Official Historical Campaign "Overlord" - P51 B-5 Mustang

[Jaegermeister]

"Overlord" a Scripted Campaign for the P51B-5 Mustang in Normandy

 

 

About The Campaign

The 354th Fighter Group, commonly referred to as the "Pioneer Mustang Group" was the first USAAF unit to be equipped with the new P-51B/C Mustang during WWII and take it into combat in Europe. They flew long range escort missions across the English Channel with the 8th Air Force heavy bombers during the months leading up to D-Day. Once final preparations were made for the Invasion of Normandy, the 354^th Fighter Group was reassigned to the IX Tactical Air Command and committed to direct support of the ground troops going ashore. The 354th flew escort for C-47s dropping paratroopers and towing gliders on D-Day.

 

Your role in this campaign begins as a replacement pilot arriving with the 354^th Fighter Group on D-Day and assigned to the 356^th “Red Ass” Squadron under the command of Major Richard Turner. In mid-June 1944 the Pioneer Mustangs flew strike missions across the English Channel from ALG Lashenden during the first V-1 rocket attacks on London and were directly in the path of the “Doodlebugs” as they headed towards their intended targets. They moved to ALG-2 at Criqueville in late June where they flew ground attack, search and rescue, fighter-bomber escort and fighter sweep missions during all the major battles of Operation Overlord. After the Allied breakout at Saint-Lô, the 354^th FG was reassigned to the new XIX Tactical Air Command and moved east with Patton’s 3^rd US Army through Paris and eventually into Germany. Due to the hectic flight schedule and squadron reorganization, you will move up from wingman to element leader and finish the campaign as a flight leader.

 

This is a historically based campaign depicting real events, however, the number of planes and specific squadrons involved in the missions have been altered slightly, and some event locations have been moved for improved game play.

 

 

 Timeframe: June 17^th – August 7^th, 1944

Unit: 354^th Fighter Group, 356^th “Red Ass” Squadron

Aircraft: P51B-5

Duration: 15 Missions

Average Playtime: 10 Hours

Languages: English, Russian, Spanish, French

Author: Jay =Jaegermeister= Yarbrough

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Campaign requires IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Normandy - Standard Edition to play.

 

Available in the IL2 Store HERE

Available on Steam HERE

The discussion of this Scripted Campaign on the old forum is here:

Overlord Campaign Discussion

 

Feel free to discuss the campaign or report any issues in this thread.  

Edited December 31, 2025 by Jaegermeister

[MDzmitry]

I think it would be a nice option to also link an old forum topic as reference for possible issues or questions to check whether these have already been answered 

[Jaegermeister]

1 hour ago, MDzmitry said:

I think it would be a nice option to also link an old forum topic as reference for possible issues or questions to check whether these have already been answered 

Sure, I can do that

[skitzbuckethatz]

Good Afternoon, 

I have recently started the scripted campaign Overlord. I have noticed over the beachhead I have significant performance issues. 

Essentially, the game runs perfectly fine until I reach anywhere on the Normandy coastline. I experience frame drops from 100fps to about 30fps, however the real issue is that the game begins to run in slowtime. Flying a P-51B, the roll rate almost triples, and the in-cockpit clock slows down by almost double. It is borderline unplayable. Putting timeskip into 8 doesnt change it at all. 

I have seen other threads about the performance issues in Normandy, but they tended to be hardware related. My PC is more than capable of running the game on Ultra settings.

Keeping task manager open on 2nd monitor while playing, I can see that my CPU usage peaks at about 15%. 

I also have zero modifications to the game.

Specs:

• CPU - Ryzen 7 5700X3D
• GPU - RTX 5060ti 16GB
• RAM - 2x16GB (32GB) DDR4 3600Mhz
• MB - B450 Gaming Plus Max

Unfortunately I cannot lower the density of ground forces as it is a scripted campaign. 

These two videos from an older thread perfectly display what I am experiencing - first video normal, second video is the issue.

 

Any advice would be appreciated because other than this I am enjoying it.

[LuftManu]

Hi,

The slowdown you’re experiencing is caused by the AI workload exceeding the CPU’s processing capacity, which forces the engine to reduce the simulation tick rate. This behavior is independent of rendering performance (FPS).

The limitation is not purely hardware-related, but rather a consequence of how the game engine schedules and executes AI logic on the CPU, particularly its reliance on main-thread performance.

In highly complex missions, the critical factor is high IPC and strong single-core performance, as AI calculations are largely serialized. In this context, 3D V-Cache provides little to no benefit, since it primarily improves frame rendering throughput rather than simulation or AI processing.

With a Ryzen 7 5700X3D, the CPU’s cache advantage helps FPS, but its single-core IPC and clock speeds become the bottleneck for large-scale AI simulations.

I experienced this with my 9800 X3D. If +200, Ill have more margins.
And, on my other Intel system, a 285K which performs like a 30% worse in FPS, there is even more capabilties to increase the number of units.

Try to reduce the number of units and it will be fixed! 
Scenario distance won't matter. (In game Settings) it only affects the area around you which is being createad and only adds to VRAM.

[skitzbuckethatz]

On 12/28/2025 at 11:46 PM, LuftManu said:

Try to reduce the number of units and it will be fixed! 
Scenario distance won't matter. (In game Settings) it only affects the area around you which is being createad and only adds to VRAM.

Thanks for the detailed reply and explanation. However given that this is a scripted campaign, there is no option to reduce the number of units. Do I just have to tough it out for this one?

[AndreiTomescu]

Hello, @skitzbuckethatz mate!

I have some bad and also good news 🙂

 Bad:

- your CPU, which is almost my CPU (Ryzen 7 5700G, which is a bit worse) we have poor single core processing. And the game does only single core use, which is lame, but that's it. 15% usage on a 8 core cpu is a full house on the single core used, since the usage monitor sees the CPU as a hole, not individual core items.

- from all the scripted campaigns i've done, and that are all excluding those with Russian build birds, in only 2 i've experienced this slow downs, and those are exactly this really awesome and thrilling Jaggermeister's Overlord and Walter's Lost Hope.

- there is no workaround with game settings, 😞 

Good:

- in Overlord, i've only experienced this issue in about 3 missions, forgot which ones exactly, and wasn't like mission breaking

- What i did (i'll put it short, you ask for more details if you need):

       - install AMD Ryzen Master software and run the software in the background BEFORE launching the game

       - determine what CPU core is used by ingame engine (or you can overclock them all! but i didn't)

       - overclock the cpu core used by the game (basically automatic process, you don't have to know much about temps, currents and voltages)

       - you'll see a mild improvment, but noticeable

       - don't forget to set the CPU core/cores to normal afterwards, as the standard cooling is NOT suited for  prolonged overclocking ! that's why i overclocked only one core, as to reduce heat in the hole CPU

        - setting (from BIOS) the CPU cores to avoid going into sleep state doesn't give you any improvement

Hope this helps.....

[Jaegermeister]

Or I could just reduce the number of ships and landing craft offshore because it’s just scenery anyway.

[sandmarken]

1 hour ago, Jaegermeister said:

Or I could just reduce the number of ships and landing craft offshore because it’s just scenery anyway.

You already made sure that by the time you see action in the air, those units are discreetly deactivated and the game runs smoothly again. I have a pretty old system and play VR. I have some frame drops, but the campaign is great, and I enjoyed it a lot! The scenery around d day is the only time in game you see something that resemble a real landing force! 

[Jaegermeister]

10 hours ago, sandmarken said:

You already made sure that by the time you see action in the air, those units are discreetly deactivated and the game runs smoothly again. I have a pretty old system and play VR. I have some frame drops, but the campaign is great, and I enjoyed it a lot! The scenery around d day is the only time in game you see something that resemble a real landing force! 

That's true. It does not have any effect on game play.

[skitzbuckethatz]

On 12/30/2025 at 7:08 PM, AndreiTomescu said:

       - overclock the cpu core used by the game (basically automatic process, you don't have to know much about temps, currents and voltages)

Thanks mate. Unfortunately you cant overclock an X3D CPU so im just going to have to put up with it haha.