Axis forces surrender

[WTE_Ikey]

With the total destruction of Naval TF 'Malta Assaulto Tre' by HMS Desolate & HMS Desperate , Axis Command has decided to call off the invasion of Malta & withdraw back to Sicily. Although there are other TF /shipping sailing to the LZ atm it has been determined that forces available with be unable to sustain as successful take over of the island.













Congratulations to all participants, we've seen this campaign go through many changes over the last 4 years & I'm very happy to have been part of it.
Also a thank you to Warg for designing this campaign .
cheers
Ikey

[IV/JG7_4Shades]

This was a very interesting campaign, played in classic HQ style with friendly cooperation between all throughout the 79 missions over 4 years!

I remember well many torpedo attack missions (at which I was totally ineffective), spectacular light shows over Malta as my bomber was coned by searchlights and then surrounded in flak, ferry missions between Sicily and Tunis, night-time CAPs in Falcos over Sicily trying to locate the lone Blenheim intruders disrupting Axis logistics, etc, all the while facing a determined and well-organized foe.

Ikey deserves a medal for even establishing a beachhead on Malta. In the end our inability to be effective against the Royal Navy cost us and we are unable to support the beachhead.

Congratulations and admiration to all who participated, especially 5, Ikey and Luny, and commiserations to those who missed out on seeing what a real IL-2 campaign can be. I am a better virtual airman and campaigner for the experience.

Cheers,
4S

[IV/JG7_4Shades]

I have consolidated the pilot names and rebuilt the statistics for the Illustrious campaign.

[II/JG3K.Brandle]

5 plotted and excecuted a few night, flare supported, naval attacks that were some of the most exciting missions I've ever been in. Prior to that, I had never seen a flare used and it was spectacular.

[II/JG77Hawk_5]

I would like to second what 4Shades has already said.

That was a great campaign and having been a part of our lives here at SEOW HQ for so long I'll miss it.

There were many memorable missions and some that were your classic "never saw a thing" missions.

I recall many hours flying in very poor weather looking for ships in the dark and gloom. Most of the time there was nothing but when I actually found one the heart rate really got going only for the attack to end poorly for me. Well I think at least once I had success anyway. A lot of these flights really tested the navigation skills out at sea and in the dark.

The intense defence over Malta where the enemy fighters and bombers faced the heavy flak and AAA which I would rarely follow them into.

Utilising radar from its very early days.

The campaign evolved through many versions of Scorched Earth which saw many new features introduced and tested where possible. We even moved the campaign from the small version map Fortress Malta to the full sized Central Med map.

A special thanks to Ikey for being a great opposing commander indeed congratulations for actually landing on Malta. The convoys were tough to find and to attack effectively. They were well put together.

Thanks Luny for being my Naval commander and making command a not so lonely place at the top!

I learned a lot about SEOW's finer points over the four years not to mention the Navicat experience keeping them up to date.

Cheers,
5

[LW/JG10_Luny]

I joined the campaign last year, I believe, and was a great experience. I just flew a few missions but I remember specially the one flown with _5 in a Blenheim at night. He was saying we were going to find and destroy a couple of enemy patrol boats and we should be close. Exactly in the moment he was sayng this, the enemy boats opened fire right under our path. Later in the same mission, the patience of _5 teaching me how to follow the radio transmission from Malta, led me to an almost invisible airfield.
The naval commanding was a challenge, the search of the enemy fleet and the desperate run away from the deadly Luftwaffe bombers doing a great work attacking the carriers and the escorts with the final and spectacular sinking of the HMS Contestant when trying to run back to Malta, kept me busy many times planning. Great work, bombers.
The AI bombers seems to do a way better work now, hitting moving ships with torpedoes.
The at sea refuelling is also a challenge and perfectly real. It takes several hours to a ship to be refueled, an the risk it includes. Plotting carefully ships path sometimes cause unexpected results, like the sinking of a freighter and a patrol boat when docking or the, luckily colission of the italian Trento class cruiser and a transport during the previous mission. This probably was the reason both destroyers run the northern Malta shore in the last one.
I've also learned a lot in this campaign. Carrier base air ops, behaviour of sea task forces, submarine ops (and the deep one wich is absolutely great, tks 4S), recon flights, etc. And also how to forget the flights rules that always _5 used to fix before the mission and patiently tell me what and why she did the correction after.
Thanks all, lads. Looking forward for the next one like this.

[JG26_Scannon]

Thank you to all who created this campaign and kept it running for all of us to enjoy. I thoroughly enjoyed partaking in the plentiful bounty of various tasks and doing a lot of things I hadn't done before.....level bombing in pitch black at night and actually finding Sousse factory district and hitting something with a Blenheim, and landing to tell about the tale......and many Swordfish runs ship hunting over vast amounts of ocean, some fruitless, but at least one mission enabled me to get a torp into the Zara, lose radio communications and get lost, then re-establish radio contact only to discover being miles off course and running out of fuel....elation and despair all in one mission.....who could ask for more.

Thanks all!

Scannon