Dunkirk, Oscars and Invasion

Over the weekend, the movie Dunkirk  took home three Oscars (Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Film Editing) from the 90th Academy Awards. Congratz to them!

To be perfectly honest, I watched the full movie only once and wasn't really interested in a lot of it, mostly the fiction-based-on-fact human drama taking place on the boats and the beach.

Thanks in part to TV trailers and early reviews, I knew what I wanted to see and that was the aerial action.

With so few operational World War II aircraft left in the world, it was a real treat to see some real, physical warbirds on the Silver Screen (I know there were a few large scale models built to stand in for stunts and other aircraft that just don't exist in flying condition) and not a obvious CGI special effects fest.

So, I was inspired to make a tribute of sorts and flew my tier V premium "Dunkirk" Spitfire to mark the occasion. Little did I know I was going to make some drama and action of my own....

Fighting In A Flight

Over on the World of Warplanes NA forums, a player named LMG, whom I have previous conversations and played with, made the top announcement a short while ago. Of course, I made the open offer bottom.

That day was today....

I had originally popped into the game, just to see if I could quickly collect Stage 1: Air Superiority rewards for the Operation Westwall event, when I received a poke from LMG. Seems he was having a bad gaming day with the event (been there, suffered that too) and asked me to flight up with him, perhaps turning the tide of bad luck that had befallen him. Sticking to my word, the first battle we flew was with our tier IX GA's....

Not bad, if I do say so myself. Okay, maybe it was Beginner's Luck? Next, we switched to Fighters....

Again, a pretty decent outcome. I would love to tell you about our last adventure in Bombers, trust me I say it was a spectacular defeat, no screenshots needed for that story.... 

Houston, We Have A Problem!

I have played World of Warplanes long enough to have encountered just about every kind of negative issue the game has to offer. Unlike some, I don't go racing to the forums, announce the problem (obvious I am here with this post, but for awareness reasons) and proceed to rip the game, players, developers and the whole company down and apart. Anyone who has spent time on the forums has read those type of posts and knows what I am talking about here.

Not my style.

Instead, I do something I doubt few people do, I try and play through it....

Operation Westwall Invasion Defense

Stealing time like a skilled thief!

First time I gave the new World of Warplanes Operation Westwall event a try, it didn't end well for me or my team. This time, I picked what I believed to be a more capable aircraft and got lucky being a Defender....

Operation Westwall Invasion Attack

So, I found enough time this morning to squeeze out my first battle for this Operation Westwall event in World of Warplanes.

I was feeling pretty confident about using my tier V Junkers Ju 88A bomber, since I performed rather well with it the last sortie I flew and went on the attack this time around.

However, it turned out that "somebody" had much different plans for me and the outcome as a whole....

Auf dieser Bombenlast

For some odd, intuitive reason, I felt like playing a bomber.

Having just completed the short Hawker line, I had a look around at the current selection of aircraft in my hangar, checking out my progress on abandoned and stalled lines across all the nations. Then, I gauged all of that against the mood I was in and for some reason, the German tier V Junkers Ju 88A felt like the right thing to play.

Turns out, it was the right choice....

Map Tour of Arctic Region

With Update 2.0.4, an old favorite, formerly known as Winter War, was returned to the game. Reworked and renamed Arctic Region, here is my first look at the only night map (and with Northern Lights too!) in the game....