Turnout rebounded 40% this year, no doubt stimulated by each entrant receiving eight professionally-printed aircraft cards, including new-to-the-series Re-2000 and I-16 tip 18s featuring Martin Scott's beautiful artwork. The first four rounds consisted of single dogfights featuring evenly-matched planes, resulting in a lot of close games. Scott Beall's Round 1 victory was the closest, as after eight turns he was still locked in a 2-2 tie with Linda Pattison and won based on more time remaining (on the chess clock used as a tiebreaker in Turns 7-8).

After the four rounds of double-elimination, nine players were either undefeated or had one loss, requiring the latter to duel in Round 5 to see who would advance. Two of the defeated in that round were still tied for low cumulative score, and had to cut cards to determine who would advance. Michael Confoy lost the cut, allowing Mike Lam to squeak into the Quarterfinals.

In the Quarterfinals (and subsequent matches), each pairing played two identical dogfights, switching sides and using chess clocks as a tiebreaker in the second. This proved to Mike Lam's advantage, as his speedy play led to the elimination of perennial contender Buck Markowitz when they were tied 12-12 in cumulative score at the end of the second contest. Scott Beall defeated Chris Orszak 22-15, while Rich Phares topped David Bohnenberger 24-15. Mike Nagel was the only one to win both dogfights,vanquishing past champion Roger Taylor 26-7. Overall, the British Buffalo I/Hurricane IIb pair proved superior to the A6M2/Ki-43-I side, 79-54.

Nagel's margin of victory matched him against Lam in the Semifinals, but his 7-5 victory with the P-40C/P-40F pair over the G.50bis/M.C.202 side was not enough to overcome the 5-0 win by Lam's 'Hawks. In the other Semi, Beall's Commonwealth fighters crushed Phares's Italians 17-0, easily outweighing the 10-5 win by Phares's P-40s.

The Final thus pitted undefeated Scott Beall against two-time Champion Mike Lam. In the first dogfight, Lam's Bf109E/Bf110C elements dominated Beall's D.520/Potez 631 pairs. After one aircraft in each French element went down on Turn 2 (including the Potez Wingman destroyed by the 110 Leader with the dreaded Fuel Tank card), Lam's Luftwaffe never let up, leavingBeall with only a damaged Dewoitine against the four undamaged Germans at the end of the fight. Beall avoided having any of his Messerschmitts damaged or destroyed in the second dogfight, but was unable to kill any of Lam's French planes until the 109s finally shot down the D.520 Leader on Turn 5. The Emils damaged the remaining 520 on the last turn, but that was all, as Mike Lam won his third WBC DIF Championship by outscoring Beall 17-7 in the Final.

Special thanks are owed to dedicated Assistant GMs Mike Lam and Chris LeFevre for their support in preparation for and during the event, and to Martin Scott for doing the artwork for16 beautiful aircraft cards.