The Cockpit

is a Japanese original video animation series, based on Leiji Matsumoto's World War II manga Battlefield. The OVA series is written and directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Takashi Imanishi and Ryousuke Takahashi. Kawajiri's Slipstream follows a Luftwaffe pilot on his mission to protect Germany's trump card: the world's first atomic bomb. Imanishi's Sonic Boom Squadron explores the last hours of a Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka pilot on August 6, 1945. Takahashi's Knight of the Iron Dragon tells the story of two Japanese soldiers in Leyte as they attempt to keep a promise. Plot Slipstream Captain Erhardt Von Rheindars, a German fighter pilot who is disgraced for abandoning his Fw 190 after his wingman, Lt. Hartmann, is shot down by three enemy Spitfires during a night recon mission, is assigned to escort a captured American B-17 bomber flying to Peenemünde. The bomber is to carry his childhood sweetheart, her scientist father and a fearsome secret cargo - a Nazi atomic bomb - and for the mission, he is given a prototype Ta 152H1, following complaints about the high altitude performance of his Fw 190. The night before the mission, Rheindars's sweetheart begs him to let enemy planes destroy the bomber before "humanity sells its soul to the devil forever", even though she and her father will die with it. On the next day, after shooting down two of three attacking RAF Spitfires with his Ta 152, Rheindars allows the final Spitfire to destroy the bomber; afterwards he shoots down the Spitfire, and flies off declaring himself "the man who did not sell his soul to the devil".