Kurland Campaign II

At the start of Operation Barbarossa in 1941, Courland, along with the rest of the Baltic area belonging to the Soviet Union, was overrun by the German 16th Army. In 1944, the Red Army lifted the siege of Leningrad and re-conquered the Baltic area along with much of Ukraine and Belarus. However, some 200,000 German troops held out in Courland. With their backs to the Baltic Sea. they were trapped in what became known as the Courland Pocket, blockaded by the Red Army and the Red Baltic Fleet. Colonel-General Heinz Guderian, the Chief of the German General Staff, insisted to Adolf Hitler that the troops in Courland should be evacuated by sea and used for the defense of the German Reich. Hitler refused, and ordered the Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine forces in Courland to continue the defense of the area. On January 15, 1945, Army Group Courland (Heeresgruppe Kurland) was formed. The blockade by elements of the Leningrad Front remained until May 8, 1945, when the Army Group Courland, then under its last commander, Colonel-General Carl Hilpert, surrendered to Marshal Leonid Govorov, the commander of the Leningrad Front (reinforced by elements of the 2nd Baltic Front) on the Courland perimeter. At this time the group consisted of the remnants of some 31 divisions. After May 9, 1945, approximately 203,000 troops of German Army Group Courland began moving to Soviet prison camps in the East. The majority of them never returned to Germany (Haupt,1997).

This campaign serves to honor the brave soldiers of both sides who lost their lives in the campaign. May they never be forgotten.

In this 30-mission online campaign, using the flight simulator IL-2 Sturmovik 1946, members of the AKA_WarDogs, 418th and 352nd Virtual Fighter Squadrons accompanied by other flight simulator and military history enthusiasts fought a loose form of re-enactment of these battles.  This page will track the statistics of the teams for each phase  during the total 30 missions. After the first 15 missions are flown, the pilots switch sides and fly it all over again.

PHASE I Stats Dec 2013 - Jan 2014:

PHASE 2 Statistics: after the first 15 campaign nights, both sides switched to the opposite side and went at it again with the following results.