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From Kharkov to Kursk - a change of scenery for Steel Fury! The battle The fighting at Prokhorovka has gone down in history as one of the biggest and most desperate tank battles ever seen. It was a battle within a battle, fought on the southern front of Operation Citadel, the German offensive against the Kursk salient in July 1943. This was an ill-starred effort to regain some of the initiative lost after the Stalingrad disaster. At Kursk, the Soviets knew the Germans were coming and the offensive soon bogged down amidst well-sited defences, storms of artillery fire and fierce armoured counterattacks. The fiercest was at Prokhorovka on 12 July, when hundreds of T-34s from the 5th Guards Tank Army swept forward in massed waves and ran headlong into II SS Panzerkorps. As its full name indicates, Ukrainian tanksim Steel Fury is centred on the 1942 battles around Kharkov. However, thanks to the modders and mission makers, its scope has been extended well beyond those battlefields and that year. Sure enough, if you install the NTA mod and the associated mission packs you will find that you now have a short series of missions based on the Battle of Kursk - specifically, inspired by the fighting at Prokhorovka. From these, I chose a mission featuring the Panther tank, which the Germans had rushed into service for Kursk, only to find that mechanical teething troubles and limited crew training added up to a very disappointing debut. Would I do any better? There was one way to find out! Edit, August 2014 - the NTA mod has been discontinued but its successor, the STA Mod, is now available: http://stasf2008.ephpbb.com/t6-steel-tank-add-on-steel-fury The mission and the tank Here's the mission briefing. I think it's fair to say that its intention is to recreate the general pattern of the German operations at Kursk on a smaller scale and - as I found out - give the player a taste of the kind of fighting at Prokhorovka, where the Germans were on the offensive but were faced with having to fight off waves of oncoming Soviet tanks. With the briefing panel minimised, you can get a better look at the map, including the disposition of the units, the lie of the land, and the route to your objective. I've got a platoon of three Panthers - the blue diamonds, bottom centre in the map below - and we are in the middle of the attack, with other tank platoons either side of us. Rather than keep us with our parent tank company - which would have been fully equipped with Panthers (those that had not broken down, anyway!) for the sake of variety we have a mix, including the stalwart Panzer IV but also some Tiger tanks and Elephant tank destroyers/assault guns. There's no mention of infantry or fire support in the briefing but as it turned out we had dismounted Grenadiers with us. It's probably no bad thing that they were on foot; there wasn't much hostile artillery or mortar fire and when the German SPWs (half-tracked APCs) do feature in an SF '42 mission, they seem always to suffer especially heavily! Basically, the operation is in two phases. First, we attack and destroy the enemy defensive positions. Then, we pass through and re-group on the other side, presumably in anticipation of a counterattack. Before leaving the map screen, I selected line abreast formation and 'Do as I do! for platoon orders. I didn't fiddle with the default game settings, which would have allowed me to change relative skills for each side and increase or reduce the balance (=the size of the enemy force, relative to mine). I kicked off the mission then as I usually do, in the external view, went to the commander's station and popped open the hatch (F3, P key) then moved to the gunner's station (F2) and loaded an AP round. From this station you can control turret traverse/elevation and do most of what the tank commander can, too, giving orders to driver and loader; so this is how I usually play. And here are our three Panthers, lined up and good to go. Nice to see that they are the correct model for Kursk - the Ausf. D, with the original 'dustbin' commander's cupola and vertical flap on the right of the glacis plate for the hull machine gun, instead of the later ball mounting. Another early feature is the set of three smoke dischargers either side of the turret (non-functional, as I believe SF doesn't simulate tanks popping smoke) Edit - Steel Fury mission-maker and modder Lockie tells me 'SF has smoke grenades. To use them u need sit down on loader place and press "space" on keyboard to fire' . The other units either side of us didn't hang about, but soon shook out into formation and roared off towards the enemy defensive lines, which were more or less in plain sight and not too far off, either. It didn't stay quiet for long, as the air was soon filled with the din of combat. Already, tall columns of smoke arose from the battle's first victims, friend or foe. Everyone else might have been in a hurry but not me. I drove forward a little way into a small fold in the ground, where I halted and started scanning the ground ahead for signs of the enemy. ...to be continued!