Flying Follies

 I decided to do some aerial gaming last weekend. I was inspired by this:

It's from the classic Halloween cartoon, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. After watching the show, I decided that I wanted to be a World War One flying ace.

So I brought out my Fokker Dr 1 and Spowith Camel. I'm using my Sky's No Limit rules, which are an adaptation of Kaptain Kobold's Spandau and Lewis rules (which you can find on his Free Stuff page).

Lieutenant "Snoopy" Brown in his Sopwith Camel spots a red Fokker Triplane.

"It's the Red Baron!"

Snoopy turns to attack, but the Red Baron outmaneuvers him and ends up on his tail. Rat-a-tat-tat. Bullets shred the Camel's tail surface.

And moments later hits the engine.

"Curse you, Red Baron!" yells Snoopy as his guides his plane down for a crash landing.

Well, that was short. Let's try something different.

The Continuing Adventures of the Dragon Squadron

Let's bring back Devin Drake and his Dragon Squadron. I played the first campaign using my variant on Mike Crane's Battle of Britain rules. The Dragon's squeaked out a win, although the last mission was a tough defeat while attacking artillery emplacements.

 

"You've got to be kidding me!" Capt. Devin Drake exclaimed in the telephonic receiver. He could not believe his luck. His squadron, the Dragons, had just returned to the front and they were immediately tasked to attack an artillery emplacement. The last such mission practically destroyed his squadron!

But you can't reason with Wing Command. So Drake took his entire squadron with him. "Let's take out the cover first." he ordered.

As they approach the emplacement, they see two enemy Cobra fighters.

Devin (in the red, white, and blue plane) and his XO Al Hartley lead the charge.

But one of the Cobras cuts back and rakes Drake's side. Severely damaged, he breaks off for home.

The rest of the squadron carries on. Alas, their gunnery is horrific. Finally, Hartley is hit and must retire.

"Let's get out of here, boys." Hartley commands. The two neophytes, Palmer and Hobbes also break from home.

A thoroughly disheartening start for the newly reconstituted squadron. They did not score a single hit on the enemy and lost two planes (damaged beyond repair).

Dragon to the End

The Continuing Adventures of the Dragon Squadron

Mission 5
"Bad news, boys" Capt. Devin Drake announced to his men of the Dragon Squadron. "I just got off the line with Group. They want us to go after those artillery emplacements again."

Lt. Taylor Hicks groaned. Two of his comrades were lost on the last attempt to destroy the enemy artillery. Newcomers Al Hartley and Randy Palmer exchanged nervous glances. This did not seem promising.

Drake chose Hicks and Hartley to accompany him. As they approached, the saw only 1 enemy fighter on patrol. "Let's take out their air support and then go after the artillery." Drake commanded. "And if you get hit, head back home!"

The aircraft swirled around each other in an intricate dance of death.

But the Cobra struck first. Hicks fell before the enemy's guns.

Fortunately, Hicks was able to bail out. Alas, he was picked up by enemy infantry.

Back in the skies, the Dragons could not get a shot on the Cobra. But after a few passes, the enemy broke off for home.
Note: the Cobra flew off the side of the board. In my rules, this means that it disengaged from the fight.

Drake made a run and damaged one of the emplacements.

His second pass damaged another emplacement. Hartley missed.

And then gets hit by AA.

Following Drake's command, Hartley heads for home. Drake is then hit by AA.

Disobeying his own orders, he makes a pass at the damaged gun. He misses. With his controls causing problems, Drake also turns back for home.

Final tally - 1 pilot and plane lost with one gun destroyed and another damaged. A bit less than Group hoped for (the objective was to destroy 2/3 artillery emplacements); mark this down as another loss.

Later that day Drake took a call from Group Command.

"We're pulling you boys out of the action."

"What? Why?" asked Drake.

"You seem frazzled, and your boys are all new. Give them some training and get some R&R yourself. We'll need you soon enough."

With that, the Dragons' first campaign ends. With the way I'm scoring, it is technically a victory (3 successful missions out of 5), but it feels like a defeat - 2 losses to end the campaign, 3 pilots and 5 planes lost with only 4 victories. Not exactly a smashing success. But another campaign is in the offing.

Dragon Tales

The Continuing Adventures of the Dragon Squadron

Mission 3
Alarms began blaring at the aerodrome.

"All hands to your planes! Incoming air raid!"

Within minutes, Devin Drake had his entire squadron (himself, Howell Green, Taylor Hicks, and Ike Peters) in the air.

Not long after, the squadron spots the bomber formation, 3 Vulture medium bombers, plus 3 Cobra escorts.

Drake has a shot at one of the escorts, but he misses.

The same goes for Green.

A Cobra makes a pass at Hicks. Its bullets slash through Hicks's plane. He begins to spiral to the earth.

Hicks manages to pull out in time. He then tries to nurse his stricken craft back to base.
Note" Planes that are "shot down" get a save to survive. They are removed from the board with the assumption that they return to base. Hicks managed to pass his save roll.

Meanwhile, Drake gets a bead on a bomber. His shots do damage but he then gets hit by the bomber's defensive fire.

A Cobra makes a pass, damaging both Peters and Green.

But Peters gets revenge! Unfortunately, Drake gets hit by more defensive fire. His plane goes up in flames; he has to bail out!

Note: Drake failed his save so he definitely gets shot down. I then make a survival roll, which he passed.

All alone, Peters chases after a bomber. He damages it.

And then destroys it.

Although the remaining bombers make it to the target zone, their bomb run is woefully inaccurate.

Hicks manages to nurse his plane back to base. He lands successfully, but the plane is a wreck. Drake survives his bailout and is rescued by friendly troops. Likewise, he makes it back home.

Note: Given that the dogfight occurred over friendly airspace, I ruled that Drake made it back to base.

The pilots are all safe but two planes were lost. It was a rough day for the Dragons. Fortunately the enemy bombers failed to destroy the target. Technically, the Dragons' mission was a success!

Note: Out of curiosity, I rolled damage for the lost bomber. If it had managed to get to the target the bombers would have won the scenario. Peters's last minute heroics saved the day!

Mission 4
With Drake and Hicks out of action, the next mission falls on Howell Green and Ike Peters. For a rookie, Peters has shown great promise, already destroying 3 enemy aircraft.

Today's mission is to destroy enemy artillery positions.

Green and Peters approach. A sole Cobra fighter plane flies cover.

While Green circles around trying to get a bead on the Cobra, Peters makes a pass at the enemy artillery.

His first attack damages the target but he is hit by anti-aircraft fire!
Note: I treated the ground targets like medium bombers (2 hits to destroy) with all-around defensive fire, hitting on a 6.

His engine sputters; he cannot get away fast enough.
Note: His activation roll in this turn was very poor so Peters was unable to fly out of range.
This allows the AA to zero in on his plane. Shells smash into his stricken craft; it goes up in flames. Peters manages to escape from the cockpit and bail out. He parachutes safely, in the midst of enemy artillerymen.

Green follows Peters. His attack misses but the AA is again accurate! Now Green is damaged.

As the Cobra turns back into the fray, Green makes a pass at a second artillery emplacement. He manages to score some damage.

Then Green turns to attack the Cobra. Their guns blaze, but the Cobra strikes. Green's plane explodes!

The Peregrine fighter crashes to earth in a twisted pile of metal.

A disastrous outing for the Dragons. Two planes shot down, with 1 pilot killed and another captured.

Notes: 

• Once again I made a roll to determine the fate of planes that are eliminated. There is a 50% chance of the pilot escaping with a badly damaged craft. Obviously that did not happen in either case today. For planes shot down, I then make a pilot survival roll. Green failed but Peters succeeded. I ruled that he managed to bail out, but given that he was flying over an enemy position I figured that it made sense for him to get captured.
• Technically the Dragons have already won the campaign, being successful in the first 3 missions. I am still playing out the last two, just to see what happens to the pilots. Alas, it did not go well this time.

A New Aerial Campaign

A few months ago I finally put together enough supplies for a full-scale mission using the Tiny Air Combat / Battle of Britain rules. I promptly stopped playing the game. What happened?

Well, I think it just grew too much for me - too large, too many minis, and too much bookkeeping. I found that I wanted a more streamlined version. Recently, I started playing around with some changes:

Smaller Board
The first thing I did was to shrink the game. For the full-scale version of the game I used a 16 x 30 square grid but I preferred a game that could fit into a pencil box. I wanted to squeeze onto an 8 x 10 grid. The movement rules of the original game were problematic, however. It is possible for some planes to move 8 squares in a turn. For the smaller grid, halving movement distances seemed like a good solution. I could effectively do this by doubling the movement cost of each maneuver but that left some maneuvers to expensive. In the end, I just upped the cost for each maneuver by 1 point. It seems to work fine.

Smaller Forces
In order to reduce the board I also had to reduce the size of the forces involved. I now use a single squadron of bombers + 2-4 fighters per side.

New Campaign Rules
The original rules involve a bit of bookkeeping (especially considering that I game solo) as you have to track the fate of 18 squadrons. I wanted to reduce the record keeping so I decided to follow the fortunes of a single fighter squadron. It dawned on me that a fighter squadron could do more than escort bombers, so I came up with additional missions. Eventually, a new set of campaign rules evolved.

Campaign Rules Overview

• The campaign follows the fortunes of a single squadron of 4 pilots/planes
• A campaign will consist of 5 missions. The squadron wins the campaign if it succeeds in 3 of the 5 missions.
• Possible missions are patrol (fighter vs. fighter dogfight) escort (defend your side’s bombers), intercept (stop an enemy bombing raid) and attack (strafing run on ground targets)
• To reduce the death rate, planes that get “shot down” get a chance to escape instead. Also, I gave the player characters a bonus when determining damage – there will be less chance of them getting shot down in a single hit.

Introducing the New Campaign
During the Lucranian War (set in my 1930s-style imagi-nations), Capt. Devin Drake, veteran of multiple aerial campaigns, has been selected to lead a new squadron. Known as the Dragons, the squadron has been outfitted with the latest Peregrine fighters.

Drake has 3 pilots under him – the veteran Howell Green and two promising novices, Taylor Hicks and Ike Peters.

Notes:

• Player characters are rated as novice, veteran, or ace. The rating affects movement points, chance to hit, and chance to escape.
• I came up with the name Devin Drake on my own but the other names came from a name generator

Initially things are quiet in the Dragon’s sector of the front. Drake decides to take Hicks on a patrol over the front.

Notes:

• The campaign rules call for a random roll to determine the mission type. I decided that I am just going to do one of each mission, then roll randomly for the last.
• I rolled randomly for the force make-up for each side. The Dragons start with 2 planes; I decided that Drake and Hicks will be the pilots. We’ll see what the Dragons will be up against.

FIRST AFTER ACTION REPORT IS BELOW

First Blood

Missions 1-2 for the Dragon Squadron

Mission 1
Things have been quiet for the squadron since their arrival at the front. Captain Devin Drake, the squadron CO, decides to take one of the rookies for a routine patrol.

They spot a Viper, one of the latest state-of-the-art enemy fighters. Drake signals for the attack. He is unaware of 3 more enemy fighters hiding in and behind the clouds.

Drake and the Viper trade head-on shots. Drake's bullets rip into the Viper and send it down in flames.

Ambush! A Cobra fighter emerges from the clouds and sends a hail of bullets at Drake. He yanks his control stick and manages to elude the shots.

Note: Readers of my previous Aetherian AARs will note that I have renamed the enemy fighter plane.

After some circling, Drake and the rookie, Taylor Hicks, get a bead on a Cobra. Taylor delivers the killing blow, or so he thought.

Badly damaged, the Cobra dives into some clouds and escapes.
Note: To cut down on the kill ratio I now roll if an aircraft is eliminated. There is a chance that it escapes rather than gets shot down. Alas Hicks's victory was spoiled.

The other Viper also escapes and the remaining Cobra tries to flee. Drake pursues and finds himself in a good position. He squeezes the trigger. Miss!

The last enemy gets away.

Still, a good outing. One kill and one damage for no losses.
And a 1-0 record in the campaign!

Mission 2
Howell Green (a veteran) and Ike Peters (a novice) are now up. They have been tasked to escort a bombing mission.

Peters finds himself engaged with a Viper fighter (one of the enemy's best). He calls for help, and Green rushes to his aid. But Peters manages to take out the fighter on his own.

However, Green's "rescue" leaves the bombers open to an attack by 2 Cobras.

Buddy Haroldsen, gunner for the lead bomber, takes matters into his own hands. He knocks down an old Adder fighter plane.

And then he shoots down a Cobra!

Haroldsen's heroics frees the bombers to make a run. Their bombs fall accurately, doing extensive damage to the target. Success!

Notes:

• Other than the initial pass, the Dragon Squadron was notably ineffective. They made a few more firing passes but kept missing. Perhaps some target practice is in store!
• I didn't plan on naming anyone on the bombers, but after one bomber shot down 2 enemy fighters I had to give the gunner credit. Buddy was the star of the mission!
• Nevertheless, Dragon Squadron gets credit for a successful mission. They are now 2-0 in the campaign.