Hellcats Over the Pacific

Hellcats Over the Pacific

• This was probably the first videogame I ever saw, because my dad had it on his Mac.  I probably saw this before I ever went to a friend's house and saw an NES.

• A very interesting thing about this game for me is that I remember being very intimidated by the complexity of the game because of the manual, which had a ton of information.  But now as an adult I can see that the guy who made the game just included the original Hellcat training manual and some official FAA flight manual to add bulk to the game.  The stuff in those manuals doesn't actually matter for playing the game.  The game is actually quite simple.  But I remember thinking that I was supposed to know everything in the manuals to be able to play the game.

• Another thing I'm remembering while playing this game is that it plays the first three notes of taps (the song) at the end of a mission when you die, and my dad would always plug his ears and go 'la la la' to not hear it.

Requirements / setup

• Basilisk 2 MacOS 8.1 emulator.

• I have links on how to set up MacOS 8.1 on Windows further up on this page but basically you want to use Basilisk II.

• Download the game here, download the Leyte Gulf expansion here.

  • To get Leyte Gulf working, I mounted the Leyte Gulf .dsk file, ran Basilisk 2, then dragged it into the same folder as Hellcats on my macOS simulated hard drive.

• To get sound working you need to apply the 1.0.3 → 1.0.4 patch, which you can find at macintoshgarden.org.

• You need a keyboard with a numpad.

Getting sound working / patching the game

• TLDR: You need to apply the 1.0.3 → 1.0.4 patch, which you can find at macintoshgarden.org.

• A lot of people trying to play the game on an emulator have had this issue and many of them never figured out what was causing it.

  • On this page a user wrote, “Apple changed the sound code pretty significantly at some point (7.5? 8.0? somewhere around there). Which broke sound on a lot of games. I remember Hellcats Over the Pacific releasing a patch to fix the sound problem, for example.”

  • This link has someone saying they were never able to get sound working for Hellcats on Basilisk.

  • In a comment on this video @MarsFKA says, “In a box in the garage I still have the old OS Classic eMac that I used to play Hellcats on. The trouble was that the OS Classic upgrades got away on the game and it became unplayable.” This seems to be further evidence that the sound issues may be a result of updates to the OS.

  • On this page a user wrote, “I remember back in about '92 I sent a postcard or something to the company (Graphic Simulations?) that put out Hellcats Over the Pacific (a WW2 Pacific-Theater flight sim) so they could send me the patch on a floppy, no less. And they did.” Further evidence that there are patches to the game.

Controls

• Basic flight:

  • Ailerons/elevators - numpad

  • Flaps - f, they start in the flight position when you're on the runway, so you need to lower them.

  • Throttle - + and -

  • Wheel brakes - spacebar

  • Rudder - shift+z / shift+x

  • Landing gear - g

  • Look around - arrow buttons

  • Look forward (cockpit view) - v

• Misc:

  • Time compression toggle (3x): Alt+t

    • I never knew about this back in the day, wow.

• Combat:

  • Gun - spacebar

  • Radar distance - Tab

  • Eject - j

  • Look straight behind you - r

  • Release bombs - b

My advice for playing

• You seem to lose airspeed unrealistically slowly in straight-and-level flight.  I have to totally cut the engine to lose airspeed.

• At full power you can be in the tightest possible banking turn without losing much speed.

• It's useful to lower your landing gear as airbrakes when you come up behind an enemy plane.

• The main purpose of the RPM and manifold pressure gauge seems to be to let you know if your engine is damaged.

Overall mission strategy

• IMO the most important thing to understand about this game is that these missions throw you into situations that a single pilot would not be expected to be able to handle by themselves in the real world, in terms of the relative amount of opposition you’re up against. So don’t feel bad if your starting carrier gets hit or sunk, for example; you aren’t expected to be able to save it.

• Many missions involve dive-bombing a target protected by enemy fighters. In the real world there would be one team of friendly fighters tasked with engaging the enemy fighters and another team tasked with doing the dive-bombing. Because you’re usually on your own and outnumbered in these scenarios and there are no time limits, your strategy should be to first focus entirely on eliminating all enemy fighters, and only afterwards focus entirely on dive-bombing enemy targets.

Choosing a loadout

• Don’t take bombs / torpedoes / rockets in your initial loadout if there will be enemy fighters to engage. Instead land when all the enemy fighters have been shot down and load the bombs / rockets / torpedoes then.

• In your initial dogfight phase, limit the fuel you carry to what you need, as more fuel apparently weighs down your plane and makes it slower to dogfight in.

Dogfights

• You lose airspeed very quickly when in a banking turn (if you have the engine cut).

• It’s preferable to draw the enemy fighters towards a friendly airbase / carrier / cruiser to have friendly flak help you take down the fighters. It seems like you get credit for a fighter shot down by friendly flak if you damaged the fighter at all with your machine-gun fire.

• Switch to using your mouse when dogfighting so that you can more-easily make the constant minor corrections to your aim necessary to hit the enemy.

• Lower your flaps to turn faster.

• Raise your flaps to fly faster. This is helpful if you are behind an enemy fighter and want to get closer to it, or if you need to race to intercept enemy fighters before they can conduct an attack on some other target (like a friendly ship or base).

• Lower throttle to lower speed and avoid overshooting an enemy fighter. I never really find it necessary to also drop my gear to slow down further.

• Once you get a fighter smoking you can basically ignore it as it'll crash within a few minutes. This is a good way to conserve ammo. The exception is when the fighter is likely to try to dive-bomb or suicide into your carrier.

• The AI have a move they like to do where they fly back and forth (I think it’s the “scissors” maneuver). You can just aim in the middle of where they’re doing that maneuver and shoot as they pass in front of your guns.

• If you’re shooting at one plane and you suddenly realize you’re being shot at by another plane, immediately lower flaps and maneuver out of that situation, it’s not worth trying to continue to go after the first plane.

• If you need to shoot down an enemy plane immediately (rather than just kill the engine), try waiting until it’s about as wide across your view as one of the black crosshairs, then rake it with fire from left to right across its full width. I did this on Divine Wind, it’s obviously easier when the other plane is flying straight-and-level. I don’t know if there are other methods to shoot down planes effectively at longer ranges or at higher deflections.

Dive bombing

• Fly up to at least 5,000 feet to do a run (preferably 12k+ feet), use the down arrow twice to look straight down to get a sense of when I'm over the target, and try to pull out of the dive before I get too close to the target.

• I use the rudder to perfectly line myself up with the target on the approach (before I start the dive).

• Reduce your throttle to zero and deploy your landing gear to slow your speed of descent and give you more time to line up with the target.

Landing

1. The first thing you should do is lower your gear, because you die 100% of the time if you land without your gear down.

2. Aim for a point like 3-5 runway-lengths away from one end of the runway. That’s where you’ll start your final approach. The term for that point is the Final Approach Fix (FAF).

3. Use your arrow keys to keep yourself oriented with respect to the runway as you approach the FAF. Do a gradual turn as you approach the FAF so that when you reach it, you’re aiming more-or-less at the runway.

4. Lower flaps.

5. Reduce power if necessary to bleed off speed as you approach the FAF. Try to get to under 120 knots.

6. Use your rudder (shift+z/x) to make minor corrections necessary to line up properly with the runway. You want to visually compare the near end with the runway with the far end and make sure they’re in-line with each other and not at an angle.

7. Visually imagine a line going from your aircraft out to the point where it would hit the ground if the plane kept going in the direction it’s currently going, and adjust your controls (stick and throttle) to have that line aim at the near end of the runway. To visualize this line you need to pay attention for a few seconds to the trend of the aircraft’s movement, you can’t do it from a single snapshot.

8. As you get close to the near end of the runway, reduce your airspeed to around 80-100 knots. I usually alternate engine power between 1-4 notches above zero power.

9. Cut power as you cross the threshold of the runway.

10. Pull up on the stick to bleed off the last bit of energy while hovering just above the runway; let the plane fall onto the runway on its own as it crosses below 70 knots.

11. Hold spacebar to activate the wheel brakes.

Others' advice

• “Bullets passing through is no bug; Hellcat had wing mounted guns that were typically set to converge at ca. 1800ft. If you were that close you should offset your aim to one side.” (source)

Thoughts

• I can't get the sound to work  [Later: to get sound to work you need to apply the 1.0.3 → 1.0.4 patch. It took me a long time and a lot of online research to figure that out.]

• I wonder if I could get my modern joystick to work with this game...

• The rudder seems unrealistically powerful. It turns your aircraft very quickly.

• It's weird that the flaps indicator shows three positions but there are actually only two positions modeled.

• Points-wise, a carrier kill is only worth 5 fighters, and a battleship kill is only worth 3 fighters.  Seems unrealistic but maybe makes sense given their relative difficulty in this game.

• There's no way to trim the aircraft, so I find myself having to repeatedly press the '2' key to nose-up the plane.

• When you land, you need to go to File → Resume to keep the mission going, or press 'm' to turn off the engine to refuel / load bombs.

• It's interesting that I find it easier to spot aircraft from their shadows (which seems unrealistic).

• With max power and the flaps extended I was able to get up to ~39,700 feet.  With no flaps I got to ~37,000 feet.

• It's interesting how it doesn't have a conception of having an anonymous flight; you have to create a pilot to fly a mission, and you can get that pilot killed even during training.  I think that's more immersive.

• The map in Leyte Gulf seems to be static, so that your 'Airfield' (aircraft carrier) on the map is just labeled at its initial position.  Ditto for your 'Target' if that target is inbound enemy aircraft.

• The game really gets its hooks into you when you start to feel fluid with the controls.

• The game is forgiving, at least for the first mission.  Like, the enemy aircraft aren't very smart, the enemy AA isn't too deadly, etc.  You don't have higher difficulty modes taunting you.  Whereas if you play a more-recent sim and try to jump in with full realism you'll have an unpleasant time.

• I wonder if the flak is actually calculated from the planes' predicted future position at the time the shot is fired from the AA gun or if it just generates flak randomly around the plane. [Later: my impression is that it’s randomly generated around the plane.]

Things I like about the game

• I love how connected I feel to the aircraft when I get familiar with the controls. It gives me that same “in-the-flow” feeling I get playing helicopter sims.

• I like how lifelike the enemy Zeroes feel in how they fly around.

• I like how quickly the missions get into the action. There’s no boring downtime, especially if you use time acceleration.

• I like the personal radar as a compensating factor for not being able to see as well as a real pilot would be able to see.

• I like how simple the controls are and how easy it is to learn the game. It’s a great example of a game that’s easy to learn but hard to master.

• The game has a very interesting difficulty system because there are no difficulty settings, but you can make the game more or less difficult by the goals you set for yourself. When you start you can just play missions without regard for whether you die, then as you get better you can set a goal of not dying, even if you fail to achieve the objective of a mission. And missions often have a primary objective but you don’t get any kind of punishment for failing to achieve it, so it’s up to you to decide if you care about having achieved it or not. And some of the missions have very difficult primary objectives.

Things I don’t like about the game

• Maybe the #1 problem with the game: I don’t like how Zeroes are so hard to shoot down from directly behind them. If that was done on purpose to make them survive longer, I’d prefer having them maneuver much more to make it harder instead. They’re definitely hard to hit when you’re dogfighting with them and they’re flying across your screen. [Later: it seems like Missions at Leyte Gulf doesn’t have this issue, so it seems most likely to be a bug.]

• Maybe the #2 problem with the game: it’s too hard to track the enemy fighter while also flying the plane. There’s no hotkey to lock onto the nearest enemy fighter.

• I wish I could try the game with a joystick, because lining up a shot is much easier while using a mouse, but the mouse bugs out if I make too-big of a movement (maybe an issue with the emulator), so I switch to the keyboard for normal flight or big turns, but then switching back to the mouse causes the plane to lurch because the mouse doesn’t start out zeroed relative to the screen when I switch to it.

• I don’t like how it’s easier to spot the shadow of a plane than the plane itself. If it’s realistic then that’s fine but it doesn’t seem realistic.

• I wish the game gave more practice or advice for how to judge/take accurate shots when the enemy plane is flying across your field of view, like in a dogfight. I seem to never hit and it’s not clear to me if the game isn’t registering shots that should be hit or I’m not aiming the shots correctly.

• I wish the game had the briefings in the UI itself rather than just being in the manual.

Things this game will teach you that will carry over to more-sophisticated sims

• Mission format

  • Missions consist of taking off from somewhere, flying to somewhere else, shooting down or bombing something there, and then flying back to land.

• Loadouts

  • Choosing what weapons you’ll carry and having that affect the performance of your aircraft.

  • Choosing how much fuel to load.

• Takeoffs

  • You get familiar with the idea that you need to start your engine, taxi out of a hanger to the runway, lower your flaps (you learn what flaps are), and set your throttle to max.

• Flight

  • This game can help get you comfortable visualizing the expected path of your aircraft through the sky if it continues as it’s flying, and then adjusting your throttle / attitude / etc to modify that expected path. This is useful for landings, coming up behind an enemy fighter, and getting into formation with a friendly bomber.

  • Staying in formation with a friendly aircraft (bomber) by watching that aircraft and your movement relative to it, and adjusting your throttle / attitude / flaps / etc. while watching that relative movement.

  • The game can teach you the idea that setting your throttle to max lowers your max range.

• Combat

  • Using flaps to turn more sharply.

  • Lowering your gear and dropping your throttle to slow down your aircraft when in a dogfight.

  • You learn that high-deflection shots are much more difficult.

• Landings

  • I feel like the game models airstrip landings about as realistically as much-more-complicated sims.

  • I can’t remember if more-complicated sims model carrier landings in a more-complicated way.

  • Off the top of my head, I feel like the main complication the game is missing is needing to use radio calls to request permission to land.

Things in more-complicated sims that this game will not prepare you for

• Takeoffs

  • I feel like the main complication the game is missing is the complicated startup procedures aircraft can have in more-complicated sims likes DCS.

Unrealistic aspects of the combat model

• It seems like the game may not give you an appreciation of the superiority of the Zero at low speeds and in turning fights: “The F4U could outperform a Zero in every aspect except slow speed manoeuvrability and slow speed rate of climb. Therefore you avoided getting slow when combating a Zero. It took time but eventually we developed tactics and deployed them very effectively... There were times, however, that I tangled with a Zero at slow speed, one on one. In these instances I considered myself fortunate to survive a battle.” (source) But in the game you seem to be able to turn as fast or faster than the Zero if you use your flaps.

• The game doesn’t seem to model the ability to sneak up on / surprise the enemy, except perhaps for the fact that planes below a certain altitude don’t show up on radar. Your personal radar is totally unrealistic: planes didn’t have those. And when you watch instructional films from the time or read accounts of the combat you realize how much just spotting the enemy and correctly identifying them was a part of winning a fight. For example, coming out of the sun to surprise the enemy.

• The game doesn’t give you an appreciation for the fact that engagements were typically between teams of planes, and the dynamics of those team engagements. It’s like comparing playing soccer 1v1 vs. playing in an 11v11.

• The flaps making you able to turn so sharply seems unrealistic and over-powered, it would be interesting to have a difficulty setting to t

Unrealistic aspects of the AI

• I get the sense that the AI pilots are sometimes programmed to fly straight after you get behind them. It seems random, like some AI pilots will do it and others will never stop maneuvering to try to get behind you.

Mission-specific thoughts

• How I would order the difficulty of the missions, from least to most difficult:

  • Flight School

  • Bomb Base

  • Capture Island

  • Scramble

  • Flying Fortress

  • Divine Wind

Flight School

• Try to see how close you can get to flying behind the yellow practice target planes.

Bomb Base

• Mission: bomb an enemy runway, but when you take off there are two enemy Zeroes inbound for your carrier, so you should defend your carrier first.

• This mission is pretty easy in the sense that it’s easy to bomb the runway. It’s harder if you set a goal of not having the Intrepid get bombed.

• I don't load any bombs at first because two or three enemy planes are incoming, so I get in a dogfight with them first.  I then land either at the carrier or my friendly base to load bombs, fly up to 5,000-10,000 feet (higher is better, it'll let you avoid enemy aircraft as you approach the enemy base), then dive-bomb the enemy runway before flying back.  Staying up high will keep you safe.

• I'm not sure how you'd go about saving your aircraft carrier when you're so outnumbered.

• Thoughts for future attempts:

  • try not loading bombs when you first start the mission, and loading less fuel (30%?) . That could make it easier for you to take out the incoming Zeroes.

Capture Island

• Mission: bomb another enemy runway, but the island has other buildings you can bomb as well. There are 3 enemy Zeroes inbound for your carrier when you start.

• You've got 3 enemy planes coming in to attack your carrier.  I haven't figured out yet how to save the carrier.  I guess you just have to be very fast at shooting down the enemy planes.

• This mission seems very similar in spirit to Bomb Base in that your target is a landing strip and you start on a carrier with enemy aircraft inbound who are pretty much surely going to damage your carrier so that you can't land on it.  It seems like the big difference is that your nearest friendly base is much further away from your target in this mission than in Bomb Base. Another difference is that there seem to be other buildings that you can bomb to get more points.

• If you get hit defending the carrier, just land on the island closest to your ship and you'll get rescued.

• Thoughts for future attempts:

  • don’t load bombs or much fuel (20%?) when you start.

Flying Fortress

• Mission: Protect a B-17 from two enemy Zeroes.

• It seems you want to go up ahead of the B-17 to get the Zeroes to chase you instead of going after the B-17. When I tried staying with my B-17 one of the Zeroes went after me and the other one went after and shot down the B-17. I'm not sure if they change targets after choosing an initial target to go after.

• Make sure to keep track of the B-17 on your radar to not stray too far from it.

• Just get the Zeroes smoking and let them crash on their own, focus on staying with the B-17.

Scramble!

• Mission: Take out the enemy bomber, don’t let it drop bombs on your base’s runway.

• I figured out the way to win: you want to gain as much altitude as you can, then dive at the bomber again and again. This has multiple advantage: 1) by staying at a very high altitude the enemy Zeroes have a much harder time engaging you because they have to gain a lot of altitude. 2) when you dive at the bomber you're moving so fast that the bomber's gunner doesn't have time to get a lot of shots at you, so you take less damage. 3) by diving close past the bomber you can aim so that your shots *have* to intersect the path of the bomber, so you can just hold down the trigger and not worry about aiming perfectly. For example, if you're approaching from the bomber's rear, you aim at a position behind the bomber, then bring your point of aim up to the front of the bomber as you get very close.I figured out the way to win: you want to gain as much altitude as you can, then dive at the bomber again and again. This has multiple advantage: 1) by staying at a very high altitude the enemy Zeroes have a much harder time engaging you because they have to gain a lot of altitude. 2) when you dive at the bomber you're moving so fast that the bomber's gunner doesn't have time to get a lot of shots at you, so you take less damage. 3) by diving close past the bomber you can aim so that your shots *have* to intersect the path of the bomber, so you can just hold down the trigger and not worry about aiming perfectly. For example, if you're approaching from the bomber's rear, you aim at a position behind the bomber, then bring your point of aim up to the front of the bomber as you get very close.

• When I beat it, I got incredibly lucky that the bomber decided to drop its bombs too early. It makes me wonder if that's scripted (i.e. if you hit the bomber enough the mission is scripted to have the bomber drop its bombs too early).

Divine Wind

• Mission: Don’t let the Intrepid get sunk by incoming kamikaze pilots.

• It seems like the 'easier' part of this mission is that the Zeroes don't maneuver to try to dodge your attacks, but they come in very fast, so you basically have to knock out each of them on your first pass.

• Having to do that for ten Zeroes in a row is way beyond my abilities right now.

• Interestingly, I seemed to get the badge for this mission even though I didn't save the carrier from all ten Zeroes. I just took out three and then landed before the carrier was sunk.

• I would love to see a playthrough by someone who can actually beat this.

• My suspicion is that the way to win is to go straight for the carrier while gaining altitude, then fly to the nearest Zero, fly over it, flip over to do a diving attack at it so that your plane passes in front of the Zero, and hope you can tag each Zero on the first pass.

• The first group of five flies slower than the second group of five. For both groups you want to perform a loop to end up behind the fighter, but for the second group you want to try to retain your speed while doing it, so you want to make your loop bigger, maybe not using flaps or not pulling so hard.

Flat Top

• Mission: Sink the enemy carrier.

• It seems straightforward to take out the enemy carrier, the tricky part is trying to save your friendly cruiser. Maybe just gun it for the cruiser from the start and try to divert the enemy Zero to attack you instead.

The Duel

• Mission: Sink the enemy carrier without letting the Intrepid get sunk.

• I think I understand how to win: don't take any bombs at first, just gain altitude over your carrier and let your friendly flak take out the enemy Zeroes (the enemy Zeroes don't seem to have bombs to go after your ships). Then land, load up bombs, and go after the enemy ships.

Questions I have

• What’s the proper way to handle a situation in which you have multiple Zeroes inbound? I feel like if it’s just you against them it’s a losing matchup, so you want to try to fight them while they’re near your friendly ships, but you also want to try to prevent them from dive-bombing your friendly ships. Should you try to engage them further away from your ships to give yourself more time to shoot them down? Should you gain altitude first so you can dive at them from behind (or from the front) and have the potential energy to be able to quickly gain altitude again to be able to dive at another plane further away?

Summary of tips from the manual

• When in a duel, "the pilot who succeeds in turning faster and shooting accurately is the likely victor".  So, not much in the way of tactics.

• You can use the flaps and landing gear as air brakes if you need to.

• They recommend 2-3 second bursts with your guns.

• Specific systems that can be damaged by hits: engine, landing gear, flaps, ailerons, fuel tanks, pilot.

• If you can't make it back to base, try to land or bail out as close to friendlies as possible.

  • Bailing out is more dangerous than landing or ditching, so prefer one of the other two options.

  • Use landing gear when landing on land (unrealistic?), don't use it when ditching in the water.

• To land, set speed to ~70 knots.

• When landing, if you push forward on the joystick (or equivalent) you can increase the effectiveness of your wheel brakes.

• When landing on a carrier, make sure your throttle is at zero when you catch the wires.

• To turn your plane on the ground without forward movement, hold the brakes and increase the throttle.  Use the down arrow for a good taxiing view.

• To refuel and repair, you need to turn off the engine with 'm'.

• There are helpful 1-page briefings for each of the missions at the end of the manual.

• Once a carrier has been hit with a bomb and is listing, you can't land on it (see the briefing for Divine Wind).

Real WW2 air combat tactics resources

• US Navy - Offensive Tactics Against Enemy Fighters 1943

  • 1:05 - Understand that your primary mission is seldom to take out enemy fighters, but rather you’ll be 1) guarding bombers and torpedo planes, and 2) attacking enemy bombers and torpedo planes.

  • 1:47 - You have to be able to fly the plane without thinking about it and instead focus your attention on watching the enemy fighter.

  • 2:04 - Make sure to complete your checklist that will make your plane ready to fight before you engage the enemy, so you don’t waste time fumbling for switches when every second counts.

  • 2:47 - You have to aim to hit the plane in a vulnerable spot or it will be much more difficult to disable it: aim for the engine, the pilot, or the fuel and oil tanks. Use the engine as the bulls-eye and then let the plane advance into your fire to hit the other spots.

  • 3:22 - You want to be in an advantageous position before the fight starts. Altitude is your wealth, be careful about spending it. Try to attack out of the sun or out of the clouds.

  • 4:00 - Attacking head-on is not good against fighters because it gives them an equal opportunity to shoot at you.

  • 4:22 - If attacking from the side you want to try to finish the attack lined up close behind them.

  • 4:35 - The stern approach is the best. You get an almost-zero-deflection shot and he can’t shoot back. All he can do is turn to try to get out of your gunsight. If he starts turning, you should match every turn, shooting a short burst when you know you’ll hit.

  • 4:59 - With the steep overhead approach, try to start with 2,000 feet of advantage.

    • If the enemy fighter has superior performance, wait a bit after he passes under you to make the dive shallower than it would be against a bomber and use your speed advantage to break away.

    • If the other plane has similar performance to your own, you can wait even longer after he passes under you to make the dive, make the dive even shallowed, and just stay on his tail. If he turns to try to make you overrun, swing to the outside of his tail. But if you go too wide, he’ll be able to turn back the other way and meet you head-on.

  • 6:10 - Don’t be overconfident. Never underestimate your enemy. Don’t attack recklessly.

  • Many fighters would start a dive on an enemy plane below without noticing that there were other enemy planes above that were now diving at him. Before you attack, check your six-o’clock high.

  • 6:42 - Another trick to watch out for is when two enemy planes stage a dogfight to try to fool you into thinking your friend needs help.

  • 7:04 - Don’t try to dogfight unless you’re sure you can out-maneuver (out-turn) the enemy.

    • If you can’t turn inside his turn, he can turn tightly back and forth, you’ll overshoot him, and he’ll end up behind you.

    • If you’re behind him and he pulls into a loop, and your loop is much bigger than his, he can end up behind you.

  • 7:39 - The best way to beat a fighter that can out-turn you is to start at least 2,000 feet above it, dive at it from behind, pass behind it, and break away in a different direction when you’re in the blind spot below the figher so that it can’t see which direction you went in.

  • 8:09 - Unless you have a superiority of numbers, you should get an altitude advantage before starting an attack, even against an inferior fighter.

  • 8:54 - The key to fighter tactics in the US Navy is teamwork. Fighters' greatest value is in escorting bombers and torpedo planes to their missions. Or having a group of fighters at a higher altitude protecting another group of fighters at a lower altitude that are going to be engaging enemy planes attacking a friendly carrier.

  • 9:23 - Teamwork begins with the two-plane section. If you are flying and spot an enemy plane at a lower altitude, you can both flip over to dive at it in quick succession, then form up again in “bracket formation” after you’ve both broken away from it.

  • 9:53 - If you and your partner are flying in parallel at some distance and an enemy fighter encounters you from the front, it’ll have to turn towards one or the other of you. The one turned towards should go head-on while his partner should maneuver into the saddle position (behind the enemy plane).

  • 10:08 - You and your partner can make simultaneous side-attacks at a plane from opposite sides. If the plane turns toward one of you, the other one should get into the plane’s 6.

  • 10:22 - One pilot can make a feint towards the enemy plane to draw its attention and keeping him occupied while his sectionmate uses the distraction to maneuver into the plane’s 6.

  • 10:40 - If your two-plane section engages an enemy two-plane section, concentrate both of your planes on the enemy wingman (whichever plane seems to be flying somewhat behind the other plane). [The video doesn’t explain why but maybe it’s because the wingman is less experienced. It might also be because the wingman is further behind, so engaging the plane further forward puts you at risk of being pursued by the plane further behind.]

  • 11:50 - If the enemy section separates, don’t separate your formation. Just both go after the wingman (the higher-up / further-back plane).

  • 12:50 - Don’t think of a section as two planes, but as a single combat unit.

  • 13:10 - Two sections makes a “team” or “division”. The success of a division depends on it following a definite plan.

  • 13:46 - Each fighter in a division must concentrate on his division leader.

  • 14:30 - If an enemy formation is in V formation, the two rearmost planes are attacked simultaneously. If in echelon, attack just the rearmost plane.

  • 15:10 - If a two-section enemy division splits and one section attempts to gain altitude, one of your division’s sections should peel off to go after it while they still have the altitude/energy advantage.

  • 15:25 - Usually you’ll have one division attack while another serves as “top cover” to serve as a lookout and extra protection.

  • 15:33 - The goal is to be able to repeatedly dive at the enemy and then go back to your original altitude, thus maintaining your energy/altitude advantage.

  • 15:50 - For this strategy to work, a chain of protective fighters from lower altitudes to higher altitudes must be maintained. If a fighter in the chain gets out of position, it creates an opening that an enemy fighter could exploit to end up on a friendly fighter’s tail.

  • 16:02 - “Breaking the chain causes the flight commander to lose tactical control, and the fight degenerates into a melee of individual dogfights.” It’s incredible hearing him say this after playing so many combat flight sims where this kind of melee is exactly what happens, which I always found incredibly confusing (I found myself asking: where’s the rhyme and reason to what’s happening?)

  • At the end it gives a great example of a realistic engagement: two 12-plane teams (A and B) go out on a Combat Air Patrol (CAP), one team (A) higher than the other (B). A group of enemy fighters and bombers are spotted heading for their carrier.

    • The higher-up team A goes out in front to engage the enemy fighter formation. It keeps one section up top, while the other two sections start going in on the highest-up/rearmost enemy fighter in the formation, one plane after another, one section after another. If an enemy section tries to break away and gain altitude, they go after it once it becomes the highest-altitude threat.

    • Team B goes after the bombers (he doesn’t go into detail but it’s presumably easier since they can’t dogfight, and they presumably follow the same pattern of one section up top and two sections running the mower against the enemy formation).

  • Comments:

    • “I remember a German ace saying there was no chivalry in fighter pilots. The most successful strategy was to sneak up behind you opponent and shoot him in the back.” Someone responds: “Most pilots got their kills that way.”

  • My thoughts:

    • This is an extremely helpful video, because it makes it clear to me what it’s reasonable to expect me to be able to do when playing Hellcats or any other WW2 sim.

• US Army Air Force - WW2 Fighter Combat Formations: Attack & Escort w Ronald Reagan -1943

  • 2:50 - The proper way to get in formation is to get up to the right airspeed and then give the plane ahead 6 rings' worth of deflection.

  • 3:18 - He gives an example of a formation that didn’t work because it required too much attention from the wingmen to maintain it.

  • 3:42 - The new “combat formation” is just four planes in line. [It’s interesting how different this is from the US Navy advice.] The planes should be 5-7 plane-widths' apart from each other.

  • TODO: Summarize the rest.

  • My thoughts:

    • The formation seems much less thought-out than the US Navy one. They say it requires less attention to maintain but it’s not clear why, it seems like in both cases each plane needs to focus on one other plane to maintain formation.

    • It’s interesting how much emphasis is put on trying to maneuver into baa position between the enemy planes and the sun. Attack out of the sun, and when defending bombers, position yourself “up sun” of them. But I don’t remember this being emphasized in the WW2 combat flight sims I’ve played.

Tips from the FAQ

• I think I’m going to wait until I’ve played through all of the missions before I read the FAQ.

Challenges for fun

1. Beating the game

   1. Go through the missions without regard for maintaining the same pilot, just trying to figure out for yourself how to beat each mission.

   2. Try to get the badge for completing each mission with a single pilot without dying.

   3. Try to reach the top rank in the game.

      • IMO this is probably easy-but-boring if you just farm an easier mission for points.

   4. Try to reach the top rank in the game while looping through the missions in sequence without skipping any, rather than farming a single easy mission.

   5. See what highest score you can get on each mission. This may involve going around to all the islands and destroying every enemy base.

2. Training exercises

   1. Play the training mission and practice shooting down the planes with single-pass attacks from every position: high and low, at every angle (e.g. coming from the other plane’s 3 o’clock high).

   2. Do a video where you’re just taking off and then landing again immediately from a runway, or from a carrier.

   3. See how long you can stay on the tail of a Zero / Frank fighter.

3. Compilation videos

   1. Compile all your footage of gun kills into a single video to make it easier to remember/learn how to aim properly.

   2. Compile all your footage of dive-bomb releases into a single video to make it easier to remember/learn when to release the bombs properly.

Hellcats: Missions at Leyte Gulf

Installing the game

• You need to apply the 1.0 → 1.0.2 patch to have sound work. You can find the patch here. The way I got it working was that I started the emulated Mac, navigated to the .hpx file (or whatever the extension is) from within the Mac’s view of my actual hard drive, extracted it into the Hellcats directory, then ran the extracted patch and deleted the extracted files.

Summary of new features

• New weapons:

  • You can carry up to six rockets, they're launched with 'n'.

  • Torpedoes (launched with 'b'). Fly under 200 knots, under 200 feet, straight-and-level to launch them. They go straight for 2 miles.

• New NPC vehicles: Submarines / tanks / trucks / a new enemy fighter type (Ki-84 "Frank").

• Ships can move.

• Most(?) missions give you wingmen.

• You can use multiple monitors (unfortunately I don’t think emulators can simulate multiple monitors).

My advice for playing

Rockets

• It seems the ideal way to use rockets is in a top-down attack just like using a bomb. If you fire them horizontally they can land well short of where you aimed. I launched my rockets starting at ~6,000 feet and dumped my bombs at ~3,000 feet after the rockets were done.

• If you’re in a swirling, barrel-roll-type top-down dive the rockets may naturally cover a more-circular area. I haven’t experimented enough to say how it compares to a flat dive, though.

• Rockets are the best way to take out tanks.

Torpedoes

• Torpedoes seem best used to take out ships that have already been stopped. I have to experiment to see if rockets can damage ships at all / cause them to stop.

Killing tanks

• Rockets are the best way to take out tanks. You will want to fly low-level to find them, stay at 50 feet if there’s enemy AA nearby. Then pop up to around 300 feet to come down at the tanks so you don’t risk getting caught in the explosion yourself.

Thoughts

• It seems like this game doesn’t maybe have the bug(?) present in HotP where shots don’t register if you’re immediately behind a Zero.

Mission-specific thoughts

Big Bang

• Mission: Destroy the enemy ammo dump buildings.

• Your approach should be to first defeat the incoming Zero attack against the carrier and then go after the objective.

• Take off with no bombs or rockets at first, 50% fuel or less, raise your flaps ASAP to not lose speed, and go straight for the incoming Zero. Try to tag it or otherwise engage it until it's clear it's chasing you rather than going after the carrier.

• This is basically just like Bomb Base or Capture Island, except in this mission you can use rockets.

• Once you take out all the Zeroes, land on the carrier and load two bombs and rockets.

• Do a top-down attack in which you dump all your rockets and bombs.

Mission X

• Mission: Destroy the enemy hanger containing a new airplane (the Frank fighter).

• I think(?) I basically beat the mission, I just got hit by friendly(?) machine-gun fire at the very end and forgot to lower my landing gear before I hit the ground, which killed me.

• The strategy is the same: draw in enemy fighters to be taken out by friendly AA, then go dive-bomb the target starting from a high altitude.

• The target is so big in this mission that you can launch your rockets/bombs from a higher altitude and start flying away before the enemy fighters over the target can get at you.

Lightning Strike

• Mission: Destroy the enemy task force (carrier and two destroyers/cruisers).

• Same strategy as the other missions: first clear out the enemy fighters, sticking closer to your friendly base / carrier to make use of friendly AA, then land to load bombs / torpedoes and go after the enemy ships.

• This was the first mission where it made sense to load and use torpedoes.

• After striking the carrier with two torpedoes I go back with bombs and rockets to try to finish it off but I get hit by AA fire. It's not clear to me how high I should stay to avoid getting hit. In reviewing the footage, the first AA burst near me is when I'm at 9300 feet, making me think that in the future I should try to release my ordnance at above 10,000 feet and then try to climb back above 10,000 feet. But 10,000 feet is very high, I doubt I could hit the carrier with a bomb at that height and I doubt rockets would do enough damage to sink it, even if they hit it. So it may make the most sense to just use torpedoes.

Scramble Two