There are seldom any servers in DCS World that have the community that surrounds Enigma's Cold War (ECW) server, a community that is passionate about a certain timeframe and that is willing to use period-accurate loadouts to enrich the experience. I hadn't been in Enigma's server ever since Heatblur took over server operations, so I decided to change that.
Today I found myself flying in ECW with my good friend Hueman acting as my GCI, but we found a very interesting scenario unfolding in front of us. Right as we joined, we notice that there were barely any red players flying, and of those even less were flying top cover. We decided to change that and help the underdogs by joining the Redfor forces and provide a bit of a boost to their fight against Bluefor.
For context, at the time there were so many F-4E Phantoms flying for Bluefor that it was impossible for Redfor aircraft to even establish basic top cover for the helicopters flying down low. Every Redfor player was flying fighter aircraft, since going out in an attacker would be an exercise in futility. I joined these players in my Mirage F1CE, a plane everyone else also seemed to be using when I was there.
After fighting with the control mappings for a bit, I got my aircraft ready and sortied away. Hueman guided me to the closest contacts on radar, which included an ongoing furball between two Phantoms and a Mirage. Right before I got there, and in visible range, I see the Mirage get shot down by a Phantom, leaving me alone against two very angry fighters looking for their next prey.
I get into a dogfight with who seemed to be the lead aircraft, positioned myself behind them and push the trigger, only to find that I had left my master arm switch on the safe position. I quickly scrammed to arm my missiles and get the plane on C + M/SW mode (Cannon + Matra/Sidewinder) as I try to establish a rate fight with the enemy Phantom.
While I could manage this rate fight pretty well with the lead Phantom, their wingman popped right behind me and aimed for a missile shot. But as this is happening, an A-4E pilot appeared from thin air behind the wingman Phantom and shot an AIM-9B that, unfortunately, found its mark. This marked the end of my first sortie.
My second sortie went much better. I took off as fast as I could and was vectored by Hueman towards a single F-4E Phantom that seemed as it was conducting an air to ground sortie. I approached the lone Phantom, and we merged over the mountains and engaged in a very short dogfight. The enemy pilot disengaged very quickly and ran away, which gave me a very easy shot with my AIM-9Bs. I shot one, it missed. I shot the second, and it tracked perfectly, but it missed the target due to it running out of energy before impact.
Frustrated, I engaged my afterburner all the way and went in for a gun solution. As I approached them, I squeezed my trigger and hit his right wing, sending him into an uncontrolled spin into the ground. That was the first kill of the day. Unfortunately, I ran out of luck the moment I landed at Al-Dumayr, since it was captured right as I touched down. This spawned ground units that proceeded to annihilate me.
There were two other sorties, one in which I managed to bag a Phantom with a somewhat sneaky AIM-9B shot before being shot down by enemy air defense as I defended against two incoming Phantoms, and another where I got stuck in the best dogfight of the session against a very experience Phantom pilot that knew how to manage their energy pretty well. We stayed in that dogfight for quite a while, and just as they were going to shoot me down, a cheeky F-5E pilot snuck in and stole their kill, me.
Enigma's Cold War is a blast, and the experience only gets better if you have some friendly eyes in the skies guiding you through the action while your team is the underdog. If you haven't yet, make sure you drop by the server and try it out for yourself, you will not regret it.
About the writer:
Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos
Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000s, leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities, but only started being active around the mid 2010s. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as the co-founder and writer ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy
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