Hello everybody,

 

Today we'll tell you about the creation of the new historical scenario campaign for Battle of Kuban. Unlike previously released 10 Days of Autumn and Blazing Steppe historical campaigns that you can get in our store, this one will be included in the Battle of Kuban and will be available once BoK releases.

 

After finishing the work on the Kuban map this Summer, we faced a hard decision of choosing a scenario for the next historical campaign. Battle of Kuban includes many very interesting planes and an interesting and captivating story could be told about almost each one of them. However, taking into account the development plan, two already released campaigns focused on the fighter aircraft (Bf 109 and Yak-1) and numerous suggestions on the forums we decided to choose the series title aircraft for the next story - IL-2.

 

During the battle, Ilyushin sturmoviks made up almost a quarter of the entire Soviet air force that consisted of 4th and 5th Air Armies and the air forces of the Black Sea Fleet. The main strike units were 214th and 230th strike fighter divisions while naval sturmoviks formed the Novorossiysk Defense Region Naval Air Group that later became 11th strike air brigade and eventually 11th air division. Unfortunately, reconstructing the tour of duty of 214th or 230th ShADs was out of the question because of the lack of the required information and some practical gameplay reasons. For instance, 214th ShAD regiments were based in Krasnodar area - at least 75 km to Kuban bridgehead where the main fighting unleashed and almost one hundred kilometers to Malaya Zemlya bridgehead under Novorossiysk.

 

So in the end, I have decided to select naval 47th ShAP. There are enough real sorties and losses data and pilots lists for several dates are also available. And, most importantly, this regiment together with 8th GShAP conducted not only the strike missions for the fleet targeting ships and ports, but it also provided support for ground forces, allowing me to create diverse missions.

 

 

While there is a lot of data on the air force operations of both sides, ground force movements were harder to recreate - they were reconstructed day by day using the documents of the North Caucasian Front and its subordinate armies. Because the offensive as a whole did not go as planned, these events were mentioned in the Soviet history works very sparingly, and studying the available primary sources revealed interesting facts that would be enough for a dedicated discussion. I think we should be proud of the painstakingly researched front lines that reflect the accurate operational situation for a given date and time; you'll see them both in this scenario campaign and the new career mode.

 

 

In this campaign, you'll take a role of a former fighter pilot who has been transferred to 47th ShAP after recovering from a heavy wound and immediately found himself in the thick of the action when the new stage of the battle for Novorossiysk bridgehead started. This means that you'll be flying as wingman for some time to familiarize yourself with the new area of operations and ground attack tactics. When you get the hang of it, you'll take command over... well, let's not reveal most of the story beforehand.

 

 

Since the 47th ShAP was called back from the frontline for reorganization in June 1943 and returned only on September 23rd, I was able to skip the mostly uneventful and calm time during the Summer. Therefore you'll participate in the most fierce fighting during Spring and in the final liberation of Taman peninsula during Autumn 1943, which wasn't a cakewalk for the Red Army at all because of the desperate resistance of the enemy.

 

 

I have only a bit of time left to finish the campaign and pass it to beta-testing while you only have to wait until the Battle of Kuban release and evaluate it for yourself. Well, perhaps the waiting is a harder thing to do 

 

Alexander 'BlackSix' Timoshkov