The first step before you take to the skies is learning how to fly or, more accurately, deciding how to control your plane. Fly-by-Mouse that you're familiar with in AB and RB doesn't work here, so your going to have to try something new. Below are the different approaches that you should consider.

The classic implement and a prefial that you will be using, regardless of whatever else you have plugged in to your computer to fly. Any secondary or tertiary actions that won't fit on your Joystick or controller should go on your keyboard, reserving the important controls to a button near your hands. I often have my gear toggle, menu and comms, radar controls, and bomb-bay door toggle on my keyboard, along with many other functions.

If you're too poor to own even a game console controller, there is still the option of using your mouse. It's very different from the aim-mouse that your used to, so bear with my explanation: Imagine it like a top-down perspective of your flight stick. Moving the mouse around moves the stick to that angle, moving your control surfaces and thus your plane's aspect. It's not the most efficient way of flying a plane and you will have difficulty competing against others using controllers or HOTAS. I have seen some players master the mouse for sim battles, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Not everyone can afford a crazy HOTAS setup, but any old controller is well within many pilot's arsenal. Any old Xbox or Playstation controller can be hooked up to your computer and used to control your plane, using the joystick to control your aircraft. This is a much better way to do it and I would consiter it the bare minimum for survival in Sim, but do be warned. Controllers lack buttons and the small size of their joysticks lack fine movements. You might be able to fly around well enough, but fine movements required for accurate gunnery is going to be difficult.

Standing for Hands On Throttle And Stick, HOTAS is the preferred control implement for flying, basically being what real pilots use to fly real planes (more or less). Allowing for very fine movements with the flight stick and often lots of easily accessible buttons at your finger tips, it's simply the best way to fly. It is an investment, however, as some HOTAS setups can be quite expensive, though don't feel too intimidated. Rudders pedals, more often than not, are totally unnecessary as many flight sticks twist to emulate rudder control. You can find some used or even market HOTAS for a few hundred dollars, but if you're dropping thousands of dollars for a Warthog or F-18 Flight Stick, then you should be playing DCS or IL-2 and not Warthunder for your sim fix.

While not a required feature and completely optional, head tracking is a very useful tool for situational awareness, literately moving your head around to move the camera.

Tuning your Joystick axis is absolutely essential for keeping control over your aircraft allowing for fine adjustment with small movements as well as big adjustments for larger movements. It may sound daunting at first, but there really only two things that you need to do:

For Pitch, Yaw, and Roll, crank this up to 100%. If you don't do this, your control inputs will be delayed and make fine adjustments for basically anything a pipe dream. 90% of new players troubles about Sim being impossible to control is because of this. War Thunder defaults you with low sensitivity, so I cannot stress enough how much this will change your life.

Axis linearity can simply be described as an S-curve where smaller inputs of the axis invoke very fine movement. As more and more input is placed on the axis, the curve gets steeper and more input invokes very large movements. This allows for the fine movement necessary for gunnery without sacrificing the large movements needed for air combat maneuvering, a reality which is may be more difficult to achieve with axis linearity at 1:1. Personally, I like my linearity at 25%, but don't feel too pressured to get this right the first time.

Engine Management is an important part of flying the piston powered warbirds of the second world war, and one which you can chose to ignore or embrace. War Thunder will default to full automatic control, which works fine for most planes and situations, but sometimes manually controlling aspects of the engine will provide measurable advantages in operation, especially for picky engines which like to overheat or planes where you can pull of some funky stunts with the pitch of your prop. Whatever the case may be, if your interested in MEC, below is where you can find out what common controls do.

In real life, mixture controls how lean or rich the fuel is as compared to air coming into the engine. As a general rule, the lower you are, the thicker the air, and the richer you can make the mixture. The higher you are, the thinner the air, and the leaner you have to make your mixture. In war thunder, fuel mixture does absolutely nothing on 99% of aircraft short a few select spitfires. If you don't know if your plane simulates mixture, set your mixture to 75%. This should work at most altitudes.

The most important control for your engine and the one you will alter all the time. The radiator controls the cooling flaps for your oil and/or water radiators, opening up to cool your engine or closing them to reduce drag. General rule is to keep them open when you're climbing or when the engine's overheating and close them for cruise and combat. Some aircraft have very efficient cooling flaps or other ways of counteracting the drag of the opening them up (I.e. P-51, Fw-190), allowing you to keep them open with little penalty. Personally, I rarely close the radiators fully, leaving them slightly ajar at 10-15% to keep things cool.

The second most important control for your engine and the one you will pray has automatic control. Prop Pitch alters the blade angle of your propeller as it cuts through the air. A higher pitch means a flatter blade, resulting in higher engine RPM and generally more thrust at the cost of drag. Lower pitches means a narrower blade, resulting in lower engine RPM and generally lest thrust, but low drag. It's a balance between thrust and drag when it comes to choosing the correct prop pitch and, I'll be honest, one that I can't understand. The general guide is to set your prop pitch to 80-95% if you're climbing or in WEP, 50-75% if you're cruising, and 0-25% if you're gliding or diving. Some planes also require pitch control to manage RPM, preventing the engine from over revving and breaking apart. If you don't want to worry about this, most German planes automatically control Prop Pitch. If your plane does not and you don't understand prop pitch, I heavily suggests that you don't use MEC.

Prop Feathering is can be considered as a limit release to Prop Pitch, allowing you to further angel the prop to be flatter or even narrower. This is often used if an engine is lost. feathering the prop to reduce drag as much as possible. If this is the case, you'll know that your prop is feathered if it's barely spinning.

The supercharger in a plane is similar to the superchargers found in muscle cars, just serving two completely different purposes. The supercharger is an engine powered implement which sucks in additional air and compresses it into the cylinder. In cars this is used to generate more power, but in aircraft it allows an engine to operate more efficiently at higher altitudes, where the air is thinner and a booster is necessary to suck in enough air to produce power. Most allied aircraft have manually controlled superchargers where you have to change the gears manually as you fly higher and higher. While there are guides that can tell you at what altitude to change your supercharger gear, the general rule is two swap gears if your plane feels a little low on power at higher altitudes. Remember to change back to a lower gear at low altitude, however, as superchargers use engine power to function and being in too high a gear will sap power rather than give it.

Torque is defined objectively as the tendency of a force to rotate an object, but I'm going to define it this way: Torque is how big your muscles are while horsepower is how agile your limbs are. Big trucks need torque to carry big loads while fast cars need more horsepower to reach higher speeds. A plane needs torque and horsepower, but such things have consequences on how a plane handles, especially on single engine aircraft. The torque of the engine will roll the plane in the direction the prop is spinning, requiring either pilot input or trimming to counteract this effect. This is less noticeable on smaller engines and completely absent on most multi-engine aircraft or contra-rotating props, but especially torquey engines (Such as that found on the Fw-190 D) will be more violent in this rolling effect, requiring more input that worsen's controlability and can exhaust the pilot. Rather than constantly yanking the stick to one side, the best solution is to trim out this torque effect.

Trimming is automatic fine input on a control surface that would normally require manual input by the pilot. A common use of trimming is when the plane pitches up or down naturally in level flight. Trimming the elevator so that the plane remains level eliminate the need to the pilot to constantly apply pressure to the stick to combat such things, increasing controlability. Think of it like zeroing a rifle. An unzeroed rifle means that the shooter will constantly have to account for the weapon shooting off to one side, too high, or too low, but a properly zeroed rifle will always hit where the sights line up, allowing the shooter to focus on aiming for the perfect shot.

Many aircraft with trim control can change their trim in flight via small flaps, but many aircraft, especially small fighters, have trim tabs which cannot be altered in flight. Before joining a server to sortie in your favorite aircraft, please do the research on the WT wiki to see if your aircraft has in-flight controllable Trimming. If not, then that means that your aircraft either doesn't have trim at all (normal for old aircraft) or must be trimmed in test flight. If this is not done, then your aircraft will not be pre-setup to handle engine torque or pitching in level flight, reducing controlability and possibility hampering your top speed.

If your aircraft uses trim tabs instead of trim flaps, the only way to edit them is to do it in test flight mode. Here, you can control them normally in flight, allowing you to come to cruising speed and trim your plane as normal. Once you believe that your plane is trimmed to your liking, there is a button in controls that allows you to save your trim setup. You should do this for every plane you intend to use in Sim, even if it already has in-flight controllable trim.

When trimming your aircraft in test battle, I would sugest for a pilot to first climb to 1,500 meter altitude or 3,000 meters altitude and go as fast as their aircraft will let them go at 100% throttle (or whatever throttle where your engine won't overheat). This is your cruise speed and you may start trimming. When trimming, you should look for the following:

1. No or minimal pitching up or down in level flight. The nose should stay stable on the horizon when the flight stick is let go.
   
2. No or minimal rolling to the left or right in level flight. The nose should stay stable on the horizon when the flight stick is let go.
   
3. The slip indicator (often a little ball between two posts located under your artificial horizon in the cockpit) should be perfectly centered when in level flight.

If all of the following is done, not only should your plane fly straight and true without unnecessary input by the pilot, but it should also fly slightly faster as drag is minimized. Consider it an extra reward for going through the prep-work!

Finally, your ready to fly; but with what, against what, and where? Unlike RB where you are forced into a single aircraft, SB allows players to take their full roster of aircraft out on a sortie like in AB, but unlike either, SB has individual servers rather than a random queue for pilots. Each server has a BR range for the aircraft that you are allowed to sortie, along with which countries you may sortie for and for which side. Once you find the server and BR you wish to participate in, grab the aircraft you want to fly and join!

Now that you're in the match, you have the choice of what you want to do before you take off. While it's always an option to fill your plane full of fuel and set your destination to hell, it's not always the most efficient.
Before takeoff, take a look at the map and current objectives. What's going on in the match at this current time? Is there a ground battle that needs air support? Are their bombers who are spotted in a specific area? Is there an air superiority point that needs occupying? There are a number of objectives mission objective which you can do, some of which are listed below:

• Intercept/Escort Recon Aircraft: A recon aircraft is sortied by one side to fly over enemy airspace for a time before leaving. They're normally medium bombers flying around 3,000 meters, orbiting around a grid square for some time before leaving. Alone, they are often difficult to spot, but once spotted make easy prey as they rarely fly escorted. Perfect mission profile for new players or air defense fighters.
  
• Intercept/Escort Bombers/Attackers: Bomber or Attack aircraft are sortied by one side to fly over an enemy target to attack ground targets before leaving. They range between medium bombers to lighter attackers and dive bombers, flying around 3,000 meters or at low altitude for bombers and attackers respectively. Due to them being in large groups, they are very easy to spot but harder to attack due to massed defensive gunners. Furthermore, players like to flock around bombers, either believing them to be easy prey or believing players distracted by the bombers to be easy prey. As AI kills show up on the kill feed, everyone will know generally where you are be warned.
  
• Support Ground Battle: A clash between amassed ground units. Artillery, tanks, pillboxes, AAA, the lot. Ground Attackers and frontline bombers like to hang around these areas for obvious reasons and because of that, make easy and distracted prey. For ground attackers, don't linger around the area for too long as once enemy players know that your there, you're going to get hunted in due time.
  
• Destroy/Escort Convoy: In the rear of friendly or enemy lines are convoys which travel around to different areas. The preferred target of interdiction bombers and attackers, they're safer to attack as enemies will have to guess which convoy your attacking and may even confuse you for attacking the frontline battle. The greatest difficulty of attacking these targets is simply crossing the border without being noticed and evading anti-aircraft fire. Just like in RB, they can sometimes be full fidelity vehicles. harder to kill and more dangerous.
  
• Seek and Destroy Aircraft Carrier: On some maps there will be an aircraft carrier somewhere. Once players find it, it will be a mission objective to destroy it. As with all ships, anti-aircraft fire is a constant danger and a large bomb load or torpedo is needed to destroy them. They are rarely escorted by fighters, however, and make easy prey for anti-ship bombers or Fritz-X users.
  
• Win air superiority in zone: An area on the map is declared a zone of air superiority and it's king of the hill. A player being on the point will sway it into their favor with more players making it move faster. Once the circle is filled, the zone is captured. This is a clear hot zone for fighters and dogfight, so if you want to get mixed into the action, go here.
  
• Strategic Bombing: Just like RB and AB, there are bombing points far behind enemy lines that need destroying. These missions are often the easiest and safest as bombers fly at high altitudes and can move very far away before interceptors can arrive. Sadly, it is also the most boring.
  
• Airfield Bombing: Unlike RB and AB, the different airfields on the map have four facilities that can be destroyed to harm the airfield's operation, if not destroy it outright. I've forgotten how destroyed facilities affect their operation, but a general rule: aim for important looking stuff to the left and right of the runway, don't bomb the runway, beware airfield AAA, and beware AI fighters that sortie to protect airfields.

Here are some other missions and flight plans that you might go out on that, while not serving any specific objective, can still be fun:

• Combat Air Patrol: The standard profile for any fighter pilot looking to score some kills. Normally patrolling the border as BARCAP, your job is to intercept anyone flying across the border who isn't friendly. This is generally the time where you can intercept other players while they're still cruising to a target.
  
• Fighter Sweep: A profile used during crushing airborne offensives such as the Battle or Britain, Operation Barbarossa, and the Six Day War. This is the deliberate stalking of enemy airfields to destroy top cover fighters and catch enemy aircraft as they are taking off or landing. While this does risk being engaged by airfield AAA, you can easily catch people low, slow, and utterly distracted. Such a mission profile does, however, attract a lot of hate.
  
• Free Hunt: Popular German strategy and a common flight plan for players, Free Hunt is exactly what it sounds like: looking around areas of high activity, looking for a scrape.
  
• Pathfinding: An absolutely essential job and one often undervalued by players. Objectives, airfields, and bombing points don't start spotted like in RB and AB as they must by spotted manually. This mission profile often involves flying at low to medium altitudes, combing enemy airspace for unspotted targets of opportunity such as airfields, bombing points, convoys, and AI recon or bombers that haven't crossed the border yet. This best done with a high-speed aircraft with long endurance such as the Do 335 or Mosquito.

[WIP]
TL;DR Bind a key for "Follow Me/Guide on Me!" This is your basic IFF. When a player calls this out, respond with this to declare your position to your team Marco Polo style. Trust me, this is a major time saver and life saver.

[WIP]

[WIP]
TL;DR Flying low makes it easier to spot targets as the're easy to see against the sky, but your in a worse position. Flying high gives you a superior position but it is often difficult to impossible to spot targets below you.

[WIP]
Look behind you and use your ears. If you hear an engine note that isn't yours, there's probably someone climbing up behind you.

[WIP]
TL;DR A pair of AI fighters will spawn on airfields if you grow too close. They aren't the best, but they can be a threat or waste your time if your intercepting. General rule is that if there are two aircraft orbiting an airfield that's yours, they're probably friendly AI. 3, and there's probably an enemy mixed in.

WIP
TL;DR Airline simulator. If you trimmed your aircraft to the point that you can take your hands off the stick and go watch the whole Godfather trilogy without crashing, you've won.

[WIP]
TL;DR Try not to crash.