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'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!

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!

The heavies are back! Here's the briefing for the next mission in my Reich Defence career, flown as per previous missions in IL-2 '46 + Dark Blue World and the same campaign from FlatSpinMan. I say 'briefing' but it's actually a conversational piece between the campaign pilot Willi Redemann and his boss, followed by what has the appearance of a piece of extended radio traffic, from the local Ground Controller to fighters outbound for an interception mission. 'Furniture Vans' - 'Moebelwagen' in German - is a Luftwaffe radio nickname for heavy bombers, so it's pretty clear that we're up against the USAAF's Eighth Air Force. And from the reference to 'butcher birds' - a little-used name for the Focke-Wulf 190 - it's evident that our Bf109Gs from I Gruppe, Jagdgeschwader 1, won't be on our own. Just as well, methinks, even if, at this stage of the war, we're not facing opposition from escort fighters. Big formations of Ami four-engined bombers bristling with heavy machine-guns are no easy meat, even unescorted. The briefing map's a bit confusing as it shows two tracks, one leading out from the coast and the other (ours, as it turned out) running north-north-east. Neither appeared to originate or terminate at an airbase, which was a strong hint that this was an air-start mission...and so it proved to be. As usual for an intercept mission, I've chosen 20mm gunpods and a droptank for my formation, which as before is a schwarm of four Bf109G2s. The mission started with us in echelon right at the designated mission height, which saved us the takeoff and a long-ish climb to height, though I generally prefer to start on the ground. I throttled back slightly, gave the order to change to 'finger four' formation, then opened up again as my comdades slipped into position. As expected, there were at least two other flights on the same mission, which I could see from their contrails, above us. Who were they? Using the IL-2 view system to 'have a nosey', I could see that our companions consisted of another flight or two of 109s and a couple of flights of 190s. If I remember my Luftwaffe markings right, the checkered-nose 190s are from 1/JG1 and the ones with the 'tatzelwurm' (which is on the opposite side of the cowling of the other 190s, with the cross-hatched fuselage side camouflage) are from IV/JG1. Orders from the Ground Controller reminded us to turn right onto heading 090 when we reached the next waypoint, in which direction we'd been briefed to expect to encounter the American bombers heading home from their raid. Up ahead, the other two flights started their turn and rather than wait till I had reached the waypoint, above the lake just ahead, I cut the corner and turned in early. I didn't gain much ground; the others must have been at full throttle! Whatever might lie up ahead, it looked like they would run into it first. Fair enough, I thought to myself as I rolled out onto my new course, I tried. So be it! ...to be continued!

Mission # 3 in Flatspinman's campaign My first campaign featured as a set of mission reports - with Jasta 5 in Wings Over Flanders Fields - having come to an early and inauspicious ending, I thought I'd wind the clock forward to World War 2 and pick up on a campaign first reported here last year. This is none other than Flatspinman's IL-2 campaign covering the Luftwaffe's attempts to defend 'The Thousand Year Reich' from those who rather thought that Nazi hegemony over large swathes of eastern & western Europe for the aforementioned period was, perhaps, not entirely a good idea. In case you're wondering where missions 1 & 2 got to, they're here and here, respectively. To recap, my pilot was operating in Scandanavian skies flying the Messerschmitt 109G with Jagdgeschwader 5 'Eismeer'. But I've been transferred south to JG1 'Oesau', operating in the Reichsverteidigung (Defence of the Reich) role. My first mission had been a transfer flight south which had ended with an unplanned but successful interception of an RAF Mosquito shipping strike. The second sortie was my first mission with JG1, intercepting an unescorted raid by USAAF B-24 heavy bombers over the North Sea. As for this third mission, here's the briefing. As you can see, my virtual alter ego is bitching about various things, not least being sent on a shipping protection mission in poor weather. But orders are orders! As you can also see, an IL-2 map covering the eastern Baltic is doubling up for the German Bight, the area between the German North Sea coast and Denmark. With the map scrolled fully north and the briefing text scrolled fully down, you can see our flightpath and the tail end of the nicely-written briefing. Basically, we are to fly north along the coastline below the clouds then turn west and fly a rectangular patrol pattern, presumably in the vicinity of the shipping we are supposed to protect. Enemy airstrikes are going to be the threat, as the risk from U-boats, minefields and the Luftwaffe makes Allied naval incursions too risky. Before kicking off the mission I checked that I had the recommended 'skin' selected. I also chose to take a droptank and two underwing 20mm cannon gunpods. Rightly or wrongly, at this stage in the war - early-to-mid-1943, if I recall right - I wasn't expecting to meet enemy escort fighters so far from England and the extra firepower might come in handy. There are four of us in the mission and I'm the Schwarmfuehrer. My aircraft has been renumbered, had its JG5 unit badge replaced with the JG1 'winged one' equivalent (not actually carried till early 1944 I think) but is otherwise mostly in the same markings carried previously. From my rudder markings I'm something of an ace already and from the black disc with the white diagonal cross on the rear fusealge, I have evidently been in Spain with the Legion Condor. Wasting no time I checked my controls, locked the tailwheel and started up. With flaps set I opened her up gradually, ruddering to control the swing as the power built up. Off we went, past the parked aircraft and other paraphenalia of a busy operational airfield. Regardless of the weather and the mission, it felt good to be back behind the controls of a virtual 'Gustav', the most-built if not most successful version of the Luftwaffe's classic fighter. 'Bring them on!' I thought to myself, as we climbed away from our airfield. ...to be continued!

Beating up the enemy after dark, in Prangster's Mosquito campaign for IL-2! To adapt the 'Redneck's' line in the movie 'Outpost', you can say what you like about Hermann Goering, but he had style...and a perhaps characteristically brutal but effective way with words. Of all the pithy statements attributed to 'der Dicke', as the rotund Reichsmarschall was unceremoniously nicknamed, one I like best concerns his opinion of the 'Wooden Wonder' - the justly-famous DeHavilland DH98 Mosquito. Of this superlative aeroplane, Goering is said to have remarked: 'In 1940 I could at least fly as far as Glasgow in most of my aircraft, but not now! It makes me furious when I see the Mosquito. I turn green and yellow with envy. The British, who can afford aluminium better than we can, knock together a beautiful wooden aircraft that every piano factory over there is building, and they give it a speed which they have now increased yet again. What do you make of that? There is nothing the British do not have. They have the geniuses and we have the nincompoops. After the war is over I'm going to buy a British radio set - then at least I'll own something that has always worked.' It's said (eg in Crowood's Me262 history) that - far from having been forced into development as a bomber by Hitlerian ineptitude - the famous German jet fighter was heavily marketed by Willy Messerschmitt as a multi-role plane from the outset. And that this was partly in an effort to cash in on widespread German recognition of the Mosquito's success as a very fast warplane which excelled at many roles: fighter, night bomber, precision day bomber, fighter bomber, night fighter, anti-shipping, reconnaisance. Whatever Messerschmitt's motivation, the Mosquito is one of those aircraft which, as the saying goes, looked right and was right. It also sounds pretty good: A little while back, my plan to feature comparative Mosquito mission reports in a few different sims didn't get beyond CFS2 add-on 'Mosquito Squadron' when my graphics card failed. Restored by heating it to re-flow possible failed soldered connections, I can pick that up now. So it's time for 'Mosquito Squadron' again; this time not the CFS2 add-on but Prangster's mini-campaign of that name, available for IL-2 over at that peerless resource for all things Sturmovik, Mission4Today: http://www.mission4today.com/index.php?name=Downloads&file=details&id=1172 I was especially interested in flying the included Amiens Prison raid in IL-2, by way of comparison with the CFS2 equivalent. But that will come later. This report is on the first mission in Prangster's campaign. Intriguingly, this is for a night intruder mission, which I knew Mossies flew in 1944 around the time of the Normandy landings. Some of these operations are described by participants, in Osprey/del Prado's 'Mosquitos of World War 2', a good basic source. One of the units flying these missions in 1944 was the Royal New Zealand Air Force's 487 Squadron, squadron code 'EG', assigned to the RAF's 140 Wing, No. 2 Group, in the famous Second Tactical Air Force (2nd TAF). And this is the very squadron featured in this campaign! Go, Kiwis! Night intruder missions were a new departure for me. I knew they had earlier been flown by black-painted Hurricanes and Bostons, stooging around in the dark, low over enemy-occupied France and basically shooting up anything that looked like it needed shooting up. Now, I was going to attempt this in a Mosquito...a virtual one of course but the darkness would be real enough. So with the room light turned off and illumination provided from a light outside filtering through a partly-open door - the better to be able to make out detail on a dark screen yet see a little of my keyboard - I braced myself for a new simualtion experience. Here's the mission brief. I have to say that it is short but exceptionally good. Mission objectives and important parameters are clearly stated and appended to this is some immersive, realistic extra, military-looking stuff, starting with a met report from the meterolo...meteriolo...you know, those weathermen chappies. From what I remember, this is the original IL-2 Normandy 'map', which I think came with the Aces Expansion Pack or thereabouts. No South of England provided. So I'm taking off from a small island where no land should be, out in the English Channel and quite close to the French coast. But I for one much prefer this to an air start. And the island is a reasonable substitute for Thorney Island on the southern coast of England further north, at which Mossies were really based at this time. Though it's February 1944 and D-Day is still four months away, knowing what's coming I can read off from the map and savour all those names about to become famous on The Longest Day...Pointe du Hoc, Ouistreham, Courselles-sur-Mer and all the rest. In short, on this sortie I must fly west at low level and orbit at the enemy airfield near Valognes, knocking down any Gerries silly or unfortunate enough to be caught in the circuit there. Then I fly south for a bit, clobbering all and sundry ground transport as I go. If I can see any. It being dark, this doesn't seem very likely. How on earth will I manage? I have no idea. But there's one way to find out... I started the mission. Here I am in the cockpit...and in the dark. At least it's a moonlit night. When you're out and about in the countryside, away from the city lights and relying on just the Mark 1 Eyeball suitably dark-adapted, you appreciate the massive difference between visibility on a moonlit night, compared to a truly dark, overcast one. This was bad, but it wasn't impossible. At least I could see my immediate surroundings and most important of all, a horizon. So I had at least a sporting chance of getting airborne...and maybe even staying there. So far, so good. Switching to the external view, I had a look around. Against the lighter sky to the west, I could at least see my own aircraft, on its own as this is a solo mission. Our little island base seemed quite well-appointed and the flarepath was nicely illuminated for my takeoff. Feeling a little less uncomfortable, I called up the 'mini-map' and oriented myself. Sad to say, I completely forgot about using my own cockpit, navigation or landing lights. Not enough training in night flying, was my excuse. What are they thinking, throwing people like me to the lions, on operations like this, that we're completely untrained for? Feeling still slightly peeved, I started humming to myself that old airman's refrain...all together, now: 'I didn't want to join the Air Force I didn't want my b*****ks shot away I'd rather hang around Piccadilly Underground Living off the earnings of a high-born lady.' Not much hope of that now...maybe later, if I make it back and that transfer to a training unit comes through. Oh well, nothing else for it, but back to the night's business. I started up, checked my controls, set flaps two notches down and opened the throttle. Very slowly. This seemed to have the desired effect in minimising swing. Keeping well between the rows of lights either side of the long runway, I lifted off and climbed away. Early days yet but so far, still so good. Maybe I'd do alright at this night intruder lark, after all. ...to be continued!

Holding the line against the Japanese onslaught in New Guinea! There's no point disputing matters of taste - as the Latin saying goes, 'de gustibus non est disputandum'. But if there was a contest for the most attractive US WW2 fighter, the Curtiss P-40 would get my vote. Especially the later models with that long, deep radiator bath under the nose, with or without the famous 'sharkmouth' marking. The P-40 is of course celebrated mainly for its exploits with the American Volunteer Group in the China-Burma-India theatre and with the British and Commonwealth air forces (and later the USAAF) in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations. While the Warhawk/Tomahawk/Kittyhawk lacked the high-altitude performance to keep it competitive later in the war, the P-40 made a vital contribution to the middle part of the Allied war effort, adding service in Russia to its many laurels. There's some great P-40 warbird action here, courtesy of New Zealand's Historic Aviation Film Unit, showing the -C, -E and -N variants: Up to now, my simulation 'stick time' with the P-40 has been very largely limited to some action in CFS2, made up between Just Flight's 'Pearl Harbour' add on and the user mod package 'In Defence of Australia: http://www.justflight.com/product/pearl-harbor http://jamcraft.net/DoA_42v2/Docs/RAAF_Expansion_Pack_v2.htm My appetite for another crack with the P-40 was recently whetted in unusual circumstances. Having in my last mission report castigated the flying sequences in the movies 'Red Tails' and 'Pearl Harbour', I decided to watch that footage again, to see if I still thought it as contrived and inane as I did first time around. The answer was a resounding 'Hell, yes!' I mean, guys on the ground talking to pilots in 1941 on a 'walkie-talkie' to arrange an ambush for Zeros by placing rifles, MGs and a shotgun(!) on a tower? Not to mention that the same two intrepid P-40 pilots had just impossibly arranged a game of 'chicken' between opposing fighters...I mean, why not just jump out on the wing and knock them down with light sabres, which would have been as realistic? But P-40s feature prominently in both films and you can't help but admire the planes, however silly are the things they're made to do by the total muppets who dream up this sort of nonsense, when the real thing could be just as cinematic. IL-2 '46 has an outstanding selection of P-40s and includes a USAAF Pacific fighter pilot campaign featuring the type. So that was my sim of choice. The variants available in IL-2 include: P-40B: P-40C: Tomahawk: P-40E: P-40M: With IL-2 - and presumably, this came originally with the 'Pacific Fighters' installment - you can opt to fly the PTO campaign I had in mind with the US Army Air Force, starting with Pearl Harbour in December 1941. I choose instead to start with the next segment of the campaign, during the following year. It was 30 July 1942, soon after Japanese fortunes had been spectacularly and decisively reversed at the aero-naval Battle of Midway. Still intent on isolating rather than invading Australia by seizing Port Moresby on eastern New Guinea, just across the Coral Sea from northern Australia, the Japanese attacked overland, along the Kokoda Trail. Such is the dramatic period in WW2 covered by this IL-2 campaign, with mainly US and Australian forces pitted against the Japanese drive to Moresby. Here's the briefing for the campaign segment's first mission. And there's no time to lose - it's a 'scamble' to intercept an enemy raid, said to be coming in from the south-west! I was at the head of a flight of just four P-40Es; and here we are, lined up on the concrete at Port Moresby's main airfield. We're not alone, though; behind us are no less than six Army P-39 Airacobras. There were quite a few other aircraft parked around the airfield, including some B-25 Mitchell bombers and some more P-40s. But we four and those P-39s seemed to be the only available aircraft for this sortie. All the more reason to get off without further ado, and gain what height we could. As it turned out, that wouldn't be much. ...to be continued!

Defending 'Bloody Tarawa' in the Ki-43 'Hayabusa'! Having enjoyed flying the Nakajima Ki-43 in an island defence mission courtesy of CFS2 and Yoshi's 'Battle of Chishima' campaign, I was keen to see what IL-2 had to offer, in the same department. IL-2 1946 includes the previous 'Pacific Fighters' installment so I opted to use this, combined with Dark Blue World, the premier add-on package for offline IL-2 fans. If you want to see the real Hayabusa in action, you probably can't do better that this war-time film: This looks to be a reconstruction for the cameramen of a 25 December 1941 Imperial Japanese Army raid on Rangoon, Burma by Ki-21 'Sally' bombers with a Ki-43 'Oscar' escort. Even though I suspect it has no real combat footage, it's pretty good stuff, and includes some staged dogfights between Hayabusas and a P-40 and Buffalo. There's some impressive Japanese model-making skill on display too but it all gets blown up in the 'bombing'! The real Christmas Day raid on Rangoon is described in some detail in Chapter 7 of Grub Street's 'Bloody Shambles' by Shores, Cull & Izawa and involved over 60 Ki-21s escorted by 25 Hayabusas, followed by another thirty-plus Ki-21s covered by a similar number of Ki-27s and was intercepted by both the American Volunteer Group and the RAF. The defenders reportedly believed they had definitely shot down at least 42 enemy aircraft but Japanese losses are said to have been two Ki-43s, the same number of Ki-27s and three Ki-21s, plus a handful more force-landed; casualties on the ground were more clear cut and were estimated at 5,000 killed. The Hayabusa also stars in the recent Japanese movie 'For Those We Love', about the Kamikazes, notably in the final climactic attack on a US Task Force. The flying sequences look to be filmed with a mix of scale models, CGI and full-size taxying replicas, and have the odd contrived moment, but they totally put to shame the high production value but inane and inept combat footage in films like 'Red Tails' or 'Pearl Harbour'. This is the link to what I believe is the legitimate official trailer on Youtube (as opposed to the 'unofficial' uploads which include the final attack in full): As for the simulation equivalent, while CFS2 features the mid-production Ki-43-II (shorter span wing and two heavy MGs), IL-2 '46 + DBW provides virtually the 'full Monty', from the early Ki-43-I with longer-span wing, tubular gun sight and two rifle-calibre MGs, through later versions with one heavy and one light MG; to the Ki-43-II with reflector sight, more powerful engine, two HMGs, shorter span wing and extra intake in the lip of the upper cowling; and the Ki-43-III with separate exhaust ejector stubs. See for yourself: Ki-43-I Ki-43-II Ki-43-III The mission I forgot to create a new pilot so I ended up with a rather un-Japanese named left-over pilot! But having created a stock IJA fighter campaign, I was pleased to see that I didn't have to start with the long flights of the Malayan operations but could choose to begin later, in November 1943, on defensive operations - just before the US Marines came ashore in Operation Galvanic - defending Tarawa atoll itself. I'd picked a starting rank high enough to lead operations, which is how I like it. Here's the briefing for the first mission - and it's 'in at the deep end' with a 'scramble', to intercept an incoming enemy raid. I'd have appreciated some information on the the enemy's height and maybe numbers, but at least I knew they were coming and roughly where they were coming from! Here we are on the airfield - six of us, lined up and good to go. CFS2 formation takeoffs are in pairs and quite brisk, but while I believe the Team Diadolos patches now support formation takeoffs, in DBW it's as per the stock IL-2 'conga line'. This is the 'vanilla' IL-2 Ki-43-I skin, solid green uppers rather than my preferred mottle. But my main beef here is that it's late 1943, yet we've been given obsolescent early-model Hayabusas, with the original 980hp engine and just one of the rifle-calibre MGs upgraded to a 12.7mm model. Okay for 1941-42 but not so good for this point in hostilities. I haven't checked but maybe it's because this is a stock campaign and the later model Hayabusas come with DBW. Whatever the reason, it appeared that someone at Imperial General Headquarters was being rather parsimonious with the latest kit. And this, despite the fact that, as the briefing reports, we're believed to be facing an attack. And a massive one at that. This being a 'scramble', there was no time to waste musing on the shortcomings of our kit. I don't bother with Complex Engine Management and as I dislike fiddling with radiator flap settings (and have on-screen text suppressed, so don't get 'Engine overheating!' warnings) I have set my motor to keep itself cool, as well. This may not be very 'hard core' but it's just how I like it. So I started up, checked my controls and set flaps to one notch down. Possibly that is actually the 'combat' setting - the Hayabusa being one plane which really did have combat flaps, apparently needed to meet the design requirement to have manoeuvrability comparable to its fixed-undercart monoplane predecessor, the Ki-27 'Nate'. Anyway off I went, followed at intervals by the others. The IL-2 Ki-43 is somewhat higher-polygon than its CFS2 equivalent although its mainwheels are rather angular, side-on anyway. It took me a second or so to realise that the green aircraft parked to my left as I took off were not modern Argentine Pucarras who'd badly lost their way in space and time, but typical Japanese dummy aircraft. They weren't the only ones; further down the runway was parked a row of dummy fighters, the far side of which sat the airfield's real planes, sensibly in blast pens. Some nice touches there! So the mission had begun. Now, where were the Americans? Coming from the south-east, the briefing said, though our flight plan indicated that we should head pretty well due south. Airborne, I raised flaps and undercart and began a turn to the right as I gained height. I could have climbed away from the incoming raid to gain more height before turning south, but orders are orders and they said 'go south'. ...to be continued!

Flying a South African Air Force Hurricane against the Regia Aeronautica in a WW2 backwater Notwithstanding the mounting excitement around upcoming new sims, there's still plenty of life in classics like IL-2. I for one was keen to try out a couple of new campaigns released by Greybeard which featured a little-known theatre of operations, Ethiopia and eastern Africa. Here in 1940, Musolini's forces staged an initially-successful offensive into British-controlled territories that was soon rolled back after some stiff fighting, in the air and on the ground. I decided to make a start flying for the victors, in a campaign which puts the player into the cockpit of a Mark 1 Hawker Hurricane in Number 3 Squadron, South African Air Force. The campaign announcement is here: http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3864227/No_3_Sqn_SAAF_in_East_Africa#Post3864227 I much prefer to fly IL-2 with the Dark Blue World mod. This campaign uses a particular version of the Dgen campaign generator by Asura and although it likely works in DBW I decided to make this my first outing with the Team Diadalos patched version. Before installing DBW I had taken a copy of my IL-2 '46 install (a simple cut & paste operation gives a fully-functional second install) and I patched this with the latest official patches and then the TD patches, to get it fully-up-to-date, then installed the DGen mod and the campaign. Here's the briefing for the first mission. I was assigned to lead a section of three Hurris on what the USN would call a Combat Air Patrol from our base on a rather barren, possibly volcanic, island off the coast opposite the opposing front lines. Clear enough, although the squadron was described at one point as an 'eskadrilyia' (Hungarian?) and the briefing didn't mention the presence of friendly aircraft, whose radio chatter I began to hear early in the mission. Anyway here we are, lined up and good to go. The recommended skin is quite superb, don't you think? Without further ado, I locked the tailwheel, tested the controls, and started up. Flaps set, I opened the throttle gradually to reduce swing, and was soon airborne. Gear and flaps up, I swung right into a climbing turn inland, and having put on a couple of thousand feet, levelled off and throttled back on a course just off north, waiting for my flight-mates to catch up with me. The island base is nicely done; in fact it reminds me of the old RAF verse, that goes like this: 'A little bit of Heaven fell from out the sky one day And landed in the ocean, oh so very far away. And when the air force saw it, it looked so effing bare They said 'THAT'S what were looking for We'll put the squadron THERE!' We didn't have long to wait, for the enemy to show up! While my wingmen were still some way behind, I head the call on the radio 'Fighters! One o'clock!'. And there they were - two specks to my right front, about the same level. I gave the others the command to get stuck into them, and turned into them myself, as they appeared to do likewise. The enemy was a pair of Fiat CR42 biplanes and they were short of neither manoeuvrability nor aggression. I gave their leader a fairly wild burst from my eight Brownings as they whizzed by in a frontal pass but it was no time at all after that before one of the b***ers was above me and shooting, ignoring the tracers from ground MG fire. For some reason, he then rolled away, perhaps distracted by one of the others. This gave me the chance I needed, and I didn't waste it. I chopped the throttle and rolled in after him, being careful not to push my Hurricane - which I had found in test combats to be prone to stalling - too hard. I got in a good burst and though he was in my sights only briefly, it was enough. Breaking away and taking stock, the sky seemed clear of enemies, so my comrades had evidently got the other impertinent Italian airman. I ordered a reform, and was relieved that both my chaps answered the call. Relaxed but still alert, I steered south towards our assigned patrol area, throttling back again to let them close on me before gaining height again as we headed into...what? ...to be continued!