"CTD" but game still running - no crash.

[Strike]

Weird...

Sometimes when flying CoD and viewing certain high-detailed scenarios such as a bomber formation or many planes in the air at the same time. My GPU will be under normal operating conditions, the FPS smooth and screen freezes for 1 second, goes black and brings me to windows. The game keeps running in the background (I can still fire my guns and control it, swap views but I cannot get the game to load up the graphics again).

All I see is my windows desktop.

If I hit ESC it brings me back to the game menu instantly, but if I click "FLY" again, it goes back to desktop. Really strange.

Only way to get back ingame is to restart the game.