Midair mayhem

Tim wanted to try out his new air and air/ground combat rules for his Funny Little Wars 54mm forces in the late WW1/Interwar period, so we gamely lined up to give them a go.

The general target area,  a gun battery defended by Flak and a barrage balloon and with an OP out front.

The OP scans the skies

The objective was this magnificent Brtains howitzer.

The British had also managed to put up this very realistic barrage balloon model.

World class pointing from Jerry as a German bomber and escort fly on. The movement rules are pretty simple, with speed and turning restrictions based on type. WW1 planes are quite manouverable though.

British fighters scramble to met the threat.

The Fokker manages to get on the tail of one of them.

And scoes a hit! air to air gunnery involves throwing darts at a target. No dice were harmed in generating this combat result.

Meanwhile the bomb run is successful (yes, rolled up bits of paper are bombs).

The British pursue the Germans bomber, but it is all too late.

Off for a second try with some more 'modern' aircraft, in this case a pair of French D.520s, These planes are very, very fast, but with quite small turn arcs.

The wicked Italians hove into a view, a pair of beautiful SM 79s. These bombers are also very, very fast, and with somewhat more firepower and sturdiness than their WW1 counterparts.

As section leader, I thought a head on pass was he way to go. En avant!

Oooer, bombs away before we can even engage.

Sadly, our high closing speed mean the head on attack was complete ineffective. 

Eventually we managed to turn around and catch up with the bombers to conduct a maximum deflection attack.

Both sides duly knocked pieces off each other, but the bombers got away.

This was really good fun, and Tims 'no dice' mechanisms worked very well. The very simple manouvering restrictions actually produced some very realistic results as people with better spatial awareness we able to out manouvre their foes. I'll never live down the shame of being outflown by a couple of SM 79s though...