Operation BattleAxe - A Bag The Hun Campaign

I pulled out all of my Bag the Hun miniatures again for the first time in a long time. I took stock of my miniatures and have plenty of painted aircraft. So I pulled out my air campaigns and started to look through them. The idea would be to do a solo campaign but for four separate fighter squadrons based on the miniatures I have painted up.

The thought is that each side will get an action during the day randomly rolled on a table that will target a specific force. The sides to this will be the SAAF & RAF against the Luftwaffe & Regia Aeronautica. Each game will be played independently between the squadrons unless a force randomly rolls an opposing mission against a side that is attacking them. This way, mostly the opposing forces would be other random squadrons with the occasional opportunities for them to clash head to head. Or so is the idea.

I plan on keeping the games on the smaller side with between 4 to 8 fighters per side with a small handfuls of supporting aircraft (4 or less). This should make the games manageable and faster for solo play. Operation Battleaxe was a short operation lasting only 3 days. That gives a total of 12 games for the full campaign. Note, that the squadrons are ficticious but based on real squadrons of different numbers. Each side will have 3 characters of the 13 member squadron. This will be the Squadron Leader and two other members of the squadron - chosen randomly. Of these, at least one must be a Sprog. Each of the squadrons will have a relatively similar experience levels.

Meet the Regia Aeronautica

For the Italian forces, I am looking to run a Squadriglia of either MC.200s (In june 1941 there was only 1 in North Africa), Cr.42s (I have 4 planes painted), or G.50bis fighters. I have more MC.200s painted than any other Italian aircraft so I will likely go with them. Pulling from some of the historical formations I have made the following Squadriglia of 13 pilots.

377^a Squadriglia

They are flying the MC.200 aircraft. Apparently, these were uncommon over North Africa at this point of the war. But I have 8 of them painted up. The squadron has 12 total aircraft at the start of the battle.

No.	Pilot	Status	Kills	Notes
1	Capitano Mirocleto Gerbino	Jr Ace	5	Spanish Civil War Veteran
2	Tenente Gualtiero Titone	Veteran	1	Squadron XO
3	Sottotenente Tarso Isola	Regular	0
4	Sottotenente Urdino Peduzzi	Regular	0
5	Sottotenente Michael Mariano	Regular	0
6	Sottotenente Abramio Giacinto	Sprog	0
7	SergenteMaggiore Lavinio Lico	Veteran	2
8	Sergente Cristian Piccoli	Regular	0
9	Sergente Romano Garafalo	Regular	0
10	Sergente Rocco Botti	Regular	0
11	Sergente Rodolfo Scalese	Sprog	0
12	Sergente Neoterio Sciulli	Sprog	0
13	Sergente Girardo Rizzi	Sprog	0

These fighter aircraft will support squadrons fielding Ro.37bis and Ca.310 reconnaissance aircraft (I need to buy a few), Ba.65 aircraft (liason/observation and light bomber), SM.79 bombers and some Cr.42s fighters in a ground attack role. I own SM.79s with one nearly painted. I also own some B.65s but they are not even primed. I have three Cr.42s painted up and ready to go. I own some Br.20 bombers as well but they are also not painted. I do have some G.50s painted but they may need some decals to complete them out. I think I also own a pack of Ca.310s provided that my aircraft recognition skills are up to task.

Meet the Luftwaffe

For the Germans, I have a bunch of Bf109s painted up and ready to go. So these will be my base force. I own some Bf110s but they are unpainted. I have at least 4 Ju87s painted up as well which would make a great support. I think I have some bombers (likely Ju88s) but I didn't see them when i checked the tray. They would be unpainted if they are there. That would cover nearly all of the aircraft for the campaign. 3.II JG 28 These are flying the BF109E-7 trop aircraft. They were the most common German fighter aircrat over the western desert. I have 8 painted and another 16 that are unprimed. The squadron has 12 aircrat at the start of the battle.

No.	Pilot	Status	Kills	Notes
1	Hauptmann Magnus Hippler	Veteran	4	Kills scored in the Battle for France.
2	OberstLeutnant	Veteran	1	Squadron XO
3	Leutnant Edgar Masing	Regular	0
4	Leutnant Erik Von Braun	Regular	0
5	Feldwebel Marc Viermetz	Regular	0
6	Feldwebel Fritz Lips	Sprog	0
7	Feldwebel Jacob Staudenmaier	Veteran	2
8	Unteroffizer Stefan Kellermann	Regular	0
9	Unteroffizer Jacob Kindl	Regular	0
10	Unteroffizer Christopher Schulberg	Regular	0
11	OberFahnrich Benedict Stoltenberg	Sprog	0
12	OberFahnrich Karl Gebhardt	Sprog	0
13	OberFahnrich Claus Ehmann	Sprog	0

The fighters will support the Ju87s of a nearby squadron as well as escort the Ju88 bombers of other squadrons. Occasionally they may protect spotting aircraft (I found an unpainted pack of Hs126 that I can get going on).

Meet the RAF

For the RAF, I settled on a unit equipped with the P-40. I currently have eight of these aircraft painted up. There were still unit equipped with this fighter deployed in North Africa by June 1941. As supports, i own some Blenheim Is and IVs, none of which are painted. I also have a pack of Martin Maryland bombers as well that need paint.

No.	Pilot	Status	Kills	Notes
1	Squadron Leader Troy Holmes	Veteran	1	Kills scored in the Great War.
2	Flight Lieutenant Caleb Carter	Veteran	1	Squadron XO Kill Score in France
3	Flying Officer Toby Hunt	Regular	0
4	Flying Officer Deacon Carr	Regular	0
5	Pilot Officer Wyatt Moss	Regular	0
6	Pilot Officer Bertie Morgan	Sprog	0
7	Pilot Officer Ernest Khan	Veteran	2
8	Pilot Officer Thomas Cole	Regular	0
9	Pilot Officer Gabriel Read	Regular	0
10	George Foster Douglas	Regular	0
11	Flight Sergeant Elliott Harper	Sprog	0
12	Sergeant Stanley Pearce	Sprog	0
13	Sergeant Adam George	Sprog	0

I have started the clen up process for some Blenheim Is and primed some Martin Marylands to give these fellows something to escort. I need some form of observation aircraft. The fighters themselves may be pressed into a ground attack role. I don't think it will take long to get the support aircraft ready.

Meet the SAAF

For an allied contingent for this campaign, I added a squadron of SAAF flying Hawker Hurricanes. They will use the same support aircraft as the RAF. The paint schemes are more or less the same between the RAF and SAAF. So what gets painted for one, is done for the other.

No.	Pilot	Status	Kills	Notes
1	Major Zayden de Beer	Veteran	1	Kills scored in the Great War.
2	Captain Rudi Pietersen	Veteran	1	Squadron XO Kill in East Africa
3	Captain Adiel Hertzog	Regular	0
4	Lieutenant Androw FitzSimmons	Regular	0
5	Lieutenant Francois van Wyk	Regular	0
6	Lieutenant Bertie Morgan	Sprog	0
7	Lieutenant Wincuf Pinckney	Veteran	2
8	Lieutenant Jonah Parker	Regular	0
9	Lieutenant Luca Hanekom	Regular	0
10	Lieutenant Archie McKenzie	Regular	0
11	Lieutenant Josh O'Brien	Sprog	0
12	Lieutenant Dexter Hill	Sprog	0
13	Lieutenant Stephen Reynolds	Sprog	0

I have 8 Hawker Hurricanes ready to go. In addition to the Blenheim Is and Martin Marylands that I have, I also found a pack of Blenheim IVs to paint up. I also have a pack of Spitfires but they may not end up in this campaign. I also think I might have a single pack of Gloster Gladiators languishing unpainted. They might be interesting to have make an appearance.

I have already played the first game but this post is long enough.

Reinforcements for North Africa

After the game last week, I broke out my North Africa aircraft. I had a quick game of Check Your Six to get the rules stuck in my head. As I reviewed my aircraft, I started thinking about what I would want to add to my aircraft.

First, I inventoried what I have.

Nation	Aircraft	Painted	Unpainted	Notes
Italy	Cr42	3	6	These were a pain to assemble
Italy	G50bis	6	3	These were simple to paint up.
Italy	SM79	1	7	I copied aircraft with no camo pattern.
Germany	Bf109e Trop	8	16	Simple pattern to paint. Slight megalomania as I wanted a complete Staffel of aircraft.
Germany	Ju87B Trop	3	5	3 of the unpainted really just need markings.
UK	Hurricane Mk1	8	4	Had wanted to do a squadron of these.
UK	Tomahawks	8	4	One of the unpainted has an accidental hole through it.
UK	Spitfire	0	8	These are for later in the war.

So, as you can see, I have a nice selection to start with. But I was lacking some aircraft for some scenarios that I wanted to do. Basically, not enough bombers. So, I went shopping. My Picoarmor order just came in. It is great.

Nation	Aircraft	Numbers	Notes
Italy	Br20	3	Nice clean castings.
Italy	Ba65	8	Neat little aircraft that did not fare well.
Germany	Bf110C	8	These should be fun.
Germany	Ju88A-1	3	Should be a nice little bomber.
UK	Martin Maryland	3	Nice bomber for the Brits
UK	Blenheim IV	3	This was an impulse buy.

I also placed an order with Tumbling Dice. I am waiting on some Blenheim Is, Caparoni 310s and some Hs126s. Now to take some time to paint them. I also checked and I only have 14 flight stands so the possibility of doing larger actions is unlikely.

Joys of Blogger and I got to Play some Games!

Blogger

No clue what the fine folks at Blogger are doing but my reading list now consists of a single entry and the view more does not work. Apparently, I am not alone in this. I saw a post on the TFL Yahoo group and there is a Google Group talking about it too. I hope they straighten this out soon as it is really annoying.

Two games of CY6

Yep, you read that right, I got in two great games of Check Your Six last night. I met Mark at Gigabytes lat night and got in two East Front games.

Game One
This was set in late 1942 with the Italian Air Contingent running a patrol over the skies of Stalingrad. My Italians were flying a flight of four MC200s. They encountered a flight of four Soviet Petlyakov Pe-2s. (At least I think that is what they were)

I divided my aircraft into two two section flights. They started at speed 3 at an altitude of 8. I think the Russians entered at an altitude of 7. I forgot to make note of that.

We pre-plotted the first three moves as the visibility was poor. In the initial pass, I had timed it wrong and ended up passing in front of the Russians instead of to their side or behind. The MC200 is a very fragile aircraft. I think I failed almost every save by over 4 and thus the first aircraft fell to Mark.

As the aircraft closed on one another, a intense combat ensued. i landed a few hits that were shrugged off by the durable Pe-2 aircraft and Mark landed a solid hit on another MC200 which sent it down in flames.

Being rather sensible about it and the remaining pilot having no interest in a Russian Gulag, they power dive and begin their getaway. The Russians had been executing tight turns and lacked the speed to catch up.

The dive worked and the remaining Italians made good their escape. Time for a glass of Chianti in remembrance of lost friends. One more fleeting shot taken by the Russians but they were far out of range and the remaining Italians got away.

The game ran for a total of nine turns. I lost pilots at turn 4 and turn 5. It was a great game that went differently than I expected. First, the Italians were all +1 pilots. The Soviets had a -1 pilot and a couple of 0 pilots. Yet they still destroyed me. Well done Mark.

Game Two
For the second game, I played the Romanians in late 1941. I had two groups of aircraft to keep track of. The first is a bomber group consisting of two SM.79JRs. These were Italian aircraft with two German motors instead of three Italian ones. The center motor was replaced with a forward gun mount. The second group consisted of four Romanian IAR-80 aircraft (I think).

I positioned a pair of fighters at altitude 8 in front. The two bombers were behind at altitude 7 while the tailing fighters were at altitude 6.

This game had better visibility. My force was considerably more varied in quality than the first game. Each pair had a plus one pilot and a zero pilot.

The Romanians were a very different kettle of fish. I really liked these aircraft. They had more guns and it did not hurt that I had better luck with the dice.P> The Soviets entered with the flight of four Yaks. Not sure what variant these were.

We began the game farther away and it took several turns to close. The Plus One fighter pilots all spotted the enemy and began to turn towards them while the sprogs continued straight ahead. The bombers were moving terribly slow (2) and the rear group of fighters were matching speed with the Bombers. The lead group of fighters were just going slightly faster (3).

In the first pass, both of my lead aircraft dove on the lower flying Soviets (Altitude 6). The Soviets were climbing up to engage the bombers. In the first pass my lead pilot managed to score a kill on his first Yak. His wingman scored a hit on a second that left it with airframe damage.

The sprog who scored a hit managed to get on the tail of his victim and pursue him directly into the bombers. Mark had his best shot at the bombers. The angle was bad but he was coming from a direction that was not covered by a gun. His two planes fired on the sprog bomber and managed to kill one of the gunners. That was the end of turn 4.

Turn five had my sprog still on the tail of the Soviet and managed to kill the Yak underneath the second bomber. The dying fighter managed a few shots at the second bomber but did not score a hit. With only two aircraft left in the fight, the Soviets doggedly attempted to pursue the bombers.

Somehow this picture was before we removed the stricken fighter. It is seen still smoking in between the two bombers.

Turn six was a bad time for the second bomber. One of the Yaks lined up with an excellent stern shot and put fire into the bomber. He scored a critical hit and a fuel leak. He also managed to kill a crew member. The crew was on their game and managed to stop the fuel leak. The stricken bomber had to drop its bomb load to keep from loosing altitude.

The plus one pilot from the lead pair of fighters found itself separated from his wingman and far away from the bombers. But very close to a Yak fighter. He scored a kill on the third Yak of the day. Mark was having difficulty getting a save and I was rolling some really good damage.

Turn seven saw the last Yak off as two of the Romanian pilots shared a kill on the fighter. Mark was unable to finish off the wounded bomber and this left the State Vodka Works an open and unopposed target. What else would keep the Soviets so doggedly in the fight to the last man?

With all of the enemy driven from the sky, the sprog bomber reaches his target. The State Vodka Works was successfully bombed. It was said that the infantry on the front lines could see the explosion and the skyline was unnaturally bright well past midnight that night.

Three Romanian pilots came home with claims. The lead pair of aircraft claimed two each (the sprog had a shared victory). It was a good day to be Romanian. It was a second great game in a row.

The robustness of 1 of the IAR-80 definitely helped out. Having a Robustness of 0 for the MC200s meant that any hit was potentially deadly. I really want to work out a campaign with Mark using Squadron Forward on the Eastern Front. Air games can flow pretty quickly and you can get in more than one game per night. If I only could get in more games normally, this would be great. Now where is that Romanian name generator.....

kuk LFT Reinforcements

I just received my first Shapeways aircraft yesterday. I had ordered a pair of Fokker E.III's and I am happy to report that they arrived. I am very happy with the aircraft.

The planes were well packed and kept very safe during their voyage over to my aerodrome.

The aircraft are very nicely detailed. I managed to get these scrubbed last night.

Tonight, I will be loading it in Future as a sealant then spray priming them later. These will be painted up as 03.51 and 03.52 of the kuk LFT.

Happy New Year. Lets Fly

Happy New Year ya'll. I hope you all are looking forward to a new year of Wargaming as I am.

In keeping with my theme of not staying on target, I have distracted off to WWI Air Gaming again. I purchased a few aircraft for the Italian Front. A pair of Nieuport 10s for the Italians and a pair of Fokker Eindecker E.IIIs. These should prove interesting to paint up as Italian and Austro-Hungarians.

Now the question becomes how were these used. I have two books that cover this: Above the War Fronts and Air Aces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1914-1918 by Martin O'Connor. O'Connor's book is an awesome tome that provides much more detail than anything else I have found. Looking at Amazon, I feel like I got a steal when I bought it for $75 back in the mid 2000s. Searching through the Austro-Hungarian Aces list, you find very few aces that claimed kills using an Eindecker. This is probably due to the lack of them.

At the tail end of 1915, the Austro-Hungarians a shipment of 13 E.I and E.III aircraft from Germany with stipulations that they could not under any circumstances fly them over enemy held territory. These were parceled out across the front with the airbase at Haidenschaft receiving 4 of them to be shared among three FliK's (4, 8 and 19). These FliK's (AH Squadrons) were mixed use squadrons in 1915 & 1916 with pilots flying both two seater Hansa-Brandenburg C.I's and and Fokker Eindecker aircraft. The E.IIIs were numbered 03.41 and 03.42. The E.Is were 03.51 and 03.52. These numbers were displayed prominently on their fuselage. The 03.52 aircraft was nicknamed the Snow Bird by Leutnant Ludwig Hautzmeyer who scored two of his kills in this aircraft. Thanks to the Wings Palette web site, we can link to one of these images.

FliK 19 became one of the premier two-seater squadrons of 1916 with many of its pilots and observers scoring kills. Top Aces such as Oberleutnant Benno Fiala started in this FliK and eventually achieved 28 kills. Fiala served in the unit as an officer observer from January 1916 to February 1917 before attending flight school to become a pilot. The commander of Flik 19, Hauptmann Adolf Heyrowsky was one of the few men in the Austro-Hungarian airforce to score a kill with an Eindecker. His first Eindecker victory was not until August 15th of 1916. He shot down an Italian Voisin aircraft. He is also credited with shooting down the Italian airship M.4 from a Hansa-Brandenburg C.I two-seater with future ace Benno Fiala as his observer.

Hauptmann Heinrich Kostrba is another pilot to score multiple kills with an Eindecker. He was the deputy commander of FliK 4 from January 1916 to March 1916 when he was posted to command FliK 23. Hauptmann Mathais Bernath was the commander of FliK 4 at the time.

The most successful of the Eindecker pilots was Oberleutnant Ludwig Hautzmayer. He joined FliK 19 in February of 1916. He is officially credited with 2 Eindecker kills. The first on February 18, 1916 and the second on August 9, 1916. In between his first and second Eindecker Victories, he also shot down a bomber while piloting a Hansa-Brandenburg C.I.

In late August, the Austro-Hungarians began to reequip with Albatross D.III aircraft. The Fokker Scourge, as it was over Italy, was at an end. The switch to newer aircraft coincided with the change in tactics by the Italians. Beginning in August 1916, bombers were now assigned fighter escorts. By the end of the year, the ITalians had suffered 176 losses and claimed 56 victories. The Austro-Hungarian pilots claimed some 35 Italian aircraft as confirmed kills. Both sides greatly expanded their air programs. The Italians closed the year with 42 squadrons totaling 328 aircraft and 369 pilots. The AH Empire had ordered the creation of 48 FliKs but only 37 were active by years end.

The kills scored in 1916 reflect the importance that the Italians placed on bomber formations. Up until mid 1916, they had no scout planes at all. To make up for this, they utilized the two-seater Nieuport 10s in a scout role but with no success.The Italians began to replace their Nieuport 10 fighters with the new Nieuport 11 scouts in April of 1916. The first Italian victory was claimed in a Nieuport 11 on April 7, 1916. This was by their greatest ace Francesco Baracca. He claimed a Hansa-Brandenburg C.I.

Some fantastic maps are available online that cover the area of the front. The 3rd Military Mapping Survey maps from 1910 are available here. This is the index page. You can find the Haidenscaft area in the map just to the right of the Trieszt map. You will find it on the left hand side of the map close to the middle. As you can see, the area where these aircraft could reliably operate was very limited. The steep mountains could not be overflown by these early aircraft.

Anyway, here are the links to what I ordered: Nieuport 10 and Fokker Eindecker E.III. I am supposed to receive them on the 9th of January. Will post pictures once they come.

I also ordered Alexis Mehtidis' book on the Italian Air force: Italian Military Aviation in WWI: 1914-1918. I am really looking forward to this. Alexis helped me out with the orders of battle for the 11th battle of Isonzo when I had written an article for the Summer 2008 TFL special. He has another book out on both the Italian and Austro-Hungarian airforces that I have not been able to find yet.