Back to the front with 1C/777's World War 1 air combat sim!     'Is Rise of Flight dead?' is a question that's been asked online, of late. There have been no new planes or updates for some time, while the developers have been concentrating on other products. By my definition - for whatever that's worth  - a game's dead, not when the developers lose interest, but when people cease to play and enjoy it. I had ceased, mostly, despite buying a good many individual planes, like the Pfalz D.XII..

Hunting an enemy commander in Normandy!     In between my efforts at practicing section tactics as I knew them in Iron Front, I decided to interleave this more serious business with some light relief. As in, playing some 'regular' missions. Preferably ones which don't over-tax my as-yet-still-developing skills in team command. First choice was to re-start my effort at the German campaign, set on the Eastern Front at the time of the great Soviet summer offensive of 1944, which took the Red A

Real-world infantry tactics in the Arma2-based Iron Front: Liberation 1944   Hey, you! Get down off that effing skyline!   Section attacks - ask anyone who's had even basic infantry training, and they will tell you it's the point all the training comes together - the weapon handling and marksmanship, camouflage and concealment, tactical movement, formations, field signals, target indication, fire control orders and all the rest of it. Since at least the time of the Romans, whose legionari

CombatACE Interview with Leslie "Bitchin' Betty" Shook   Pull up! Pull up! is a command many of us may be familiar with while using Strike Fighters or DCS simulators. But there are some here at CombatACE who may have heard the real thing. That automated voice is usually referred to as Bitchin' Betty. There are; however, several variants of the automated warning voice. Some call it Barking Bob, Naging Nora, and a few refer to the voice as Sonya, as in gets on ya nerves. Our spotli

Another Atlantic Fleet battle in Arctic waters!       I have always been something of a fan of the big German destroyers of World War 2, ever since assembling tiny 1/1200 plastic kits of some of them in the early 1960s. These were made by Eagle, part a themed series representing the ships involved in the First and Second Battles of Narvik in April and June 1940. Like this one, of a Leberecht Maas class...or is it Erich Giese?     Maas wasn't actually at Narvik, having been sunk in a dis

Re-fighting the battle for Convoy PQ13 in Atlantic Fleet   Of all the many dramatic photographs taken of the war at sea, some of the most haunting are of the last moments of what maybe minutes before was a fine warship in fighting trim. Pictures like this well-known shot of a Japanese escort sunk by skip-bombing. The crew cling to the capsizing vessel as what appears to be another bomb, dropped by the aircraft from which the photo was taken, splashes across the water towards the stricken shi

Back to CFS3...in the Martin B-26 Marauder     I was - and suppose I still am - a fan of Microsoft's last fling in the Combat Flight Simulator series, CFS3. I didn't especially like the air-to-air combat - AI planes flying at empty weight meant that even heavier, more sluggish enemies could often prove frustrating foes. And there was the unfortunate fact that CFS3 ignored the strategic bomber component (even decent add-ons like Firepower, which added 4-engined bombers, just