Charmy Down

Charmy Down puts you in the cockpit at a real Second World War fighter station. RAF Charmy Down sat on a plateau just north of Bath, Somerset, and the airfield in the game is built from the Air Ministry's 1944 site plan and wartime aerial photographs. Runways, perimeter track, dispersal pens, blister hangars, the watch office and the pillboxes along the wire are all where they really were, and the countryside falls away to Bath and the Swainswick valley below. Bath and Bristol are laid out as they really are, with the Royal Crescent, Pulteney Bridge, the Floating Harbour, Clifton Suspension Bridge and Temple Meads as landmarks to steer by. Start with the Hurricane and a thirteen-mission campaign that runs from the Bristol Blitz of 1940 to the Baedeker raids on Bath in April 1942. Ground control radios a vector, height and raid size. You scramble from dispersal with your section, climb to angels, find the raid, and have to break it up before the bombers reach the city. Heinkel He 111s, Junkers Ju 88s and Dornier Do 17s fly in vics and night streams with defensive gunners, Messerschmitt Bf 110s escort them, and every bomber that gets through leaves visible damage on the town and counts against you. Prove yourself over the first five missions and a flight of Spitfires arrives at the station for you to fly. Flying is fun first and believable second. Pull too hard and you will stall and lose it, but the aircraft is forgiving enough to enjoy. Eight machine guns with limited ammunition, fuel that burns with the throttle, and damage that brings smoke and failing controls mean every sortie has a cost. Landing is a skill in its own right: flaps, undercarriage, a proper approach, touchdown, and a taxi back to the pens where the ground crew refuel and re-arm you in game time. Pilot fatigue builds with flight time and combat and dulls your reactions, so between sorties you climb out, walk the station on foot, rest in the crew hut or the mess, take the jeep round the perimeter, visit the watch office for the next briefing, or man a Vickers gun in a pillbox. The station lives. Ground crew work at the pens, pilots wander between hut and mess, a lorry and bowser trundle the perimeter track, sentries stand at the pillboxes, and an aircraft flies circuits when no raid is on. Weather and time of day change the sky: clear summer afternoons, overcast, rain, snow, and moonlit nights with searchlights sweeping for the bombers over Bath. Barrage balloons stand over the cities and around the field. Play solo, or host a flight and have friends join you online. The host runs the raid and each pilot flies their own aircraft, with AI wingmen filling the rest of the section and answering to orders to form up, engage or return to base. A training course covers circuits, navigation, air firing and a night circuit, and free flight lets you explore the valley at any hour and in any weather. Two difficulty settings, playable on phones and tablets as well as a PC, and your progress is saved between visits.