From the seat

September 28, 2026 · feature

Press C and the chase camera is gone. You're sitting in the Sparrowhawk's cockpit with the panel at your knees, the windscreen arch over your head and an orange ring glowing on the gunsight glass — and that ring tells the truth about where your guns are pointing.

Climb in

Three airframes have their offices built out, rivet by rivet: the Sparrowhawk's Spitfire, the Ironclad's P-38 Lightning and the Leviathan's B-17 flight deck. Press C in any of them and you're in the seat; press it again and the chase camera comes back. On a phone it's the VIEW button beside BOMB. The game remembers which you like, so a pilot who flies from the seat spawns in it every sortie.

The view from a Spitfire's cockpit: the riveted windscreen arch, the black instrument panel below, and on the reflector gunsight's glass an orange ring with a cobalt fighter trailing smoke inside it, banking over the island coast — The Sparrowhawk's office. A Thunderhead breaks right inside the ring, and the four fifties meet on him.

Your own aircraft is still out there around you. Look down and the Sparrowhawk's wings are painted in your team's colour; look left from the Lightning and there's an engine nacelle just past your elbow; the Fortress's four engines hang off the wings outside the side windows. The propeller in front of your nose is the faint grey shimmer a pilot actually sees, and when you fire, the flashes flicker along the wings.

A gunsight that tells the truth

A reflector sight projects its ring at infinity. However you shift in the seat, the ring stays pinned to the same point out in the sky, and you only see it through the glass. The Sparrowhawk's is the orange-red ring with range bars either side; the Ironclad's is a tighter amber ring that fits its round-topped glass.

The pip in the middle of the ring is where your rounds go. Your guns are bolted to the wings and the nose, below your eyes, and they're lined up so the bullets from every barrel meet at one point ahead: 280 metres for the Sparrowhawk's four fifties, 380 for the Ironclad's cannon. The rounds also drop on the way there. So the pip rides just under the centre of your windscreen, about half a degree low. Put it on a bandit at that range and that's where the burst lands.

Rolled over, the pip slides toward the ground, not toward the cockpit floor. The rounds fall down, whichever way up you are, and the sight knows it.

For anything crossing or closing, the gold lead diamond still shows where he'll be when your rounds arrive. Put the pip on the diamond. And mouse aim flies exactly as it always has: the aim marker moves the way your hand does, even with the wings standing on end.

The view from a P-38 Lightning's cockpit: two engine nacelles either side of the seat, the round-topped gunsight on its tan crash pad with an amber ring, and a stream of cobalt bombers crossing the windscreen trailing smoke — The Ironclad's office, an engine at each elbow. A Cobalt bomber stream crosses the nose, and the 30 mm walks up to the lead.

Look around

Hold the right mouse button (or drag the right half of a phone screen) and you turn your head. Check your six over the armour plate, watch a wingman tuck in, or follow a burning bandit down. Let go and your eyes come back to the sight.

The Fortress's pilot has no gunsight, since the chin turret belongs to the bombardier. From the left seat the HUD's cross stays, ranged to where the forward guns meet, but the Leviathan's office is really about flying the box: the lead riding ahead through the windscreen, a wingman's smoke streaming past the side window, and flak walking toward you along the bomb run.

The view from a B-17's flight deck: a wide windscreen with heavy frames, a crimson-winged bomber ahead to the right, another trailing black smoke off the left side, flak bursts ahead, and the long instrument panel across the bottom — The Leviathan's flight deck: flying the box, with a wingman burning off the port side.

The Thunderhead, the Swordfin and the jets are still waiting for their offices. Until theirs are built, C tells you so and keeps you on the chase camera.