Keeping Intruder warfare alive through computer sims

Me and my Strike Fighters A-6 Simulator

      Ah the feeling of flying "Nape", dodging SAMs, outwitting MIGS and delivering bombs on target. Though the A-6 Intruder has been gone from the Navy for 20 years now, it's still important to keep the memory of both the aircraft and the men who flew it "downtown" into "Indian Country" from 1965 to 1991.

     Computer flight simulations have come a long way since my first PC, the Amega 500, and the crude computer games of the 1980's like F-19 Stealth Fighter or F-15 Strike Eagle. Today we have PC sims like the Strike Fighter family which bring utra-realism to computer flight that only the A-6 crews wished for their simulators. In fact, the A-6 Intruder crews at NAS Whidbey Island in Washington used the most crude and rudimentary graphics of their day, nothing more than model ships and targets displayed with video cameras.

An AVSIM model of an A-6F cockpit.

Modern flight sims today can be played on your Smart Phone as well as lap top and super designed desk top systems and they act and behave just as the real aircraft would in combat; including weapons that screw up like bombs that hang and refuse to drop or missiles that self detonate too early and cause aircraft damage. It's not only an ideal way to experience what the Intruder crews went through, it's also an important educational tool as well; helping writers like myself and Stephen Koontz of "Flight of the Intruder" fame to flesh out for the reader what old style bomber attack warfare was about. The first time the Intruder was shown in computer Games was Spectrum Hollowbyte's version of "Flight of the Intruder" and no way was that as detailed as the modern Strike Fighter versions.