SAAF Squadron - Operation Battleaxe Results

Way back in May, when the first game was played with the SAAF, they suffered badly as well. Of the 4 aircraft, one pilot was killed, another shot down and the other two planes were damaged. I am guessing that Lt Parker didn't make it back to base in time and that was why he didn't fly in this mission. As it stands, the squadron is down to three aircraft and eight pilots of which 6 are still trying to make their way back to base. This effectively takes them out of the campaign.

Pilot	Status	Kills	Campaign Missions Flown	Flight	Notes
Major Zayden de Beer	Veteran	1/1	1	Red I	Shot down, OK, 1 kill in mission
Captain Adiel Hertzog	Regular	0	2	White I	Shot Down, KIA
Lieutenant Androw FitzSimmons	Regular	0	1	Yellow I	Shot Down, Survived.
Lieutenant Francois van Wyk	Regular	0	1	Red II	Shot Down, KIA
Lieutenant Bertie Morgan	Sprog	0	2	White II	Survived
Lieutenant Wincuf Pinckney	Veteran	2	1	Yellow II	Shot Down, Survived.
Lieutenant Luca Hanekom	Regular	0	1	Red III	Show Down, KIA
Lieutenant Archie McKenzie	Regular	0	1	White III	Survived
Lieutenant Josh O'Brien	Sprog	0	1	Yellow III	Plane hit, Survived
Lieutenant Stephen Reynolds	Sprog	0	1	Red IV	Shot Down, Survived
Yellow IV	Regular	0	1	Yellow IV	Shot Down, Survived
White IV	Regular	0	1	White IV	Shot Down, Survived

The Germans did much better.

PILOT	Status	Kills in Game	Notes
White I	Jr Ace	4	Dominated the game
White II	Regular	0	Hit Red III, Aircraft Damaged
White III	Veteran	0
White IV	Veteran	0	Aircraft Damage
Blue I	Jr Ace	0
Blue II	Sprog	0	Temp Loss of Control, Aircraft Damaged
Blue III	Sprog	0	Hit Yellow III
Blue IV	Sprog	1	Kill Red II, Temp Loss of Control
Black I	Regular	1	Kill White IV
Black II	Veteran	0	Damaged Red I
Black III	Regular	0
Black IV	Sprog	0
Bombers
Blue I	Veteran	0
Blue II	Regular	0
Blue III	Sprog	0	Temp Loss of Control
Orange I	Veteran	0	KIA
Orange II	Regular	0
Orange III	Sprog	0

There is one more game for the afternoon. This will pit our player German Squadron against the RAF squadron. I still need to roll up the scenario for this. I hope to do the mission this week. We will see how that works out.

Operation Battleaxe - Day 1 Game 4

Finally got to get the next game in for the campaign. The British were to escort a pair of TacR Hurricanes. I had two flights of four P-40s escorting them.I was going to use the recommended special article to determine starting positions but just never had time to digest the article. That is on the to do list though.

The game started with the lead group of British aircraft (White) flying at altitude 6, THE TacR aircraft flying in the center at altitude 5 and the second flight (Red) at altitude 4. Across the table was two schwarm of Germans Bf109s.

The British:

Pilot	Status	Notes
Flt Lt Carter	Veteran	Fkight Leader, White I
FO Carr	Regular	White II
PO Morgan	Sprog	White III
Sgt Pearce	Sprog	White IV
FO Hunt	Regular	Flight Leader, Red I
PO Moss	Regular	Red II
PO Read	Regular	Red III
Sgt Harper		Red IV

The Germans:

Status	Notes
Jr Ace	Schwarm Leader, White I
Sprog	White II
Veteran	White III
Sprog	White IV
Regular	Schwarm Leader, Red I
Sprog	Red II
Regular	Red III
Sprog	Red IV

The game began with a series of terrible die rolls. The first shot of the game was truely terrible. I think it was the British who fired and failed. My notes at this point were not very good.

This led to a firer side slip. The tide started to turn in the British favor though. Sergeant Pearce gets the first kill of the game by landing a hit on the pilot of German White IV, killing him immediately. This pilot had a character card and was removed from the game.

Flying Officer Hunt fired on German White II (Sporg) causing temporary loss of control which was recoved from. He failed his ontail test.

British PO Morgan fired on the German White III and missed. Then FL Carter lined up behind Yellow IV and poured fire on it causing fuel line damage and was activated again and caused it to explode for the second kill of the game.

Now the Germans started to get momentum. German White III gets on the tail of PO Moss. Then German Yellow I fired on PO Morgan causing engine damage.

The German White I pulled behind FL Carter and fired a burst that caused catastrophical structural damage. A picture was missed for this, but next the German White III pilot fired from on tail position and causes fuel line damage.

Then German White II, who recovered from out of control, gets a shot on a plane but only scores minor damage. Flight Lieutenant Carter's card came up and he failed to parachute and his altitude dropped further. German Yellow III fired on Sgt Harper but only gets minor damage. Throughout, a number of the d10 rolls were poor. FL Carter attempts to bail out again and fails to do so, dropping ever lower. German White I gets a shot on FO Hunt and forces Hunt to hard evade. In the picture below, Carter is in the upper left corner.

At this point, the British are in serious trouble. PO Read takes a shot on German Yellow III but side slips. Sgt Harper fired on German Yellow I and just wases ammo. FL Carter attempts to bail out yet again and fails. The ground is approaching him rapidly. German Yellow III fired on PO Morgan and scored a lucky hit on the pilot, killing him instantly. He was so close to escaping off the table. Morgan is the burning aircraft on the far right.

Close up of PO Morgan's fall.

FO Hunt fired on German White III causing the German to evade. PO Read fired on White I in passing, scoring minor damage. The German Ace (White I) fired on PO Read and gets a pilot hit. PO Read didn't survive and his plane plunged toward the earth. FL Carter has his final attempt to bail out but fails again. His aircraft hits the ground with an explosion, killing him instantly. Lastly, German White III gets a shot on PO Moss and Moss' aircraft explodes. (No pictures). At this point, the surviving British pilots break contact and head for home. Several Germans had run out of ammunition by this point and they decline to pursue.

The British took a hard loss. Four pilots killed including one of their best pilots. Two kills were scored but FL Carter was one of those. This puts the roster as follows:

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

I now have to plan for the afternoon battles. The Germans and the RAF were slated to have afternoon missions.

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.

Painting Accomplished

Last night I managed to finish off some more Desert Brits. I have an ATR team, a light mortar team, 2 weapon crew men, and a MMG team. I am also just a coat of matt varnish away from finishing a Bren Carrier as well.

The ATR team has a Peter Pig figure holding the Boys while the rifleman next to him is a QRF figure. The QRF figure is quite bland but blends well.

My impromptu survey yesterday gave mixed results so I went ahead and got some Zulus painted. I finished painting about 5 of them and have a good start on another 10. They painted up quite quickly. I really enjoyed painting them. I will post some pictures probably tomorrow when I have a chance to finish a few more. I will think about basing them later. I need to come to some decisions about that.

Finished Desert Platoon

The last of my desert British Squads are now complete. Here we have the platoon sergeant and the 8 man squad.

I also did some work on a Vickers MMG team and a Boys ATR team for the platoon as support elements. I am nearly done with this force.

I have only a few items left:
1) 8 Dead Desert Brits
2) 2" Mortar Team
3) Medic
4) 4 additional crewmen (2 for the 2-pounder and 2 for the MMG team)
5) A Bren Carrier
6) 2x A10 Cruiser Tanks
7) 2x Matilda II Infantry Tanks

Beyond this, I have a few spare figures that I am contemplating painting up as fillers for a few things. I need to buy a pack of Peter Pig 8th Army Engineers and I will just about have everything that I want. That would give me enough to field a full engineer squad.

Welcomes and Painting Updates

Welcome
The newest follower is Samuli Salovaara of Engineered Gaming. He has some nice painting of some Finnish troops on his site. Looks interesting. Please let us know if you have a blog or a site and I will gladly post up a link.

Painting Updates
I managed to get some more figures completed. Only one squad left plus command elements.

More Painting Progress and Pics of my Brookhurst purchases

Painting Progress
Last night was rather productive. I managed to finish off a squad of Desert British troops in 15mm.

I like the basing on these better than the basing attempt on the last Italians I did. The difference is that I used a thicker white glue. Anyway, they turned out pretty good. They are Peter Pig minis. I managed to paint up squad two as well. I will varnish and base those tonight, well maybe.

New Acquisitions
I have taken some pictures. First up is the wonderful longship from Peter Pig. When I unwrapped it, I realized that I goofed and did not get a figurehead. Brookhurst is awesome. A quick e-mail and they said they would mail me one right away. Whoo Hoo!

Then there are the casualty figures. The Italians are unfortunately with the steel helmet instead of the sun helmet.

I forgot to take pictures of the desert trench lines. Those are nice as well.

A Visit to Brookhurst

Welcome!
Welcome to Sofie Vandersmissen of Sofie's Paint Blog. She is the inspiration behind folks posting what is on their painting bench every Saturday. Lots of other interesting items to find there as well. Now that I am back from vacation, I will attempt to join in on this.

Brookhurst
While on vacation with my family to sunny California, I managed to sneak away to Brookhurst Hobbies. If you are here at Disneyland, you can reach Brookhurst in about 15 minutes. Leaving the family behind (well, except for my five year old son) I ran off to the hobby shop for an hour. Brookhurst reminds me of what the War Room used to be when it was on Indian Trail/Lilburn Road some 10 years ago. They had a fantastic selection of Battlefront and Peter Pig miniatures as well as a bunch of the PSC and Zveda plastics. I ended up using up all of my spending money and probably threw my suitcase over the weight limit.

If there was some Plastic DAK troops, I would have bought them despite my promise to myself to only augment what I already have. So, what did I come home with? I have two packs of infantry: A pack of 8th Army Dead and a pack of Italian Dead. I also picked up a Peter Pig Viking Longship. Then I grabbed up a Galeforce 9 Desert trench set. I should be close to set for desert stuff now. I will post some pictures soon.

Now I have some new items to paint up when I return. Mark is pulling ahead of me in the painting challenge since I have been out of town for a week. Can't have that now. :) Hopefully, I will have some more items to post up by tomorrow.

More Progress in the Desert

I just completed out the Italian Infantry Platoon with four more infantrymen. These will complete out the LMG teams with the added two riflemen per group. The other two infantrymen round out the MMG Support team. I changed how I was basing these. I used a thicker White Glue called "Tacky Glue" and then dipped in Sharp Sand. No odd holes appeared that needed to be filled. All in all I like these better. These are all Old Glory 15mm castings.

You can see that the British also got a reinforcement in the form of a Scout Car. The scout car was from Terry's collection and got a brand new coat of paint. I think it is a Battlefront/FOW miniature. My British forces now have A Bren Carrier and a Scout Car ready to go. I have my first squad waiting some drybrushing on the base and then they would be complete.

Chain of Command: British Desert Forces

Welcome
I can't believe how many new followers that I have picked up lately. The current welcome goes out to Sebastofig and Vladdd309 of the Too Much Free Time blog. They are the latest to sign up for this site. I could not locate Sebastofig's blog but a hearty welcome and glad your here. Let me know if you have a site and I will post a link up for you.

Desert Brits
With nearly finishing the Italians, it is off to the British. I spent some time last night and selected a single squad to paint. These are being painted from the ground up so this is not as easy as doing the Italians who were already painted. The Auburn/FSU game was on the TV and time flew by. I was able to get the painting complete on the first squad and put on the ink wash this morning. I still have to put on a coat of matt varnish before basing these fellows. All in all, they are coming along very nicely. I will post a picture once they are based.

The goal for tonight is to paint the command elements. The officer, the 2" mortar team and the ATR teams are all started but I need to finish them off.

Tanks
Yes indeed, Tanks. I managed to get some paint slapped on an M13 and an M11 recently. About to add these to my totals for the year. Very happy with this so far. January and I have actually completed something. Need to paint the treads on these and they will be ready to go. Missing Minis
Well, in going through the lead pile, I realized that I am missing some figs that I need in order to finish off some platoons to have them ready for a game. So the question out there for you is do you have any of these in your bits box that you would be willing to part with?

I need:
1) 4 French infantry with vb launchers (15mm) Not picky on the manufacturer with these.
2) 4 British NCO types with rifles rather than SMGs for the desert. (15mm again) Prefer not to have Battlefront as they are a bit bigger than my poor Peter Pig Minis.
Anyone out there with spares they would be willing to trade?

Western Desert Air Campaign June 1940 to February 1941 Completed

Well, the scenario book is finally done. It is called: The Falcon and the Gladiator: The Air War Over the Western Desert 1940 – February 1941.There are 38 scenarios covering a number of actions across the period from June 1940 to February 1941. The scenarios cover a number of different types of actions including: level bombing, dive bombing, torpedo bombing and of course fighter actions. The book weighs in at about 120 pages.

There is a campaign system included that is just like the previous Western Campaign supplement. Where available, the pilots for each squadron are included for the campaign system including notations on pilot quality. Included is a pilot progression system for both fighter as well as bomber pilots. There are orders of battle present for the start of the war, Marshal Graziani's September Offensive and for Operation Compass. There is data on squadron changes and squadron movements.

There is a brief potted history of the three covered campaigns. Also included is information on the progression of the corresponding ground campaigns.

One major change from the previous supplement is that the scenarios are fully Check Your 6 compatible and in a format that is familiar to Check Your Six players. They are still fully ready for Bag the Hun as well. There are some supplemental rules included for the campaign that cover the poor performance of Italian fighter craft in the early days of the war, specifically dealing with poor ammunition quality control and lack of radios in their fighter aircraft.

So how can you get a copy? Head on over to my PayHip store. It is also availible on Wargames Vault.

Below is a link to the aircraft required for the various scenarios: Falcon and Gladiator - Aircraft Needed.pdf

The Coming Thunder Reaches 50...

... sales that is. Fortunately, it was pointed out to me that Blogger did something odd with the page for "The Coming Thunder." The text was wiped out and replaced with... nothing. That should be fixed now.

I have just received a copy of Charge!(Issue 34). Scott Mingus did a nice recap of the scenario supplement. Thanks Scott. Hopefully, this will generate a little more traffic.

Following on with this, I have been making some real progress now on the East Front Supplement for IABSM. This morning, waiting on my desk at work was not only Charge!, but also IABSM version 3, the IABSM Card Deck and the IABSM tokens. All very, very nice. I am a very happy gamer. Hopefully, I can get some time and put a game together this weekend. Possibly.

On the Bag the Hun front, progress continues on the second desert supplement. Hopefully, I will have more on this later.

A Weekends Work

Surprise, Surprise. I actually was able to get some painting in this weekend. I managed to paint up 25 East Front Italians, a single 65mm gun and a staff car.

This was quite productive for one night's work, especially considering how slowly I paint. I still have to use the Army Painter dip, dull coat and base them up. But that is the easier part for me.

In other parts, I finally received my Christmas present. Håkan Gustavsson's awesome book "Desert Prelude: Operation Compass." This book should help me finish off my second Western Desert Campaign book. I was having difficulty with the scenarios during Operation Compass. Now I should be able to knock that out without difficulty. If you are interested in the air war in 1940 over the Western Desert, his two books on this period are probably the best there is on the subject. For the wargamer, you will not find a more detailed reference on individual battles to create scenarios from. He also has a fantastic website devoted to biplane combat in the second world war. Please check it out if you have any interest. He is also a very nice guy. He has responded quickly to any inquiry that I have sent him and been very helpful with the supplement. I was glad I could finally get his book.

Distractions, Distractions, Distractions

Well I started work revising the original Western Desert Campaign and it morphed quickly into its own stand along supplement covering June 1940 to February 14th 1941. I have plotted out no less than 30 individual historical scenarios on top of the campaign system. It is sitting at about 60% complete at the moment. The scenarios are quite expanded from those in the original and include information to run both Bag the Hun and Check Your Six games with them. I have added Altitude, a map of the board with notes on entry, cloud cover information and cards needed for scenarios (BTH) to each scenario. In all, it is a great improvement over the original. Eventually, the original will get this treatment too. Original purchasers will get the upgrade of the original for free once it is done. Oh, Look! Shiny! Then I read a post on Ray's Don't Throw a 1 blog and am now distracted to a new period entirely. I am looking at making a skirmish army in 15mm for the 3rd Prussian Regiment - Anhalt-Dessau. I have some figures from another project that went no where that it seems would fit the bill. It would be a small force to start off with. Now I am off and looking for drill information for the period with reckless abandon leaving other project to collect virtual dust. According to the some spots I found on the internet, I can use the Peter Pig Govt Figures from their pirate range for these soldiers. Which is a good thing as I have some laying around collecting real dust. I was going to do a pirate game and that never materialized. Now I have a project to use these for. Never did buy pirate figures was part of the problem. So I have the basis of an infantry unit. Now rules..... Hmmmm.... Since I have Sharp Practice, that seems a good starting point. Beyond the information on the Wikipedia page covering the Nine Years War, I really know nothing about the period. Colorful clothing. That is about it. I gather that it was pretty much the world against France for much of the fighting of this period. (Here my ignorance stands as a shining beacon of non-illumination) Oh well. Back to Google to see what I can find.