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Going to war with the ultimate predator - the Koenigstiger heavy tank! For this mission reports, it's back to terra firma - speficically, to the snowy wastes of the Russian Front in World War Two. Our hosts are Graviteam, in the form of their excellent tank simulator Steel Fury - Kharkov 1942. The 'Kharkov 1942' bit of the title is now pretty well redundant, as modders have greatly extended the scope of the sim, not least into North Africa and with many later-war AFVs...including the tank which is the star of this particular show. The tank The mighty Panzerkampfwagen Tiger Ausfuehrung B - better known as the Tiger II or the King Tiger - needs little introduction. Combining the sloped armour that the Soviet T-34 taught the Germans to apply to tanks with the other design concepts of the original Tiger I, the King Tiger was one of the outstanding tank designs of World War 2; perhaps the most effective tank on the battlefield from the summer of 1944 till the end of the war. Its early transmission problems were dealt with and its reliability was soon adequate. With very thick armour all around and especially frontally, and a powerful gun that combimed deadly armour-piercing capability with extreme accuracy, the King Tiger was a formidable enemy, if you were unlucky enough to meet one in the field. They were not invincible, of course. In Normandy in July 1944, Lt John Gorman of the 2nd Battalion, Irish Guards, Guards Armoured Division, surpised a King Tiger but was perhaps himself surprised when his gunner's first round - they had a 75mm HE 'up the spout' - had little effect. The Sherman's gun then got a stoppage and Gorman ordered his driver to ram, which caused the startled German crew to bail out. Gorman's crew did likewise, one of them briefly sharing a ditch with the German tankers. A 'borrowed' Sherman Firefly's 17 pounder gun enabled the intrepid Gorman to settle the matter permanently. The mission One of these days I will go to virtual war in Steel Fury in a Panzer 38(t) or even a Panzer III. But for now, the prospect of fighting in, rather than against, heavily-armed and heavily-armoured tanks retains, for me, a certain irresistible appeal. So I was glad to find that the modders have not only provided SF with a King Tiger, but some missions for the beast as well. Here's the one I elected to play for this mission report - 'Counterstrike' by Deviator, with adjustments by Lockie and input also from Woofiedog and Tanker. I'm using the latest NTA mod, Lockie's latest mission pack, and the winter weather mod, all enabled via the indispensable Jonesoft Generic Mod Enabler (JSGME). The weather mod by Maleshkin transforms the standard SF environment into a winter wonderland which nicely captures the essence of the Eastern Front at its chilliest. Details of all of these are available over on the Graviteam Steel Fury forum, here. [Edit, August 2014 - the NTA add-on has been discontinued, but a successor, the Steel Tank Add-on (STA) is now available: http://stasf2008.ephpbb.com/t6-steel-tank-add-on-steel-fury ] It's worth mentioning that the this mission has a long video intro consisting of some excellent clips of German armour and other troops in action, including some combat camera footage I had not seen before - from the Deutsche Wochenschau newsreels by the look of it. And here's the mission. The screenie below was taken a little way into the mission itself, by which time my platoon of King Tigers (blue trapezoids) had driven out in front of the dismounted infantry we were supporting. It was early 1945 and the mission itself was a counterattack, by elements of the 3rd SS Panzer Division 'Totenkopf', on the village of Pettend in Hungary, a German ally which was then feeling the full weight of the Soviet steamroller as the red tide swept westwards towards the Reich. I have the orders panel turned off for clarity; incidentally, in-game, I also turned off the 'head up display (ammo load, turret orientation etc) using Ctrl+backspace and could also have turned off the orange diamond/arrowheads (Ctrl+|) that act as target indicators, which you can see in some of the screenshots which follow. The orders in the panel I have turned off tell us simply that our the aim is to seize and hold the village, destroying enemy forces in the area. From the markings on the map, these can be seen to consist of infantry defensive positions in an arc on the outskirts of the village, likely with tank support; I'm not ruling out the possibility that they may also have antitank guns. Our own force consists of our brave grenadiers in what appears to be weak company strength, with just my under-strength platoon of three King Tigers for fire support. Looking at the map, the terrain was fairly open and I contemplated going either left- or right-flanking. From either flank, I could have supported the advancing grenadiers by fire at roughly right-angles to their axis of advance, in the approved manner, perhaps finishing with an assault on Pettend timed to arrive on the objective at the same time as the troops, for maximum shock effect. But after milling about a bit the grenadiers seemed to be in a hurry to get at the Ivans rather than give me time for any fancy manoeuvres. So I formed us up in line formation and decided we would just roll on into the objective, ahead of the infantry, to shield them, and basically shooting anything that looked likely to hold them up. Plan made - time to get busy! I lined myself up and waited for my two other King Tigers to get into position, either side of my own tank. ...to be continued!