I warned all of you when I wrote about my 1984 timeline that, because of the way I’d loaded so many videos into the Knight Lab tool, the result was apt to crash your browsers. I’ve got a similar problem when it comes to my “Games of the Vietnam War” timeline, whereby I place all my Vietnam War scenarios into an illustrated timeline. The sheer number of pictures tend to blow up my Firefox and the pushing-200 different “slides” tend to make the use of the timeline unwieldy. The Knight Lab people themselves recommend that a presentation built with their tool have no more than 20 events in the timeline.
OK.
Anyhow… I’m currently working on one solution, which involves separating the roughly-10-years of the Vietnam War into multiple, smaller timelines. While defeating one of my primary goals in creating the timeline in the first place (to see the whole war at a single shot) it helps me with my second, which is the real reason I created this monster in the first place. These timelines were originally meant for my own use. I wanted to bring scenarios from multiple sources and organize them into a coherent whole. In that, having a timeline (or timelines) that I’m not as afraid will blow up my computer, this is a plus.
The links below go to my work-in-progress. I imagine it will remain sketchy for a little bit as I work on moving stuff and as I try to get it right. Peruse or ignore as you see fit.
Even as I fiddled with all of this, I worried that it was going to come crashing down around me. I’ve recently received several notices from Google Docs that they intend to revamp their access and security for shared material. I could not imagine how this will NOT break the Knight Lab system, based as it is* on remotely accessing Google Docs data. As far as I can tell, though, the update does not apply to Google Docs and (again, as far as I can tell) is having no impact on the timelines. Of course, like anything digital, that is subject to change.
Please excuse the mess while we undergo renovations.
*For clarity, there is more than one way to feed the timelines their data. Google Docs is the easiest method, but it is also possible to locally host the data.
I probably am apt to rank foreign-made films above their Hollywood counterparts. Sometimes I wonder if that’s fully warranted, or if I give a well-intended “outsider” piece a certain benefit-of-the-doubt that I wouldn’t extend to a product of Hollywood. It’s hard to evaluate the extent of one’s own bias, begin biased and all that.
In the case of The King’s Choice, free to watch on Amazon Prime’s streaming, as I watched I found myself appreciating not only the work overall but also cinematic details. For example, the pacing of the transitions changes significantly in one of the pivotal, dramatic scenes. It’s a level of detail I generally wouldn’t notice and so maybe it’s more common than I realize. It was just a use of black space but was enough to set up the viewers’ emotions for the scene that was about to follow. It made me appreciate that the film is considerably more than just a “teleplay.”
While not exactly expensive, The King’s Choice was hardly a “budget” film. There are some action sequences and some more-than-passable special effects. It also benefits from being an “up close and personal” drama. It is the characters – the individuals – that matter, not tanks and planes and desperate shootouts. This means that the most important scenes are tight shots with dialog and character acting, not the sweeping views of war. Admirably, the production seemed to have made a modest profit during its original run and presumably continues to earn via its streaming availability.
As I often do, I amuse myself with the title of this film – given that it was made primarily by and for* Norwegians. In its original language, the title is Kongens Nei, or, “The King’s No.” While I knew some of the history of the German invasion of Norway, Norway’s capitulation, and the resistance that came after, I had no notions about the role that the King or his family played in this. So similarly (albeit for different reasons) to my experience with Harris’ Munich, I really had no idea what the King was going to do; what he would say. Perhaps someone anticipated this ignorance from the English-speaking audience and therefore obscured the “ending” by providing an alternate title. Perhaps I ruined the film for you by telling you the original title. If so… so sorry.
The tagline on the movie poster is “you’ll laugh till it hurts!” This was literally true. Earlier in the day I ventured too close to a wasps’ nest and was feeling a little tender as I sat down to watch State and Main. Laughing was a painful experience but, its true, this was a funny piece of work from David Mamet. I expected no less.
Now, was this a portrayal of fly-over country as seen by the Coastal Elite? Was it a portrayal of Hollywood-types as imagined by rural America? Is the joke that it’s both?
In a few of its snapshots, we see the experience of the urban, coastal denizen* being set adrift in flyover country – experiences that are probably close enough to the real thing. Flannel-clad retirees suddenly interested in reading Variety cover-to-cover, for example, has probably long been a part of an on-location shoot. The perception of big-name actors as compulsive child-molesters, aided and abetted by the industry, may be exaggerated for humorous effect. If so, it is an exaggeration that rings true to many of us outside the influence of the entertainment industry. It’s also an obvious (even if exaggerated) point well taken by those inside the industry. One can look the other way from the abuses of the industry but I don’t think anyone can, in good faith, deny it.
Other elements are laughably (although not in the right way) out of place. The piece is set in the northern reaches of Vermont but the town manages to be served by the Boston Commuter Rail. It was filmed in Massachusetts and, while all quaint New England towns are assumed to look the same, there is going to be a massive difference in look and feel between a Manchester-by-the-Sea and the real-life Waterford, VT. Hint: the two look almost nothing like each other.
The usual portrayal of flyover classes as rubes who struggle to understand things like modern door locks is partly evident. It is a balance. Are the jokes funny enough to forgive the caricatures? Are the caricatures close enough to forgive their inaccuracies? For everything that it gets wrong about small-town New England, it probably remains one of the better representations thereof that has been brought to the screen.
Anyway, laugh I did (and hurt I did). That’s what counts.
*David Mamet is originally from Chicago although he now lives in California. While that makes him far from “coastal,” growing up in Chicago does not make your part of the midwesterm farm culture. Nonetheless, and this is a big part of why I wanted to watch State and Main, Mamet seems to not have swallowed the left-coast kool-aid. It probably makes it hard for him to continue working in Hollywood so I’ll give him what little custom a Netflix rental provides. Also, do any of you want to pronounce his name Mam-may? I do. The name isn’t French, though, it’s Polish.
In the 2020 preface to his novel Code To Zero, Ken Follett writes that when he wrote the book (in 2000), he had no idea there was such a thing as Jason Bourne. He had never heard of the books, much less read them, and this was two years before the film franchise was released. In fact (at least as of 2020), he says has yet to read any of Robert Ludlum’s series.
The introduction goes on to talk about how the plot point of a main character who has lost his memory is not unique to Ludlum. Some case-in-point is provided before moving on to the general background for the novel – locations and themes. A little 2020-style wokeism is tossed in for good measure (the book features female mathematicians from the 40s and 50s) and we’re asked to enjoy the book. “I didn’t steal this idea and, even if I had, so what!”
Part of me wishes I would have picked up this book back when I was all excited about the space race. Of course, this would have been impossible. Back then I had a pretty distorted idea about who Ken Follett was and would not have chosen to tackle a Cold War thriller from him. There’s also something to be said for following through with this Jason Bourne journey through literature, having little to no memory of what transpired over the past handful of decades yet, at the same time, being familiar with all of its effects. It’s like being able to read about Jason Bourne as Jason Bourne. Add to that, if I had read Code To Zero before The Bourne Identity, I never would have begun my reading with Follett’s 2020 introduction, thereby learning why this all fits together. I’m glad I didn’t miss out on that.
All that said, there is a reason that Follett is a successful WWII/Cold War thriller novelist.
Come with me as I continue my journey, reading the science fiction classics of my youth that I, nonetheless, never read when I was young.
Terry Pratchett’s The Color of Magic came out as I was discovering the allure of fantasy fiction. While I’d certainly heard of it, the tropes used to construct his fantasy universe were similar enough to “serious” fantasy (what Pratchett calls the “consensus fantasy universe”) that I don’t think really knew the difference. That is to say, I never realized that his books were intended to be comedy. Over the years, I was apt to confuse Discworld with, say, Riverworld (or perhaps Farmer’s other oddly-shaped planets) or Ringworld*, or some other extra-dimensional concept**.
In a talk, Pratchett has described The Color of Magic both as a tribute to the genre that was formative for him as a person and as an author as well as “an attempt to do for the classical fantasy universe what Blazing Saddles did for Westerns.” Of course, Pratchett authored that speech as well, so one must weigh whether the analogy is meant to be informative or just funny. Others, presumably meant to be taken seriously, compare the work with Douglas Adams. That seems particularly relevant to my reading experience and strikes a chord. The other book that comes to mind is The Illuminatus! Trilogy.
You see, there is something about absurdist style that, counter-intuitively, creates a sense of meaning out of the lack thereof. As I read The Color of Magic, I get this feeling that I’m reading something really important even though it is, objectively, nonsensical. It’s a tribute to Pratchett’s talent as well as a heretofore unappreciated characteristic of the literary style. Of course, maybe it is just me and the circumstances in which I find myself. There’s something about today’s reality – the news and the commentary and the never-ending crises – that implies a disconnection between the assumed permanence of the real world and the direction which life is taking us.
I don’t know if I can really dedicate myself to reading the dozens and dozens of Discworld-themed novels that Pratchett has written but I’m a little disappointed in myself that I took this long to even get started.
*I know, David Niven isn’t even the right genre, but remember I’m confused. Bits and pieces of Pratchett’s stories would float into my consciousness and I tried to alight them with what I already knew – what I already read.
This is the seventy-seventh in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. See here for the previous post in the series or go back to the master post.
It has been the better part of a year since I’ve delved into one of the Seven Firefights in Vietnam. So as to bring an end to my hiatus, I once again open the book (figuratively speaking, that is; I use the downloaded PDF) to the chapter titled Fight Along the Rach Ba Rai.
The Rach Ba Rai is a tributary to the Mekong River. It became the focus of an operation when two fleeing Viet Cong battalions took sanctuary in the Cam Son Secret Zone about 10 km upriver along the Rach Ba Rai. The riverine forces of the 9th Infantry were to provide the keystone of an operation to trap and annihilate the enemy force. Amphibious landings would allow the placement of battalion-sized infantry forces positioned to pen in the Viet Cong.
We all know what can happen to the best laid plans. This one, as Robbie Burns warned us it might, gang aft-a-gley.
As the U.S. force moved up-river, they sailed into a prepared ambush. The combination of surprise, confusion, and adherence to plan and doctrine meant that the assaulting force, initially, had to abandon the amphibious landing, withdrawing to regroup and to try again. The hours of delay meant that darkness overtook the operation before it could be fully executed and the next morning saw that the enemy had withdrawn and escaped. The third element – the application of plans and doctrines and the constraints that those apply to operations are generally absent from wargaming – and so it is here. Nobody can make me go through multiple attempts at the landing and I’d surely lose the scenario if I played it that way. As far as surprise and confusion go, however, I figured the best way to subject myself to that was to play the scenario in Steel Panthers before I read any of the details about the battle.
The last time I broke out Steel Panthers, I complained about the loss of sound in my installation but that has not been the end of it. In the intervening months, I’ve also lost my graphics. At least partially. I’ve explained before that the free version of the game is hobbled by restrictions on the graphical resolution. The choice is to play on a tiny window or to play in full-screen mode, converting your state-of-the-art monitor into a circa-1991 low-res eye irritant. Unless I’m taking screenshots, I prefer the latter. I’d rather look at ugly than struggle to read the texts.
Suddenly, however, my full-screen mode produces a black and white rendering of the screen. By this I mean, quite literally, black and white. Not even gray scale. Some elements of the screen can still be picked out, but most of what is rendered is completely unreadable. Playing in a window, however, works as it always has.
As before, there are probably explanations for this. Over the last year or so I’ve had (separately and many months apart) failures of both my graphics card and my monitor. Timing wise, I can probably narrow it down to the latter. Details of what happened probably need to be saved for a future post but, suffice to say, I did a lot of fiddling with my graphics settings before, ultimately, putting the exact same model monitor back in place. Could I have, somewhere in all that adventure, adjusted that one setting that WinSPMBT depended on to take over my screen? That seems almost a certainty. Yet, to date I’ve not found another* game similarly affected.
So launching the scenario Fight Along the Rach Ba Rai in the tiny window, I proceeded to play. There is nothing terribly new about the experience. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen the “monitors**” included before, but amphibious operations are old hat. What fits the engine fairly well is the size and scope of the battle. Three battalions of attackers attempt to isolate and destroy a suspected 2 battalions of Viet Cong. Although a single scenario, it takes place in two phases. The landing force must be delivered through the ambush to the landing site, after which a number of land-based objectives must be taken.
Goin’ up the river.
This scope also highlights the shortcoming in this scenario. As is often the case, a full day’s worth of fighting is compressed – this time into several hours of play. Thus there is no time for the various shifts in objectives. As the U.S. player, you have roughly just the right amount of time to do everything you need to do… no more, no less.
It is not explicitly stated but my take is that the scenario starts with the second run up the river, after the aborted first attempt. This explains, although not perfectly, some of the starting conditions. It also exacerbates the unrealistically high casualty rate. From Seven Firefights in Vietnam I gather that many of the combat casualties occurred during the ambush phase – during the confusion that occurred during that first run up the river. I tried to enhance that confusion via the play/read order. Squad Battles, by contrast, explicitly portrays the ambush as its own scenario.
At the beach.
In Squad Battles: Tour of Duty, the treatment of this battle is presented*** as a scenario pair. Like some other multi-part Squad Battles scenarios (at least, as I see it), the first of the two is meant to be illustrative of the operation’s problems – a sort of an introduction to the second part. The scenario is only 6 turns long and consists entirely of running the gauntlet of the Viet Cong ambush. Granted, it is possible to fight the scenario in a non-historical way. For example, a player could opt to disembark the assault force early**** to deal with the ambush. I think the real point is to illustrate why the U.S. had to make two tries at running the VC gauntlet.
Goin’ up river, again. Or, rather, for the first time.
Naturally, given the vagaries of the Squad Battles system, I did even worse than my historical counterparts. Whether that’s due to overpowered anti-armor weaponry, over-modelling the proficiency of the enemy, or some combination of the two, I’ll not speculate. While the historical American forces did take a lot of damage and suffered serious injury, they didn’t see the loss of their gunboats (as shown in the below screenshot) and suffered only 7 KIAs. Worse yet, the modeling of the river as a narrow channel means that two sunk monitors (each taken out by a single RPG, I might add) are sufficient to block the entire river and prevent passage of the remaining fleet.
That definitely didn’t happen. Nor, I don’t believe, could it have.
Blocked.
The second part of the scenario begins with the gauntlet successfully overcome. Although I didn’t know it (nor would you have, had you not read this far), the landing itself is completely uncontested and the point of the exercise is moving inland and taking enough ground to call it a victory.
Disembarkation.
The tighter focus and shorter scenario length, when contrasted with Steel Panthers, help with the resulting realism. At the same time, the narrow river and hex-side landing sites provide a very different feeling relative to the other game’s version. The written record does not give me enough information to definitively decide which is right and which is wrong but Squad Battles doesn’t quite feel right. There’s also the fact that Squad Battles doesn’t seem to have the mechanics to allow for a satisfying, decisive finish.
A balanced scenario is going to be one of maneuver and attrition. Without reasonable modeling of the off-board fire support, the U.S. play cannot really “sweep the field.” As it was, I took some of the victory locations and left others in the hands of the enemy. For both versions of this battle, it was enough for me to win on points. In both cases, like my historical counterparts, I found my victory lacking in meaning and import.
Return to the master post or continue on to the next post. My struggle to master the A-1 Skyraider continues as I work my way through some 1965 historical missions. I also posted an update about my timeline where I try to get control of its excesses. You might, alternatively, want to leap ahead to where I post further discussion about this battle.
*Off the top of my head, my oldest games are set up to run in DOSBox, which does not appear to be affected. I’m quite sure I’ve got some other non-native-resolution, full screen games. I can’t think of what they’d be right off the top of my head.
**Quite obviously a reference to the Civil War gunboat, the Vietnam version bears a passing resemblance to its namesake. It appears to be something of an improvised (as far as the Military-Industrial Complex can be said to improvise) solution to the requirements of fighting on rivers. It uses the basic platform of the littoral landing craft, but mounts heavy weaponry to provide support for the riverine missions.
***As his source, Tiller cites Seven Firefights in Vietnam, which is also my source for additional background. It is therefore confusing to me the mistake baked into the SB: Tour of Duty scenario pair. In the description, the game puts the two scenarios a day apart. Per the source, the second attempt was launched “just after 1000,” which would make it nearly six hours after the operation began (0415). Although air assaults on presumed enemy positions continued through the night into the pre-dawn hours of the September 16th, no contact took place and the enemy positions were found to be abandoned “the next morning.”
****In reality, the infantry forces did fight against the ambushing positions but only from the decks of their transports. As it was, the grenade launchers, in particular, proved to have some effect against the prepared positions of the enemy. In Squad Battles, however, mounted units cannot engage with their weaponry.
Earlier this year I was telling you about watching Season 6 of Homeland. My point in doing so was less about the content of the show than about that time in which it was written. It seemed that the show’s writers imagined a President* Elizabeth Keane winning election coincident with Hillary Clinton’s victory. When that failed to happen, I went on to wonder which plot points would be better applied as a Republican assault against the first female President or as the Democrats’ assault against that actual, sitting president.
I’m now on to Season 7. This story has the advantage of knowing how the election turned out. It has the disadvantage of the counter-factual – the wrong guy won. Viewed some three-and-half years later, it also has some interesting implications when considered with the advantage of hindsight.
Back in October of 2020, I was dwelling on the appearance of the Logan Act as presented in the media. Illustrative is the consideration of the fate of its violators along with its appearance, over the years, in popular culture. That article was posted only a few days before Nancy Pelosi floated the idea of using the 25th Amendment to remove Donald Trump from office. Being so far behind in my Homeland watching, I had no way of knowing that this was a key plot point of Season 7. Ironically, the show portrays an illegitimate invocation based on pure politics, with those politics grounded in misinformation propagated by the minority party.
Naturally, the villains in this case are Republicans and the Russian connection is a real one. Nonetheless, it is not a big leap of logic to match different figures to the real “villains” circa 2018 by swapping a gender here and a party there.
*It took me a while, but I finally remembered the actress (Elizabeth Marvel) as Frank Underwood’s challenger in the Democratic primary in Season 6 of House of Cards, then playing Solicitor General Heather Dunbar. Until I figured it out, I was stuck thinking she looked particularly presidential.
Browsing the internet, I saw a recommendation for the bookLast Stands: Why Men Fight When All Is Lost by Michael Walsh. It is still working its way to general availability. Hardcover only, no paperback, and a bit on the expensive side for an ebook. It is not available through the library.
At the same time, though, I found that I could get a hold* of his (so far) three-book series about a top-secret, super-spy who must battle with the forces of evil. So I read Hostile Intent instead.
The book starts me off with a partially-heard conversation about Carlos the Jackal. Then, just in case the reference wasn’t clear, our main character compares and contrasts his secret life with that of Jason Bourne (as a fictional character). The allusion has become real.
Hostile Intent is an up-to-date version of the that book I wanted when I was a teenager. A Jason Bourne thriller for the Age of Twitter, with a healthy dose of Tom Clancy thrown in for good measure. Although fiction through-and-through, the agencies, the technologies, the locations, and even the global politics are all real. Or, at least, they’re real as far as normies like ourselves are allowed to know.
The story is also chock full of pop-culture (and “cultural“) references, only a few of which are ultimately explained. I could probably grok less than half of them. I read my “airport novels” in bed, before I go to sleep, so while I was tempted to read with the book in one hand and google in another, I decided that it wasn’t worth it.
Besides showing off his own knowledge and tickling the fancy of those of us who share in his mastery of it, I’d say the goal for this author is to directly comment on our current predicaments. As I said, many of the elements of the story are real enough and even the fictional pieces – the politicians, the secret operatives, and the intricate terror plots – are plausible enough to be instructive. It is also interesting to me that the threats presented by our current array of bad guys is downplayed. We need a James Bond -style supervillain to test the mettle of our super hero. But behind all the Lex Luthors and Goldfingers, Walsh tells us that the real threat (as least as I read him) is the massive intrusion of the security state into any semblance of an ability to live a “private life.”
The first book was written in 2009 and was followed, annually, by two more installments. Wikipedia suggests that at least two more novels are expected for the series. As “current” and relevant as the 2009 story is to today’s world, one assumes there might be more to say in 2021. Whether you read what he has to say as profound or trite probably depends as much on your own politics as anything. These books are red meat for the red state dweller and there is no point in pretending otherwise. Beyond that, though, it is nice to have a good spy story that, Carlos references aside, isn’t based on the 1970s or the 1940s.
*As I type this, Hostile Intent is $5 for paperback and $1.99 for e-book on Amazon. I’ve admitted I don’t understand the economies of streaming services – I understand even less how the book publishing market works.
My next IL-2 scenario was going to be Midnight Raiders, a mission providing nighttime air support to a besieged Marine defensive position. As far as I can tell, it is a purely hypothetical setup. This was a mission that I had prepared for myself several versions ago; one of a number that was both ready and compatible with the BAT modification package. In my 2018 post, you may have detected, I was prepared for further struggles with old scenarios and compatibility. You may note that, come 2021, that didn’t happen; my experience with the scenario Blood Brothers was seamless.
Now, one of the allures of BAT is that it is designed to be a turnkey installation. Along with all the mods themselves, there is supposed to be an ecosystem of campaigns and scenarios which exploit the game’s expansions. The documentation for the Jet Age portion of the package sold me on a number of such premade adventures but, when I looked at it circa 2018, many seemed to be either works-in-progress or in need of some compatibility facelifting.
After playing the Blood Brothers scenario, I began to peruse the folders of the installation that I’d just completed. I was surprised (very pleasantly, I should say) that the mission folders for both the Jet Age and the dedicated Vietnam package were populated* with ready-to-go scenarios. It seems that what was promised to me a few years back has now been delivered.
The scenario “packs” seems to span three categories. The first are what I’ll call sample packs. A set of missions spread throughout the decade of war featuring different aircraft flying a variety of missions. The emphasis is on novelty, apparently trying to represent the Vietnam Experience (TM). Another flavor selects a single aircraft and provides a series of representative missions, typically occuring over multiple years. There are also packages focused on a single battle or a single unit – perhaps meant to be played as a “career” or as a role-playing experience for a single airman.
With this update, the availability of Vietnam scenarios goes from being a little thin-on-the-ground to, based on some superficial eye-balling, the most represented era of the Jet Age package. This makes a lot of sense. For anything post-WWII, the Vietnam War would represent the highest concentration of combat missions and enemy engagements to date.
A-1. It’s that important.
It’s a bit serendipitous that the next scenario I was going to play and the earliest scenario in this latest-version of the Jet Age mod are both flying the Douglas A-1 Skyraider. You may recall that this plane is one of the few aircraft that I have so-far managed to fly in IL-2. Several of the “packs” include A-1 scenarios, starting with the opening airstrike of Operation Pierce Arrow. This is from the ‘Nam War collection which focuses on (as far as I can tell) historical missions for six** different aircraft.
– Plenty of A-1 missions, real or imagined, to be had.
I’ve told you before about the massive learning curve I always encounter when I return to IL-2 after a break. This time is no different. As a naval mission, this scenario requires some additional interaction, all of which I’ve forgotten about and deleted all my shortcuts for. For example, in my first couple of go-arounds, I forgot how to work with the catapult*** and caused a mass-casualty event on take-off.
– American casualties are all too common when the pilots are completely incompetent.
It took a bit of reading and remembering before I managed to get myself to where, I think, I should be. Sort of. I still tumble off of the deck on every takeoff. Sometimes I can manage to get myself level before I dip a wing in the drink while other attempts have me tumble-in ass-over-tit. Yet, in all my tries, I’ve never managed to gin up enough speed to keep from dragging a tail, a wing, or a tank in the ocean. I know I’m bad but I’m not sure this is entirely on me. If I let the plane take off entirely on autopilot, it still crashes into the ocean (AI planes, by way of contrast, take off just fine). Maybe the catapult is a little underpowered or the runway is too short. Even the successful AI launches don’t look anything like the historical footage (see video, below).
– It’s going to be a very short ride.
Fortunately for my sanity, there is always the option to forgo both take-off and landing and just start the mission already in the air.
Skipping the carrier launch obviously makes it a lot easier to get to the “meat” of the mission – the actual ground attack. Alas, for me, this still does not make the scenario an easy one. Even over the “friendly” ocean, I struggled with getting the trim settings stable and level flight required a constant twiddling so as to keep from going off-course. Once on station I realized that, as admittedly bad as I am with air-to-air combat, I suspect I am even worse with ground support.
– You’re too low! Pull up!
It may or may not be obvious, but in the above screenshot I’m much lower than my mission parameters tell me I should be. In simply trying to get my rockets and bombs on target, I ended up in a fairly rapid dive at 300 ft instead of the flat bombing run from 1000 ft with which I was tasked. Luckily, I wasn’t hit on this pass but I also did no damage. The reality of the strikes on August 5th is that an A-1 pilot (Lieutenant Richard Sather) was killed in combat, his plane downed by anti-aircraft fire.
It’s probably more psychological than anything else – but I feel so much more useless being an unskilled pilot flying ground support. In a dogfighting scenario, I mix it up alongside my computer-controlled mates and, even if I don’t bring down any enemy planes myself, I can take some minor satisfaction in having flown a supporting role. When I fly over a target and all of my bombs splash down harmlessly in the ocean, it’s quite obvious that I’ve just burned a whole mess of fuel and fired a bunch of rockets to absolutely no purpose. My team would have been better off had I stayed in bed.
Not to belabor the point but my biggest problem stems from trying to casually pick up a flight sim for a day or two of fun. To succeed, I should probably either play these games in “arcade mode” or take the time to work my way up the learning curve. I’m really not in the mood to do either one. However, the fact that I have a dozen or so A-1 Skyraider missions which can serve to catch me up to where I am in Vietnam Combat Operations – this might just give me a chance to figure out how to drop a bomb or strafe a truck.
**Five of them are for U.S. Navy planes. There are six if you throw in the the Thuds and eight if you also include the two MiG sets.
***In case you’re similarly clueless and in my situation, I’ll briefly explain. The “chocks” and the catapult use the same function (which I had to add to the key map) depending on where you are on the deck. You can steer yourself to the launch position before engaging or simply hit the “autopilot” function, which will teleport you there.
I just learned today that Jodorowsky planned to have Pink Floyd do the soundtrack for his mid-70s version of Dune. That explains something about that first trailer from the new movie.
I also learned today that another trailer has been released, a week or so ago, and I missed it. Theatrical release is planned for October.