[MOD] Blue and red airfields on the BoS winter map

[Hamaha15]

From Operations Uranus through Koltso – blue and red airfields on the BoS winter map

 

Hello out there, I hope that you and your families are all doing well in those days of disease and isolation and that we all around the globe will come back to a relatively normal life again soon with the current danger reduced to a risk our health systems can cope with.

 

While browsing the forums recently I came across a topic that reminded me of a project I started a while ago but abandoned because at that time BOS didn’t offer the Mods-On function. The aim was to select from the vast number of airfields available on the Stalingrad map those which were or became operational in the period from the start of Operation Uranus in November 42 to the conclusion of Operation Koltso with the surrender in February 43.

 

The modification is finished now and you can download the attached results. The sources below allowed for pulling together a list of active airfields which appears quite exhaustive because you can track the history of all of them  with only a few exceptions.

 

All airfields established in the summer months but abandoned by November are reduced to mud streaks and collapsed blast pens. Aerodromes that were put into service after January 1943 have disappeared from the surface now. However, no surface element has been deleted from the initial landscape file. The elements have been neutralised mainly by unticking the Solid-Ground box and setting the opacity to zero.

 

The German airfields inside the pocket received special treatment. Only the three main airports of Pitomnik, Bassargino and Gumrak remain unchanged as they were fully operational, although Gumrak came into use only after the loss of Pitomnik. The airfields of Karpovka, Bolshoye Rossoshka, Voroponovo and Shkolny, the former soviet aviation school, are reduced to landing strips. Only the runways and a hem about 10 m large on either side provide solid ground. If you leave that band your plane will get bogged down in the snow. This is to simulate a poorly maintained landing ground. The 6^th Army claimed to have seven operational airfields available inside the cauldron, but in fact, about 50% of the planes landing outside Pitomnik and Bassargino crashed.

 

Finally, I added the Stalingradskij improvised landing strip approximately at its correct location. Against widespread belief this airfield is not identical with the Shkolny aviation school although situated not far away from it. Wilhelm Adam, the former adjutant of 6^th Army, describes in his memories “The difficult decision” how he personally selected a suitably large and flat strip of terrain when Gumrak came under heavy artillery fire on January 22^nd. This stretch of land was located close to a ravine to which the 6^th army’s HQ had retreated previously. The name Stalingradskij stems from a small settlement at the edge of a sickle-shaped ravine west of Stalingrad proper. The name of the place on today’s maps is Ovrashnij. The operational life of this landing strip was limited to one day as Russian tanks arrived at dusk on January 23^rd just after the last plane had taken off.

 

You may know much better than me how to manage mods. This is what I did: I secured the original “LANDSCAPE_Stalin_w” folder by adding the suffix “_initial” and created a backup folder before editing the surface details. In order to make the modified surface files work with your game the suffix “_Uranus-Saturn-Koltso” must be deleted from the new Surface- and SurfaceTex-files and the MOD option must be activated. I hope it'll work that way...

 

Enjoy

Cheers

 

Uranus-Saturn-Koltso.zip

 

References

•        Vladimir Ratkin, Aviation in the Stalingrad battle, Moscow 2013 (Russian language)
•           Christer Bergström, Stalingrad – The Air Battle: 1942 through January 1943, Midland Publishing, Hinckley 2007
•           Franz Kurowski, Luftbrücke Stalingrad (Stalingrad Airlift), Pawlak Verlag, Herrsching, 1988 (German language)

Edited June 27, 2021 by Hamaha15

[Vishnu]

Does this work with JSME?

 

[Hamaha15]

Good morning,

 

Yes, the downloadable files are JSME friendly.

Please don't forget to secure the initial Stalingrad map before you download and save the mod.

 

Cheers