Official Historical Campaign "Steel Birds"

[BlackSix]

Historical Campaign Steel Birds

 

 

Spring 1943, the final stage of the Battle for the Caucasus. The German 17th Army holds the Kuban bridgehead firmly, repelling all Soviet troops attacks. Both sides prepare for upcoming operations and are rapidly increasing the number or aircraft they can put into action over the Kuban. One of the largest and fiercest air battles on the Eastern front is ready to explode.

You've just been appointed flight commander in 5. Staffel of the German ground attack unit II./Sch.G 1 and you will fly a modified attack variant of the newest Fw 190 A-5 fighter plane. Your objective is to attack artillery batteries, vehicle convoys, armored columns, airfields and battle formations of the advancing enemy. Your opponents are mountainous terrain, strong anti-aircraft fire and numerous Soviet, American and British-made fighters.

The tide of the air war is slowly turning against the Luftwaffe, are you up to the challenge? Can you halt the Soviet advance?

 

Timeframe: April 14th – May 16th, 1943
Unit: II./Sch.G 1
Available aircraft: Fw 190 A-5
Duration: 15 missions
Average playtime: 8 hours
Languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Russian and Polish

Author: Alexander =BlackSix= Timoshkov

This campaign requires IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Kuban

 

Player review by ShamrockOneFive

 

Detailed information:

Spoiler

Origins of the Battle

In the wake of the defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad in early 1943, the main forces of Army Group A faced an immediate threat of getting surrounded and crushed in the North Caucasus. The German command launched an urgent redeploying of its units: the 1. Panzerarmee retreated to Rostov, while the 17. Armee withdrew to the Kuban where it put up a formidable defense at well-fortified positions that came to be known as the Blue Line. Meanwhile, after liberating Krasnodar, the North Caucasian Front forces of the Red Army gained 50 to 60 kilometers of ground in February and March while repeatedly attempting to obliterate the German forces in Kuban.

 

 

The course of the Kuban battle in April 1943 from the North Caucasian Front reporting map and the frontline at the start of the campaign on April 14.

 

Luftwaffe Forces

Preparing for the operation to eliminate the Soviet bridgehead near Novorossiysk, German command assembled a powerful aviation group. Organizationally it was part of the I. Fliegerkorps of the Luftflotte 4, based at the Taman Peninsula and Crimea airfields. On April 14, 1943, it included:

 

– Fighter groups II. and III./JG 3, II. and III./JG 52, Croatian and Slovak squadrons (Staffeln) and night fighter Staffel 10.(N)/ZG 1;

– Bomber groups III./KG 4, I. and III./KG 51, II. and III./KG 55, as well as separate Staffeln 7.(Eis)/KG 51 and 9./KG 55;

– Dive-bomber groups I., II. and III./St.G 2, I./St.G 3, III./St.G 77;

– A separate Panzerjäger Staffel 8.(Pz)/Sch.G 1;

– Various transport and support units.

 

Also, а ground attack unit II./Sch.G 1 arrived at the Anapa airfield in mid-April, and this campaign is dedicated to its combat missions.

 

I  

The Luftwaffe fighters, ground attack planes and bombers during the spring battle of Kuban.

 

II./Sch.G 1 and Fw 190 A-5/U3

This unit was formed at the beginning of 1942 and equipped with Hs 123 and Hs 129 ground attack aircraft. Starting in May 1942, II./Sch.G 1 took part in the battles over the Crimea and Kharkov area, and then supported the Army Group B's offensive on Stalingrad.

 

In mid-January 1943, II./Sch.G 1 was withdrawn from the front for refitting. The 5. and 6. Staffeln were equipped with ground attack modification of the Fw 190 A-5 fighter, and the 7. Staffel continued to use the Hs 123 B-1 biplanes.

 

The Fw 190 A-5/U3 armament consisted of two 7.92-mm MG 17 machine guns, two 20-mm MG 151/20 cannons and three bomb load options: 4 x SC 50, 1 x SC 250 or 1 x SC 500. Specialized ground attack modification U17 entered service with the Gruppe only in June 1943 and had reinforced armor and additional wing bomb racks.

 

  

The Fw 190 A-5/U3 ground attack aircraft with various bomb-load options.

 

About the Campaign

You'll take on the role of the newly appointed flight commander in 5. Staffel of the II./Sch.G 1. Under the command of Hauptmann Frank Neubert this Gruppe has just completed a retraining program and has relocated to Anapa airfield to support the operations of the German 17th Army.

 

The campaign is set from April 14 to May 16, 1943 and are centered around the struggle for a bridgehead at Novorossiysk (Operation Neptune), and two major Soviet offensives in the area of Krymskaya, which ended with the withdrawal of German troops to the new line of defense in early May.

 

The sharp increase of the Soviet air strengths in the Kuban led to one of the largest and fierce air battles on the Eastern front during the entire war. In this difficult situation, you have to strike at artillery batteries, transport and armored columns, airfields and battle formations of the advancing troops.

 

   

The Soviet, US and British-made fighters, ground attack aircraft and bombers of the Red Army Air Force during the Spring battle for the Kuban.

 

Old screens:

Spoiler

 

Official Trailer made by @ShamrockOneFive

 

Quote

- Fw 190 A-5 has a tail wheel lock system which locks the tail wheel if the flight-stick is pulled backward. The tailwheel should be locked when taxiing straight for a long distance, before takeoff and after touchdown upon landing.

- If you need to reinstall game and save your progress in the campaign then copy and save folder ...\data\swf\il2\usersave\...

 

Buy the campaign in our store

Buy the campaign on Steam

[sevenless]

Excellent Trailer! Me likes ?

 

 

 

[UFA_Bagel]

@BlackSix the 2nd mission briefing says full bomb load and SC-500 but it's SC-250 locked-in instead.

Edited August 12, 2021 by ACG_Elegz

[BlackSix]

5 hours ago, ACG_Elegz said:

@BlackSix the 2nd mission briefing says full bomb load and SC-500 but it's SC-250 locked-in instead.

Yes, thanks, it will be fixed. This is a funny situation because I ran this mission about 15 times, then the testers checked it and no one noticed anything. I just looked at the rest of the missions in the editor - everything is fine everywhere with the bomb load, except for the 2nd one.

[Gr3y]

Bought! Have to agree with sevenless as I also really liked the trailer (might be the best one so far), can't wait to try the campaign out! 

[Eisenfaustus]

Bought although on vacation. Looking forward to fly it when I‘m home

 

I do like the trailer

[UFA_Bagel]

7 hours ago, BlackSix said:

Yes, thanks, it will be fixed. This is a funny situation because I ran this mission about 15 times, then the testers checked it and no one noticed anything. I just looked at the rest of the missions in the editor - everything is fine everywhere with the bomb load, except for the 2nd one.

No worries. Anyway, I destroyed a tank with 250. You get what you get.

[BlackSix]

23 minutes ago, ACG_Elegz said:

Anyway, I destroyed a tank with 250.

When you read the beginning of the 12th briefing you will feel a deep sense of superiority over the main character of the campaign))

[UFA_Bagel]

If anyone needs some extra inspiration for the campaign, go and check out this playlist from Meph. In ACG we ran MP Kuban campaign some time ago and Meph's unit represented 6./SchG1. His videos are full of fun and inspired me to try that unit in the Career mode and later to buy this scripted campaign. BTW, we are recruiting for the next Market Garden campaign so you are welcome to join, just say hi on our forums.

Edited August 13, 2021 by ACG_Elegz

[Hartigan]

The first mission completed and I have to say that this campaign is already my favorite! The FW190 is so comfortable for both fighter and strafing tasks

[UFA_Bagel]

Be aware of the wind in this campaign! There is no wind info in the briefings so look at the wind sock on the airfield. Ignoring wind costed me a column of transport missed in one of the missions. Approaching the middle of the campaign. Quite entertaining! Would love to see some mission types from this campaign in the career mode as well. Such as hunting moving targets or counter-attacking a tank offensive. This campaign allow you to experience this!

Edited August 13, 2021 by ACG_Elegz

[firdimigdi]

Had a blast playing the first mission last night. Very atmospheric and very busy, gives the feeling of being in an ongoing battle without being the center of attention.
 

Any tips on what options I might tinker with to alleviate some framedrops and stutters I experienced when in the thick of it? During ingress and egress, and a couple of furballs during the latter, I was getting a solid 5-6ms frametime but in the combat sector no matter what I looked at there were continuous spikes that went up to 10ms which normally shouldn't lead to framerate dip but in this case it did. This is in VR and the GPU wasn't showing particularly high usage so I suspect it was CPU usage related somehow, however I'm on a 5900x with 3600Mhz RAM.

[BlackSix]

Yes, some missions put a heavy load on the CPU. This is the price to pay for a busy battlefield. This was noted by beta testers and I reduced the number of aircraft by about 20% and made many artillery batteries non-firing. Lowering the graphical settings won't help here, I suppose. If there are many complaints about performance, it will be necessary to further reduce the number of units...

[firdimigdi]

Well the CPU overload didn't occur at what I'd call crucial moments so it wasn't game-breaking - I was mostly gawking around the battlefield and checking six when I noticed the framedrops (all the while hoping someone didn't get a drop on me during a stutter!). I'll be sure to note if this isn't the case in subsequent missions and let you know.

[Eisenfaustus]

Time dilation is a very unfortunate problem holding back this fantastic game. I mean modern CPUs are much more powerful than anything available when BoS was released. 
 

Is it theoretically possible to streamline the computation processes to reduce this effect and it is ‘just’ a question of time and money or would a completely new game engine be necessary?

[BlackSix]

1 hour ago, Eisenfaustus said:

Time dilation is a very unfortunate problem holding back this fantastic game. I mean modern CPUs are much more powerful than anything available when BoS was released. 
 

Is it theoretically possible to streamline the computation processes to reduce this effect and it is ‘just’ a question of time and money or would a completely new game engine be necessary?

I can't answer anything, not my area of expertise. Yes, at the time of the BOS release the CPUs were weaker but we also created missions with a lot less objects and now they look very poor.

[Eisenfaustus]

4 minutes ago, BlackSix said:

I can't answer anything, not my area of expertise. Yes, at the time of the BOS release the CPUs were weaker but we also created missions with a lot less objects and now they look very poor.

Thanks for the answer anyways - and very true the original “career” missions  tended to be very “efficient” to put it nicely ^^
 

Hope my rig will run this campaign fluently ^^

[C6_lefuneste]

I also notice some huge fps drops when coming back to airbase, even if there was not so many activity. It was only CPU creating the bottleneck, if I believe fpsVR.

I wonder what is creating this problem...There should be something to improve in the game...

Anyway, my first conclusion is Ultra settings is "nogo" for this campaign ans you will need reprojection for some parts.

 

[UFA_Bagel]

So far it’s been very good for me in non-vr. 

Edited August 14, 2021 by ACG_Elegz

[BlackSix]

40 minutes ago, c6_lefuneste said:

I also notice some huge fps drops when coming back to airbase, even if there was not so many activity. It was only CPU creating the bottleneck, if I believe fpsVR.

I wonder what is creating this problem...There should be something to improve in the game...

Anyway, my first conclusion is Ultra settings is "nogo" for this campaign ans you will need reprojection for some parts.

 

On the way back home, groups of planes always appear in the air, which fly towards the front line to simulate continuous war; when approaching the airfield, a group of planes taking off will also appear there. The appearance of these planes will always cause FPS drawdowns

[Irishratticus72]

Finish tossing an SC500 at a tank column, take out two T34s, pull left right onto the tail of a flight of IL2s, flame two of 'em, take a few rounds to the face, no biggie, then pull up to head home, opportunistic snap shot on a Lagg, tear his tail off, then firewall it back over friendly lines and home. And that's just the second mission. Great campaign, cheers! 

Edited August 15, 2021 by Irishratticus72

[FTC_Mephisto]

Pre-ordered directly after it was announced. Really enjoying it so far. I like the plane, the period and missions so much that I decided to do a playthrough video series in VR. Check out the announcement video, first mission should come up this week:

 

 

Hopefully this would raise awareness further and more people buy the campaign.  

[UFA_Bagel]

On 8/12/2021 at 2:24 PM, BlackSix said:

When you read the beginning of the 12th briefing you will feel a deep sense of superiority over the main character of the campaign))

Funny things is I did not hit a single light tank with SC-500 in that mission.)) Though, I compensated with 3 flying tanks downed.

 

Completed the campaign. Only positive emotions. Only sad things is BlackSix worked so hard and for so long on the campaign and I finished it so quickly.))

Edited August 15, 2021 by ACG_Elegz

[UFA_Bagel]

On 8/14/2021 at 5:49 PM, ACG_Elegz said:

So far it’s been very good for me in non-vr. 

Correction. I noticed CPU struggling in one of the missions dogfighting over the target area. However, it was not that much noticeable.

Edited August 16, 2021 by ACG_Elegz

[firdimigdi]

Replayed the first mission in non-VR and with uncapped FPS I could see it go from 200+ fps down to under 100 in some sections with the CPU usage spiking while GPU remained in the 50% zone, so yeah in non-VR mode you wouldn't really notice that if you play on a 60Hz monitor and get >60fps. I have a notion it has to do with the moving AI vehicles on the ground; for example while strafing the objective it seems like as soon as I got near the moving supply trucks that are near the artillery it would dip FPS. In any case, I've progressed some more in my playthrough - once more: really well-made, the ambience in these missions is top-notch.

[Nocke]

Wow!

Just finished the second mission - and I am blown away.

Hardly ever felt so immersed into a battlefield.

Love how the situation is alive all the time, the ground battles, flights, ships, ...

Its just on the edge of what my I9700 can deliver - but still inside, perfect balance!

 

Thx.

[DFLion]

Thanks BlackSix,

I am currently half way through your campaign and enjoying your fantastic attention to detail. I have got a fairly powerful computer setup and am amazed at the number of planes you can get flying at the one time in each mission. I am a mission maker (no Campaigns yet) and as you know it takes so much more time to add the extra detail and test the missions - very well done, a very immersive Campaign which I can recommend everybody getting.

DFLion

[DragonDaddy]

On 8/14/2021 at 8:52 AM, BlackSix said:

Yes, some missions put a heavy load on the CPU. This is the price to pay for a busy battlefield. This was noted by beta testers and I reduced the number of aircraft by about 20% and made many artillery batteries non-firing. Lowering the graphical settings won't help here, I suppose. If there are many complaints about performance, it will be necessary to further reduce the number of units...

I hope you don’t end up doing so. I built a high-end computer so I can enjoy scenarios like this that challenge my system. If campaigns are designed only to meet mid-level specs, what’s the point of advancing computer and gaming technology? 

[Gambit21]

52 minutes ago, DragonDaddy said:

I hope you don’t end up doing so. I built a high-end computer so I can enjoy scenarios like this that challenge my system. If campaigns are designed only to meet mid-level specs, what’s the point of advancing computer and gaming technology? 

 

Like he said he’ll wait and see how many people remark on it.

 

Due to some ‘under the hood’ issues, slowdowns/time dilation can happen even with a modest number of units at times. During testing with just a few testers a small cross-section of hardware is represented, so it’s akways a bit of educated guesswork as far as unit density etc.

 

 

[BlackSix]

4 hours ago, DragonDaddy said:

I hope you don’t end up doing so. I built a high-end computer so I can enjoy scenarios like this that challenge my system. If campaigns are designed only to meet mid-level specs, what’s the point of advancing computer and gaming technology? 

Yes, I'll wait for more reviews before cutting anything. I have already found several ways to optimize the load and now I'm testing them in the new Yak-7b campaign that is created on the same map.

 

Thank you all for the feedback!

[Denum]

Hey, glad this was successful so far! 

 

Is it something I can host with friends for multiplayer?

[BlackSix]

No, unfortunately the cooperative missions must have a completely different structure. The last time I did them was in 2004 for the IL-2 Aces expansion pack))

[Denum]

That was a very fun pack.

 

Fair enough. Thank you for the clarification.

 

 

 

 

[FTC_Mephisto]

First video for the playthrough series is up. More to follow soon. Hope you like it:

 

 

 

 

[percydanvers]

On 8/14/2021 at 7:52 AM, BlackSix said:

Yes, some missions put a heavy load on the CPU. This is the price to pay for a busy battlefield. This was noted by beta testers and I reduced the number of aircraft by about 20% and made many artillery batteries non-firing. Lowering the graphical settings won't help here, I suppose. If there are many complaints about performance, it will be necessary to further reduce the number of units...

Personally I enjoy the sense of scale in these missions, with battles raging in the air and on the ground. It's one thing to read in a briefing that such and such attack is being made by ground forces in a certain area, but quite another to see a massive line of tanks charging an enemy artillery battery, each side inflicting losses on the other.

I'd even go for more of this kind of flavor to the pure fighter campaigns. 

[BlackSix]

It turned out that the current limit of 30 aircraft in the air at the same time and the busy battlefield are poorly compatible in terms of performance.

 

In this campaign I had to greatly reduce the number of aircraft and in the fighter campaigns I've to show more simplified events on the ground... 

[F19_Haddock]

I'm on the second mission, playing on VR. At moments the frames were dropping quite a bit (around the target area) but it was still playable. We'll see how the other missions play with my PC, but it does make you feel that you are part of a much bigger war. It looks stunning.

 

The flight times to the target are about right for me too. I just don't have the time for very flights. 

 

Top job!

[percydanvers]

Finished. Thanks again to BlackSix for a bloody good time! Probably my favorite scripted campaign so far!

[BlackSix]

OMG, 46 planes in the ground-attack campaign? I really tried to meet the interests of all parties and make the most diverse missions, but didn't expect such a result 

[UFA_Bagel]

3 hours ago, BlackSix said:

OMG, 46 planes in the ground-attack campaign? I really tried to meet the interests of all parties and make the most diverse missions, but didn't expect such a result 

There are so many planes in this campaign in different locations so I even though to try one more time but ignore mission and just do free hunt.