In all of the rush to find out just what the new Career mode was all about, many may have forgotten about the Sea Dragons campaign that shipped with IL-2: Battle of Kuban’s 3.001 patch. If you have forgotten about it, this is a reminder to check it out. If you like mud moving and are a fan of flying the IL-2, this is the campaign to fly!

Full review coming later

My full review of the Sea Dragon’s campaign is coming later when I finish the campaign but right now I’m just enjoying it.

Having completed 9 of the 15 missions that ship with Sea Dragons, I have a good sense of what the Scripted Campaign offers. I’ve flown some interesting missions attacking a huge line of artillery, interdiction strikes on enemy transport, and a particularly cool dawn strike on some small ships in the Black Sea.

There’s plenty of variety although you will get accustomed to flying near Novorossiysk and nearby Gelendzhik Bay.

Dawn strike on enemy shipping

One of the most interesting missions is flown with just a hint of light on the horizon at the start of the mission. The goal? Hunt an enemy torpedo boat convoy heading away from the combat zone before the sun rises. Spoiler… we find them anyways.

As this mission ends, the sun begins to rise and the horizon has a beautiful glow about it as the sun is about to appear above the mountains. Spectacular!

Early light as IL-2s head out to find enemy ships along the coast

Enemy ships are spotted and attacked

One of the ships burns from the strike

Another ship on fire from a strafing run

Beautiful morning light at the end of the mission

Convoy interdiction

Another great mission I just flew involved a strike on an enemy convoy. It was particularly harried as there are tracers snaking across the ground all over the place, flak is bursting in the sky, and an intense dogfight involving Stukas, Bf109s, Spitfires, and our escorting Yak-1s amps up the tension several more steps.

Despite the utter chaos of this mission, my strike team was able to hit our targets and return to base. I was able to bag a single Bf109 who flew above me and subsequently lost a wing to one of my 23mm VYa cannons. Albeit, there were losses on our side two as several IL-2s were shot down and some Yaks were as well.