Owners of any IL-2 Sturmovik: Great Battles title can supplement his or her collection of vehicles by buying special Collector Vehicles. They are usable in all modes of gameplay. However, they may not be available in Campaign mode.
Churchill Mk.IV Heavy Tank
The Churchill was a British heavy Infantry Tank that first saw combat during World War II in 1942 and remained in service in the postwar era until 1952. One of the heaviest Allied tanks of the war, the Churchill went into action for the first time during the Dieppe Raid in France in August 1942 and also saw action in North Africa, Italy, and on the Eastern Front. The chassis design proved very versatile and it was used as the basis for many specialized vehicles throughout the war.
The Churchill Mark IV was the most numerous of the series, with 1,622 produced. This variant was virtually identical to the Churchill Mark III, with the main difference being a cheaper and better-protected cast turret. A Bedford 12-cylinder gasoline engine powered the tank and was capable of providing 350 horsepower. The tank’s top speed was around 24 km/h (15 mph), but Soviet tests claimed that a Churchill Mark III reached 28 km/h (17 mph). The main armament of the Churchill Mark IV was the Ordnance Quick-Firing (QF) 6-pounder gun of 57mm caliber. The solid AP round featured a fairly high armor penetration but did not have a bursting charge, reducing its after-penetration effect. Also, the lack of high-explosive fragmentation shells in the ammunition load was limiting its versatility. The secondary armament consisted of one coaxial 7.92 mm Besa machine gun mounted in the turret, second Besa machine gun fitted in the hull and 2-inch mortar in the turret roof. The model featured in the sim is produced by the Leyland factory and has Mk.V gun with a 50-caliber long barrel.
Churchills took part in the battles on the southern face of the Kursk Bulge in the summer of 1943. There, as part of the 2nd Guards Tatsinsky Tank Corps, they fought against the German Totenkopf and Das Reich Panzer Divisions. Alongside, on the same section of the frontline, Churchills served with the 5th Guards Stalingrad Tank Corps and the 18th and 2nd Tank Corps. Each of these Corps included 21 Churchill tanks, a total of 84 tanks - a third of the total number of tanks of this type supplied under Lend-Lease during the war.
2-inch mortar fixed on the roof of the turret, on the loader’s side, was intended for remote smoke screen deployment with smoke grenades fired at a distance of about 400 meters. In the reality of the Eastern Front, the Red Army often used Soviet 50-mm high-explosive fragmentation rounds as ammunition for 2-inch English mortars, so in the sim you have the option to replace some of the smoke ammo with HE rounds. Besides the mortar, the tank was equipped with two pyrotechnic smoke dischargers mounted on the rear that allow the tank to deploy a smoke screen for a minute and a half.
Our Churchill Mark IV represents tanks used in the battle of Kursk, has Soviet crew models and can be used in both single-player and multiplayer scenarios. You can play it in Quick Mission Builder mode on any map you have but the Tank Crew Prokhorovka map is recommended since it is designed for ground engagements and has higher landscape detail than the other maps designed for aerial battles.