I wasn't going to risk our virtual necks in low-level operations over an enemy airfield, for the sake of finishing off one damaged bomber. Out of rounds at last, I climbed up and turned away, calling my flight back into formation. I fired off my last rounds at the big German bomber, then broke up and away, pursued by some desultory flak. Looking ahead of him, I saw an airbase, to which the German was evidently on his final approach.Įvidently, the pursuit had taken us some way over into enemy territory! Now, it was my turn to be caught in searchlights, German ones this time! He was now very low and I suddenly noticed that he had his gear and flaps down and that his landing and navigation lights were on. With a bit of luck I might nail him with my last few rounds if not, I would call in the rest of my flight to knock him down.
Though now very low on ammo, I decided to have a crack at the last Heinkel, which I had clipped with a burst earlier on. The crew thought so too for they started bailing out. As I watched, his nose gradually went down, until he was falling from the sky, Clearly, the damage I had inflicted had become critical and he was doomed. The one I hit first started straggling.Īs I was coming back for another pass at the smoking Heinkel, I saw him turn sharply. This time, my flight got the 109 and I was able to put in a couple more passes at both bombers. I led the flight after the Germans and repeated the dose. After a few seconds held in the searchlights they turned left, probably having bombed whatever was protected by those lights, down there in the darkening snowscape. By this time the Heinkels were rapidly receding, once more escorted by a 109 and two of my flight reported they were too far away to engage.Īt this point some searchlights came on below and picked up the German bombers. Having damaged one bomber and needing only to shoot it down (or damage one more enemy) to complete my mission goals, I decided to cut the flight loose. I mean, look at the sun glinting on the props of the distant Heinkels, in the bottom pic. The finest of aviation art could do little better than this. The visuals and effects are gorgeous, with vestigial tracer smoke trails, fantastic aircraft and lovely environmentals, like the terrain and clouds softly caught by the light of the setting sun. I took a noisy hit or two in return, but without suffering any serious damage.
My shooting hasn't got much better (the most recent update cuts the current lag between trigger pull and weapon firing, which will help) but it wasn't long before I had one of the bombers smoking. This resulted in a dogfight after a bit of jockeying for position, with the 109 initially going wide and attempting to threaten my flight-mates from above and behind, rather than rushing straight at them. I made a beam attack on the two winter-camouflaged Heinkels while to my complete satisfaction, my flight moved in to get between me and the Messerschmitt. Our targets turned out this time to be two He 111s escorted by I think a single 109. I then gave them a 'cover me' command to ensure they didn't attack the enemy on sight, but stuck with me instead. In the brief run-in I experimented with formation changes which the AI executed slickly. Turning the 'HUD' off removes labels from aircraft and the map, as well as turning off the instrument readouts. Here we are (one Yak out of shot) on the leg in to the target/Action Point, with the mini-map zoomed out. Time was short so I appreciated the option to choose an air start, mission by mission. So there is some variety here, if replaying a mission. This time I decided to go in first and have my flight cover me.Īs seems normal with a repeated mission, the general target area was the same but the other details had changed - time of day (it was now dusk), we had a different flight plan and height, there were four in my flight instead of three and the targets were different. Previous efforts had failed to meet my personal objectives, partly as I'd been happy to play the flight leader and see what happened when I cut the others loose on the target, resulting in them shooting it/them down (the good news) and me missing out on XP and unlocks and awards (the bad news). This was a third effort at flying an intercept in a Yak-1, from our base north of Stalingrad to an area south of the city. Before we get down to brass tacks here, as a lead-in I'm going to run briefly through another SP campaign mission, illustrating some of the features that I think are worth highlighting at this point and have influenced my own verdict on IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad.