Do you fly for your own country in sims?

[JediMaster 451]

Remember Israel itself had no problem flying former "Nazi" fighters during its war of independence against so-called "Allied" fighters. Many an Israeli 109 shot down Arab Spits.

[+Gepard 11,307]

I think some people still today have problems to distinguish nazi and german. Still today they believe German = Nazi and in some areas of the world (GB, but also South America) some people greeting a german with "Heil", what i feel is a shame.

It is true, that a lot of germans were Nazis. But it is also true, that a lot of germans were no Nazis. And there were a lot of germans that were enemies of the Nazis and fought against them. The first victims of the Nazis were not the jewish people as all world seems to think, it were german unionists, social democrats, communists etc. with one word german Antifascists who were killed and imprisoned in concentration camps.

Nazis were a movement all around the world from the early 20th. You could have find them in whole western europe. There were british Nazis too (the father of the todays Formula 1 boss was the british Nazi leader). There were Nazis in the USA. (The famous Charles Lindberg was one of them.) And so on. Nazis were and are no german problem alone.

 

If you say the Me-109 is a Nazi plane so it is not true. The pilot was a Nazi or not. It has nothing to do with the plane.

In my family history i find 2 relatives who had flown in the Luftwaffe. One was a recon pilot and was shot down near Charkow. The other was a Me-410 pilot in the Reichluftverteidigung (air defence) and survived the war. Non of the two men was a Nazi. In contrary. Before 1933 they were member of the social democratic and liberal combat organisation "Reichsbanner" who fought to defend the german democracy. (Liberal is to see in european context, not in the typical american thinking liberal = left). And there were a lot of germans who fought in the Luftwaffe with the same personal background.

I had the chance to speak with the former Me-410 pilot a lot of times. And one time i asked him, why he has flow combat planes for Hitler. His answer was, that he not has flown for the Nazis, but for the german people. His motivation to fight was the wish to protect the german civilists against british and american bombing raids. He has seen the burning towns, the fire storm and the dead women and children. To protect is a good reason to fight. So i see this.

[Cpt.Cosmos 0]

We Brits were the first to use concentration camps, during the Boer War (aka African War) of 1899 to 1902, whereby those who were deemed to be a threat to our "British Empire" were interned. The treatment of those interned was similar to that employed by the Nazi's 40 years later, lack of food, medical treatment and poor living conditions. This led to the deaths of tens of thousands of men, women and children, yet most pepole associate concentration camps as being a Nazi invention.

 

During (and after) WW2, "Bomber" Harris was considered the hero of Bomber Command, who masterminded the Allied bombing strategy. Yet along with the bombing of strategic targets, plans were drawn up and implemented to bomb "soft" targets. Certain towns and villages within Germany, were identified as "should burn well" (due to the construction of buildings being mainly of wood). The U.S employed a similar strategy against the Japanese mainland. The implemenation of these plans, and the resulting fire storms from incendiaries, again cost the lives of tens (more like hundreds) of thousands of men, women and children.

 

You don't have to be a Nazi to cause extreme suffering and hardship, nor do you have to be German (Hitler was after all, Austrian).

 

How can you seperate the good guys from the bad guys, when both sides employ plans purely to eliminate the other side with maximum effect, for the least amount of expenditure.

 

When bombing targets in a flight sim, do you think of the collaterol damage caused by missing (or hitting) your target? Probably not.

 

It doesn't matter what side you fly for, both sides have the same final objective, whether it's a game or reality.

 

It's normally the winners who are seen as the good guys, as they have triumphed over evil... or have they?

[Viper6 3]

Oh My word it's a SIM! I fly because I love to fly and not crash and die! So SIMS give me a way to live a dream.

Whatever or whomever country has the best and most capable F-4 I'm there! BTW it is STILL a sim

[Cpt.Cosmos 0]

Oh My word it's a SIM! I fly because I love to fly and not crash and die! So SIMS give me a way to live a dream.

Whatever or whomever country has the best and most capable F-4 I'm there! BTW it is STILL a sim

 

 

I totally agree! Nothing can beat flying in your fave aircraft, (whether your doing as much damage as possible or not) regardless of who you fly for. Just wanted to make the point that we shouldn't concern ourselves with the politics of who or why, as at the end of the day, we are all the same.

 

Rightly said, it is only a game and great a great one too.

 

So long as we are ALL having fun and not harming anyone else, who cares! Let's fly!!

 

(I should of entered that into my post, but I'm a complete newbie at this posting lark, which probably shows!) :yes:

[the test pilot 5]

i always fly mercenary.

 

however, in the real world i share the tought of gepard's relative

(the former me-410 pilot he wrote about)

[+Jarhead1 27]

Gepard, Charleas Lindbergh was accused of being a Nazi sympathizer, but it was NEVER proven that he was a Nazi. He was also accused of being anti sematic as well.

[Rodent 0]

I like to fly swedish planes, representing my country or not.

Of course, sweden has not been represented a lot in air combat sims. Probably because we have not been in any wars where we had aircraft. I remember when back in the day on my Atari ST I got this little game called FighterBomber and the Viggen was in it. That was just pure awesome to me, and the first time I flew a swedish aircraft in a game. Ever since then I have taken any chance I get.

 

When swedish fighters are not available though I tend to fly whatever is represented in the sim I am playing, wich most often has been american ones. If several nations are represented then that depends on the era and what hardware is available. I tend to go with wich aircraft I like best rather than what nation they fly for.

[Kirsten 0]

I usually fly for the US or Britain (and our allies but mostly US). I just natually choose the US basically because I am an American. I prefer to fly for my country. I would suspect that if I was German, I would do the same for them and so on and so forth. Make sense? At the end of the day it is a game.

 

Very interesting discussion..... Basically I agree very much with Dave, but flying for my own country or the Allies IS for me a matter of flying for the good against the bad. In the colonial past the Dutch had their flaws, especially in Indonesia where we had our own version of My Lai, but my parents and brothers and sister had to endure the Imperial Japanese hospitality for a couple of years over there and if there hadn't been Hiroshima and Nagasaki I simply wouldn't have been born.

So that's that with the Japanese, and what the Nazis did in Europe and also in my own country is the second point. And a third point is the number of people killed by Stalin and his butchers - probably more than the Nazis did. And they would have liked to do the same in Western Europe. So for me there has always been a good and a bad side.

And then after WWII, I was born, a child of the Cold War, when there was a well defined enemy with a very real threat a few hours driving away. An Iron Curtain with an overwhelming force right behind it, fighters at QRA, parts of our army stationed in Germany, articles in the papers about the nuclear threat, Korea, the Hungarian rebellion in 1956, the Cuba Crisis, Vietnam and lots of smaller incidents to remind you every day that something called communism existed..... My two elder brothers served in the Army and they did not need a third one from the same family so I did not have to serve, but flying over Europe in SFP1 or WOE still means "defending" my own youth and my own country and its NATO allies. It still gives me a kick, can't help it and I like it....

And luckily, indeed, in the end it's a game. And it's great that our former adversaries are here on this forum and it was fantastic to be able talk to them back in the nineties, with the airshows full of MiG's, Sukhoi's and whatever came over from the East.

Making up is beautiful, but there will always be a past.......

For now, let's be happy !!

 

Aju,

 

Derk