The preface to the manual was written by Richard Halsey Best, who commanded the dive bomber squadron that sank two Japanese aircraft carriers during the Battle of Midway.

The Battlehawks 1942 manual includes details Fighter Tactics instructions, such as deflection shooting or how to perform overhead approaches from the same or the opposite course.

Allied players flying Grumman F4F Wildcats would find themselves often vastly outnumbered in a desperate attempt to save their carriers from waves of Japanese Aichi D3A Val dive bombers.

The graphics throughout the game use a sprite-based (so-called) 3D engine, which is based on bitmaps which are rotated and scaled depending on the player's view.

Muzzle flashes and tracers were present, the aircraft took hits and caught fire, smoked or exploded with the pilot bailing out with a parachute.

The performance characteristics of the various aircraft were realistically modeled so that, for example, the more nimble Japanese Zeros were very good at outmaneuvering U.S. fighters such as the F4F Wildcat.

It's 127 pages of history, tactics, theory and aviation lore and includes fold-out maps of the battles in which you can fly.