Until now the friendly (virtual) skies of MS Flight Sim have hosted almost every kind of unarmed and non-belligerent aircraft imaginable. With the upcoming release of Microsoft's new Combat Flight Simulator (CFS) things are preparing to get decidedly less friendly.

CFS will give you the opportunity to fly almost any of the existing aircraft now available for the Microsoft Flight Simulator series, at least version 5.1 to FS98 (MSFS)- and that's a heck of a lot of airplanes! (I know of at least one submarine out there)!

Over the approximately 10 year existence of MSFS, hobbyists, aviation buffs and real pilots alike have built almost any type of aircraft you can think of. There are professional developers who will sell you a CD full of generally higher quality planes for a few bucks too. But many, many more are available free for the downloading from a number of specialty sites on the Net.

Microsoft says CFS will import most of the planes that are already out there by doing a quick conversion job on them. You'll even be able to add guns to them! This brings up the interesting proposition of flying your Cessna 150 in the Battle of Britain against the Luftwaffe in their ME-109's.

That's right! Any time you choose to import an A/C from the MSFS livery into CFS you will have the option of adding guns to it. How many and which types is still an MS state secret as far as I know. Will they include gun turrets or just wing and or nose mounted guns? What caliber, machine guns and/or cannon? It's anyone's guess right now.

Any way you look at it this promises some interesting furballs over war torn London in England's virtual skyways. Sopwith Camels versus Focke Wulfe's, F18 versus Messerschmitts, 767s versus Dorniers? Forgive me, I digress.

Well, kidding aside I figured that to give folks a bit of a head start in this area I'd pick a few really good examples out of the bin and let them know where to find them. I have been adding to my plane collection for some time now (mostly military types) and out of a 30 megabyte stable I have on a zip disk, I have picked out a few of the best warplanes to get folks started and to save you some time too. Who knows? Maybe there's one of your favorites here.

So here they are: All (except the A-26) have custom panels, paint jobs, sound and flight models. And a lot of effort has gone towards producing as close as is possible to a virtual replica of the original aircraft's specifications.

1.) North American P51 Mustang.

"In 1939 the Royal Air Force asked North American Aviation to quickly produce the existing but obsolete P-40 Warhawk. Instead the company designed, built and flew a new airplane in just 117 days. This airplane is known as the P-51 Mustang. The Mustang has gained the reputation as the best all around fighter-bomber probably ever built."

This is my personal favorite, "it's got the looks" and the sound AND a very nice flight model. Special attention to detail in this one, from the paint job, (based on a flying P51) right down to the real merlin engine sound. This plane is freeware. And comes with this note:

"This design as well as previous ones done by FSD incorporate many new techniques. The Mustang P-51 was designed using just parts and components, no structures were used. The flight characteristics have been specially tuned to give as real a feeling as possible to that of the actual aircraft. Get it at Flightsim.com

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2.) Grumman F6F Hellcat.

by Oscar Everitt also includes panel and sounds and includes this information: "The Hellcat shot down more than 5000 Japanese Zero's in WWII. More aerial kills than any other fighter in history. This aircraft was flown by the Commanding Officer of BF-20 in 1946.

Mr. Everitt is retired a little over a year now and he says: "I build my aircraft and panels for my grand kids and myself. We fly together on the Internet." He was in US Navy back in the 1950's. At Miramar N.A.S. and the U.S.S. Lexington. You can find his planes at www.flightsim.com and The Ark. He adds: "A lot of folks seem to enjoy them. Its really nice to hear from someone who flew them in real life, thanking me for the nostalgia trip. It don't get any better than that."

3.) Douglas Invader A-26b.

Obviously not all WWII A/C were single engine fighters, witness the P-38 Lightning. But an attempt to make a fighter bomber (or attack a/c) resulted in Douglas coming up with a twin engine craft that was very fast and powerful: if it couldn't out run the fighters it could turn around and knifefight with them. (At least that was the idea).

Quite a few of these remain in service today and are being used for things like water bombing in forest fire suppression. Here is a very nice example of this unsung bird by Gerry Schmidt. This one unfortunately does not have a panel for it yet but I'm sure some helpful soul will build one eventually.

4.) F4U Corsair

Another one by Oscar Everitt Watch out for this one, it has a tricky flight model and will lose lift and stall in an eyeflash. It also has a tailhook for carrier landings, though this is not for the faint of heart.

5.) Messerschmitt BF 109G-6.

One for the opposition. This plane is as Eric Hartmann (who downed a total of 352 planes) had it painted in summer of 1942 on the eastern front. By Tom Miller

Since the this article was published I have heard further from Gerry Schmidt and he has recently created a B26c version with full panel, real R 2800 engine sounds as well as a new paint sceme. The result is spectacular. File to look for is b26cfs98.zip.