33LIMA

'There is no land behind the Volga!' * * Red Army 'no retreat' slogan during the Battle of Stalingrad Well, it's here! IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad ('BoS') is the latest in a long line of WW2 air combat sims to bear the illustrious IL-2 name. The last major iteration, Cliffs of Dover, forsook the Eastern Front for the Battle of Britain. But with BoS, it's back to the (here, frozen) steppes of Mother Russia and the Great Patriotic War, as the Soviets dubbed the bitter conflict in the east. As you'd expect from the title, BoS is based around the momentous and decisive battles around Stalingrad in late 1942 and early 1943. The Wehrmacht's 6th Army, fresh from its triumph in the Second Battle of Kharkov, had swept south in the major German offensive of 1942, to the banks of the River Volga and the city which bore the name of the wily and feared Soviet leader. After slowly grinding down the epic Soviet defense of the city, the German forces there were cut off by two successive pincer attacks which overwhelmed the less well-equipped Romanian, Italian and Hungarian allies holding the flanks. Manstein's attempt to break through to 6th Army fell short while Hitler forbade withdrawal, lulled by Goering's assurances that the Luftwaffe could repeat its success in supplying by air the earlier (but much smaller) Demyansk pocket. Despite herculean Luftwaffe efforts, galvanized by the highly-capable Erhard Milch, the supplies delivered were never enough and when the major airfields inside and outside the Stalingrad kessel at Gumrak, Pitomnik, Morosovskaya and Tatsinskaya were over-run, the writing was on the wall for the battered and ultimately starved 6th Army, which surrendered in February 1943. This famous Soviet victory stands with the few battles that can claim to have dictated both the outcome of WW2 and the fate of Europe for many years afterwards. So, set against this epic background, how does BoS shape up? Let's find out! The review will be in several parts, a real CombatAce team effort, with 'Founders' CowboyTodd41 and Jedi Master providing an Early Access participant's insights on different aspects of the new sim. To wrap up the review in style, Hellshade will provide a video finale showing BoS in action! Availability and installation BoS is available by download from both the Publishers and Steam and on DVD. Each format comes in two versions - 'Standard' and 'Premium' - which differ in the number of flyable aircraft provided (eight versus ten, respectively). There is no manual with the sim. Apparently, one is being worked on but for now, it's a case of diving in and working your way through things for yourself. Much of the interface and controls will be reasonably familiar, if you've played the sim's progenitor, which is actually Rise of Flight (RoF). There are some enthusiast-produced aircraft guides available already and of course you can find material covering instrument layouts, performance and handling online, if not also in books - for example, Eric Brown's most excellent 'Wings of the Luftwaffe'. On the battle itself I would highly recommend William Craig's 'Enemy at the Gates' (the film only covered the sniper duel, a tiny part of the book) which won't tell you which Kampfgruppe, Tank Brigade or Jagdgeschwader went where and when but it's a gritty, memorable and powerful picture of the battle as seen by those who experienced it. My review copy of BoS is the Premium edition and was downloaded from from the Publisher's website. The download and installation process was entirely painless, the slow part being downloading the 'game client' via the 'Launcher' app that is your point of entry into the sim. Though different in some details, this Launcher will be familiar to players of RoF. BoS's Launcher is illustrated below (the desktop background pic is from IL-2 '46). As you can see, amongst other things, the Launcher lets you configure some graphics options at this front end, though few, compared to RoF's Launcher. As in the older sim, the Launcher will update BoS over the 'net, but automatically, rather than manually as before. Once you start the sim itself, you are invited to log on. As with RoF, some features require an internet connection. You can fly Quick Missions offline but not the stock Single Player campaign. This I believe is because online servers generate campaign missions, track your progress and use this to apply BoS's 'extensive in-game achievement system' (as the developers describe it) which we will come to, later. I don't especially like this connection dependency but - though there was a glitch one weekend when a server issue prevented player achievements being recognized - having a decent broadband connection, this requirement doesn't much affect or concern me. The developers have said that the bandwidth required for this is low. The sim's main menu screen is the 3d aircraft view familiar to RoF fliers, displaying the last aircraft you flew (or the IL-2 Sturmovik by default) as rendered in-game, now in a hangar setting as seen here. For me, the interface is a bit choppy, with a bit of mouse lag, which I gather is a known issue for some though a minor one. We'll go through the options it presents, later on. The planes The aircraft featured in BoS are listed here. Those asterisked are flyable in the Premium version, only. German Soviet Bf 109F-4 LaGG-3 Bf 109G-2 Yak-1 FW 190A-3* La-5 * Ju 87D-3 IL-2 He 111H-6 Pe-2 So we have a decent mix of fighters, bombers and attack aircraft, out-of-the-box. The FW 190 was apparently not in action at Stalingrad but is presumably included for its popularity and to provide an alternative German single-seat fighter to the two visually very similar Bf 109 variants. The developers have said that the Ju-52 transport may be added later, possibly AI-only. While this slow tri-motor transport would be a popular mount with only the bravest (or most foolhardy) players, it really is an essential aircraft for Stalingrad and a good choice for an AI plane. The Luftwaffe used every available type that could carry cargo or personnel in their desperate 'air bridge' operation including bombers and FW 200 Condors, but the 'Tante Ju' was the mainstay and the sooner it's added, the better. A Ju 88 and a Bf 110 would also be very welcome, on the German side. In my book, the more major types a sim can feature from the get-go, the better, even if only the AI gets to fly some of them (or you have to pay to activate the cockpits). But apart from that Ju 52 - and the fact that a Bf 110 would have been a better choice, historically, than an FW 190 - BoS already comes with a respectable planeset, for the time period featured in the sim. Here are some of the stars of the show, inside and out. They are gorgeous, with accurate outlines and detail, readable stencil markings, panel lines & rivets visible in relief ('bump mapping'?) and animated aircrew, RoF-style. Heinkel He 111H: (note the subtitled radio comms from the 'tower' at Morosovskaya airfield, in the cockpit pic) Messerschmitt Bf 109F (top) & Bf 109G: Focke-Wulf FW 190A: Lavochkin La-5 (in a snowstorm): Petlyakov Pe-2: ...and finally, the star with the top billing - the Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik: As well as flying these birds, you can man other crew positions, including bombardier and air gunner. Here I am in the dorsal position of the elegant Heinkel 111, manning my MG 15 and ready to ward off the Ivans. You can see the neat panel and rivet detail, especially running out along the main spar of the starboard wing. The aircraft has the correct 70/71/65 colour scheme with factory finish pattern on top and the appropriate theatre markings, comprising yellow rear fuselage band and lower wingtips. Having closed my canopy to keep out the slipstream and looking down into the fuselage, I can see two of my comrades below, one standing by a waist gun, the other ready to go prone in the sterbebett (death bed) ventral position, should the need arise. The cocking handle on the MG 15 reciprocates when you fire the weapon but I haven't yet fired off enough rounds to see if the reloading of the saddle drum magazine is animated, which if so might look a little odd as I am invisible, in the 'cockpit' view. Luftwaffe aircraft had a semi-gloss finish and this is nicely captured, along with the correct factory-applied camouflage colours and patterns. As you'd expect, the aircraft have dynamic self-shadowing, inside and out. Perhaps the cockpits are not quite as sharp as Cliffs of Dover's...and they're not 'clickable', for those who like fiddling with such things rather than hitting a key. But they look good enough to me and combined with 'head bobbing' (which you can turn off), those moving shadows and minor canopy scratches catching the sunlight, the effect of being up in the heavens in a real aircraft is superb. Externally, the lack of individual or unit markings creates a certain blandness, my only real criticism here. And I understand why there aren't swastikas on German tails, but the vestigial ones provided perhaps look worse than none - better no marking than an inaccurate one. I recall the old Revell 1/72 FW 190A, in its 1960s incarnation, had a normal cross for a tail decal with a note in the instructions acknowledging the inaccuracy and stating that portraying the correct markings (and I quote) '...would not be in keeping with the spirit of democracy.' But I digress...instead, I should add that all screenshots were taken at medium graphics settings (the 'Balanced' pre-set). My PC is slightly below the recommended specs for BoS but flies RoF, a recommended benchmark for the new sim, fine at medium settings and is ok with BoS. Engine sounds are distinctive and realistic, much better than the original IL-2. Your guns could be louder though. Some have reported your airframe being hit is barely audible but that hasn't been my experience. Radio transmissions can be a tad repetitive but sound like...well, radio transmissions (they are in the original language, with subtitles available). In short, the BoS aircraft are exceptional; they look and sound great. The contrast is a bit high between the 70 (Schwarzgrun) and 71 (Dunkelgrun) upper surfaces on the Ju 87 for my taste and I think the 109s should have little fillets either side of their lower radiator flaps but those are very minor quibbles. Coming in part 2 - the environment, the options and Quick Missions!

The ammo counters work, IIRC. Not sure about the other stuff, or if stoppages are modelled. With short bursts, German tech and ammo, I'm not sure I'd expect to get to many, even in the depths of a Russian winter!

Yes Dave the visuals are certainly very good indeed. I spent a while in a Stuka, sight-seeing over Stalingrad itself, looking for 'the tennis racquet', a prominent railway track loop I remember reading about. The Ivans don't seem to care much for foreign tourists though, because their flak peppered my plane before I'd finished my trip. But I look forward to picking out a map and seeing if I can find some historic landmarks in BoS's Stalingrad, like the Barrikady factory or even Pavlov's House. Morosovskaya airfield was a bit underwhelming but they seem to have represented the Big City itself pretty well, down to the snow-covered bluffs overlooking the Volga (completely frozen over, along the bottom of the pic above), which gave the last Soviet holdouts some cover, until the big pincer movements turned the tide and changed the course of history.

Yes great planes and, with the BE2e, they fill some of the few significant gaps left in the FE/FE2 planeset. Strongly recommend fliers of the BE12/12a make the following edit (in bold) in the files BE12_Cockpit.ini and BE12a_Cockpit.ini, changing the existing value to something as shown, around the 180 degree mark, so you can see behind (allowing for peripheral vision and a loosened seat belt, I opted for 185 degrees): [CockpitSeat001] ModelName=RAFBE12Cockpit.lod HideExternalNodeName=Cockpit OpenCockpit=TRUE ExternalClipDistMin=0.04 Position=0.0,-0.95,0.52 Offset=0.0,0.0,0.00 ViewAngles=0.0,0.0,0.0 MaxYaw=185 MinYaw=-185 This is what happens if you don't :) http://combatace.com/topic/84499-be12-twosome-1-first-eagles/

It's the favourite mount of the notorious Baron von Richthamster, if I'm not mistaken. Found it, here: http://www.unmuseum.org/flystrange.htm

Checking out the Bf109 in the new Eastern Front air combat sim! I was flattered to be invited by Skyviper to be on the team for the CombatAce review of 1c/777's IL-2 - Battle of Stalingrad (hereinafter referred to as BoS). Having only recently installed the sim (I wasn't a participant in the 'Early Access' programme) it'll be a little while until we get the review done & dusted. In the meantime I thought folks might be interested in my first impressions of one of the BoS aircraft, the iconic Messerschmitt Bf109, which comes here in the form of the F-4 and G-2 models, distinguished mainly be the latter's more powerful DB605 motor and visually, by its heavier-framed cockpit. So far, my impression of the BoS aircraft is that they're as good as, or better than, any aircraft I've seen in a combat flight sim. Cliffs of Dover's cockpits might be a little sharper-looking (perhaps just thanks to sharper or darker shadows) but outside and in, these birds look just terrific. As an old-time Luftwaffe modeller, while I find the vestigial swastikas slightly irksome and don't welcome the lack of unit markings, pending availability of the facility for user-made skins, I can't help but admire the accuracy of the finish. For example, the 109F I'm flying here has a very accurate rendition of the standard 74/75/76 fighter finish (Dunkelgrau, Mittelgrau and Hellgrau, respectively). It's applied in an accurate upper surface Messerschmitt factory pattern, appropriate for these later 109s and features readable stencil markings. Even the fuselage side mottling is straight out of the textbooks, with spots of Schwarzgrun (70), Dunkelgrau (74) and 'RLM' Grau (02). The slightly glossy standard Luftwaffe finish is also nicely captured and in the right light, you can see every rivet and panel line caught in relief. The overall effect is a joy to behold. Anyway, I recently took my first proper flight in a 109 - a favourite familiar to me from many another sim, including European Air War, CFS3 and the original IL-2 series - and it was an experience and a half! I just did the one circuit, set up via the 'Quick Mission' option (which will be familiar to Rise of Flight users, given the close family relationship with BoS). I don't do 'complex engine management' but even so, it was a pretty awesome experience, the sort of flight I'd have expected in a plane built for FSX. The airfield I think is Morosovskaya (spelt slightly different in the sim) which I recognised from William Craig's superb 'Enemy at the Gates' - if you read just one book on the battle, make it this one (the film was just a single episode from the book). This airfield I recall was, with Tatsinskaya, one of the two most important bases for the Luftwaffe's desperate 'air bridge' into the Stalingrad 'kessel'...until the T-34s arrived there and put a sudden stop to flying operations, in dramatic and violent fashion. From the cockpit of my chosen Bf109F-4, even the engine start (computer-assisted, just using the 'E' key) was most impressive. OK, there was no black-overalled mechanic standing on the wing turning the hand crank but there were cockpit indicator lights coming on and animated switches flicking. Then came the sound of the 109's flywheel spooling up and finally, the throaty roar of that big Mercedes DB601 as it spluttered then thundered into life. Great stuff, like watching and listening to a real warbird start-up video! Flaps set and flying control movement checked, taxying out to the runway was the first challenge, using mainly the brakes combined with short bursts of throttle to keep her rolling. I managed to get her lined up fairly well. The take-off was a bit hairy with plenty of swing, first left when I opened her up a bit then right when I steadily applied full power. I kept her fairly straight but once off the ground, was suddenly afflicted by a serious wobble. Did I pull her off at too low an airspeed, and maybe the leading edge slats had opened differentially? It was quite scary for a couple of seconds but I stayed in the air and, gaining height, turned onto the crosswind leg of the left-hand circuit I was planning to fly. Throttling back and gingerly checking out control responses while relishing the realistic sound of my engine - a far cry from the drone of the original IL-2 109s - I turned left again and settled onto a downwind leg, applying a bit of elevator trim (which I believe actually adjusts tailplane incidence, in the 109) when I'd settled on what seemed like a respectable cruising speed. Possibly I was a little high for the 1,000 feet I'd planned for the circuit - I had turned off inflight map and instruments. Once well down the leg, I looked out over my left shoulder for a glimpse of my airfield, remembering that when it was at roughly 7 o'clock, I would want to turn left again, onto the base leg. OK, so where was the runway? Oh-oh....my base was lost in a sea of whiteness. I remembered that there had been a medium-sized wood or town somewhere just north of the airfield. I could see what might have been that area, in the form of a dark patch on the ground. Taking this as my mark, when I judged it about right, I turned left and rolled out onto a heading just short of north and flew my base leg. At some point, fiddling about with the 'pilot gestures' controls, I had inadvertently fired a flare, which I assume is why the flare gun has now appeared in its slot below the starboard windscreen. Nice touch! When I was nearly level with the wood, I turned left again, onto my approach to the still-invisible airfield. As I began to roll out of my turn, peering desperately ahead to the left of the dark area I was using as my reference point, I was mightily relieved to see the runway, between wisps of low cloud. Whew! I held my left turn, then reversed it, to line myself up with the runway. Throttling back, I started dropping my flaps and then lowered my gear. The 109 is no slouch and things seemed to be happening awfully quickly! It's been a long time since I had my handful of flying lessons in slower Cessnas but in pitiful ignorance of the correct numbers for a 109, I did my best to use the throttle to control my rate of descent and the elevator to manage my airspeed. I often land in the external view because with no peripheral vision and the other limitations of 'flying' at a monitor, it's easier to judge when to flare. Not this time! Having flown the circuit from the cockpit, apart from slipping outside from some screenshots, I decided I would go the whole hog. Flying from the cockpit view with all the self-assurance of a rabbit in the headlights, I flared too soon and landed heavily, bouncing rather badly. I somehow managed to keep the wings level and did my best to make the next bump survivable. They say it's a good landing if you can walk away from it and a great one, if you can re-use the aircraft. By that standard, I'd made a good landing. And most of the plane looked to be re-usable. So far so rather brilliant. But this is a combat flight sim and therein lies the real test for BoS. Anyway it's off to a good start in my books, though I will want to spend more time doing circuits and bumps before I take on the Ivans in a campaign. In the meantime, of course I could not resist a bit of blowing stuff up (or attempting to) but that's a story for another day! Watch this space for the CombatAce review!

It does now; has done since Aldo's new .exe. It's quite scary seeing enemy tracers arcing towards you. I believe it also reduced the tendency of your platoon tanks to turn their backs to the enemy. I'm sure in real life if you haven't recced the positions in advance, it also takes a bit of time and effort to find hull down fire positions for a whole platoon, rather than just a single tank. As in the above mission, I get them in close then drive us all in line abreast, at right angles up to a suitable linear feature which I've chosen in advance. Worked fine this time. If it doesn't, I don't find it a massive chore to jump to any exposed tank (click on # behind the mousetank and Ctrl+J works more or less instantaneously for me) and guide him into position. Sure, the AI isn't entirely up to SB standards but it's okay now. Sometimes platoon commanders need to get a grip of the less experienced crews :)

Alles kaput? At this point, things started to happen fast. Just ahead, a squad of infantry appeared from a dip in the ground and started moving right. A split second later, a second squad broke cover, just behind the others. I hosed the first group with tracer from the co-ax and let loose an HE round. The troops went to ground immediately. They looked to have distinctive British field equipment, perhaps because I hadn't disabled the British infantry mod before enabling PP2-X. The second squad disappeared again, into another fold in the ground. My tank commander called in a fresh target and traversing slightly left, I quickly picked it up - an escaping half-track, heading for a gap between a two-storey brick house and a smaller building with an ivy-covered wall. At that point, as I was in the act of clobbering the half-track, the infantry clobbered me. At least I think it was them, a bazooka (or PIAT) most likely. All I know is, there was a loud bang, one of my crew gave a grunt, and my tank was dead. As is the way with PE, I was almost immediately transferred to the command of my first platoon-mate, back on the other side of Pirou. It happens a little fast but it's good that PE (in effect) assumes you have survived and taken over one of the other tanks in your platoon, as a platoon leader would do in real life, instead of just ending the mission when your command tank is knocked out. I checked out the map and mission results screen and while I was doing ok, I hadn't done enough to win the mission, which generally involves achieving a specified main mission goal. As this goal was (per the briefing) to hold la Croix de Pirou, and we were still doing so, I wasn't sure what else I had to do. The US attack seemed to have petered out. Perhaps I just needed to sit tight a while longer for the mission script to recognise my success. Perhaps because I had by-passed Pirou on the way in, some mission triggers hadn't fired and something necessary for mission success hadn't happened. After waiting a little longer, I decided I would count this mission as accomplished, whatever the OC (Officer Commanding, ie company commander) might think or say at debrief - and in PE, they can give you a fair old tongue-lashing at the debriefing, if you don't succeed. However, I thought I might as well get my money's worth, as it were, so - my platoon commander persona having evidently escaped from his own tank and taken over one of the other Panzers - I led the others out of our fire position and around the back of Pirou. I'm not a vindictive person, as a rule, but payback is payback. Arriving at the scene of my first tank's demise, I found that the enemy infantry had unwisely advanced from their cover and were now in the open. Perhaps they were mad at us for destroying their half-tracks. More likely, they had regrouped and were following their original orders, to seize Pirou. They didn't make it. I still got a right royal rollocking from the OC for failing the mission. There's just no pleasing some people. I admit, I did lose a tank, and a couple of others got slightly bent. But we had stopped the Amis and chalked up a decent tally of AFV kills. A good day's work, in my book. Apart from a few 'Instant Action' missions, this was my first serious outing with PP2-X and I'm delighted with the mod. It's still a beta, the most (only real?) noticeable sign of which is that many AFVs are still stock, like this M4A1(76)... ...while some which were added by the original PP2 mod are also not up to the latest standards, like this E-100 super-heavy tank... However, the new models are excellent and I gather more of the Shermans (there's already a new Firefly) are next in line for an upgrade, doubtless to the high standards set by the Panzer IVs as featured in this report, not to mention the different Panthers versions and the King Tiger: Even playing with the stock (or early modded) AFV models, the new sounds, environments and ballistics provide a real shot in the arm for this classic sim. Panzer Elite was and remains a top-notch WW2 tanksim with a great set of vehicles and campaigns, first-rate tank and platoon command and control, and other immersive and/or useful features which you just don't seem to get in sims these days. Between the new .exe and the latest mods designed to make good use of it, the old girl is still capable of showing the 'newer models' plenty of tricks. No question, PP2-X is highly recommended!

Wo sind noch die Amerikaner? Ok, now what? What are the Amis up to? Where have they gone? The longer it stayed quiet, the more concerned I got. They're up to something...I can feel it in my hydraulic fluid! Probably creeping around a flank, over there on the other side of Pirou... For a while I resisted the temptation. I was in a good position, four Panzers side by side, with decent fields of fire, out over the relatively open ground in front of Pirou. My mission was to hold that town. We had done exactly that. If they came again, we would beat them again. But in the end, impatience got the better of me. I compromised, though. I would do a bit of a recce over to the other flank, in my own tank. But my platoon would stay put, ready to clobber the Amis if they repeated their attack. So I gave the boys the order to sit tight and in the approved fashion, backed out of my own fire position, knowing that to drive forward out of it was to invite disaster. Then, far back enough to be out of sight to any Amis, I turned left and rolled along behind my numbers one and three. Turning right, I then trundled across the southern, friendly side of Pirou, swinging my turret to face the enemy and watching for targets, to my front and to my right. From time to time I stopped in such cover as there was, and had a good scan though gunsight or binos. But there was nothing to be seen, except the occasional knocked-out enemy vehicle and some SPWs* lurking in Pirou. I rolled across a field of cut corn and turned half right towards a small group of buildings on the western outskirts of Pirou. Now, I was taking a big chance, likely beyond the ability of my platoon to support me and approaching some cover, behind which anything might be lurking. I should have turned back. But I thought to myself, well, just a little further, I'll check out what I can see from the other side of these buildings. If the Amis are lurking there and there aren't too many of them, I'll consider calling up the platoon and putting in an attack. If it's all clear I'll conclude my reconnaisance and rejoin the others, knowing the left flank isn't threatened and that we can continue to defend Pirou from our original position on the right flank. Halting for observation amidst some shrubbery at a safe (I hoped!) distance from the buildings, I went to the gunsight and scanned to my front, left to right and back again. With all that cover it was hard to see what was what. Suddenly, there it was...a green, angular thing between two small buildings.., and it was marked with a white star! I could see little of it but from its flat-sided appearance, I judged it to be a US half-track. I had an AP round up the spout so I put that into him, then another, at which point he started to burn. Rolling forward to open up some more lines of sight and scanning again, I suddenly came under attack, bursts of automatic weapons fire. This seemed to be coming from a second half-track, which suddenly came into view half right, as I drove forward, rather frighteningly close. Where there were half tracks, likely there were infantry, and where there were infantry, there were bazookas... I had switched from AP to HE rounds and let the second half track have a couple of these, which had the desired effect. My little reconnaisance was turning out to be quite a profitable venture. But I had the feeling that maybe sitting out here on my own, driving into goodness knows what, in such close country, was perhaps pushing my luck just a bit too far... ...to be continued! * SPW - SchutzenPanzerWager - the Wehrmacht's term for their half-tracked armoured APCs, aka Hanomags or SdKfz 251s.

Es braust unser panzer in sturmwind dahinn! * Out onto the right flank I took my Panzer IV, at the head of my platoon column. I had ensured all of us were fully fitted with spaced armour - solid plate hull skirts in the case of the H models, mesh for the single Ausf. J. The new PP2-X Panzer IVs are big improvements on the rather crude originals. A neat touch is the unbuttoned tank commander. I think only the Soviets routinely fought closed down. While the PP2-X TC's aren't animated, they certainly make your tanks look less like robotic machines in an arcade game. Having passed Croix de Pirou on my left and reached an area of slightly higher ground, I swung left and, facing west, ordered the platoon into line formation. I slowly trundled forward until we were just short of the edge of a little plateau which overlooked the approaches to the village and halted amongst the bushes. I judged we should be at least partly hull-down to anyone crossing the lower, open ground to our direct front, which I had selected as a likely kill zone for the expected Ami attacks. I could have further adjusted the positions of individual tanks; you can mouse-click on a spot on the ground and order them to go there but for precise control it's best to take over the other tank and drive it into position yourself. But I was reasonably happy with the positions we had stopped in and rather than risk getting caught out by a sudden appearance of the enemy, I left it at that. After a minute or two's comparative silence, the fun began. My platoon-mates started reporting enemies, more or less straight ahead, at about 5-600 meters if I recall right. I had the text panel at the bottom of the screen turned off and my German isn't great but I've played PE enough to be up-to-speed on the sim's first-class radio and intercom traffic - 'Ziel gesichtet - zwolf uhr - sechs hundert meter!' The text panel would vave identified the vehicle too but I knew from having played this mission before - from both sides - what to expect: a 3-platoon company of US Shermans attacking more or less in line of platoons, with half-tracked infantry later following up from the enemy's left flank, the other side of Pirou from my position. I scanned ahead through the gunsight but saw nothing. Note that PE gives you a pretty good representation of the standard German tank gun sight reticle, which you can adjust for range, the scales providing for different projectives - on the right the standard AP round, Panzergranate 39, and the tungsten-cored APCR/HVAP shot, PzGr40; and on the left, the co-axial MG and the HE round, Sprengranate 34. Note also the 'mouse-tank', which I have downsized and dragged over to bottom right; this gives you an on-screen commnand tool, a visual guide to what your other tanks are doing, and (perhaps must importantly) a compass rose and a turret position indicator. My platoon-mates were making good shooting though, so I let them get on with it. By hanging back amongst the bushes we were deliberately sacrificing wide arcs of fire for better concealment and I was quite content if only some of us had enemy in sight at any one time...and vice versa. Especially the vice versa. My number 2 was damaged by return fire but from the plumes of dark smoke out in the kill zone, we were hitting the enemy pretty hard. At this point I spotted an angular green shape moving across my front from right to left, close by and mostly out of sight in the dead ground just the other side of the dip in the ground to my direct front. I managed to put a round into him and he stopped and smoked but didn't burn. From the commander's position, through my binos, I could see that he was in fact a US M8 armoured car. His scouting days were over! Beyond him, on the edge of a cornfield, was one of my comrades' victims, a Sherman tank with a column of dark smoke climbing up from its turret-less hull. Things seemed to go quiet. I scanned left and right, then hard left, in case we were now being by-passed. But there were no more enemies to be seen. Next to me, one of my Panzers lurked, watchful for any further sign of the Amis. The tension of the last few minutes began to ease, to be replaced by a sense of mounting elation. Our Panzers seemed to have stopped the enemy attack in its tracks - literally! ...to be continued! * from the famous 'Panzerleid' - 'Our tank thunders in the wind of the storm'

The old girl's back at the front! Wing's Simulations' Panzer Elite - not to be confused with the later 'arcade' tank game Panzer Elite Action - was the doyen of tanksims for many years and in many ways, she still is. With the classic Panzer Elite Special Edition (PE-SE), which included a series of major mods, you could fight your way through campaigns in Libya, Tunisia, Italy, North-West Europe and Russia with British, German, US and Soviet forces, fighting from a great variety of tanks. Artillery support, infantry, A/T guns, light armour and soft-skinned vehicles were all there. Briefings were accompanied by animated maps and voiceovers. Platoon command and control was second to none and better than nearly everything else. Radio and intercom traffic was pretty thoroughly represented. You could swap around crew members with different skills and, within some limits, choose your ammo loadout and some optional extras for your tanks. The years passed and better-looking tanksims appeared, good and not-so-good, but some of PE's talented modders didn't give up and improvements continued to be made, notably time of flight for projectiles and better graphics. This mission report is my first serious outing with a new PE mod, still in beta but already showing the way ahead for PE - Panzer Pack 2-X, or PP2-X. The original Panzer Pack by the Lenort brothers was one of the original big mods for the sim, geared towards multiplayer. Its latest incarnation is by modder Slomo, based on a new PE .exe from fellow modder Brit44 'Aldo'. Main visible improvements include some much better tank models, with 3-dimensional and better-animated wheels and track, which had been 2-dimensional, even on previously-improved models. The latest version of PP2-x also includes more recent work by Aldo which pretty well eliminates the tendency of PE tanks to teeter sometimes like they were made of cardboard, as they moved on uneven terrain, which makes for a big improvement to my eye. Many tank and other models are still the originals from PE-SE, but these are gradually being replaced as work on the beta progresses. As things stand, PP2-x is a mod for the basic sim, so doesn't add Eastern Front, Libyan or other campaigns; to play these in their latest versions, you'll need a different mod, BobR's PE3, which I used in my last PE mission reprot, fighting the Sherman Firefly.. Details of PP2-X are available here: http://pedg.yuku.com/forums/52/PP2X#.VG0pTcnHSRE. Graphics and animations are still not up to the latest standards but especially with the new tanks, are a tremendous step forward from the originals and they really give this fine sim a new lease of life. Having installed PP-2x (latest version 1.2) in my 'mods' folder and enabled it using the JSGME-like Mod Enabler that comes with PE-SE, I decided to play for the Wehrmacht, starting with the first mission in the Normandy campaign, 'St Lo - 3 July 1944', a mission which all the PE old hands will know well! Here's the screen that greets you when you start. Your platoon awaits you! You can see your allocated tanks, parked up in front of a slightly-knocked about farmhouse. In the centre stands your 'adjudant', in practice your platoon sergeant whose animated figure, when clicked on, will open up the options that your industrious second-in-command will be able to organise for you, as befits the abilities of the professional Senior NCO that you, a mere Lieutenant, will be glad to rely upon. Click on the tanks and you can choose to replace them (which I usually do, if only to get a platoon that is realistically equipped with the same model of tank). You can also choose to move crewmen or add realistically-available features, like skirt armour ('schurzen') for German tanks. Long-time PE players will recall that the cow moves and moos! It's been a lo-o-o-ong time since sim developers put this kind of care into creating an immersive front end. In the pic below, I have replaced my Panzer IIIN (short 7.5cm gun) with a late model Panzer IV to match my other tanks - a mix of Panzer IV H and J versions, all with long-barrelled 7.5cm guns, the J model being a late war 'economy' type with manual-only turret traverse and other simplifications. I am also adding available upgrades - some extra protection, including spaced armour for both turret and hull sides, as normally carried from about mid-1943 (hull spaced armour was frequently lost, but the turret 'skirt' generally stayed put). Having already set my realisim options to my taste (via the 'adjudant'), it was time to kick off the mission briefing. Here is the basic mission map. The voiceover and map markings, which appear one after the other, talk and walk you through the mission - again, a touch that few other sims have equalled, before or since. Basically, our 4-tank platoon has formed up at the hamlet of la Corbierre and is to move a short distance to the north, to la Croix de Pirou, to help defend that village against imminent, concentric US Army attacks. We are supporting some Panzergrenadiers in that place and are ourselves supported by two other platoons which will follow us, plus others on the flanks. As usual in PE, your side's little battlegroup is a mix of different platoons with often unspecified but varied equipment, when a more coherent, more homogenous force, with slightly less variety and tied more closely together in what they are doing, might be more realistic. Here's how the briefing looks when it's stopped playing through. The green arrows are the expected, concentric US attacks, while the blue markings indicate our (German) positions and movements. If we can't hold la Croix de Pirou, we have been told we can fall back to la Corbierre, whence we came, and if it goes really badly t*ts up, then St Giles to the south is where we must make our stand, with a platoon of anti-tank guns already there as a last line of defence. I clicked the icons on the right to review advice, weather etc and then had a good look at the map, to choose my firing positions. These I intended to occupy at once, rather than waiting for the enemy to appear, in this fairly close country, where lines of sight and fire were rather short and nasty surprises could creep up on you rapidly. On the left, the ground was fairly level, with open terrain ahead of the village. This open area looked like a possible killing ground but fire positions in that direction lacked hard cover, just limited cover from view amongst some shrubbery and little scope to 'shoot and scoot' under cover, from fire position to fire position. In the centre was the village itself, an obvious target for enemy artillery and while providing some cover from direct fire, this would also limit my own arcs of view and fire, while separating my tanks from each other. On the right was higher ground, with a fair bit of soft cover and some countours which suggested better fire positions, possibly hull down, from which I could shoot and scoot, while possibly firing from the advancing enemy's flank, as they came into that open ground. Plan made - I'd move out wide to the right in column formation, turn back left when just ahead of Croix de Pirou, and then go into line abreast, edging the platoon, in that formation, into our initial fire positions. My plan made and the mission loaded, I ordered my tanks into column and we roared off to the right. Here we go, boys! Let's see if we can teach these impertinent Amis a thing or two, about what German Panzers can do! ...to be continued!

The 'calibre' can mean 'length in calibres' eg the German 7.5cm Pak 40 was IIRC 'L/46' meaning barrel length was 46 times 7.5 cm while the tank mounted KwK derivatives were first L/43 later L/48.

C'est 'EEE-pruh', n'est-ce pas?

'Heavy-handed Hans flies Halberstadts' * The fight didn’t begin immediately. I lost a bit of height in my turn and the Halbertstadts, though turning too, kept their height advantage, rather than dropping down after me. I kept turning into them to deter an attack from the rear. After a while, one of them disappeared somewhere, how or where I have no idea. I kept turning and watching, toggling padlock on and off, deliberately trying to drag the other Halberstadt down with me, down over my own side of the Lines. And down he came! He dropped right down to my level in an attempt at a firing pass; and a proper dogfight developed. He was nimbler but I happily accepted losing altitude in my turns and my big BE12 refused to stall out, giving me several shots at the Hun. That big airscoop on my nose, the lack of a proper centre-line gunsight and my single Vickers's low rate of fire inhibited my shooting but I still got some hits. The Halbertstadt's movements became more sluggish and he started layng a fine trail of white smoke or vapour. Switching to the side-mounted gunsight view for better accuracy at the expense of field of view - and keeping bursts short to avoid a stoppage - I managed to stay behind him longer and get closer each time I fired. Fortunately the second Hun never showed up again because I was by now fairly well target fixated, knowing I should look behind but totally determined to get my man, despite the friendly AA fire that was now bursting around the both of us. At one point my target climbed up away from me and extended the range further when I pulled up too hard and lost airspeed - and ground. But a slower climb put me back on his tail as he fled east and once again I had him. A few more bursts and he lost much of his forward airspeed and began a steady but wings-level descent. I broke away and watched from above, finally clearing my own tail. I expected the Hun to force land. But about a hundred feet up, he suddenly nosed down into an ever-steepening spiral and hit the ground near a hedgerow. Got him! I wasn't in the mood for a long flight back to my own airfield so after checking the map, I decided to land on a nearby base which lay just to my west, south of a nearby river. I turned away from the smoking remains of my foe and within a few minutes I was slipping down to land. I taxied up to the sheds and switched off, hopeful of a hot drink in my host's officers' mess and that they would have seen and could thus confirm my recent splendid triumph. Mission over, I filled in a victory claim form and gave a pretty good description of the fight, lacking only the time. When I submitted the claim, a message warned me my named witness wasn't flying at the time, which was strange, as he was definitely up there with A Flight - who admittedly weren't around anyway. The full debrief shows no sign of A Flight having been in action, so perhaps that 'fighting 19 Squadron' label indicated the Huns were actually hunting (rather than fighing) me. Evidently, through the wondrous powers of AI vision, they had spotted me from way beyond the distance that their aircraft (as opposed to labels) became visible to me, for they appeard to have been making a bee-line for me the whole time. I haven't a clue what happened to the second Hun. Perhaps our AA fire had damaged him or scared him away, for it was firing all around us, friend and foe, for much of my dogfight. If so, I forgive the gunners for not alerting me to the presence of the enemy aircraft, earlier. The debrief wrongly records me as landing on my home airfield but hopefully, the Powers That Be will at least get the victory confirmation right! * from the RFC song: Heavy-handed Hans flies Halberstadts In handy Halberstadters for a flight our Hans does start. His C.O. says 'Oh dash it! For I fear that he will crash it!' See how heavy-handed Hans Ham-handles handy Halberstadts!

It's a long way to Tipperary the objective Gaining height with my single-aircraft B Flight, I looked around for A Flight. I quickly spotted them forming up and scudding around just above the deck. AI-led flights in WOFF, having taken off, spend rather a long time flying around rather aimlessly at low level like this, before something finally triggers them to climb up and head off on the mission itself. Avoiding this rather tedious routine is one reason I prefer always to lead a flight. In this unusual case, I was in a flight on my own, to which the others were to provide top cover. So I spent a while following them around while slowly climbing to my own assigned 5,000 feet. In the end, I got fed up waiting for them to come out of their 'take off, form up and potter around' routine and headed off down to the south-east, towards the Lines near the town of Albert, whose chuch tower's tottering Virgin Mary's fall was supposed to herald the end of the war. I had selected 'historical weather' and wasn't surprised to find it rather murky, with lots of low cloud and generally poor visibility in most directions at any one time. Despite this, as is my wont I kept the Tactical Display set to short range (to avoid the AWACS radar effect). It can be hard to spot other planes in WOFF at the best of times with visual aids off or minimised and today seemed unlikely to be an exception. While following A Flight around, I had tried to pick up and set a recognisable vector to a genuine mission waypoint on the Tactical Display. But I cycled too far ahead and couldn't get back so having spashed out on my own, I relied instead upon the in-flight map, to navigate. With no 'warp' facility, I went onto 2x time acceleration to cover the long leg to my objective area - I can fly this without autopilot and besides, any faster, it's a stutter-fest. I popped back into real time every so often, to double-check my surroundings, but I saw no flak and no other aircraft, A Flight included. Nearing the limit of my patrol, things were still quiet and I began to fear that this was going to be one of the rather high percentage of my WOFF missions that encounters no enemies. In some frustration, I turned on labels. At least I might discover if A Flight was looking likely to join the party. Instead, the labels which now appeared were for a Halberstadt scout, from Jasta 4. He was about 5 miles away, at ten o'clock and slightly high. I mentally kicked myself for not switching first to 'dot mode' labels and avoiding this unrealistic revelation. The Hun was the other side of some clouds and with labels off, quite invisible. No friendly flak bursts in sight over there either, despite being well on our side of the Lines…where incidentally, Hun scouts should not often be. Maybe he was lost in the bad weather! I continued on my course for a while, turning the labels on and off. The range seemed to be winding down, but slowly. Had the enemy detected me via some from of superior AI vision? Hard to say, but likely, if as seemed possible, he was now heading unerringly my way, despite the intervening clouds. I decided I would do what I would have done, had I not seen the enemy aircraft - continue to the limit of my patrol, then if A Flight didn't show, break off and fly north, just my side of the lines, looking for trade. Another flick of the labels revealed that the Hun, steadily drawing closer, was 'fighting 19 Squadron' (or words to that effect). That was the limit of my patience! I was not going to fly another boring 'milk run' while the others had all the fun! So I turned towards the enemy and impatiently closed with him, flicking labels on and off again. Then, there they were - two Halberstadts, not one, to my direct front, slightly higher and on a reciprocal course. No sign of 19 Squadron...except for me... They flashed past above me and then turned, even as I turned into them. ...to be continued!

Second time lucky? Flying the BE12 in Wings over Flanders Fields This time up, having met a heroic but early end in my First Eagles BE12 campaign, I'm checking out the same experience in WOFF. No need to worry about editing files this time tho, for the BE12 is one of the new planes included in this latest version of OBD Software's popular WW1 airwar sim. 'Latest' not for long, though, as a new iteration, WOFF 2.0, is about to hit the virtual shelves, as a payware upgrade and expansion, with the emphasis on Home Defence against Zepps and Gothas: http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4018110/WOFF_v2.0_Screen_Shots__!#Post4018110 As in FE, I created a new pilot, finding that I could enlist in the same squadron from the same date - 19 Squadron, RFC, from 1st September 1916, just days before Boelcke and his 'cubs' from Jasta 2 burst onto the scene. WOFF bases us at Fienvillers/Candas, to the north-west of Cappy and further behind the Lines, than in FE. And here's my pilot logbook, a much better presentation than FE's pilot stats screen (better than how most other combat flight sims have done this, come to think of it). Not so good is the accuracy of this page, describing my mount, which emphasises the BE12's brief and almost accidental fighter role and says it was at the front in April 1915, a whole year or more too early. The data in the panel looks more like it applies to the BE2c; for example the BE12 has a 150hp RAF4 engine, not a 90hp RAF1 and the armament is also wrong. Here's the squadron roster for my first campaign mission. Perhaps WOFF is trying to break me in gently with a patrol behind my own lines. And while I've selected 'always lead', I'm leading just myself, for oddly, I'm on my own in B Flight while A Flight is well up to strength, and flying top cover, for just little old me. Obviously, this squadron believes very strongly in looking after its new pilots. Naturally, I did not consider for a moment the possibility that they might be using me as bait for the wily Huns. And here's the briefing itself, confirming this rather odd arrangement: No doubt, the CO knows best. Ours not to reason why, and all that. Off to the airfield I went, finding myself lined up next to A Flight. Losing no time, I started up, checked the controls and as soon as the others began to move off, opened her up. The WOFF BE12 is not a bad replica, tho the nose is I think a little slender. Unfortunately it has not yet been updated like the WOFF BE2c and thus still has its interplane struts visibly too far inboard. Hopefully WOFF 2.0 will effect some improvement. With little thought for such things, I banked around and turned my mind to the task at hand: to wit, a solo patrol behind our own trench lines, with A Flight covering me from somewhere on high. Nothing to it. Or so I thought... ...to be continued!

My luck really runs out! Down we went at the Huns. Having drawn somewhat ahead of my other two BE12s but relying on them to follow suit, I padlocked the nearest Fokker and took a deflection shot at long-ish range. I had little expectation of doing any real damage but I was determined to distract him from the BE2 he was pursuing, even if that meant sacrificing the element of surprise. This part of my plan worked quite well, for the Fokker broke off his attack. After that, not so good. As I whizzed past, carried on by the momentum from my power dive, my padlock hit the BE12's rearward view limit - not much past 45 degrees - and my situational awareness promptly went down the toilet. I pulled up from my dive and tried to convert speed for height, but my big, two-bay BE12, all struts and bracing wires, seemed to lose energy rather faster than I was used to. In no time at all, I was struggling badly, back in the virtual cockpit but blind behind, unable to padlock, unable even to see in that direction. Which, of course, is where the Huns were. I had a short crack at one of the Fokkers who carelessly crossed my path but within seconds, another one had popped me off from behind. Pilot kill! Mission over. For me anyway, but not for the others. No need to pause the action, my now-pilotless BE12 was doomed regardless. Again I tabbed through the nearby aircraft, now a mere spectator to the continuing action. I followed one of the two surviving BE12's for a while, as he fought with another Fokker. Round and round they both went, with the Fokker slowly gaining ground. However, the BE cleverly put in a low yo-yo, pulling up just above the ground and causing the Fokker to break away. The BE now managed to get behind the Hun and get in some bursts before the faster German machine got away. Seconds later, there was a bang and the BE12 was falling in flaming pieces from the skies, seemingly a victim of a mid-air collision which appeared to have left the Fokker still flying. I didn't see the fate of the third BE12. The results screen afterwards told me that of the three of us, two were KIA and one wounded, so maybe he glided home. The action wasn't over, though. The Fokkers had resumed their attacks on the BE2 bombers. For a while, it looked like my flight's sacrifice was going to be in vain. But the day was saved by one of the silver Nieuports, who swung in towards the Huns. As the Frenchman bored in, one of the Fokkers broke off from chasing the BEs and turned into the Nieuport for a head-on pass. The Frenchman didn't turn after the Hun but kept on, drawing off another Fokker. This time the two fought and the Fokker was the loser, going down with a dead motor, at first under control, then rolling into a vertical nose-dive, pulling out at the last moment to make a dead-stick landing in a field. At least I had the satisfaction of seeing my charges make it back, in part thanks to our own flight's costly intervention, but mostly thanks to the plucky Frenchman in that silver V-strutter. But for my own virtual pilot, the campaign was over. No kills and just one MG round hit, for three BE12s lost along with two of their pilots. Next time I venture into the skies in one of these machines in First Eagles, I will at least make sure I have restored my rearward vision, beforehand! As usual, the combination of First Eagles (FE2 in this case), Ojcar's Armchair Aces campaign and planes & other mods by Stephen1918 and his fellow modders delivered an intense, immersive and convincing WW1 air combat experience. Next up, I'll be flying a similar campaign mission in WOFF's BE12, to see if we can do any better, second time around!