Or "Bombs Away!". Tim put on trial game of his VCOW offering, covering Japanese air raids on Wake Island in December 1941. This is of the one player = one bomber crew variety.
We had a good turnout for this one, seven crews. Historically the raids involved 20-30 aircraft at a time. For each plane we had to allocate ourselves and people we knew to the various crew positions, and in a Misubishi G3M, there are quite a few. Two pilots, three gunners plus a bomb aimer and navigator.
The mighty Nell. Tim produced a plastic model of one and waved it around but I failed to take a photo. The raids were conducted over stupendous distances (well over 700 miles), which naturally meant swapping bombs for fuel.
I was designated as flight leader, having once owned a Mitsubishi Lancer (acquired from my father in law).
Wake Island is that tiny blob in the middle of the Pacific, we were flying out missions from the northern Marshall Islands, northwest of Australia.
We flew a series of missions, each one involved taking off, forming up, finding the target, evading the defences, dropping bombs, finding the way home and finally landing unscathed. The success, or otherwise, of each stage was determined by card draws and sometimes a poor result could be avoided by making a 'manouvre test' - which involved throwing a pencil into the air and catching it.
I had a bit of a wobble on takeoff but managed to avoid crashing with a successful manouvre test.
The actual loss rate on the raids was fairly low, in line with the historical averages. The defences downed relatively few aircraft but damaged quite a few.
After three missions I had to duck out, but by that time we'd managed to actually get bombs on target from ten sorties, had three aircraft damaged and one shot down. Casualties were 2 WIA and 8 KIA (almost all from the downed aircraft).
That was lots of fun and there was much whooping and groaning as various good and bad things happened.
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