've all got 75s, as you can see. The little white dog visible between the water trough and the right-hand Sherman is fully-animated! Truly, they don't make sims like this any more. At this screen you can do things like check out your crew skills and move people around; add any available modifications to your tanks (like in some cases radios, or extra armour) and adjust your ammo supply. When you're ready, you click on the trestle table (behind the two and a half ton truck) and that starts the briefing (or more accurately, your orders) for the mission. So that's waht we'll look at, next. ...to be continued!

The final phase... At last, our platoon was moving forward not on its own, but as part of a larger force, comprising three platoons of Shermans and a pair of 105mm SP guns. Which was just as well, because I didn’t much like the look of the ground we had to cross next – and it turned out to be worse than it looked. We sat tight for a while while I had a good look, before deciding on my next move. Ahead of us was a shallow depression, a wide area of slightly lower terrain overlooked by higher ground maybe a thousand metres to our front; not unlike a giant saucer. The bowl of the saucer was broken ground but it seemed to afford little cover, from any enemies perched on its far rim. And as we crossed, out platoon’s wedge formation was soon disrupted, as first one tank then another got held up on obstacles, like the streams which snaked across out line of advance. Had our platoon still been on its own, I would have veered left or right in search of better cover, or started moving tactically, with half the platoon covering while the other half moved ahead. My own tank was still descending into the depression when a radio report announced an enemy tank, spotted up ahead. Fortunately I was amongst a belt of trees which provided some concealment. Here I halted, to see what I could see. I use the ‘show spotted enemies’ option so the contact was marked up on my map, but edging forward, I could only see the straggling group of buildings around the stretch of road where the enemy had been seen. From what I’d seen and heard, I came to the conclusion that this was likely the Tiger tank reported in the area earlier. In real life, whoever was in command of our force would have made a plan to deal with this threat and then communicated this to me and the other platoon commanders, in the form of new orders over the radio. Current tanksims simply don’t have this sort of higher-commander AI, beyond whatever might be scripted into the mission. Steel Armor: Blaze of War and I believe Steel Beasts cope with this by letting you assume the force commander role and rescript the mission on the fly, as it were, before stepping back to command your chosen platoon. In sims like PE and SF, all you can do is carry on. PE gives you an option you don’t get in SF, though, and it was that card that I now chose to play. I would call in a shoot from our supporting artillery. In this mission, IIRC I had two shoots available from a battery of 105mm howizters. One-five-fives would have been better for dealing with tanks, especially a Tiger, but beggars can’t be choosers. This is WW2 so you have no fancy options like cluster munitions or top attack weapons. From the map’s support tab, I selected HE for the fire mission (smoke being the only alternative) and when the target box appeared, mouse-dragged it on top of the marker denoting the enemy tank. Fortunately, the target didn’t move, while I waited for the rounds to arrive. There’s a delay but there’s no need or facility to adjust fire; the shoot generally seems to arrive not too far from where you’ve indicated. While the rounds were in the air, I decided to call in my second shoot on the same target, while he was obliging enough to sit in one place. I suspect he was lining up to engage the other Shermans. At any rate, nosing forward to get a better view of the results of the strike, I saw a lot of white smoke in the target area, which made me wonder if in my haste I had selected smoke for the first strike. But no, it was just the PP2-x effects. This was confirmed when my second strike, falling slightly further left, produced the same white smoke but this time, also a column of dark smoke from a stricken enemy vehicle. At this point, a couple of M4s trundled in from the right, just short of the target area, giving me an anxious few seconds. If my strikes had left some enemies un- clobbered, in halting to call in the artillery I was now too far behind the other M4s to help them. But I needn’t have worried. The Shermans rolled on, unmolested . Got him just in time, it seemed. By the miracle of PE’s ‘objectives’ tab on the map screen, which lets you view your progress against all mission objectives in real time, I suspected that this target might be the one I needed, to complete my appointed ‘kill list’, which accounted for my secondary objectives. But no - some portion of Zug (platoon) Falke still needed our attention. And there was still the matter of my primary objective: to prevent our bridgehead being over-run. And it was less clear what I needed to do now, to achieve that objective. Emboldened by the visible destruction of the enemy up ahead and the survival of the Shermans, I lost no time in emerging from the scant cover of the trees and making another bound forward, into the wide depression to our front. As it turned out, the answer to the question 'What do I need to do to win?' was ‘nothing’: I now got the ‘mission completed’ message. This also meant I had achieved my ‘bonus’ objective, of at least 60% of the platoon surviving. This is all a bit ‘gamey’. But apart from air combat sims, where mission success can be neatly resolved in terms of survival and kill, many games seem to struggle with generating a sensible ‘win/lose’ answer. At least, in PE the victory conditions are there for you to see, any time you want to see them. I could have driven on up to see what the damage was up ahead, but I decided not to push my luck. I’d already taken enough of a chance, pushing out ahead of most of the other US armour to confront an incoming enemy attack. Here’s the results screen. As with the ‘briefing’, the narrative is spoken as well as typed up for you, and once again, the speaker is calling you ‘Sir’, when he should be your boss. I don’t think I’ll be able to tell him much that will be of use, in combating Tiger tanks. My recipe was rapid application of massed fires, killing his lighter supporting tanks and spooking the Tiger. Then dropping a lot of arty on him, once he’d gone to ground. And moving cautiously, preferably bringing lots of friends with me. Don’t ask me what the ‘Hidden’ goal was, that I missed: it was, well, hidden. You can see that mission success has earned us some credits, in terms of improved 'crew ratings', which means skill improvements, which will affect things like gunnery accuracy of the speed of reloading or spotting enemies. This was a fairly typical sort of Panzer Elite mission, my main criticism of this being that the friendly and/or enemy units tend to be rather scattered and un-coordinated, instead of operating as a coherent company group, working together to the sort of plan a real-life company commander would create, for a given mission. The positive side of this is that you have plenty of scope to manoeuvre and manage your platoon, using PE’s outstanding command and control facilities. While AI units mightn’t be scripted to co-operate much with you, there’s nothing to stop you creating and taking opportunities to co-ordinate your movements with them. Individual tank AI that was a bit smarter about ‘action on halts’ and use of cover, would help; but then, the conscript armies of WW2 weren’t perfect either, witness Ken Tout’s description in ‘Tank!’ of a Panzer IV commander who took his tank onto a Normandy skyline, with predictable results. Anyhow, this mission was played to put Slomo’s new Shermans through their paces and it seems apt to finish with a visual comparison of stock and modded Shermans, in this case the cast-hulled M4A1 I operated on this mission. As you can see, the vanilla one has no ‘unbuttoned’ tank commander and is generally rather crude. Textures are low resolution, the distinctive slope to the upper rear of the turret is missing and the suspension is completely two-dimensional. The new version is streets ahead. And it’s just one of a full range of Shermans now available for the PP2x mod. As a footnote, Panzer Elite is still available, cheaply, via GoG, here. While this comes with the original mods (as released with Panzer Elite Special Edition, aka PESE) and is still very playable, these days the PE-x executable is probably de rigueur. So the main options are (either or both of!) PP2x or PE3. PP2x has many improvements including some re-worked vehicles, now including Shermans, but isn’t compatible with the original mods which added nationalities, theatres and campaigns. PE3, available here, isn’t adapted for the latest PE-x but includes much of the content (including the extra nationalities, theatres and campaigns) of the original mods and more besides; vehicles generally have the relatively basic 3d models but have much better textures, seen below on a T-34-76 in a PE3 Ostpak mission. Whichever mod or mods you choose and despite the dated graphics and animations, PE is still a ‘must have’ sim, for simmers with an interest in the WW2 era.

Sicily by Sherman, part the next It was at this point that I realised that we hadn't been the only unit engaged with the Germans. In the heat of the recent action, I had been only vaguely aware that there had been other traffic on the radio net, that didn't directly concern me there and then. But looking left, I could now see burning vehicles on the skyline - the remains of 'Combat Group Dirty Boys', as they had been marked on the map. I could only guess that they must have been victims of the mixed Panzer platoon we had bumped into, knocked out after they had foolishly skylined themselves. A look at my map confirmed their identity; alas, the Dirty Boys were no more. Incidentally, while we're looking at the map, I will mention that PE is a bit inconsistent in its terms for units. Some are described, correctly, as platoons, but other apparently platoon-sized units are labelled 'Combat Groups', which suggests a much larger force. Anyhow, the map showed that we were now well out in front of our own defensive positions, indicated on the map by Combat Groups Walter, Smith and Neil, which appeared from the map markings to be infantry supported by anti-tank guns. The tank platoons behind seemed to have no intention of joining us, which re-inforced my determination not to play the hero. Instead, I made another cautious bound forward, steering around the right-hand edge of some slightly higher ground and aiming for a low crest which I could see in front, between us and a stream. At this point, a target was reported on our right, about 1500 metres away. This turned out to be more Panzers, of which I could see only one, who looked to be a Mark III. I lobbed a round at him as he flitted in and out of some distant trees, but missed. Damn! We were being outflanked. But I needn't have worried. It seemed that those other US tankers had decided to earn their pay, after all. Scanning through the gunsight, pillars of smoke marked out the scene of the action. Seemingly I could carry on, secure in the knowledge that this second German thrust had been blunted. So far, our trusty Shermans were giving Jerry a good old beating, assisted by the fact that he seemed to be just as bad at us, of arranging matters so that tank platoons advanced to as to be capable of supporting one another and at least, maintaining interlocking fields of fire. So far, the enemy had just been feeding Oxo Cubes to the lion, one at a time. as a British General described later operations at Arnhem. As my turret crew reloaded another armour-piercing round, I jumped to the commander's position and started scanning ahead again, through the binoculars. This gave me a slighty greater zoom and a slightly higher viewpoint, all the better to see Tigers and suchlike. As I scanned, the radio announced that somebody else had spotted some Germans, who were retreating. I called up the text message panel to get the full details and was delighted to see that our erstwhile foe, the Tiger, had apparently decided to continue with his withdrawal. The same message log confirmed we were credited with a secondary mission goal. I called up the map and selected the 'objectives' tab to confirm this, which you can see on the right-hand page in the map display, below. It's not entirely realistic that you can get this sort of real-time, in-mission confirmation of which target enemies you have destroyed. But it's typical of the thoroughness of Teut Weidenberger and the team at Wings Simulations, who really have packed into Panzer Elite more features than a thing with an awful lot of features; with Teutonic thoroughness you might say if you will forgive the pun. And another thing: the PE AI doesn't always pick bad fire positions, in case you got the wrong idea, from what I said earlier; as you can see from this view of one of my platoon-mates. This hull-down Sherman is a cast-hulled M4A1 like my own, with one of at least two different tank commander figures visible. This one has a radio mike in one hand, another variant holds a pair of binos. At about this time, another radio message announced that other friendly tank platoons were advancing again, which a glance at the map confirmed - depending on the game settings you have applied, friendly units (who would be able to report their position by radio) can be displayed on your map, along with spotted (or all, or no) enemies. OK, good. Soon we would have company. And this time, it wouldn't be the enemy. I decided to wait for some friendly forces to draw level, so that we could all advance together. After a short wait, I was able to make out the first Shermans, moving up on our right. Another unit, closer in, was a pair of M7 'Priest' SP 105mm howitzers. They really would have been better staying to the rear and sticking to indirect fire, being much too lightly armoured to act as assault guns. These two are orignal PE models, and while they lack the detail of the new Shermans, they feature a reasonably accurate MTO sand and green camouflage, the new M4s so far only having an Olive Drab finish. Anyhow, I certainly wasn't going to be goaded into racing the M7s. But I wasn't going to sit back and let them get shot to pieces, either. Off we went again, shadowing the M7s. If they hapened to flush out some Germans under our guns, well, I wouldn't get too upset. ...to be continued!

Contact! Our five Shermans moved on steadily, over the undulating terrain, which provided fairly decent cover, provided you stayed off the road and put up with the reduced speed. I was tempted to organise my tanks into two half platoons or sections so that one could cover while the other moved, which Panzer Elite will let you do. However, I decided - as I usually do in PE - to keep the platoon together. If you send your PE 'wingmen' ahead, they're liable to halt in exposed positions. So instead, I usually move the platoon in bounds, from cover to cover, and trying to halt in a position - like a fold in the ground - that will provide cover not just for my own tank, but for the whole platoon. Whichever way you do it, PE lets you switch to any tank in your platoon so you always have a way of fine tuning positions...if the enemy will let you. Leapfrogging is also much slower, and I was already moving slowly enough, halting in cover at frequent intervals. If and when we did hit contact, I reckoned it'd be better to have all of us in a compact group, for better mutual support. And so it came to pass, for when one of my 'wingmen' called in an enemy target - a good demonstration of the sim's capabilities, where your platoon is really a co-operating team, not just a bunch of silent, individual bots - I was able to get my gun onto him quickly. Hitting him was another matter. All I could see was a sand-coloured shape, flitting between a stand of typical Italian poplars, off to our right. I jumped to the gunner's sight - in PE, you can also stay at the tank commander's station and designate targets by mouse-click - and fired at what I could see. It wasn't much, but it was enough. There were two of them, armoured cars I though, and between us, we quickly got both of them. A radio message from somewhere or other told us that enemies were retreating so it seemed that there were more of them and the survivors had wisely decided that tangling with tanks was not in their job description. If I had left the text display panel on screen, I would have got further details than in the simulated radio message, but I tend to leave such things turned off. We moved off again to the next cover. And once again, my platoon-mates reported another contact, to our left, this time. I swung my turret around onto the indicated bearing - PE uses the clock code for this, and gives a range as well and again, the text display may also state the type of target, if that had been recognised. It's really quite a thorough tank sim, is Panzer Elite. This time, it was real trouble - panzers. Seemed like we had now run into the enemy counterattack, coming the other way - a meeting engagement, in the venacular. Two of my Shermans opened fire immediately. Turning my platoon into the threat - my usual Immediate Action in such circumstances - went by the wayside. Quick shooting seemed more important, so that's what I did, letting my two shooters get on with it and joining in myself. Once again, I couldn't see much of the targets due to intervening foliage and the lie of the land. I resisted the temptation to advance for a better view, figuring that would work both ways. The enemy tanks turned towards us and halted to shoot. They were Panzer IIIs or IVs, at least two of them. Under fire from at least three Shermans, one of them was soon burning. At that point, I got a bit of a fright. Amongst the other Panzers, I saw the unmistakeable shape of a Tiger! I laid my gun onto him and let him have two quick rounds, aiming for his turret ring. But he motored on out of sight. Wasting no time, I switched targets to a Panzer IV which was swapping rounds with my platoon-mates. He didn't last long; he started smoking then suddenly, an internal explosion sent his turret flying. The Tiger seemed to have pulled back, for he was no-where to be seen and the shooting died away. Taking no chances, I rolled forward just far enough to get a better line of sight over to my left. This revealed what was left of our two victims, but happily, no sign of the Tiger. It's a very welcome feature that PE is good at platoon communications, because you have five crews looking for targets - and more to the point, indicating them to you, on the radio or the intercom. For now the airwaves stayed silent, so I felt reasonably sure the Tiger had pulled back. Our next move brought our earlier victims into sight, just to our right front. There were indeed armoured cars, seemingly the command version of the big Sdkfz 222 8-wheeled job, no threat for a medium tank. So far, so good. Two German platoons defeated and a Tiger apparently put to flight! Not a bad day's work, thus far anyway. Especially as I like to bring all the boys home afterwards, rather than use them as cannon-fodder. I like to think that the boys believe I'm a decent officer who cares about his men and not a Kamikaze, a glory boy or a full-on f***ing f***wit (to borrow Sgt Wells's pithy observation in 'Dog Soldiers'). Whether that would continue, remained to be seen. ...to be continued!

Bring on the Shermans! Panzer Elite is pretty well unique amongst sims in that it provides by far the most realistic 'briefing' for the player. When you kick it off, you are taken to an map. A suitably-accented voice-over describes the tactical situation, including the disposition and actions of friendly forces and the expected dispositions and actions of the enemy. You are then given your own tasks. This is a quite decent representation of the process of 'oral orders' and is how it works in real life, nowadays as well as in WW2. When the briefing's done you can read a summary, view specific objectives, check the weather forecast and see what artillery support is available. Unfortunately, these tools - the animated map and the verbal 'briefing' - are not as well utlised as they could and should be. The player is given his orders alone, whereas in real life, he and the other participating platoon commanders would all be sitting in on the same session (or 'Orders Group'). And in PE, the person giving you the briefing - in the US missions, anyway - calls you 'sir': in real life you get your orders from your boss, absolutely not from a subordinate. And the missions themselves often seem a bit disorganised, with platoons moving hither and thither, often rather widely spaced and with little apparent effort at co-ordination. Most PE missions - offensive ones, anyway - feel like a rather lonely advance to contact. All that said, they are still pretty good and within the sim's conventions and limitations, they offer players an exceptional experience of not just operating their own tank, but also playing the role of a tank platoon commander. Here are our dispositions for this mission, in green; the 'X' marks my on platoon's starting location. We're defending the US bridgehead at the town of Gela, in southern Sicily. Apart from scattered infantry units in a wide arc to the west and north, our forces seem to consist of a group of tank platoons. One of the nice things about the PE campaign missions is that they follow the course of a series of real battles from each campaign, fought on maps which are decent representations of the ground at the time. This mission replicates one day in the Battle of Gela, 11 July 1943, when German armoued units, including some Tiger tanks, made a sustained effort to crush the US beachead there. In re-fighting this battle, we have been told that the Germans are expected to mount concentric attacks on Gela from north, north-west and west. My platoon is ordered to make what is described rather oddly as a recce, just inland from the coast, to the west-north-west. Not for us, the luxury of finding fire positions from which we can wait for the enemy to come to us. It's implied (but not really made clear) that the other tank platoons will also move out, later. I decided I would move only slowly, from fire psoition to fire position, to avoid getting too far out in front. And I would edge northwards towards the others, for better mutual support...I so hoped. As usual, the PE briefing lets you see the specific goals which determine mission failure or success, as well as 'bonus' or secondary goals which I believe can result in medals or experience being won. This is uesful, if not entirely realistic, not least as it displayes the actual names and presence of units that you are not going to know so much about. Incidentally, in stock PE, all units are pretty anonymous, even though their missions closely follow real ones. I rarely bother swapping my crew around in PE and on this mission, I forgot to check out what extras I might be able to add to my tanks, which was not a good thing. But I was keen to see the new Shermans in action; so after a quick review of the objectives, I kicked off the operation. I quickly got my tanks into line abreast formation - I have a full-strength platoon of five - facing the enemy. Halted again, I checked out the immediate locality, before moving off again. Ahead of us lay a road through some scattered buildings, on the northern outskirts of Gela. I called my platoon into column and drove on through, intending to deploy again on the far side. After playing a lot of Steel Fury, it's a pleasure to be able to take advantage again of Panzer Elite's much superior command and control facilities. You can do so much more, and all of it via hotkeys, though there so many key commands that it takes a while to remember them all again. Calling up the map, I checked out our side's dispositions; you can see friendly forces in green (spotted enemies appear blue) with their names as text labels. My tanks are the yellow symbols, making their way in column up the road. In game, in modded PE, the map appears rather small, but you still have all the control of the stock sim's map, including options to configure the display, check your orders and progress and call up artillery support - if you have any. And we do on this mission, in the form of a limited number of HE or smoke 'shoots' from 105mm howitzers. Sadly, we have none of the naval gunfire support that drenched the German and Italian defenders, in the real Battle of Gela. Once out into the open again, I gave the order for wedge formation. As anyone who's read the handbooks, played the sims or done the training for real will know, for both infantry and tanks, this is a good formation for an advance, giving decent observation and fields of fire to both flanks, as well as straight ahead. Whether every army used every formation or not, it's good to have the full range of options PE allows, which includes the ability to close up or spread out. Your AI 'wingmen' can dilly-dally a bit sometimes, especially if there are obstacles about - in the screenie below, only one of the two tanks on my right has so far made it into position. But generally, they keep up quite well and with the mods, their turrets aren't all rigidly stuck facing straight ahead. Soon enough, we were formed up and en route, giving me a bit of time to admire the improvements wrought by Slomo to these staple PE tanks, which includes external stowage as well as 3-d suspensions. But I wasn't here for the sight-seeing. Up ahead somewhere, the Germans were said to be coming, and we had been flung out to meet them, Tigers and all. With a long ridge between me and the coast to my left, I felt reasonably secure on that flank. Ahead and right were the arcs we most needed to watch. I rolled forward, seeking a suitable fire position from which to halt and observe before making my next bound, with my turret turned slightly right, about as ready as I could be for whatever it was lay out there. ...to be continued!

Fighting Steel Fury's version of WW2's most famous tank action! OK, so maybe Kursk was more famous, but it was a battle with tanks in it, rather than a specific tank action. In the latter category, few can be more well-known that Michael Wittman's (largely) solo action against the spearhead of the British 7th Armoured Division at Villers Bocage in Normandy, on 13 June 1944. This mission report is based on the first of three new missions by the Steel Tank Addon (STA) team, featuring the equally-new Normandy terrain; my earlier Panzer IV report was based on one of the other missions in this set. This is a very welcome addition to what's been a solidly Eastern Front tanksim, apart from a desert mod and some NW European missions, the latter nearly all based on Soviet maps. The Villers Bocage map isn't an exact replica of the actual terrain: for example, Villers Bocage itself lacks the closely-spaced rows of buildings on some narrow streets, I suspect because SF's AI would have difficulties with these. But it's pretty close, and with its hedgerows and distinctive buildings and structures, it really makes the player feel like he's somewhere different, where lines of sight are short and an A?T gun, a bazooka or a tank could be lurking on the other side of every hedgerow. As with the terrain, the mission is not an attempt to reproduce exactly the Witmann action, which itself has been the subject of different interpretations over the years. Rather, it captures the spirit of the fighting that morning, fifty-one years ago. You're playing the role of Michael Wittmann and you are ordered firstly to get to Point 213 a few hundred metres to your north, and ambush the British advance guard from there. Having done that, you are to attack into Villers Bocage itself and destroy the enemy there, too. You have just your own Tiger initially, but a second one is being made ready and will join you at some point. You are also warned to keep out of red zones marked on the map, as these areas are known to be under enemy observation and you will compromise the ambush if you're spotted first. Below is the mission map, showing the first phase. You're starting from Beauvais, marked by the blue oval. On this mission, it's important you follow your orders reasonably closely; for example, your arrival within the oval area around Point 213 will, I believe, trigger the British advance from the town, up the N175, towards you (along with simulated radio traffic warning you of this). Kicking off the mission, I ordered an AP round loaded and from the external view, had a look around. Below is my Tiger in the hamlet of Beauvais, with the as-yet-unready second Tiger stationary close by; to my front was a radio-equiped Kubelwagen field car. Wasting no time, I turned north and rattled off, towards Point 213. You can just about see Point 213 in the screenshot below: it's the rising ground more or less right behind the little house, half left. I was steering slightly right of it, to ensure that I stayed away from those darned red zones. I was careful not to smash the well or otherwise do more damage than I could avoid, to the nice Norman scenery. The fence in front of me was the exception. It was a shame to mangle that nice ironwork but the shortest distance between two points being a straight line, it just had to go. Soon, I was rattling as fast as I could go, over the relatively flat, open ground towards my first objective. I say 'open', but the terrain is a good deal less open than the usual SF landscape, criss-crossed with hedgerows and dotted with patches of woodland. Not ideal Tiger country, as I was soon to find out! ...to be continued!

An end, of sorts... Slowing down, I moved more cautiously down the left-hand verge of this road, hugging the cover. This brought us out onto the flank of the furthest Cromwell. He didn’t move but he didn’t look particularly dead, either. So, encouraged by my tank commander, I blasted him at close range with some of my remaining HE ammunition. We pressed on, crossing the N175 and bypassing the Cromwell. The Hotel de Ville, the map indicated, was just across the road, set back a little, so our ultimate objective was only seconds away. We roared up the last stretch and there it was; the Tommies hadn’t had time to haul down the German flag, which was still flying in the front garden. Halting, I looked around, expecting some final ambush. Nothing in sight, not a round came our way. No mad lawnmower sounds. I probed cautiously around the building. We'd done it and the coast was clear, but still, there was none of SF's usual confirmation message that we had completed the mission. Obviously, simply reaching the stated objective - even being in sole possession of it - was not enough. Evidently I needed to find and kill more Tommies, somewhere in the vicinity. However, by now, I rather lacked the means to do so. In particular, if those Cromwells I’d smothered with HE weren’t quite dead and needed to be, then I was as out of luck, as I was out of AP rounds. I could see what looked like bailed out British tank crews up the road, beside the Cromwell I'd knocked out as it sat next to the crippled second Tiger. They looked pretty miserable, standing there in the rain next to their broken tank, but I hosed them with the co-ax anyway. A lot of good it did me - still no victory confirmation. They had died in vain. It can be frustrating if you have to drive around to locate and destroy some last enemy to complete a mission, rather than just reaching the objective and holding it. But I decided that I would play along, to a degree. Instead of ending the mission and stomping off in a huff, I would attempt to do what Wittmann might have done in similar circumstances. Unsupported and low on ammo, I reckoned he’d probably have withdrawn and attempted to get back to his company lines, there to get 'bombed up' and organised for a fresh attack. With this in mind I turned about and drove north, getting out of Dodge as fast as my Tiger could go. No subtleties this time, I just ‘floored it’ and off we went, hoping we had already sprung most of the mousetraps. On my way out, I took a chance and passed close to the site of the British ambush in a last effort to mop up remaining enemies, but this just seemed to confirm that the other Tiger's crew had become casualties, which made me feel less bad about shooting down the Cromwell crew nearby. Swinging around clear of Villers, I made for our original ambush site. A glance at the map showed this to be a good landmark on a more or less direct route back to Beauvais, where we had started. As I drew away from Villers Bocage, I turned the turret around until my gun was laid over the engine decking, facing the enemy, in the approved fashion for a withdrawing tank. SF doesn't really do 'blue on blue' so I was more worried about being able to respond quickly to any threat to my rear, than being mistaken for an enemy by friendly forces. Reaching the kill zone, I turned slightly right, to give the wrecks a wider berth, crossed the N175 diagonally and then turned left again, on a heading for Beauvais. And in that fashion, as the rain fell steadily from dappled skies, we made it back to our starting point. Despite the mission not being recorded as a success, my own Tiger’s stats were rather good, if not quite up to the standard set by Wittmann in the real mission (probably with a full ammo load, and certainly with more opportunity to smash up light armour). Behind us, we left a goodly assortment of damaged or broken ironmongery. Much of this was in our original killing ground on the N175. There was plenty in and around Villers Bocage itself, too. All in all, this was an excellent mission (a beta, at the time of playing). It’s very different from the traditional Steel Fury job, in which you are usually commanding a platoon as part of a closely-knit attacking force which you can see and thus co-operate with. This solo mission looks, feels and plays very differently. Because you’re on your own (apart from that second, AI-controlled Tiger, which is liable to be out of sight often) the mission helps you learn and apply some basic lessons in handling a single tank – notably selection of fire positions, use of ground and cover and of course, application of fire or gunnery, whether you play from the tank commander or (as I did) gunner positions. I was disappointed to run out of main gun rounds, particularly the AP ones I needed most, and was surprised to discover that my ammo supply had actually been reduced by design. I feel a full ammo load would have been preferable, as the mission can be difficult enough without reducing your ammo load. If you want a greater challenge, in game setup, you can vary the balance of forces (one setting introduces a 17 Pounder towed anti-tank gun, I believe!). The limited ammo would have mattered less, had mission success not required the destruction of more enemies, beyond merely arriving at the final objective. As usual, some of SF’s limitations were apparent. As you’re not in command of other vehicles on this mission, it doesn’t matter that you have limited platoon control or that what you have, you must switch to the map view to exercise, rather than using hotkeys. But the excessively aggressive AI was also in evidence. This can see your platoon-mates make wild charges against detected enemy instead of staying with you. In this mission, single or light AFVs or troops were too willing to advance or attack regardless of losses or risk. However, decent AI was also on display, with vehicles driving out of the kill zone and that Cromwell making good use of dead ground and cover to stalk my Tiger...up to the point he just charged me. SF’s AI does take some account of morale but should have more regard to danger and losses – in particular, the loss of platoon (or higher) command elements, which should visibly degrade unit performance. Another downside is the near complete lack of radio comms in SF, except for event-triggered traffic incorporated by individual mission designers. It’s a pity that SF platoons do not routinely transmit by radio things they would in real life, like situation or contact reports. Panzer Elite was outstanding in this respect. Steel Fury is probably suited to mid-war Soviet (or early-war western) practice where maybe only platoon (and above) command tanks had transmitters. A good feature of this particular late-war, western front mission is that Lockie has built in plenty of radio traffic. This is exactly how it should be done for western armies and compensates quite well for the sims’ lack of AI radio traffic. It’s also frustrating that while the German tank commanders in Steel Fury use the clock code to indicate targets in spoken intercom messages, 12 0’clock is not straight ahead, as it was in real Panzer practice (as replicated in Panzer Elite), but due north. This makes it needlessly difficult to play with the visual aids turned off. Graviteam’s newer tanksim, Steel Armor: Blaze of War, replaces this with a still-slightly-quirky but more intuitive system. Indeed, with many other improvements and a dynamic campaign system, SABOW should be a great basis for WW2 virtual tanking on any front, if and when suitable mods or downloadable content appears. Even then, and regardless of some limitations, Steel Fury with the Steel Tank Add-on will still be a top tier WW2 tanksim, a title shared currently only with the visually inferior but still exceptional Panzer Elite. I’m particularly delighted to see Steel Fury now at last fighting in Normandy, with a range of really excellent new US and British vehicles and some of the best terrain and ground objects seen in the sim to date. Far from facing defeat, with this content and these missions, Steel Fury has truly opened up a new front!