NZFF

As I make my weary way through all these sims I have .. I sometimes think "what would it have really been like" ... referring to the more war inclined offerings.
I get a small sense of that when I involved myself in a battle of Britain scenario in Warthunder ... the bombers, the low level fighters etc.
The Submarine sims (modern) I follow are even more detached ... no visual contact at all.... just fire and kill, most of the time... but with the same result.

But when I got into the tanks in war thunder, my thoughts of " what would it have really been like" changed .... because I could see instantly the result.
Little villages (towns and cities in some cases) with gardens, shops, cafes, homes ...suddenly this (or more normally) 40ton machine, appears with no interest in you or your life ...and the battle begins.
I can't begin to imagine what it was like.
So this will be my last screen along these lines. I know our dearly departed friend Ian would disagree ... but I'm sure he now knows better now.

I must admit. I never had a feeling for "War Games" of any sort, (except for fighting off the advancing Aliens from the Planet Zorg in my Photo-Torpedo equipped Inter-Stellar Star Fighter in my dreams at night), having experienced the destruction of the City of London by the German Hun whilst we lived there.
I follow the Internet News around the World during the course of the day, and the result of Man's inhumanity to Man leaves me disappointed, to say the least..... ....!
All my Flight Simming time has always been spent with small, General Aviation aircraft like my trusty Cessna 150 Aerobat and Bensen Gyrocopter.
The camouflaged stuff reminds me too much of the Luftwaffe.
I'm off to explore the devastating Wildfires in Southern California in my Cessna 150 now, with my copy of FSX...>>>

Ventura and Santa Paula: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42263237

"Exploration" is what I do in the Sim every day...No bombs or bullets involved!!

(...or annoying passengers in Aluminium Tubes!) .... ...!

Paul... ....!

Over the years, I as a German was in Wolgograd (ex. Stalingrad) , Rostov on Don, Moscow, Kiev, in Luanda, Angola in the heat of the civil war, in Vietnam... 11 years after the war... and I have a more bad feeling when i see such "Simulations" from military stuff. It is one thing "to play" those kind of things and another to get involved in the real stuff or after the war to see what happend. I was by myself active draftee Soldier on the false side, the NVA, the National Peoples Army in the last year of it´s existence. Every man in the NVA was in September/Oktober 1989 very allone with one question. With the question what to do if we became the order to fight against our own people in Leipzig, in November 1989, days before the wall was broken... This is one thing, that bothers me for the rest of my live and I am so happy, that the end for the GDR was faster, as this scenario. In reality, nobody in the east german army was involved. The biggest thing ever in the history off all german army´s was, that the NVA, a true german army does nothing 1989 to save Honecker and Co. and the GDR ... but this historical point of view is in Germany long forgotten and not recognized. They let us, the soldiers in 1989 in the National Peoples Army with this question alone. We old hands from the NVA are not happy about this. Without the courage of our man, 1989 in East Germany to do nothing but some sabotage that we as a combat engineer-unit capable to destroy barricades cant go to Leipzig, it had been a bloodbath. The stress for us was (end sometimes is, if i see "documentations" about "the Eastgerman revolution 1989") a real factor.
The most worse simulation in my eyes is from Russia. "Syrian warfare."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrYcWS8D5dk

This is the first time, I have talking about this for years... Sorry for my bad english.

What a haunting picture...
I had a "What it would have been like" moment, visiting Budapest earlier this year.
I felt I knew it quite well from flightsim visits (Dam' good scenery!)

From Buda Castle this is what you see looking over the tranquil Danube:



While taking more pictures, a tour group passed by and the guide said:
"Where that gentleman is standing (looking at me) a Soviet T-54 tank stood in 1956..."



"it fired on the city below, killing hundreds of citizens in the streets"

The thought troubled me for some time after.
We are truly privileged in NZ, not to have lived through that kind of history.
Long may we sustain this way of life.

Thanks for the thoughts and follow up gents.