Missions

Channel Patrol

• RAF
• Spitfire (or Hurricane)
• 1 wingman (Spitfire)
• No enemies
• Free flight

Routine patrol, no enemies. Use this mission to fly and explore the channel region.

You start at 1,800 m over the North Foreland, the north-east tip of Kent, with a friendly coastal convoy of seven ships just below you to the south-east. After about 2½ minutes three Hurricanes arrive from Manston. There are no objectives and it never ends. Use it to get the feel of the Spitfire and Hurricane, practise the look keys and cockpit view, or fly down the coast to the white cliffs of Dover.

London Tour

• RAF
• Any aircraft, either side
• Solo
• No enemies
• Unlimited ammo
• Free flight

Free flight over London, 1940: no enemies, fly anything.

You start at 2,500 m over Deptford, heading north-west up the Thames. The docks are off your right wing: the Surrey Commercial Docks, the Isle of Dogs and, beyond them, the Royal Docks. Ahead are Tower Bridge and then the dome of St Paul's on the north bank. Further upstream are the Palace of Westminster and Big Ben, with Battersea Power Station's chimneys beyond.

This is the only mission that lets you fly any aircraft, including the Bf 110, and it's a good place to try the bombers' controls and bombsight view with no one shooting at you.

Convoy Patrol

• RAF
• Spitfire (or Hurricane)
• 1 wingman + 3 Hurricanes later
• 9 Stukas, 6 Dorniers, 10 Bf 109s
• Difficulty: Medium

July 1940, the Kanalkampf. Coastal convoy CW 8 is rounding the North Foreland out of the Thames Estuary, bound down the Channel through the Downs. You and your No. 2 are the standing patrol over it. Dover radar has plotted a Stuka raid forming up over Cap Gris-Nez, with Dornier bombers behind it and 109s high above. Break up the dive bombers before they reach the ships, and remember: eight Brownings give you barely fifteen seconds of fire. Short bursts.

What comes, and when

Objectives

1. Protect convoy CW 8: lose no more than two of its seven ships.
2. Destroy six raiders.

The mission is won when every bomber is down or has turned for home with the convoy still afloat.

Tips

• Climb first. You start at 1,800 m, 1,200 m below the Stukas, and their escort is higher still. Turn toward the south-south-east and climb while they close. You have about two minutes.
• Hit the Stukas before they reach the ships. Over the convoy they peel off one at a time, a couple of seconds apart, into near-vertical dives. If you're late, follow them down and catch them on the pull-out.
• Watch the escorts. The four 109s above the Stukas dive on you the moment you get close. Make one fast pass through the Stukas and pull up and away rather than turning with them.
• The Dorniers bomb in formation on their leader. They release about 2 km short of the ships, and the whole formation drops together. Break up the formation before then. Attack from the front quarter or high on the beam, not from dead astern.
• Use the Hurricanes when they arrive. Drag a 109 across them.
• Ammunition. Two or three good bursts per Stuka. If you've fired your guns dry by the time the Dorniers arrive, you're done.

Scramble over Biggin Hill

• RAF
• Hurricane (or Spitfire)
• 2 Hurricanes + 3 Spitfires later
• 9 Dorniers, 9 Heinkels, 6 Bf 109s, 4 Bf 110s
• Difficulty: Hard

18 August 1940, the Hardest Day. You're already rolling: the klaxon went, you opened the throttle and the Hurricane is just unsticking from the grass at Biggin Hill. Nine Dorniers of KG 76 are coming in at treetop height from the south, straight for the field, with a heavy He 111 raid and its 109 escort high behind them. Turn onto the low raiders before they reach the hangars, then climb for the big one. The station's Bofors and Lewis guns will be firing at anything overhead, so stay out of their way.

What comes, and when

Objectives

1. Protect Biggin Hill: lose no more than seven of the station's buildings, aircraft and guns.
2. Destroy six raiders.

If nobody stops them, the Dorniers destroy a hangar and the petrol bowser, and the Heinkels flatten the huts and the mess. That's eight losses, and a failed mission.

Tips

• Turn straight onto the low raid. You start at 200 m, only just airborne, and the Dorniers arrive about 50 seconds later, 60–100 m up in a tight formation. Get across in front of them. A beam or head-on pass breaks the formation up, and a Dornier that isn't in its slot drops its bombs somewhere else.
• Then climb. The Heinkels reach the field at about 4 minutes, from 3,800 m, and the Hurricane climbs slowly. Start as soon as the low raid is past. You have to break up the formation before its leader releases, roughly 2 km short of the field.
• The Bf 110s come in head-on with four machine guns and two cannon in the nose. Don't meet them nose to nose. Turn inside them: they can't follow a Hurricane.
• Stay out of your own flak over the field.
• Every airfield has a pale brown take-off strip down a mown green field, with hangars along the edge. It makes Biggin Hill easy to find again from altitude.

Coastal Command: U-boat Hunt

• RAF
• Sunderland only
• Solo
• 2 U-boats, 2 Bf 110s late
• Fog, low cloud
• Fuel limited
• Difficulty: Hard

September 1940. While Fighter Command fights overhead, Coastal Command keeps the sea lanes open. Convoy FN 26, four merchantmen and a destroyer, is coming down the east coast for the Thames at eight knots, and a U-boat is reporting its position. You are Sunderland Q-Queen, at the end of a long night patrol: sweep ahead of the convoy on a creeping-line search, four legs, in under three miles' visibility under a 450 m overcast. Fuel is short: leave enough to make landfall at North Foreland.

Objectives

1. Sink a U-boat.
2. Protect convoy FN 26: lose no more than one ship.
3. Make landfall at North Foreland, about 2 km south-west of your start. Reaching it ends the mission.

What you'll face

Two U-boats. One is shadowing the convoy, which is about 23 km to the north-east. The other is on the surface somewhere in your search area, recharging its batteries. About 2½ minutes in, HQ radios a direction-finding fix on one of them, near your second search leg. Two Bf 110s come out over the estuary about twelve minutes in.

Tips

• Fly the search legs and use the ASV radar. The waypoint marker leads you through four legs across the convoy's path. From 300 m, the radar shows a surfaced boat out to about 10 km ahead as an amber ASV marker (about half that down on the waves). The navigator calls each new contact, and tells you when one fades. That means she's dived, so mark the spot.
• The lookouts see you first. In this weather a Sunderland is seen about 5 km away, and a U-boat is under water in less than thirty seconds. Skim the wave tops (below 60 m) or stay in the cloud, and the lookouts only pick you up at about half that range. Then go straight in.
• Depth charges (B, six of them) sink and burst eight metres down, and only a close one is lethal. Catch her on the surface or in the middle of her dive. Release below 120 m or they break up on the water. A damaged boat may be forced back to the surface.
• The IMPACT marker is your bombsight. Against a boat you can see, it turns amber (CLOSE) and then green (ON TARGET). The green window is only about half a second, so release just before it turns green. Green isn't a guarantee: she may be going deeper.
• DATUM. If she dives while you can see her or have her on radar, the navigator plots a DATUM marker where she went under, with a line for her course. The marker doesn't move, but she does, at about 1.5 m/s. The marker shows its age: at 20 seconds she's about 30 m along that line. It turns green (ON DATUM) over the plot itself, but where she really is by then is your call.
• Left alone, the shadower closes in on the convoy and fires torpedoes at the merchant ships. Every time you force her under, she loses ground.
• The Bf 110s are a job for your tail and beam gunners. Keep flying the search.
• Watch the FUEL gauge. Full throttle burns fuel three times as fast as cruising. Dry tanks mean ditching in the North Sea. Out of depth charges? Press O until Make landfall at North Foreland is picked, and the marker points home. Landing with no U-boat sunk still loses the mission.

Gunnery Practice

• Luftwaffe
• He 111 (or Do 17)
• Crew station
• 3 RAF fighters, endlessly
• Unlimited ammo
• Sandbox
• Difficulty: Practice

Gunnery practice over Sussex. Your He 111 flies itself, straight and level; you start at the dorsal gun. Fighters come in one at a time: from astern and above, then a minute later off the right beam, then low from the left, and any you shoot down come back. Put the ring on the lead pipper, and walk your burst onto the fighter's nose as it closes: engine and pilot hits bring them down.

Objectives

1. Shoot down five fighters.

What you'll face

Tips

• Switch guns with 1–5 (1 nose, 2 dorsal, 3 ventral gondola, 4 right beam, 5 left beam), or C for the next gun. 0 takes the controls.
• The red arrows at the screen edge show where attackers are and which gun can reach them. Switch before the fighter arrives.
• Start with the astern attack. It barely moves across your sight. Open up at about 400 m aiming at its nose.
• If you're shot down, you respawn automatically. Ammunition is unlimited, so experiment.

Stuka Escort

• Luftwaffe
• Bf 109 only
• 1 wingman + 2 more 109s
• 9 Stukas to protect
• 5 Spitfires, 3 Hurricanes
• Difficulty: Medium

July 1940, Kanalkampf, from the other side. Nine Ju 87s of StG 1 are going for a British coastal convoy off the North Foreland, and your Staffel of 109s is their close escort. Stay with the Stukas: they're slow, they're helpless pulling out of their dives, and the RAF knows it. There's a standing patrol of Spitfires over the ships, and Hurricanes will scramble from Manston. You're flying at the edge of your range: fight over the convoy, not over Kent.

What comes, and when

Objectives

1. Escort the Stukas: lose no more than three.
2. Sink at least two ships of the convoy. (The Stukas do the bombing. Your job is to keep them alive.)

The mission ends when the Stukas are home.

Tips

• Stay high and behind. You start at 3,600 m, 600 m above the Stukas. The RAF fighters go for the Stukas first, not you, and they have to climb up to reach them. Dive on anything that goes for the Stukas, zoom back up, and repeat. Don't turn with a Spitfire.
• The dangerous moment is the pull-out. The Stukas peel off one by one over the convoy and come out of their dives slow and low, heading home at about 250 m. That's where the Hurricanes will be. Follow them down.
• Save your cannon for sure shots. You have only about seven seconds of cannon fire.
• Watch for the high Spitfires from the north-west at about 1:50. They'll have a height advantage over you.

Hit the Airfield

• Luftwaffe
• Ju 87 only
• 2 Bf 109 escorts
• 2 Hurricanes, Bofors
• Broken cloud
• Difficulty: Medium

You're over Surrey, just south of the target, with a cloud deck to hide in. Use it to close on the airfield, then dive-bomb the Hurricanes parked on the grass. Expect Bofors fire over the field and fighters overhead. Withdraw immediately after the attack and run south for the Channel.

Objectives

1. Destroy the three parked Hurricanes.
2. Reach safety over the Channel, about 40 km due south. Reaching it ends the mission.

What you'll face

The airfield is about 5 km ahead, a little east of north. You start at 1,500 m, just under a broken cloud deck at 1,800 m. Two Hurricanes are up at 3,000 m about 20 km to the north-north-east, and a Bofors gun guards the field. Two 109s at 3,000 m are your escort.

Tips

• Use the cloud. Climb into the cloud deck on the way in. Inside it, nobody can see you beyond about 150 m, and that includes the Bofors crew.
• You have one bomb, and there are three targets. The Hurricanes are parked in a row about 65 m apart. A bomb between two of them can catch both, and parked aircraft are fragile, so finish the rest with your two machine guns in a shallow strafing pass.
• Dive steeply from the cloud base with the IMPACT circle on the row, release, and pull out early.
• Then run. Turn south at low level and stay there. The Channel is a long way off for a Stuka, about six minutes at full throttle. Let your 109s deal with the Hurricanes.

London Burning

• Luftwaffe
• He 111 (or Do 17)
• 4 He 111s in company, 6 Do 17s
• Searchlights, flak, balloons
• 2 Hurricane night fighters
• Night
• Difficulty: Hard

The night of 7 September 1940. This afternoon's raid set London's docks alight, and the fires are still burning: you'll see them from the coast. You lead the second wave, with four more He 111s in company. Target: a row of five warehouses along one quay of the Surrey Commercial Docks, south of the river opposite the Isle of Dogs. Bomb on the fires, and lay your stick along the row: three of the five will do. Expect searchlights and heavy flak over the city, and a balloon barrage below you over Greenwich: stay high.

Objectives

1. Destroy three of the five warehouses.
2. Get clear of the London guns: fly into the zone about 9 km south-east of your start. Reaching it ends the mission.

What you'll face

The warehouses are about 15 km straight ahead (north-west) of your start at 4,000 m. The city is defended by 14 searchlights, 10 heavy anti-aircraft guns and 8 barrage balloons. A Dornier raid goes for the West India Docks across the river at the same time. Two Hurricane night fighters come up from the west about three minutes in.

Tips

• Press C until you get the BOMBSIGHT. The crosshair is where a bomb released now would land. The target comes down the sight toward the cross as you close. The nav marker shows the warehouse row: steer to bring it straight down the vertical line.
• Press B once as the row meets the cross. The whole stick goes by itself, one bomb every 0.6 seconds, which is about the spacing of the warehouses, so a steady run along the row lays the stick on it. Hold it level until it's all gone. N sets a shorter stick if you want bombs left for a second run.
• The fires lead you in. From the coast, the docks show as a glowing patch on the river, and the moonlit Thames points straight at them.
• Searchlights. Straight and level, they'll hold you, and every heavy gun in reach concentrates on you. A hard turn or a push into a dive breaks away within a few seconds. If you're on the bomb run, bomb first, then break.
• Stay high. The balloon barrage over Greenwich floats at 1,500 m, and its cables take wings off.
• Go home with the wave. When the rest of the second wave turns for home, its leader calls the course on the radio. Turn with them: a lone bomber is the night fighters' easiest kill. V points to the nearest of them.