It's important to remember that in each level, you fight to achieve level objectives with the help other air, water and land squadrons backing your squadron up from other points on the level map. As you are technically the commander of all forces in a level, you can directly control almost every vehicle, craft, or gun in a mission, no matter the squadron.

Using the E and R buttons, you can switch from controlling an aircraft carrier in one squadron, to controlling a plane in another squadron. Or, you can shift from manning a gun on land, to commanding a battleship at sea. You can shift perspectives at any point in a level---though you will likely only change a perspective for a reason (for instance: aircraft carriers don't have excellent weapons, so when they're attacked by battleships, it's best to switch an airplane perspective to fend off the boats). Game vehicles share the same WASD control scheme for maneuverability, but each has specialty controls for certain purposes.

In levels, you often have to put out multiple fires at once. All too often, while you're commanding a battleship in a sea battle, a radio communication will inform you that bombers are attacking one of your airfields. Or, similarly, while you're trying to bomb a building with an airplane, you'll be informed that your side's battleships are under attack. Sometimes, your enemy will attack three different parts of a level map. You can rotate between squadrons to handle all the attacks, but that can get complicated. In fact, you might say that far too much of your time is spent organizing your troops. Or, alternatively, one of the more unique/challenging/aspects of the franchise is juggling all of these different forces at once.

The best way to handle the multiple enemy attacks is to press your Tab button, which will take you to a tactical map of a level with the location of all your squadrons on it. On the map, you can order any of your squadrons to fight in, or protect areas of the map that you're too busy to defend.

While you're fighting a battle, radio transmissions will keep you informed of the progress your unsupervised forces are making in their assigned battles. Still, you should check in with them from time to time, or you'll lose track of what they're doing. While playing, I often neglected my duties as commander of one squadron so that I could command another. Frequently, while helping one squadron complete a level objective, I would find out that I had failed another objective because I wasn't paying close enough attention to another troop under my command. You truly have to be a gifted manager to play Battlestations: Pacific or else you won't be able to handle the chaos of some levels.