'Za Stalina! Za rodinu!' ('For Stalin! For the motherland!')

Scenes from a Soviet mission included with the STA 1.2 mod, playing fine in the Steam version of Steel Fury.

I've got two IS-2 heavy tanks and a platoon of infantry. We're on the right flank of a small force whose mission is to assault and clear some enemy defensive positions, then hold off the fascists long enough for some of our boys, who've been cut off, to escape.

Moving up!



Our friends on our left bump into the enemy and tracers start flying, mostly our own green variety. Our own flank remains quiet but my tank commander is taking no chances and ducks down into his cupola.



After firing a few rounds at the Nemetski over on the left that my TC has identified, I press on and clear our own flank. There's no opposition...until we run into a counterattack by several Panzer IVs. I have an HE round up the spout but being a 122mm job, it manages to knock out the nearest panzer and the other two follow. The painfully slow reloading time is the only real headache, apart from remembering that the gunner's sight is an independently-rotating periscope which needs lined up with the main gun, before it can be used for gunnery. I only find out later that we've been hit by a 75mm hollow charge round, but it's done us no harm.



The right flank falls silent again. Our trapped troops are by now racing for safety, just to our left, where there's some desultory MG fire. The only other tanks I see are a couple of T34-85s pulling back, in the distance on the left. I move off again in that direction, the better to shepherd our withdrawing infantry.



There they are! Crammed into small trucks going cross-country hell for leather!



Mission accomplished!



Now, which way is Berlin?