[RKDinOKC]

One of the first really good flight simulator games main plane was the Hellcat. The game was called Hellcats of the South Pacific oddly enough. The game designer was a friend of a friend's in Dallas. My friend had on of the first 21inch CRT monitors and couple of 15in monitors. We set up his desk so you had the 3 windows of the Hellcat around you. The designer guy specifically programed the render engine specifically for that setup. It was fantastic to play and very immersive.

The Hellcats were fighter/bombers of the day and would fly in really high then dive bomb whatever their target was and you had to take on the fighters sent to get you on the way in and hope you could outrun them on the way back out.

One mission was to sink a Japanese carrier. It was very difficult to sink without getting shot down because it took both bombs. I came in low and dropped a bomb while flying through the open fantail. Sunk it with just one bomb, but got shot down and jumped. I landed on the deck of the carrier before it completely sank and was found by friendlies and made it back safely. The guy that wrote the game said he was planning to give me a copy, but after that stunt he was going to make me buy one.

I also beat his bomb base mission. I would take out the one plane sent to stop me, then fly in low and fast like the jets do today, come in below the ack acks and take them and most of the planes still on the ground out with my guns, then go up and do my two bombing runs at my leisure. Then was able to make it back to US Airspace before fighters could get there from the other Japanese base. Got a really high score because I could take my time and be very accurate with my bombs. He didn't like me being able to do that either.