Last night my son saw some books on a shelf that he hadn't looked at yet.  So I took down volume one of USAAF Fighters of World War Two.  I didn't try to read it to him, but they have lots and lots of pictures that completely fascinated him.  We came across one plane that was fitted with pontoons, which I explained to him.  I told him that meant it could go on land or water.  "Then it's a amphibian airplane?" he said.  He was mighty proud of himself for figuring that out.

He kept asking to see his favorite, so I had to get down volume two to see "the one with the shark face on it."


Makes me nostalgic for the old days when I spent untold hours playing Aces of the Pacific and Aces Over Europe.  Sometimes I want to hunt down an old native DOS machine just so I can play Aces again.  I tried running it in DOXBox once, but it didn't work.  I couldn't get any sound.

I also had the AotP 1946 add-on.  The 1946 disk had the game continue under the premise that the two atomic bombs were never used, and Japan had to be invaded conventionally.  It had several new planes in it that were still under development when the war ended, and so never saw combat during WWII.  Some of them were still around during the Korean War, though.  There were a few extremely powerful kamikaze interceptors that I really liked.  I also tinkered with some of the settings just for fun.  Like I changed the P-51 so that instead of being armed with six 50-cal machine guns, it was armed with two 50-cals and two 20mm cannon.

Right at the very end of the 1946 campaign you got to fly a P-80 Shooting Star, but I never could get used to it.  It just moved too fast.

I think my favorite plane from the game was the P-38 Lightning.  I always seemed to be much more effective in it than in any of the others.  But then I also really liked the P47 Thunderbolt.

The good old days, when my biggest decision was if I should play Aces or Doom.  Sigh...