33LIMA

Thanks Rends and thank you for the map and the mission. Now that there is a 'Mickey Mouse ear' T-34 available, it would be good to see this in the mission. I might try editing the mission to make that change, and replace the Panzer IVs and Tigers with Panthers, for a bit of variety. Lockie has been showing me a little of the editor but he makes it look easy! The thing I liked most about your map is that the ground is not a 'billiard table', but has lots of dips, folds and gullies so that you can move tactically, in bounds, from fire position to fire position. However, I am glad I did not encounter that anti-tank ditch, nasty!!! I'm going to have a crack with a T-34 next, but even that has its hazards, like 88s firing across the valley while you're trying to get across the bridges:

The butcher's bill I'd got away with it, this mission, but many hadn't been so fortunate. On the Soviet side, the casualties were mostly T-34s, as was to be expected, including these fellows. Another T-34 lay next to a gun pit with a 45mm anti-tank gun, which had been no match for the panzers. There were several of these about but I didn't see any of the 76.2mm field guns which had a much better A/T capability. Another T-34 had somehow flipped upside down. Serves him right for showing off, like as not. Other Red Army casualties included KV-1 heavy tanks and SU-122 assault guns, like these. On the German side, there had also been losses. My own platoon had been fortunate - the Panther which had lagged behind had lost a track but was otherwise intact. I hadn't noticed it but there had been at least one SPW on the battlefield, and it had come to grief, as they usually do, along with many of the Panzer IVs. My early-war German vehicles in this mission were all in 'panzer grey' because I had applied the mod which replaces the NTA mod's 'compromise' colour schemes with the early-war colour: by Kursk, many German AFVs would probably have been in the Dark Yellow inrtoduced early in 1943, or in an interim scheme. The Tigers had borne the brunt of the fighting and two of them were out of action, both immobilised. Nearby a third Tiger was awkwardly parked but intact. Rather less well parked was this Panther, which had evidently fallen foul of a deep anti-tank ditch and left its crew standing about waiting for the recovery crew to arrive and decide whether to pull her out or fill her in.. Finally there were the Ferdinands, as the Elephant tank destroyers were also known. At that stage lacking a bow MG to defend themselves against Soviet infantry, these were said by Panzer General Heinz Guderian to have had to go 'quail shooting with cannon' at Kursk. One of ours had been somehow knocked out; another had ended up intact but entangled with a knocked-out Panzer IV. All in all, this was a very enjoyable mission. I would have seen more action if I'd charged ahead with the others but I prefer to play a bit more tactically and ideally, to bring my platoon through the fight in one piece, rather than just regarding them as expendable AI 'bots'. Like many add-on AFVs, the Panther D lacks interiors (or 'cockpits') but I very rarely use these so I never miss them. While the mission was but a tiny fragment of the real Prokhorovka, it did a great job of recreating the basic scenario. Only quibble would be that as with many SF '42 missions, I would have preferred to be operating as part of a tank company (or a single tank platoon working with an infantry company) instead of a force where each tank platoon has a different tank - the sight of a dozen or so Panthers thundering forward, perhaps with some Ferdinands for fire support, would have been quite a spectacle - not that the mission wasn't, as usual the SF '42 battlefield ambience is first class. Highly recommended

Battle over! Advancing again, I noticed that my AI tank commander now had his head out of the hatch, which is generally a sign that there's no immediate danger. I could see no particular indications of Soviet defensive positions but for the first time I could see some of our grenadiers, pressing forward on foot. I stopped again in another fold in the ground to cover their advance. Scanning left and right again, I put a round or two into some stationary T-34s as insurance. The Tigers seemed less worried and carried on regardless. There was still lead flying, mostly MG fire, and my tank commander wisely decided to keep his head down once more. We rolled forward again to the next dip in the ground. The terrain here was well suited to a bit of fire and manoeuvre, with plenty of little undulations where I could halt the tank in a near hull down position. Checking my map I headed for one of the re-grouping zones marked on it, in the form of blue ovals, just on the far side of the enemy positions through which we had now come. At this point, I got confirmation that we had won the battle! Rather than end the mission I played on for a little while, keen to make the most of the chance to do some virtual tanking in my fine big Panther. There was still a little shooting going on and if any Ivans needed persuading that for them, the war was over, well, I was up for it. Followed by my surviving Panther, I rolled on a little while, slipping down into a gully and edging to a halt just short of the far lip, with my main gun just above grass level, in a nice hull down position Seeing no threats and moving forward again, I decided to test my crew's ability to find cover for themselves, using the 'take up defensive position'! comamnd (available from the map view and as a hotkey, '7'). This worked fairly well and I settled down to scan for a possible counterattack. The infantry settled down too although one of the Tigers - who seemed to have borne the brunt of the fighting - decided it was time to head back, to refuel and re-arm, perhaps. There had been something about re-arming at pillboxes in the briefing but I hadn't seen these. There was nothing doing, so I contented myself with putting a couple of rounds into a stationary T-34. You can't be too careful - last mission, playing for once in a thin-skinned Panzer III, I got killed by just such a stationary Soviet tank, who waited until I had driven up right next to him. Live and let die, like they say in that song. The expected counter-attack didn't come - likely, we had in fact run into it, at the outset - a meeting engagement, as they call it. In that respect, this mission had played out quite like a mini Battle of Prokhorovka. Neat! All that remained was to have a quick look around the battlefield, see what there was to be seen, and maybe grab some loot... ...to be continued!

Into action ! Scanning left with the gun sight (the object to the right is my 7.5cm tank gun's muzzle brake) I could see one of the Tigers rolling forward, but no sign of the enemy, beyond some knife-rest obstacles. A screen of trees blocked any view into the distance. But nearer the axis of our advance, things were hotting up rapidly. Beyond another Tiger, I suddenly saw a T-34 slip over the distant skyline, followed by another, then another. I swung my turret around and started shooting the Ivans. I should have set my sights to, say, 500 metres while still zoomed out, because in the zoomed-in view you can't see the ticks against which you read off the range against the scale for the appropriate ammunition. So my first round was a bit of a ranging effort. By the time I had got a hit, my first target has slipped into a fold in the ground. Soon I could see little of him and the other T-34s, except the occasional turret top, flitting left or right. Time to move, and no time to lose! Rather than backing out of cover and advancing again from a different side I just rolled forward, halted in the next fold and started scanning again. At this point, things quickly got scary. The fold in the ground ahead must have ended quite close to us for suddenly, zig-zagging T-34s started popping up in front of us, at dangerously close range, and seemingly right in front of the Tigers. Firing as fast as our loader could chamber rounds, I tracked and shot the T-34s. Just as at Prokhorovka, they seemed to have been briefed to close with us fast, as the best antidote to the new German tanks. For a while it was touch and go, seeming likely that we would be over-run. For a Panther, with its comparatively thin and brittle side armour, having Ivans in a T-34 as your next-door neighbour is not to be sneezed at. But we managed to halt the onrush, and things settled down again. Scanning left and right, I could see that our lighter Panzer IVs had taken a bit of a beating. Time to gain some more ground! I backed out of my fold in the ground, swung around, and began to press forward again. Behind me, only one of my other two Panthers was still moving. Together we pressed on, past the first of the Soviet casualties, an SU-122 assault gun. ...to be continued!

Back to the Russian Front with 'WWII Battle Tanks - T-34 vs Tiger'! The year 2008 was a promising one for tank simulation enthusiasts, with two new WW2 tank sims released around the same time. One was Steel Fury - Kharkov 1942, which found most favour with players, continues to be modded and played, and has been featured in three recent mission reports here at CombatAce. This time it's the turn of 'the other sim' - the aptly-named T-34 vs Tiger. Strangely, this was released by the same publishers - Lighthouse Interactive - as Steel Fury; my T34 - vs Tiger manual even has a 2-page, centre-fold spread advert for SF! As a fan of the Tiger tank in particular and something of a tanksim nut since discovering Panzer Commander, I was keen to try out the new sim. But with sub-par AI, no interaction with other tanks or vehicles in your unit and a very limited set of heavily-scripted (and questionably realistic) missions, I soon realised why most players seemed to gravitate (sic) to Graviteam's 'Steel Fury', instead. Still, 'TvT' has some really good features and in particular, is in most respects a very good simulation of operating the two featured tanks. And if you like it enough to hanker for more, there's an ongoing payware mod by Zeewolf which adds vehicles and missions. Having fairly recently taken some time off combat flight sims to play Steel Fury and report the results, I thought I'd dust off T-34 vs Tiger and do likewise. Will a fresh crack at the sim after the passage of several years change my first impressions? Let's find out! The mission If you're single-player only like me you won't be too bothered that the sim's apparently promising multi-player capability never seemed to have been realised. But the single-player option also had its issues. There's only six missions for each side. There are no training missions - it's all on-the-job-training, as it were. Together, the missions form a campaign of sorts but they seem to be no more than a loosely-sequenced series of small operations in the same general area in the same timeframe. The area is between Smolensk and Vitebsk in what is now Belarus, in the northern sector of Germany's Army Group Centre. The timeframe is summer 1944, during Operation Bagration, the Soviet summer offensive for that year. This was a major disaster for the Wehrmacht and a great success for the Red Army, with large swathes of Soviet territory being liberated and much destruction being visited on Army Croup Centre. I was tempted to try out the T-34; but for better comparison with both my early efforts with TvT and my recent forays with SF, I decided that I'd let the Tiger off his leash once more. As for my choice of mission, this was limited..to one mission in fact. Irrititatingly, it seems you have to 'unlock' the missions by winning them. There may have been a cheat to unlock missions but if there was I can't find it now. [EDIT - found it! it's here] I don't know if this approach was a crude attempt to make the best of the twelve missions by forcing replays but I find this pretty hateful - and unrealistic, to boot. Unless you get the chop in one sense or another, life goes on, whether or not the powers-that-be deemed your last operation was a success. It doesn't help that mission success in TvT seems tightly-defined in terms of things you must kill, down to the last tank...and I mean 'you must kill' because the AI may be little help. But more of this anon. So - this report deals with the first of the six German missions, because that was all I could get at, readily. Except that there will be two flavours - stock and ZeeWolf. This is because ZeeWolf's TvT project, though subscription-only, includes some freebies. And one of them is a new mission, which seems to replace the original first mission, when you install it (at least it did for me). The package seems to make some other changes, too; it may be a different time of day in each mission is fooling me here but I get the impression that the very harsh lighting is softened, losing the too-dark shadows and warming up the colours. And the Tiger is back to the full set of rubber-tired roadwheels (it started like this but the TvT official patch changed these to the resilient steel-tired roadwheels with the outer row removed). Top pic is stock+patch; bottom is with ZeeWolf's freebies installed: Kurtenki - the stock mission I'll keep this one short, not least because if you have ever played TvT, you'll know this one off by heart; there seems to be little-to-no variability in TvT missions, with friends and enemies identically scripted and positioned each time...unfortunately. I didn't get a screenie of the briefing but...it's brief. Basically, drive down the road/track towards a 'blown' river bridge and destroy any enemies seen massing (or doing anything else, for that matter) on the enemy bank. I don't find it easy to tell the lie of the land from the little briefing and in-game maps in TvT - that they show forests, the 'rides' between them and the roads is their most useful feature - but we're starting between the village of Kurtenki and the river, on a sort of plateau from which the ground falls away steeply to the river, then rises just as steeply on the other side - terrain perhaps more suitable for a mountain lion than a tiger. Anyway, here we go. There's two of us in Tigers, on this job. See what I mean about that harsh lighting? Apart from that, these are mostly very nice renditions of a fairly late-production Tiger 1. Apart from the steel roadwheels, distinguishing features for mid- and/or late-production vehicles include the commander's 'low profile' cupola with episcopes instead of the older 'dustbin' type; the ribbed 'Zimmerit' anti-magnetic mine paste on vertical surfaces; the lack of turret-side triple smoke dischargers; no 'Fiefel' air cleaner filters on the rear plate; and spare track stowage moved from the lower nose to the turret sides. Are you the boss on this operation? Or just a 'wing-man'? Search me. But never fear, it doesn't matter. The AI, including your boss (or 'wing-man') pay you no attention, unless the mission designer has built in triggers which provoke them into action when you (or others) do a certain thing. You have no way of controlling your fellow tankers and playing as a platoon/troop commander. It's hard even to co-operate with them, as their actions seem hasty, unpredictable or silly - sometimes all three at once. As is my wont, I switched to the gunner position then turned on the AI driver and AI tank commander (TC). The former I can give driving orders W-A-S-D fashion, from the gunner's station. I can also tell the loader whether to load HE or AP rounds. The AI TC will spot targets for me. Another advantage of playing in the gunner's sattion is that you can orient the turret to cover likely threats, instead of just driving around with the gun at twelve o-clock all the time - with the Tiger's slow traverse, this can help you get onto targets faster. I could equally have stuck to the commander's station and let AI both drive and gun. The AI gunner wil engage what he sees but if you're playing TC you can also mouse-click targets to designate them. In SF the AI crew will open or close hatches as they see fit but not in TvT. As only Soviet TCs fought entirely buttoned up I briefly switched to the TC position, unbuttoned, and then once the TC had popped into position, left him there and went back to the gunner's station. For some reason the TvT Tank Commander insists on standing tall in his cupola, instead of sensibly operating with just his head exposed. But I still prefer this to hatches permanently closed. There are well-rendered tank interiors in TvT but I never use them. External view, TC hatch open, or gunsight/binocular view, that's my style As I passed the other Tiger he sprang into life. After that, he did his own thing. I drove south towards the river, past some grenadiers with an SPW manning a flimsy barricade. The sounds of my Tiger rumbling along and my TC calling out my driving commands were well done; sound effects are one of TvT's strengths, to my ears. After I passed this little barricade the other Tiger rumbled past me. The terrain - a wood on one side of our track and a steep slope on the other - seemed designed to funnel us in a certain direction. No Operation Flashpoint-style wide open sandboxes, here. Making the most of it, I was planning to creep up to the crest line - beyond which the terrain looked to dip down into the valley. Scan every inch of terrain as it revealed itself in front of me. Hug the woods on the left and watch what emerged across the river to my right. My fellow tank commander, bless his cotton socks, had no such concerns. He drove right up to the crest, stopped, and started shooting. He then drove on down the other side, out of sight. 'Bloody Hell!', I said to myself. 'There goes Plan A. Now what?' ...to be continued!

Yes I see what you mean Dave; I got those two on the next attempt, including this lot: Letting the first effort at the mission play on after my Tiger's demise, I noticed that the agressively-handled Panzer IVs did quite a good job flanking the Ivans, even though their tactics were a bit erratic eg driving right up over skylines. Staying on the move seemed to keep them alive, though, and they certainly gave better than they got, although at lest one got stuck in the woods. So this time I stayed closer to the Panzer IVs and slowed down my move to let them get into action too. Worked a treat. It helped that I mostly kept the turret position indicator turned on, to h*ll with the screenshots. The third German mission was a bit of a pain - the one where you're defending the village and it's the Soviet's turn to come over the skyline. Main problem is that you start in the open and by the time you've taken over the gunner station and turned on the auto driver (who seems inclined to forget he's working and take a nap, usually at critical moments) and the auto-commander and started to move into cover, they're coming at you. Plus another bunch then sneak into the village behind you. By the time one of the others had got this one, it was too late for me. Managed it on the third attempt, by driving immediately into the village and shooting from defilade, dividing my fire between the skyline merchants and the sneaky-beakies. The other defenders got most of the former, and some of the latter too. The mission didn't end though and guessing that one of the Ivans was either lurking unseen or needed finishing off, I had to make a fairly scary solo drive up the hill to the skyline, hugging the treeline. After establishing that there was nobody lurking in the dead ground over the crest I put a round into a couple of the less battered-looking Soviets and that seemed to do the trick - mission completed. The gunnery and general sense of tanking is very good. Despite the frustrations with the AI, lack of platoon control and some aspects of mission and map design, I must admit I'm enjoying T-34 -v- Tiger...while the missions last...

Where do they draw the line, I wonder. Even Wehrmacht uniforms have swastikas, albeit small ones as part of the eagle badge. Are they banning accurate German Army uniforms? Or because of the prominent SS runes or who they were, just Waffen SS? The latter, I assume. Granted that the Wehrmacht played no mean part in helping the Nazis bring all the horrors of war (not to mention what came in its Nazi wake) to millions and thereby to Germany 'reaping the whirlwind', their leaders having 'sown the wind'. Of course the Waffen SS were primarilly (and as re-enacted are) soldiers, albeit they were particularly tough and brutal ones by many accounts. Nevertheless, it seems to me that a re-enactor who chooses to portray publicly, at this sort of event, troops who are so closely and visibly identifiable with a truly hateful regime (when they could instead portray Wehrmacht or Falschirmjaeger units) is just going to have to accept that they are liable to stir up this sort of reaction; and 'muck it up for others' as CrazyHorse said. I'm as opposed to 'political correctness' as anyone, but I actually think this decision is no bad thing. It actually shows that WW2, in the UK anyway, has not become simply just another visitor attraction, with the lines between good and evil now blurred by the passage of time. Some people still remember; some people still care. The day when the very public display of overtly Nazi symbols - in any context - does not engender unease or opposition will be a sad one. I'm not entirely blameless. An airsoft event a few years back was desiged around the battle for Pegasus Bridge in Normandy. I wanted to play for the Paras but ended up being detailed to command the Germans. The only suitable kit I had was a modern German flecktarn smock. As this was unlike Wehrmacht patterns but a good ringer for a Waffen SS pattern, for the sake of greater authenticity I stuck on some SS runes and rank badges to the shirt lapel and SS eagles to the smock, even tho the Waffen SS were not at that battle. But I was conscious that I was doing something questionable and contrary to my own beliefs, which I would not have contemplated at a public event, rather than a private one were my mates got a laugh and knew I'm no wanabe Nazi.

Not towns but how about labelling the forests named in many pilot accounts? The one that comes to mind is Polygon Wood. Even if that is not what the Germans called it and even if it is not polygonal in WOFF, it would be good to see it marked on the map, if there is a sim wood in the area. As for towns, the main ones would be those (probably villages really) mentioned in the major battles, like Vimy or Adinfer (the latter also having a wood named after it IIRC).

Evening patrol with Jasta 5, Cambrai sector, November 1917:

Wings Over Flanders Fields - the CombatAce Review, part 3 The WOFF Campaign System Up to now, I have tried to keep this review factual and observational with the minimum of gushing hyperbole. But this is the point at which it gets rather difficult to give a fair or adequate picture without resorting to superlatives. So I'll settle for saying at the outset 'I'm simply blown away by the WOFF campaign!', then try to settle back down to business. This first bit will be familiar to players of OFF but for everyone else, the main feature of the WOFF campaign is that it is underpinned by a pretty comprehensive, living reproduction of the aerial orders of battle (orbats) of the British, French, German and US air services. This includes 'scouts' (fighters) and a variety of two-seaters (a few fighters, but mostly general purpose recce types). Each squadron is based where it was at any point in time, during the real war. Its roster includes many of the pilots who are known to have flown with the unit, including squadron aces - you can see their names in the 'duty room' and look at their own dossiers, often with a real photo of the actual pilot. The unit's planes have an historically-accurate skin for different periods in its operational service. Its aces may well have their own, distinctive skins. You can pick your squadron and fly with it through the war, moving bases and changing aircraft as it does. This includes the ability to start for the Germans flying a two-seater then move to 'scouts' when the unit changes role, with the formation of the German Jastas (Jagdstaffeln, fighter squadrons) from autumn 1916. Squadrons may fly more than one aircraft type or variant, with the higher-ranking pilots having the more up-to-date mounts - 'rank hath its privileges', in WOFF as in real life. There are some gaps in the orbats where a plane is not (yet) available in the sim. For example, let's say you've read the classic 'No Parachute' or 'Open Cockpit' and you want to fly with author Arthur Gould Lee's 46 Squadron, RFC. You can: you just have to start where the author did, in late Spring 1917 flying Sopwith Pups, because the squadron's previous mount, the Nieuport 12 two-seater, isn't in the WOFF planeset. When you arrive at la Gorgue airfield and visit the 'Duty Room', you can see the author himself in the squadron roster and look up his dossier/logbook where's there's an actual photograph of the man himself. How neat is that? By combining a good planeset with thorough orders of battle and realistic rosters and skins for each unit, WOFF does an exceptional job of putting the player into a first-class and incredibly-detailed recreation of the air war over the Western front. OFF did this too, but WOFF does it better. And when you get into the air, WOFF's much better AI and other new or improved features bring the experience to life in a much superior fashion. There's so much depth and so many features to the experience you get from WOFF campaign missions, it really needs an article in itself. I plan to illustrate this topic with some mission reports, soon. In the meantime, here's some fairly random but illustrative info and observations on how it all comes together. First, let's take a quick look at the training option I mentioned in Part 2. If you opt for 'Automatic Deployment' after choosing the nationality of a new pilot you are creating, you can also opt to have him undertake some basic flight training in a two-seater, before he is posted to an operational unit 'at the sharp end'. This is an appealing addition to WOFF. As training, you're much better off trying out your squadron's assigned machine in Quick Combat. But many WW1 pilot autobiographies begin with accounts of their flying training, which could be pretty basic by modern standards. WOFF, amongst other things, is evidently a product for enthusiasts designed by enthusiasts and it's a nice touch that as a mood-setter, they have taken the trouble to construct for us a short, optional smattering of simulated WW1 flying training before we head off to the Front. There seems to be a training option for each nation. It's a pretty basic syllabus, but then by all accounts it was, at least until the last year or so of the war. Here's the Royal Flying Corps version, operating out of Sutton's Farm, then on the eastern outskirts of London, later RAF Hornchurch, flying a 'Quirk,' as the BE2c was called. The first flight is a pleasant short-range extended circuit around the aerodrome, with your virtual pilot under instruction sitting in the front seat, with no dual controls, purely to see how it's done. I turned on text message display just for this but saw none. It was a pleasant enough trip, in good weather, over England's green and pleasant land. For the German training, you're flying an Aviatik from Maubeuge in Belgium. With the French, I'd guess that you'll be in a Morane parasol; for the USA, maybe a parasol or a Strutter. When you kick off the course, you are told which unit you will be assigned to when your training is complete, so that you can have some choice in the plane you will fly on operations. Neat! Right, you've done the training, if desired. And, hopefully, you've had the sense to put in some time flying your chosen aircraft against typical opposition, in Quick Combat. Eager for action and with your chosen pilot active, you start a campaign. Here's a typical mission briefing. First time I saw this, I thought, 'Oh no! We're still getting some inappropriate missions, like recces for fighters!' But no, despite the headline, we're actually escorting a pair of RE8s on a recce mission. And the mission text is better written than OFF's, with more proper placenames, for example. Spot on. At this point, you can do various things. You can't alter the type of mission you get, only its target (if you're bombing) or end point/objective area (if not). But you can look up some 'Intell' (to use an out-of-place modern term!) and while you are there, apply for a transfer. Here's the 'Intell' screen with tabs opened for both local enemies and transfer opportunities, for a Jasta 10 mission in Autumn 1917. Presentation and functionality is much improved, over OFF. As to the missions themselves, the campaign is where you really notice how all the improvements and new stuff come together. Take navigation, for instance. Now, what you can see on the map and and in the 3d game world actually tie in nicely, (which they didn't really, in OFF). And there are two inflight maps available. There's a basic one that includes an icon with your own position and your track plotted. And for the more hard core who scorn such things and want to find their way around more realistically, there's a better in-cockpit map, without the visual aids. Here I am in an Aviatik in the winter of 1915, off on a bombing mission to a railway terminus near the large town of Amiens. Comparing what I can see to my maps, I can tell that the town just ahead and slightly right is Albert, with Amiens still out of sight, just beyond the river, further ahead. This helps a lot, with immersion. If you're curious how that one ended up, I chickened out short of Amiens and instead bombed a target of opportunity, namely a convoy of lorries I spotted heading east on a road near the target. After all, don't they say that a convoy in the hand is better than a railyard in the bush? If you're wondering where the bombs are, early planes didn't have racks; the observer kept the bombs in his cockpit and heaved them overboard! One irritation on longer campaign flights is that you can no longer 'warp' to save time. Apparently, this is because 'warp' messes up the synchronisation between other flights, which are going about real missions of their own, all along the front, and are not just 'spawned' in your vicinity. Instead you can fly in real time or enable an autopilot and use time compression. If I recall right, there's a workaround to enable 'warp' if you want to chance it. I haven't flown many two-seater campaign missions but while some planes have a suitably-rudimentary bombsight view, I believe that there is no special provision for reconnaisance missions (unless you want to grab a screenshot or write on Wordpad what you see) or for artillery-spotting missions. It's on campaign that you will also come to understand the various tools available to help you locate or identify other aircraft or understand what's going on. Opinions and results may vary from player to player, plane to plane and set-up to set-up; but to me, distant aircraft visibility is still somewhat on the short side. Some report up to about 2.5 miles, 1.5 is more common in my experience. You can live with this reasonably well, especially if flying German fighters as you're mostly on your side of the Lines and flak bursts will often point out your targets. Or you can use the Tactical Display (TAC), selecting a range limit which you're comfortable with. Or you can use the labels. As with the TAC, labels have been much improved, over OFF. Settings can be varied. There is now a 'dot' mode to make planes more visible further away - this appears quite effective although (i) it's now grey while I think it'd have been better left black or very dark grey and (ii) it looks to me that the default settings need a bit of experimentation to get an optimum balance between realism and effectiveness. As for the actual text labels, these can now contain a surprising variety of information, not just the type of aircaft, distance and (if close enough) the pilot's name - but also what it's doing eg fighting, returning to base, or landing. And the new TAC sub-text can also give the ID of any target you have selected - in this case, confirming that my opponent in the silver Nieuport I'm fighting in my Pfalz is no less than RFC ace, James D Payne of 29 Squadron (in the text below the TAC, 'HA' indicates an Historical Ace). Now, that was a scary discovery! But I actually managed to knock him down. Campaigns are also a great way to experience WOFF's new AI. Payne was the last of three Nieuports I claimed on that mission, having met them one at a time. Being an ace, he was a much tougher nut to crack. In fact he very nearly got me instead. At one point I saw him stall and spin out, then recover and resume the fight, another indicator of the quality of the new AI. His Nieuport seemed rather more nimble but I managed to hold my height better and in the end, my two MGs settled the matter in my favour. Here's the claim form I filled in after the battle. In 'Workshops' I've opted to have my kill confirmations depend on acceptance of these combat reports so I've typed in details like time, location and altitude into the 'Narrative' field. Here's hoping! Another thing I've noticed on campaign is that my suspicion was confirmed, that enemy balloons are vulnerable to friendly flak aimed at you. The burning Hun gasbag behind me was clobbered by his own Archie as I was beating a low-level retreat in my Pup, pursued by two Huns in V-strutters, after my blood having knocked down one of their comrades. Worth mentioning that the Albatrosses gave up chasing me when I reached the Lines, with none of the usual target fixation. And speaking of the Lines, the word is that you no longer routinely meet Hun fighters operating freely on the British/French/US side, which would be good. Another plus, I believe, is that there are no longer some disconnects between what happens in the game world and what's reported in WOFF's interface. There's no longer the RB3d-like ability to replay missions on the map, but a modder is working on something which may provide a comparable facility. The much better formation-keeping is also much in evidence, on campaign. Realistically, your flight seems very liable to become split up in or after an air combat but otherwise, the fact they now keep up so well during course changes means that at last, you can bring your flight into action as a unit, and better play the role of a patrol-leader. Scouts and two-seaters do equally well, here. I've seen no more slipping wide on modest course changes, nor falling below on a climb. The new AI is really first-class! Activity levels at or behind the front is another big plus. Though I haven't seen any artillery batteries (which I think were in CFS3) the barrages they produce look better than ever, more concentrated and with better graphical effects. As you have probably worked out by now, I could witter on all day about the WOFF campaign experience and how good it is, but I must stop somewhere and this is it! At-a-Glance - the Pros & Cons Now, we're getting into more subjective territory and as they said in Rome, there's no point disputing matters of taste. But here goes! It's worth saying at the outset that merely counting up the 'pros' and 'cons' listed below is misleading: most of the 'pros' are significant; many of the 'cons' just aren't, by comparison. Not featured in either of the lists below is damage modelling, as I reckon that isn't a particular strength nor a particular weakness. Likewise, I have left out two other points. Firstly, there's distant aircraft visibility. Though I think it should be a bit further, I expect the new dot mode, when I get it set up to my taste, will fit the bill. Secondly, there's the flight models, which in general do seem somewhat less tractable than what I'm used to and prefer. But I'm not an expert and rather than knock these, I'll put that impression down to lack of familiarity, possible greater realism and wrist strain/my lack of rudder pedals. Pros Excellent, historical single-player campaign Excellent sounds Large planeset, all flyable Great-looking cockpits Great-looking planes, especially with Ankor's mod Great looking terrain & scenery, covering whole Western Front Great AI Great 'living' air war Good range of historical 'skins' Ability to 'gun' from multi-seat planes Historical aces are present Faithful reproduction of orders of battle over most of the war Very good interface with lots of options Very good support from the developers Good level of ground activity at and behind the front lines Expansion packs already available and more planned Cons No multi-player (possibly a 'Pro', if you're not into MP!) Limited aircrew animation No reloading time for drum-fed MGs No 'warp' Barrages, but no artillery batteries in action (I think) Limited simulation of recce or artillery observation missions Attacked balloons not winched down (& vulnerable to 'friendly' flak) A few significant planeset gaps Comparatively few villages Minor inaccuracies in a few aircraft models 'Wide angle lens' external view Some significant limits to modability eg difficult to add new planes/integrate with campaign The Verdict This year marks the centenary of the outbreak of 'The Great War for Civilization', to quote the title used on my great-great uncle's Victory Medal. So it's a fitting time for the release of a new simulator which gives us some sense of what it must have been like to fight the Great War in the air. However, with WOFF's predecessor Over Flanders Fields, Rise of Flight and First Eagles (not to mention the IL-2 mod DBW-1916, the earlier FS-WW1 based on Screamin' Demons Over Europe or even the Warbirds derivatives like Flyboys Squadron) - we are already well-served with WW1 flightsims. So what's the case for splashing out on WOFF? Is it worth it, especially if you already 'fly' one of the alternatives? My own assessment of the 'big three' current WW1 combat flightsims - First Eagles 2, Rise of Flight, and now Wings Over Flanders Fields - is still that there are some areas where each is best. FE2 - modded - has an amazing planeset, great air-to-air, additional theaters and an under-rated campaign system. RoF is great at delivering the feeling of flying a WW1 plane and now has Pat Wilson's Campaign Generator to enhance the single player campaign experience. I've much enjoyed playing both FE2 and RoF and I know I will continue to do so. OFF was a product with an unrivaled grasp of its historical subject matter. However, in some core respects - patrol-leading and air combat, to my mind the most important things for a WW1 sim to do well - OFF, in my experience, had not fully matured. Now, in its latest incarnation and in this WW1 centenary year, Wings Over Flanders Fields is a simulation that has come of age, with impeccable timing. It has taken the historical content and the comprehensive single-player campaign system of OFF, improved it and then added visuals which - save for a few minor caveats - are absolutely top-notch. Likewise, sound effects are really marvellous and interface is much improved. So are most other features. And new stuff has been added, like the flying training missions. Most of all, thanks to the new AI and other related enhancements, the air-to-air experience is now right up there, with or ahead of the best of them. Playing WOFF for this review, I get a strong sense that the people behind the sim have this stuff in their blood and have striven really hard to deliver an exceptional WW1 air war experience. Did they succeed? Will Wings Over Flanders Fields repay the investment of your money and your time? Well, it's your call, and I hope this review helps you make up your mind. For me, the answer is a resounding 'Hell, yes!' Why 'Hell, yes!'? Well, I prefer to avoid gushing superlatives and have tried to keep this review balanced and observational. But lest anyone mistake that for coolness about WOFF, please allow me the luxury of two related and more personal observations, to wind up the main body of the review. Here's the first point. Imagine a developer who asked a thousand knowledgeable enthusiasts what they wanted to see in a single-player sim - content, features, looks and gameplay. And then built it. For World War 1 over the Western Front, Wings Over Flanders Fields is that sim. How many other sims can you say that about? And on/shortly after release? So there's no DH4. Not everything made it. But last time I checked, I wasn't living in Utopia. Second point is this. Having been released at the end of 2013, I don't know if WOFF counts as a 2013 sim or a 2014 one. But given the depth, breadth and quality of this product, if WOFF doesn't win at least one 'Sim of the Year' award, well, there ain't no justice. Likewise, in my experience, WOFF deserves to be in at least the top ten 'Best Combat Flightsims' - ever. The final score? Well the scale is: 5 - Must Buy - Delivers a consistently outstanding experience with minimal flaws that do not detract from the gameplay in any significant way. 4 - Highly Recommended - Delivers a fun and enjoyable experience well worth your time and money, despite some room for improvement. 3 - Recommended - Delivers a solid gameplay experience with a few irritations that occasionally disrupt enjoyment. 2 - Difficult to Recommend - Delivers some of the promised fun, but not without significant problems in the gameplay experience. 1- Not Recommended - Delivers a sub-par gameplay experience; doesn't fulfill its promises; offers more bugs than fun. This reviewer's final score on the above scale is: 5 - Must Buy But we're not quite finished here yet! Coming next in part 4 - the view from the cockpits of the other CombatAce reviewers! The staff at CombatAce are grateful to OBD Software for supplying review copies of WOFF. By way of disclosure, 33LIMA helped with a little research (mostly on aerodromes) for the original, non-commercial release of OFF, but has no other or recent connection with OBD Software.

The ZeeWolf mission, part 3 Either side of me, the gap between the woods widened out as I pressed on, scanning anxiously ahead and on either side. The ground dipped away towards the far end of the ride and what lay there, I could not see. Elsewhere it was pretty level, with little or no visible folds or hummocks to offer me any cover. As I rolled on, trying not to be distracted by the SPW's antics, I noticed a smoke column in the centre of the long clearing. Its source was in dead ground, so I could not tell if it was my remaining companion. They say that the Hoplites in an Ancient Greek battle-line tended to edge instinctively to the right as each man sought to gain some protection by tightening up against the shield of the man on that side. In a similar way, I crept up close to the right-hand edge of the woods, rather than stay exposed in the centre of the ride. If it really kicked off again I would at least be able to crunch into the trees quickly...and hope that reports that TvT's AI gunners could see through such cover were inaccurate or exaggerated. As I nudged forward, I came to a point where - having shifted to the commander's higher viewpoint to get a better view into the dead ground ahead and using the binoculars - I could see that the source of the smoke plume to my front was a turret-less T-34, likely another victim of the remaining Tiger, wherever he was I rolled on, with the dodgem driver in the SPW sometimes behind, sometimes looping out in front. Then, a little further on, scanning between a group of trees at the right-hand edge of the ride, I saw the Tiger, sitting stationary and possibly immobilised but otherwise intact, not far beyond the killed T-34. Had the turret-less T-34 hit him? Were there more enemies ahead? Or was the Tiger fine and just waiting for me to catch up? I pressed on even more cautiously, pausing at intervals to scan the ground ahead of me. Finally, I came to the point were I could see more of the dead ground to my front. This suddenly opened out into a wide expanse of clear ground. I switched back to the gunner's station and started scanning through my gunsight, working left to right, and back again, near to far. Sure enough, just in front of what looked like a couple of wrecked trucks, stood two T-34-76s, sitting stationary and right out in the open. Where they in action or knocked out? Taking no chances, I quickly engaged them. In the second pic, you can see one of my tracers just above my tartget, arcing down and about to hit, even though I have somewhat under-set the range and compensated by aiming high. As the sight is mounted to the left of the Tiger's main gun, you need to place your aiming mark slightly left of your intended point of impact. Note also that TvT does quite a good job of simulating 'obscuration', the smoke and dust produced on firing, which you can see somewhat dimming the view in the second screenshot below. Fairly sure that both the inactive T-34s were now thoroughly knocked out, I rolled forward slightly further, so as to ensure there was no danger lurking in the remaining dead ground nearby. Meanwhile the SPW, which was still with me, continued to give a rather out-of-place but nevertheless impressive display of dodgem driving. At this point, halted and scanning, I turned on the mini-map, and confusion began to set in. I had forgotten to turn off the AWACS-style display and the map showed a live enemy tank (green) to my front. Where was he? I could see nothing, except the two dead T-34s. I put another round into each of these, just in case. As continued to scan, I could see that though its commander still stood unconcernedly in his cupola, the Tiger ahead of me had taken what might have been a penetrating hit in the near side of his turret. At this point the dodgem SPW did another loop in front of me, this time taking on one of the trees, which he succeeded in knocking down in front of me. Perhaps it was a clever attempt to give me some cover but it rather hampered the view throught my optics, so I drove over it and halted again. At this point things started happening fast. I began to take fire, anti-tank or tank rounds whipping past or into my tank from an enemy to my front whom I just could not see. I put a round into a suspect shack slightly left, which collapsed to reveal another T-34, which I promptly clobbered. But by this time my own tank had taken bad hull damage, indicated by the red in the 'HUD' graphic. I tried to back up but wasn't going anywhere. In TvT, you can't pop smoke, so I was now committed to simply slugging it out with an enemy who was even now putting rounds into me but whom I still could not see. My commander called in a T-34 target straight ahead at close range but though I lined up my gun and scanned slightly left and right of twelve o'clock, I saw nothing but the T-34s I had already engaged. In something approaching desperation, I put another round into one of these and he brewed up. But I still continued to be fired at. To my rear, another Tiger had showed up - one I had not seen until then! - and started firing past me. I tried to pick up his target by watching for his tracers, which seemed to be aimed in the direction of another target beyond the now-burning T-34 behind the shack. To no avail. Another AP round slammed into my tank and knocked us out. Game over! I neglected to tab around the battlefield afterwards so I never found out who our killer was (though you can see what might be another T-34 just left of the burning one, partly hidden by the branches of an intervening tree). I think I need a bit more practice in using the TvT view and gunnery systems and help features. Turning off some of these features for better external-view screenshots (or even taking them in the middle of a firefight) is not conducive to either success or survival in TvT! However, playing 'live' missions is the only way to practice. Once you get the hang of the important keystrokes and how to make the best use of its capabilities and features, TvT comes across to me as a rather good simulator of operating a tank. However, it is badly let down by a tiny number of heavily-scripted missions, in which I often feel like I'm playing a first person shooter 'on rails', being channelled down fixed paths and then having equally fixed 'bots' presented to or thrown at me. The AI seems notably poor. The failure to provide for platoon control is another big negative. Had this been implemented the game would have been more realistic and more tactical. And player control could have partly compensated for the the poor AI, at least for your own platoon. It may be that through better mission design, and by providing more open maps with less 'chanelling', ZeeWolf's add-ons deliver some improvements here, as well as more vehicles and some more missions. The ZeeWolf mission I played for this report was a big improvement on the stock mission although it, too, had erratic AI, including platoon-mates. I don't know if it is possible to improve or mask this by somehow chaining platoon-mates to the player, so that they at least give the illusion of being under your control, instead of rattling off on their own scripted paths. Overall, my own assessment is that while the vanilla game falls short in some key respects, in others it is a decent tanksim - well worth a crack, if money is no major object or if you can obtain a bargain copy. PS a video of 'Tigers shake Kurtenki' with the full ZeeWolf mod installed has recently been posted on Youtube by Kempet, here.

The ZeeWolf mission, part 2 As I trundled cautiously around the corner of the woods, I wasn't really expecting to bump into any nastiness, since the remaining Tiger in my 3-tank platoon had already just driven on ahead that way. You can imagine my surprise and general consternation when my AI tank commander called out a fire order for a T-34-85 which was racing towards us down the gap between the woods, a mere two hundred metres away. I hastily lined up my turret with the commander's line of sight as indicated on the turret position indicator graphic. As I was playing as gunner, I had already swung my turret towards the danger zone so I was able to pick up the target quickly. Fortunately, perhaps because he was preoccupied with the other Tiger, the T-34's turret was turned away from us. He was crossing fast from right to left and before I could get off my first round he disappeared behind a wrecked tank. I let him have it as he came out the other side. Evidently caught by suprise, he pulled back behind a killed T-34 but not tightly enough and urged on by my tank commander, I put two more rounds into him, and that was that. On I went, past the sad little clutch of wrecked AFVs. As I went, I was followed by a half-tracked SPW (Shutzenpanzerwagen or armoured personnel carrier) which seemed to represent some infantry support. It was an impressive scene of armoured destruction, even if my crew could only claim one of the victims for ourselves. The SPW's driver had evidently either been trained in a fairground, or he had rather overdone the Schnapps for at one point, he seemed to be playing dodgems with the enemy wrecks. But he then moved back in behind me and off we went, down the widening gap between the woods, in the wake of the other Tiger. ...to be continued!

The ZeeWolf mission This mission comes with the pack of TvT freebies released by modder ZeeWolf. You can find more details of his project here. The mission's called 'Tigers Shake Kurtenki' and is based on a different part of the map to the stock mission. It may be unfamiliarity or an illusion created by different-time-of-day lighting, but the visuals look better - my Tiger no longer has the very deep black shadows and the colours of tanks and landscape appear less washed out. And it's back to the earlier rubber-tired roadwheels. After unzipping he package in which it came, the mission appeared alone in my available German single-player missions, instead of the stock one. Here's the briefing. As an operation order, it's in a somewhat military format like the stock briefings, a bit on the light side perhaps but it gives me a passable idea of who I am, what's going on and what I'm supposed to do about it. As before, having launched the mission I went to the gunner station and turned on AI driver and commander - if you switch stations without also then activating the AI roles, your tank just sits there quietly, engine off, refusing to budge. The brief had stated that I was 'commander of a Tiger unit' so I looked around for the others - five tanks would have been full strength for a platoon, but there were just three of us (the usual strength of a Soviet tank platoon). My first problem was that it took a while for me to orient myself and decide where to go, as my map was set with my tank marker stuck bottom left, pointing 'off screen' and I didn't know how to change this without opening the manual. One of the other Tigers moved off rapidly and with the third Tiger to my right, I followed, hoping that at least one of the others knew where he was going! The failure of TvT to enable you to command the other tanks in your platoon really is a big negative. Next best would have been making you the 'wing-man' of an AI platoon-leader, but it doesn't do this either. The nearest you can come to playing as a 'wing-man' is decide for yourself who your boss is and try to conform to his movements and actions, in the complete absence of any commands or similar assistance from him. By the time I had discovered that the F5 key centered the mini-map on my tank and oriented myself, I was well behind the Tiger I had decided to follow. A few hundred meters ahead, he turned right, away from Kurtenki, and headed towards a wide gap or ride between some tracts of woodland. A few seconds later my tank commander indidated an APC target. This was a lend-lease US half-track, which fairly whizzed out of the same gap in the trees, crossing my front from right to left. He must have driven right past the other Tiger! I had an AP round 'up the spout' and cracked off a couple of these at him, missing him both times as he disappeared behind some low buildings on the edge of the village. A second later he went up in smoke - I think the third Tiger, which was still near me, got him. At this point, it kicked off again. A swarm of Soviet infantry emerged from the gap in the trees, also heading for Kurtenki and more or less straight for the leading Tiger. I recovered from my surprise and opened up with the co-ax, hosing the enemy troops as they doubled across my front. My MG fire bowled over the Ivans like pins in a bowling alley. I got the last of them just as they reached the leading Tiger. Yet another enemy half-track then appeared from the right and drove hard for Kurtenki, straight past the leading Tiger, who was shooting at something in the direction from which the enemy vehicle had come. My tank commander belted out a fire order and I got my sights onto the Ivan, who was either foolishly courageous, completely mad, or blind drunk. Again the half-track made it into cover on the outskirts of Kurtenki, but again, one of the others got him. Or perhaps there were German troops in the village, who had clobbered him. Either way, he was done. I turned my attention back to the right, were the skies were darkened by the smoke from several burning vehicles, likely more Ivans of some sort which the first Tiger had shot up. With the other Tiger still to my right, I rolled forward at full tilt, ignoring the burning half-tracks at Kurtenki, over to my left. As I got closer I saw that the leading Tiger was smoking. What had got him, I was not sure, but I suspected it was enemy armour, still hidden around the corner of the woods on my right. I came up to the edge of the woods, slowing down as I edged towards the corner. The third Tiger had no such qualms and roared on ahead, past what I could now see to be the wrecks of miscellaneous Soviet AFVs, some still burning. By this time the lead Tiger, to my left, had also begun to burn fiercely. I edged cautiously around the corner, towards the cluster of destroyed enemy vehicles, which were a mix of T-34-85 tanks, half-tracks and SU-85 self-propelled guns. The other Tiger showed no such caution and despite being nominally his platoon comamnder, TvT being what it is, I could excerise no control over him as he rattled off down the track and out of sight. My continued caution, despite my comrade's confident performance, was soon to be proved wise! ...to be continued!

Here you go von Oben: http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/3923620/Searchpage/2/Main/384856/Words/texture+size/Search/true/Just_received_Woff!#Post3923620

Ivan's revenge As I was edging towards the crest, I had noticed some fading black smoke curling up from the dead ground in the valley ahead...roughly in the direction in which I had last seen the other Tiger tank disappear. Not good. Back in the gunsight view again and scanning for threats, I got another target indication from my AI tank commander, pointing out an anti-tank gun 500 metres away, bearing 1 o'clock. As well as the audio (crew voices are in German), you can see from the next screenie that you get a text read-out, in green, to the top left. I was caught out here because I had switched off all the 'HUD' displays for the sake of a better appearance in the external view. Back in the gunsight view, I had to glance down and fiddle with the keyboard to re-activate the turret position indicator! I should have either lined up the turret while still in the external view, or turned the turret position indicator back on the instant I switched back to the gunsight view. Once I was able to line up the main gun with the commander's line of sight, it was easy enough, having halted to fire, to pick up the target and let him have it. In this I was helped by the A/T gun being on roughly the same level, across the other side of the valley - once the main gun was lined up on the right bearring I didn't have to scan much up or down to pick up the target. And at this close a range, I didn't have to fiddle about with the sight's range settings, before getting the desired result. The gun destroyed, I trundled forward again, finally crossing the crest and dipping down into the valley, where lay the destroyed bridge - and a destroyed Tiger. At this point I made a big mistake and it all went belly up pretty remorselessly. The gradient down into the valley looked awfully steep; it seemed that I might get down too quickly, and get back up with great difficulty - or not at all. And so it proved. I tried to halt but by this time I was already on the slippery slope. Down I rolled. By the time I had brought my tank back under control and got her to a halt, I had already heard my TC calling out another target. This time it was a T-34 within 300 meters, roughly straight ahead. I scanned desperately through the gunsight but failed to pick him up - there is a fixed zoom on the gunsight, so the only way to get a wider angle is to switch to the full screen version of the gunsight view. I hadn't done this and my options quickly ran out while I searched for that Soviet tank. Armour-piercing rounds slammed into my Tiger (TvT re-inforces this by 'throwing' you momentarily back from the gunner's sight to an interior view of the gunner's station, irritating but perhaps effective!). Finally I acquired the target and shot him. At that range I could hardly miss and I didn't. I would have expected a single square-on 88mm AP hit to kill a T-34 at that range, with no questions asked. But I had an HE round loaded from the previous encounter and that didn't do enough damage. The T-34 promptly shot me again and it was goodnight, Vienna. I think that final T-34 was all that lay between me and completing the rather too precise and fixed mission objectives. Oh well, better luck next time! I'll be more careful about turning off HUD displays in future, especially the turret position indicator which is really essential for effective gunnery, when you need to respond quickly to a target indication from the tank commander and lay your gun onto his line of sight. You don't have the little orange edge-of-screen arrows that prompt you in Steel Fury. Another lesson learned. After a TvT battle you can tab around the other vehicles or guns involved in the mission, and here is one of my kills, a 1943 model T-34-76. in TvT, the bent gun is common in killed tanks - T-34s, anyway; not very realistic perhaps but it is a good visual indicator of a dead tank. Behind him, one of the Soviet trucks lies smashed with the driver slumped in the cab. You can't get Steel Fury-style statistics or hit point arrows in the TvT post-mission battlefield tour but it's clearly still nice to have. And here's the tank that ended the mission for me! Next, it's another mission at Kurtenki, but this time, a Zeewolf version. ...to be continued!

On to the 'two-way firing range'! Having seen the other Tiger tank rashly press on and disappear into the dip in the ground to my front, I decided that I would not be rushed. No need to risk the loss of two precious Tigers rather than one, to whatever Ivans might be waiting hidden over or in the river valley. Instead, I continued with my original plan - I crept up to the crest, pausing to scan for targets. First there came into view a series of what looked like the common Soviet 76.2mm field guns that had such a good anti-tank capability that captured specimens were often used or adapted by the Wehrmacht. Perhaps distracted by the other Tiger, they seemed to ignore me...but I didn't ignore them. As they came into view I hit them with HE rounds, raising my sights and hosing them and some nearby troops with coaxial MG fire, in between reloads. You can see lower left one of the four available on-screen 'Head Up Display' elements, showing ammo status, from top to bottom: standard Armour Piercing; High Explosive Anti-Tank (hollow charge); conventional HE; and co-ax MG. A green filler indicates that type of round is 'up the spout'. The other 'HUD elements are mini-map; turret direction and tank damage display; crew manning indicator (player or AI); and driver aids display. I tend to turn off the last two immediately after making my initial crew manning selections and to use the others sparingly, turning them off usually, which looks less 'gamey' but can be disorienting at the worst possible moments. But I nailed those field guns! There were several isolated Soviet soldiers on the hill, who ran around the whole time like headless chickens, and lasted about as long. Giving up on the last of such easy prey I nudged forward a little more, enabling me to see a little deeper into the valley. Two foolish Soviet trucks were rushing uphill away from me across the valley and they, too, were soon despatched. I edged forward a little more. This had been a little too easy, so far! There must be a catch, I felt sure. There was a catch, and edging forward a bit more, I soon saw what it was. It was a T-34-76, whose front end came into view, with his rear end masked behind the bank to the right of the track down which I had been advancing. I cracked off a quick round of HE, which missed - apparently tankers consider it best to fire off what they have loaded, even if it's not the right round, rather than unloading a live round in action. The T-34 backed up, so I quickly nosed forward to bring him back into view. I could have backed up myself, moved out of sight to one side then reappeared at a different point; but I had little elbow room for such tactics and I judged that a rapid second strike was my best bet. But when the enemy came into view again, there were two of them. I lost no time in engaging the nearer tank, with the right ammo this time - a Panzergranate 39 AP round, which unlike solid British AP shot, has a small explosive filler fused to detonate after penetration. Gunnery is one of the high points of TvT. The crew voices are generally better done than in SF, and the firing, empty brass and loading sound effects are also very good. The visuals are quite good too, with passable muzzle blast effects and decent visibility of your main gun tracers...and an even better view of incoming tank rounds! I quickly clobbered the first Ivan with three rounds then switched to the more distant one. The Tiger's 88mm is no tin-opener against T-34s, even at this short range, and more than one round seems often needed to be reasonably sure of a kill, unless the enemy 'brews up'. The second T-34 having received similar treatment I checked my fire. Though neither tank burned brightly, their bent and smoking appearance told the tale. Note that this last set of screenies is in a full screen gunsight view, which is less realistic but offers a wider field of view. I started edging forward again, feeling that victory was close and keen not to snatch defeat from its jaws at this late juncture. I traversed left and scanned the woods anxiously, lest some cruel mission designer had placed some Ivans there, to kill me at my moment of triumph. At this point I decided that for an even less restricted view I'd hand over to the AI gunner and play as tank commander. All seemed clear. I edged forward a little more, now scanning the area to my front alternately with and without binoculars. What could go wrong now? Quite a lot, as it turned out. ...to be continued!

Thanks vonOben. The answer to your question seems to be 'yes' - it says on the WOFF website under 'campaign features': Accurate tracking of all player squadron pilots, including the players A and B flight members, in runtime, for accurate post mission results and tallies. Each of the AI pilots in your squad have logbooks which you can peruse to evaluate their progression strengths, weaknesses, claims and kills, and even view their medals I say 'seems' only because I'm not able to confirm this personally. I don't use labels for one thing. Also compared to OFF, air fights more often seem to result in the combatants becoming dispersed and certainly often now feature damaged enemies trying to escape home, instead of a fight to the death at or close to the point contact was made. These improvements make it harder for me to be aware of what happened to flight-mates in a fight. So far I have not seen any cases of pilots I have good reason to believe were lost, appearing back at the breakfast table the next day! And I have seen the logbooks of the other pilots in my unit, evolving as their own career progresses and often complete with what are often real pics of the actual real-life pilot like Arthur Gould Lee in 46 Squadron.

Steel Fury joins the Deutsches Afrika Korps! Graviteam's tanksim Steel Fury - Kharkov 1942, as its name indicates, started out limited to the Eastern front, about a year into 'The Great Patriotic War' between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. However, thanks to the efforts of modders you can now travel a bit further afield in time and space! This mission report is set in the sim's original time frame. But for a battlefield, we're bidding adieu to the Steppes and are off instead to the desert of North Africa. Here were fought some of the war's classic tank battles, between the Germans and Italians on the one side and the British Commonwealth and later the USA, on the other. By mid-1942, the war in the desert had developed into a see-saw battle as first one side then the other enjoyed the advantage. In 1940, Operation Compass saw the British fling back westwards a much larger invading Italian force. The following year the British 'Desert Rats', robbed of troops to prop up the war in Greece, were in their turn flung back east towards Egypt by the Axis forces, now re-inforced by Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps. At the end of 1941, the British Operation Crusader, after some fierce battles, threw the Germans back again. In mid-1942, after a lull, the Afrika Korps was one more on the offensive; once again the British were pushed back well to the west. The mission The mission I'm playing here is 'Gazala', which signs me up with the famous 21st Panzer Division, justly famous for its combat record with the Afrika Korps. As usual, I'm using the latest NTA mod and the current Mission Pack. I also enabled the Africa mod, which I'm assuming is needed to replace the stock SF terrain with something appropriate for (in the words of that RAF song) '...a very pleasant land, where miles and miles of sweet eff-all are covered up with sand.' Full details of all the necessary items you need to get NTA installed with all the bells and whistles are over at the Graviteam Steel Fury forum, here. Edit, August 2014 - the NTA mod has been discontinued but its successor, the STA Mod, is now available: http://stasf2008.eph...d-on-steel-fury This mission starts off with an excellent German newsreel compilation from the theatre, some of it in colour or colourised. The briefing itself is in the stock SF style. This has rather a lot on the regimental/divisional battle picture which is fine, but not much on the company-level operation that you're involved with. The map gives you some idea what's going on but it's no substitute for something in the format of proper 'oral orders' given to you, and the other platoon commanders in your Combat Team, by your own company commander. Despite the 'Gazala' title, the mission is set on 26 June 1942, after the battle of that name. By this time, the victorious Germans and Italians were pressing on east towards the Egyptian frontier, and the date is more appropriate for the fighting that took place around Mersa Matruh. Here's the map for the mission. Basically I am part of a roughly company-strength tank/armoured infantry team, with no air or artillery support. We've to carry out an attack on British defensive positions either side and behind a long minefield of the sort that so often protected the infantry in this sort of warfare. While in the map screen, I called up the orders panel and selected line abreast formation and 'Do as I do', which I interpret as 'Conform to my movements and actions' and should really be default behaviour - Standard Operating Procedure or 'SOP', as it's called. My mount was billed as a Panzer IVF1. This has the short-barrelled 75mm gun more suited to infantry support, its low muzzle velocity limiting its effectiveness in the anti-tank role. For some reason I ended up instead with what the British called the 'Mark 4 Special', the Panzer IV F2 (later renamed as the G subtype). Part of the German response to the T-34 and KV-1, this had a much longer 75mm gun and was a potent tank-killer. Needless to say I had absolutely no objection to being up-gunned in this fashion! I switched to the gunner role (F2) and then toggled on the internal view (F9) and to the gunsight view (Insert). I selected and loaded an armour-piercing round. Then I toggled back to the external view (F9 again) for better situational awareness and to have a better look around at our force. It comprised a mix of Panzer IVs like my own, lighter Panzer IIIs with the short 50mm gun, and some Sturmgeschutze (assault guns) with short seventy-fives. Amongst us were panzergrenadiers in light and medium half-tracked Schutzenpanzerwagens (SPWs). There was even a soft-skinned Opel Blitz truck, living rather dangerously! It was quite an impressive phalanx, each vehicle raising a dark plume of dust as it rolled north towards the enemy. I ordered the driver to advance and joined the throng. As we moved off, orders came over the radio. These were in German and it was helpful to have them spelt out in a text panel atop the screen. The others set a fairly fast pace but I could not keep up. My driver ignored commands to go faster, and I gradually fell behind. Perhaps it was just as well, but my platoon - which I took to be the pair of long-barrelled Panzer IVs which I could see nearby - didn't wait for me. I have no idea why. There is a game setting ''Always obey orders' which i had turned off as recommended for a previous mission; perhaps that was why. Either way, I felt like the Duke of Plaza-Toro in that Gilbert and Sullivan song: In enterprise of martial kind When there was any fighting He led his regiment from behind He found it less exciting. I ended up watching the first phase of our assault through the gunsight. And this is what I saw. In the centre, enemy mortar or artillery fire whacked into our leading elements. Slightly right, some troops debussed from a light SPW which then then rattled on ahead. To my front, some more Panzergrenadiers had also debussed and were crawling ahead. I wondered whether it would have been safer for them to have stayed in their armoured carriers. Other dismounted infantry were being helped forward by other Panzers, like these Panzer IIIs. Feeling rather left out and seeing no sign of the enemy tanks reported on the right, I stopped and rattled off some rounds from the co-axial MG at what might have been an enemy heavy weapon which I could see as a rectangular-looking blob which came into sight above dip in the ground. I walked my tracers onto him until I saw the ricochets sail skywards. My target might just as well have been a rock but the shooting made me feel a little better, if nothing else. What this Panzer IV was doing sitting in the middle of a battle with all hatches open, I didn't know - immobilized and abandoned already, perhaps. The enemy position seemed to be in dead ground ahead of me; I rolled forwards again but I could see nothing of them, apart from the odd tracer whipping past on either side. That the defenders could clearly see at least some of us was obvious from the burning vehicles which began to appear around me as I slowly ground forward, accompanied for a while by another Panzer IV which may have been one of my platoon who had decided to stay with me, after all, By now, I'd begun to catch up with some of my comrades, as they paused to fire at targets which I could not yet see, like this Panzer III ahead and left of me. As that Panzer moved off and swung right, I noticed his turret spin around, as if he were tracking a target. Then I saw it too! A single enemy tank, some way off, was moving quite rapidly from right to left. He looked like a Valentine, a small but heavily-armoured British infantry tank, successor to the famous Maltida that reigned as 'Queen of the Battlefield' until our eighty-eights tore them apart at Halfaya Pass in '41. I knew that the Valentine would be a tough target for the Panzer III's short-barrelled 50mm gun. This one would be up to me! I set the range on my sight and lined him up with the lower right corner of the middle triangle. A little adjustment for his movement and my first round would be on its way. ...to be continued!

Nice pics! Yes the environmentals are first-class, likewise the battle ambience. I especially like the variety of vehicles (and missions to match) that's now available in SF; now including a decent selection of British AFVs, some US ones and of course the later-war German stuff. We're probably stuck with the so-so AI and the limited and map-based platoon control we have now. But the basic engine's pretty good and more missions are evidently on the way; it would be nice to have some packaged into mini-campaigns, Panzer Elite style. Perhaps the modders will also one day add the bazooka and panzerfaust for the late-war missions.

Thanks guys! I'm running SF on Vista 64, early Intel Core 2 Quad, 6GB RAM, 1GB Nvidia GTS 250. As seems recommended with many older programs like IL-2, I installed it outside the Programs (x86) folder to avoid probs and apparently this is also the drill with Win 7: http://graviteam.com/forum/index.php?topic=10219.0 Only issue you might have PCPilot is that the Nvidia Inspector tweak that enables anti-aliasing, which is otherwise inoperative, is no good for Radeon users. But Xambrium here reports getting AA on an ATI card: http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3487371/Forcing_AA_in_Steel_Fury_WOW.html#Post3487371 Anyway I've left North Africa for now, swapped sides and am back on the Russian Front finding out what made the T-34 special:

The butcher's bill One of the neat features of Steel Fury is the ability, win or lose, to roam the battlefield after the fighting's over and see what damage has been done. Starting with my own tank's statistics, here we go. Having lagged behind the battle and spent most of my main gun ammo clobbering dead tanks, 'to be sure, to be sure', I ended up with just one Valentine tank knocked out and a number of dead infantrymen to my 'credit'. No medals earned on this mission, methinks, even if SF supported them (and single missions don't, I'm fairly sure - not certain about campaigns). From the turret number, this looks like my number two. Like me, he has made it through into the enemy positions on the far side of the minefield, where he's lost a track. But at least he appears otherwise all right. Further back is another immobilised Panzer IV, next to a six-wheeled armoured car - a command variant, from the prominent 'bedstead' radio antenna frame which he carries. Also further back is this sad little group, all intact but evidently knocked out - a Panzer III, a light Sdkfz 250 SPW with a broken track and a dead crew and just ahead, one of the bigger Sdkfz 251 versions. Also knocked out is this medium SPW, a platoon commander's vehicle by the look of it, from the 37mm anti-tank gun mounted atop the driving compartment. Beyond the enemy positions was an immobilised Stug III, though others in his platoon had fared better. So, onto the enemy. Steel Fury so far has a limited range of British kit - the troops look like repainted mid-war Soviet infantry, lacking the distinctive 'Brodie' rimmed helmets for one thing. Likewise, instead of the 2-Pounder (40mm) AT guns, there are German 37mm ones. Here are those knocked-out Churchill tanks. With their very heavy armour and effective 6-pounder (57mm) guns, these Infantry Tanks were undoubtedly our toughest opposition on this mission. They weren't at the front yet, in reality - if I recall right, three were used at the later battle of El Alamein, one being knocked out. How one of the two pictured here came to be up-ended in this fashion is a bit of a mystery; in real life, Churchills had a low centre of gravity and though slow, were exceptionally agile, with a reputation for climbing hills considered 'tank-proof'. And so to the Valentines, the previous British Infantry Tank. They had suffered pretty heavily on this mission; outnumbered and mostly caught in the open during attempted counter-attacks, their heavy armour and compact silhouettes had not saved them. All in all, this was an interesting mission, and not just because it was a change from the Russian Front. In particular, I liked the in-game radio messages which gave me the impression that the Kompaniefuhrer was running the battle, as he should have been - too often, tank sims cut you loose on your own, when you would most often be operating as part of a tightly-night company-sized team. As for my slow tank, looking again at the map, it was perhaps a patch of what might have been poor going in the centre that slowed me down, even though it may have saved my life by ensuring the others bore the brunt! I'm sure this will be one of those missions that'll be a lot of fun to replay, trying different tactics. Great stuff! But I'll leave you with another view of my crew, relaxing after the battle; I think they have earned their break.

On to the objective! I brought my Panzer IV to a halt on the near side of the low crest and for the first time I saw the enemy position. Rows of obstacles indicated what I took to be the area of the minefield. On the far side were two more Valentine tanks, which my tank commander directed me to engage. Two rounds apiece and it was all over. I sat tight and scanned ahead. To the left, all was clear. Ahead, I cut loose with the co-ax at some prone enemy troops near one of our Panzer IVs. That seemed to do the trick; I saw them crumple and disappear from view, although in retrospect they may merely have ducked down into a trench I could not see. Suddenly, the tank commander called out a fresh target - another Valentine tank, slightly right. I lined him up and put an AP round into him The Valentine jinked to my right. Tracking him, I fired again and then again. The enemy tank finally lurched to a halt and I put another AP round into him, followed by a burst from the co-ax, in anticipation of the crew bailing out. I wasn't feeling very charitable, right then. As I watched the smoking Valentine suspiciously, two advancing Panzers slid into my view. The situation on the right flank seemed pretty secure, now. So I moved off again, straight towards the minefield, looking for targets in that direction. My tank commander put me onto some British infantry who seemed to be engaged in shooting up the bailed-out crew of a Panzer IV that was immobilized in front of the obstacles. I machine-gunned these enemy troops mercilessly, ignoring a pair of knocked-out Churchill tanks I could see beyond them. That job done, I now swung my Panzer to the left. My plan now was to come around the left side of the long rows of obstacles, hopefully avoiding the minefield, and to attack any remaining enemy positions from that flank. As I came level with the last row of knife-rest obstacles, I saw clearly that there was a maze of trenches behind the minefield and that they were still full of enemy infantry. This was going to be a bad day for the Tommies. First, I opened up with the co-ax, hosing the trench which seemed to have the most occupants, and ignoring one closer to my tank. Weapons flew and bodies crumpled as my rounds hit home. Further away, another Panzer was similarly engaged, shooting up the hapless enemy infantry. Next I put an HE round into the closest trench. The effect was devastating. While the main gun was being reloaded, I turned the co-ax onto the occupants crouching in another section of trench, slightly left. Traversing right and elevating the gun slightly, I repeated the process. Another HE round slammed into a trench, followed by long bursts of MG fire. Shortly after arriving on the enemy's flank I had got the 'Mission completed!' message but my blood was up and I was in no mood to stop. I ended up with a few other Panzers which had broken through, machine-gunning the occasional enemy infantryman who broke cover and ran for it. They didn't get far. For an encore, I put another round into a stationary Valentine which was doubtless long since knocked out. It seemed like a more fitting end to the mission than hunting down a few desperate enemy troops. Relaxing, our crew opened the hatches to let out the fumes and admit some fresher air. Job done! But at what cost? ...to be continued!

Battle is joined! The Valentine tank seemed to notice us for he turned to face us and halted, presenting his thickest armour. I let him have two AP rounds, firing just over the heads of some crawling German infantry. The Panzer III also fired at him. This seemed to do the trick. The enemy tank didn't burn, but he sat there inactive, evidently immobilized and unable to shoot back. Traversing right in case he wasn't alone, I quickly spotted a second Valentine, hull down and showing me just the side of his turret. I opened fire, joined again by the Panzer III. Again I let him have two rounds, after which the Valentine began to burn. I rolled forward again. Ahead of me more panzergrenadiers had debussed from a half-track. Ahead of them, two Valentines were now on fire. I moved on again. I halted and started scanning for targets again. I wasn't long in spotting one! Between two burning Valentines was another one, stopped and side on. Until then, he'd been hidden behind the halted SPW. Was he dead? Most likely he was, but I wasn't taking any chances. I put two AP rounds into him, just in case. I edged forward cautiously, foolishly halting next to a large palm tree which would have made a good marker for anyone wanting to indicate me as a target. But I remained unmolested, while I took stock. All around were the funeral pyres of burning vehicles, friend and foe. With no further enemies in sight, I rolled forward again. The speed of our advance had slowed down, as our armour paused to deal with the enemies they had spotted. There was a low crest ahead of me and I roared up to it. Perhaps from there I would be able to see at last the enemy defensive positions which were our principal objectives. ...to be continued!

In the air and on the ground... Having knocked down one of the Nieuport Scouts that had diverted my formation from its assigned task of spotting for the Gunners, I was naturally elated. But I had lost a lot of what altitude I'd started with. Now of all times, I didn't want to be the next one for the chop! So I began a full-power climbing turn, in the general direction of our side of the Lines and comparative safety. Looking around, I took stock. The air combat seemed to have petered out. Some distance behind me, I could see three or four planes slowly closing up on me - hopefully members of my six-aircraft flight. But while most of the aircraft seemed to be in the distinctive light blue Roland factory finish, one was not. An Englishmen had not given up and was hunting us again! I turned around and went for him, ordering my two flight-mates to attack as I did so. Individually our two-seaters might be pushed to handle a nimbler Nieuport. But as with the last combat, I hoped that one or the other of us would get in a good crack at him, while he was occupied with the rest of us. And so it came to pass! The Nieuport was soon on the defensive, with our Rolands rolling and swooping all around him. And once again, it fell to me to finish the fight. A single and rather slow-firing fixed MG fired from a comparatively cumbersome two-seater is not the most effective killer of fighter planes. And with my Roland's comparatively effective ailerons, more than once I found myself over-banked, with the wings near the vertical and side-slipping rather than turning. Twice I barely managed to level her before hitting the ground, recovering at literally tree-top level. But in the end I got into a good position on the Nieuport, who was again handicapped by having to deal with several Rolands who were all out to nail him. And down he went. Two kills! And in a single mission! I checked the time and my location - I wasn't going to let a sloppy combat report cost me confirmation of my double victory! My next problem was that I was suddenly alone again. The other Rolands had disappeared, as if by magic. Looking to the south, I finally spotted a single distant aircraft hearing east, which might have been one of them. I circled for a while, gaining some height, in the hope some of my flight might rejoin me. In the end, still alone, I turned my machine to the west, determined to complete my mission, even if I had to do so on my own. And that mission was artillery observation - using morse code and a radio transmitter to adjust the fire of friendly artillery batteries onto ground targets. WOFF doesn't simulate this process but happily - whether put there by the WOFF campaign system or not - I could see that there was an artillery barrage already in progress in my objective area. So as I used to do in OFF when flying an 'art obs' mission, I headed that way, intending to loiter over the barrage and thereby simulate as best I could the task of spotting and correcting the fall of shot. As far as I could make out, the barrage was falling into a beaten zone which was across and roughly diagonal to the line of the enemy trenches. I orbited the shelling, watching the bombardment hit home but also keeping a wary eye out for enemies in the air, not least any sign that my observer might be tracking one. What I did see, was on the ground. A long track or narrow road ran roughly north to south, close behind the enemy trenches being bombarded. And on the road, I saw that there were two groups of enemy Motor Transport, trundling along. I watched them for a while, mentally urging the artillery to shift its fire onto these tempting new, soft-skinned targets. Of course, no such thing could happen, as even WOFF doesn't support telepathy. Or perhaps it does! As I watched, artillery rounds suddenly bracketed the MT convoy. Some of the trucks stopped, while others continued along. Then more artillery fell, this time right amongst the northernmost group of vehicles. As the smoke cleared, I could see a column of dark smoke rising, as one of the trucks burned. Others seemed to have been immobilised! Our Gunners were not done yet. Further salvos clobbered the southernmost group of vehicles, producing another column of smoke from a burning truck. If I hadn't seen this with my own eyes, I would not have believed it. I presume that telepathy can be ruled out here. So, maybe it was a complete co-incidence that there happened to be an artillery bombardment at approximately the position of my own objective. Perhaps it was just a further co-incidence, that there was MT on the move close by. And perhaps it was yet one more co-incidence, that soon after I noticed the trucks, our artillery engaged them. But however it happened, short of providing a fully functioning system for calling down and correcting artillery fire, WOFF could not have done a better job of creating a believable impression that I had completed my artillery-spotting mission in this most satisfactory fashion. It was a magical moment! Mission well and truly accomplished, I thought to myself! Time to call it quits and go home. I swung around the nose of my trusty Roland until she was headed east once more. The skies around me looked to be empty and devoid of either succor or threat. I suddenly felt rather alone and vulnerable. I very much wanted now to make it home, with our two aerial victories and a successful shoot under our proverbial belts. I need not have worried. Soon, in a shallow full-power dive to pick up speed, our machine was back over friendly territory, with the Lines falling away behind us. Not long after, we were joining the circuit over Houplin, still on our own and quite unmolested. Despite the Roland's reputation for cracking up on landing, I got her down without any particular drama and trundled happily up to the sheds. In my excitement and my anxiety to find out what fates had befallen the others, I neglected to check the detailed debriefing screen. But the initial debrief and squadron information screen told the tale. Of our six machines, three had made it back to base. Two of the three Rolands which didn't, had been destroyed and their crews killed. The two victories and the successful shoot had been team successes; without the others, they would likely never have come my way. But the team had paid a high price. It was a sobering moment, set against the satisfaction of a job well done. As missions go, this was one of the very best two-seater sorties I have flown in any WW1 sim. The air-to-air combat was dangerous and exciting. And even if it was a complete fluke which never happens again, the sight of that artillery fire, arriving just as it might have done, had I called it in by radio, smashing up that road convoy, was one of those classic moments of pure simming immersion and delight that I will not forget in a long time. Simply brilliant!

The other nationalities in Wings Over Flanders Fields Part 2 - the US Army Air Service The plane For this WOFF campaign mission with the US Army Air Service, I should perhaps have chosen the SPAD XIII, instead of 'yet another Nieuport'. But this Nieuport is different. For starters, the Nieu.28 has been one of my personal favourites, from the mid-1960s when I built Revell's little 1/72 kit in their new range of WW1 fighters, great models for their day, with classic Brian Knight box art. And while the 28 retained the rotary engine of its predecessors, it replaced the weak single spar lower wing and V-struts with a more conventional, but no less elegant, wing structure. The aircraft may have been infamous for shedding the plywood leading edge of the upper wing and attached fabric on pulling out from a power dive. Sometimes, unburnt petrol collected in the engine cowl went on fire. But apparently, unlike the lower wing failures of the V-strutted Nieuports, these issues, though alarming, were rarely if ever fatal. And the Nieu.28 was fast, agile and fairly reliable - certainly more so than the SPAD XIIIs which replaced them, the geared Hispano-Suiza engine proving so unreliable that French units equipped with the XIII reportedly kept a stock of SPAD VIIs to maintain flying strength. Besides, I had previously flown a series of comparative mission reports featuring the Nieu.28 in First Eagles 2, Rise of Flight, Over Flanders Fields and IL-2 Dark Blue World 1916 (here). So with WOFF having supplanted OFF, this mission report serves nicely, if I may say so, to bring that series up-to-date. The unit I elected to fly with the first unit to receive the Nieuport 28, the 95th Pursuit Squadron, the 'Kicking Mules'. Held back for additional gunnery training, the unit wasn't in action until the beginning of May 1918, by which time fellow First Pursuit Group unit the 94th 'Hat in the Ring' Pursuit had already seen some action. Here's the WOFF squadron board for the 95th; many of the named pilots are recognisably those who really flew with the squadron at this time. We are based at Toul, not far from the shattered battlefield of Verdun, scene of one of the war's most awful battles, during 1916, when the French army fought the Germans to a standstill in a desperate and costly but successful defensive effort. Two years later the front here is relatively quiet, although further north in the British sector, the Germans have unleashed their spring offensive in a last-gasp effort to turn the tide and win the war in the west. The mission Here's the mission briefing. We're putting up two flights as escort to a reconnaisance by three French Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutters from Escadrille Sop 43, flying down from Beauzee sur Aire. This type was already obsolescent when the French started using it in large numbers during 1917, to replace even older 'pusher' types. At this point in the war, the French Strutters were in the course of being replaced themselves, generally by the excellent Breguet 14. Here were are lined up and good to go. I'm flying with a single flight-mate, with the squadron's other flight on 'top cover'. I have chosen the 'skin' of Lt Quentin Roosevelt, the President's son, who had the dubious distinction of being pictured on German postcards lying dead and broken beside his crashed Nieuport, after being shot down in July. If this is one of the 'skins' I've copied over from OFF, it works fine; the long grey fillet atop the rear fuselage is not a glitch, it was on the real aircraft. After take-off I took it easy until my number two had caught up, then sped off to the rendez-vous point with the two-seaters, climbing hard. The skies were an unbroken blue, visibility good but hazy at longer range. It wasn't long before I spotted them; three Strutters with the distinctive French roundels, all in un-camouflaged clear doped linen finish, which made them relatively easy to see from above, against the ground. By this time I had lost sight of the squadron's other flight but trusted they would be up and behind us, somewhere. In turn, I took my own station above and behind the Sopwiths, weaving left and right to keep station while maintaining my airspeed. Our route was a long slanting one which took us back and forward over the zig-zagging front lines. All seemed peaceful, until I heard from somewhere close by, above the noise of my own motor, the sound of an aero-engine revving and stuttering. Looking back, the cause was not hard to see. My flight-mate's engine was on fire! There had been some Archie fire earlier but the skies were now clear of both AA bursts and enemy aircraft. So I took this to be one of the random failures WOFF simulates (unless you have it turned off) - perhaps one of those fires from pooling petrol in the cowling. Despite the dark smoke and the pyrotechnics, my buddy seemed under control, and quickly turned back towards friendly territory. Though I was relieved at the prospect my flight-mate would get away with it, I was rather less happy at the thought of a long solo escort flight. Suddenly, I felt very lonely. I'd have felt a whole lot happier if I could have seen the other flight of Nieuports, but wherever they were, they were invisible to me. Nothing else for it. I flew on, zig-zagging behind and above the three Sopwiths, varying my turning points and keeping an even more careful look-out. But the skies around us remained clear, apart from some intermittent Archie. The German gunners must have fancied a challenge, for instead of targeting the straight-flying two-seaters, when they did cut loose, it generally seemed to be at my Nieuport. This did no damage but it certainly made me feel all the more exposed and vulnerable. The flight stretched on interminably. Whether it's Silent Hunter 2/SH3 or IL-2, I've never much liked time compression. The 'warp' feature of CFS/CFS2 I did like, though not quite so well when in CFS3 it changed to very rapid time acceleration. At least it dropped you out if enemies were near, which WOFF's current time acceleration 'warp replacement' does not. Best of all is the 'next encounter' facility in European Air War and Strike Fighters/First Eagles. But without it auto-quitting when contact was imminent, and especially up on my own, I was reluctant to speed things up. I flew on in real time. The tension left little room for boredom! Nearing their turning point for home, the Sopwiths flew past two of Verdun's large forts, both set in the sea of shell-cratered mud that stretched all around and as far as Verdun itself to the south-west. I urged them on. Since my flight-mate's departure, any desire on my part for a fight with the Boche had evaporated. My sole concern now was to see my charges as far as their objective, watch them make that turn for home, then see them safely over the lines. And then get myself home in one piece. Victory claims and medals could wait for another day! Finally, the Sopwiths turned left and headed back towards friendly territory, just a short distance to the south. I turned with them. The mission had ended uneventfully, but I had no regrets. The relief of the anxiety I'd felt since losing my flight-mate was palpable. The satisfaction of a mission accomplished more than made up for the lack of air combat. I'd got my charges back safely! But not quite. Looking back not a moment too soon, I was appalled to see at least three Albatros scouts with candy-striped tails breaking formation and peeling off to attack. Worse if anything, they looked to be after my Sopwiths! Groaning at being so nearly home free and now having to fight at bay and badly outnumbered, I nosed down and around, and cut them off. An aggressive defence seemed the best policy. At any rate, they were not going to get my Sopwiths! Get stuck into them, give them plenty to keep themselves occupied, then dive for home at the first opportunity. And I would do my level best to get one of the Boche first, if I possibly could. This seemed to work quite well. The enemy pilots appeared to forget about the Strutters, evidently intent on shooting me down first. I was soon in the middle of a stiff little dogfight with the three Albatros scouts, hurling my machine about the sky, taking snap-shots each time an Albatros sailed across my path. Likewise, the Boche were taking shots at me, whenever they got the chance. I tried to edge the fight towards my own side of the Lines, ready to dive away for safety when the right moment came. But it never did. Instead, there was a horrible rending and ripping sound as the top left wing of my evidently over-stressed aircraft tore off! Down she went, straight down. I throttled back but the flight controls seemed not to be answering. The end came suddenly, inevitably. To add insult to injury, what I was quite certain was a structural failure was credited to enemy action; either way one of the Boche will doubtless be putting in a claim for ein Amerikaner kaput. Given that the real-life Nieuport 28's structural issues seemed to have killed few if any pilots, I was a little miffed that my tenacity and at the end, my rather courageous solo defence of the Sopwiths should end thus. I hope mes camarades Francais in the two-seaters will carry with them back to their base a suitably glowing account of the brave end of the pilote Américain courageux who saw them safely home at the expense of his own virtual life. Perhaps a posthumous Légion d'Honneur will be in order?