***UPDATED FOR 2.7***
It's July 27th 1944 9AM. The American bombers have become daily visitors over Hungary. At the airfield of Veszprém-Jutas the Pumas are sitting in the cockpits of their Me-109Gs in full readiness, waiting to scramble as soon as the alert comes. They are listening to the loudspeakers playing their favorite song that resonates with their lives so well: "The world is just a day".
This is an epic single mission complete with voice overs, skins, briefing and kneeboard images. Lead a formation of 8 Bf-109s of the Royal Hungarian Air Force to intercept an overwhelming number of American bombers.
When I was a kid in the early '90s, my grandpa gave me a book called "The Pumas" with an Me-109 on the cover, a red screaming puma head painted on its nose. Only a decade earlier, people could have been imprisonned for possessing sucs writings. It was the memoir of a Hungarian fighter pilot, who flew and fought with the 101st Fighter Group of the Royal Hungarian Air Force, called "The Pumas". These brave young men took off day after day to face American (and Soviet) raids, often outnumbered 10 to 1. Yet, they never complained, and carried out their duty without hesitation, even if most missions were next to suicidal, and the war had obviously been lost already. I was fascinated by this book, and deeply saddened by the fact that their story has almost been erased from the books of history. The new regime after World War II persecuted these pilots, imprisonned or executed them. Only a handful lived to see their homeland free again, and started to tell their stories. With this mission, my only hope is to make their memory live on in a few more people.
