Air War - Mysteres over Mitla

 After the previous outing with SPIs Air War, John organised another Zoom session, this time with rather more players. To keep things (relatively) simple, this was another early jet cannon encounter, this time over the Mitla Pass in 1956 during the Suez crisis. Israeli paras had seized the Mitla Pass and the Egyptians sent a flight of Meteors to attack them. The Israeli top cover was a couple of Mysteres. We had no less than seven players for this, plus John running it and once again we were graced by the presence of the games original designer, David Isby, to keep us all straight.  

My home made Air War setup has expanded considerably! This was a six map sheet game, and coupled with the QRS, control sheets for six aircraft, my laptop, dice and various charts and tables, it all took up quite a bit of room. I had to use the chairs either side hold various other bits of paper as my back isn't up to standing up over a table for two hours wearing my headset.

I said the scenario was 'simple', well it isn't really. All those counters are various types of IDF ground forces blue = trucks, red = M3 halftracks, green = occupied buildings, red = quad .50 cal AA and yellow = ammo dump. The Egyptians get various amounts of VPs for destroying them. I'd actually misplaced the ammo dump, it should be up by the AA guns. 

The real complexity is the terrain. The four sheets either side of the central two are ground level 8, the four hex columns either side of the pass are ground level 12, and the base of the pass itself (where all the targets are) is level 4. So the Egyptians need to crest the hills either side of the pass, dive down and then run along the trench blowing stuff up. As we played this on 4th May, Star Wars day, it seemed entirely appropriate that we were playing a flying trench assault game - their is even a 'Death Star exhaust port' in the ammo dump.

The simplicity was mainly that we weren't using missiles and the targets are all static - much easier to hit than something flying around!

Here are the good guys, a pair of Israeli Mysteres. As I'd been practicing, I was elected to be Israeli and was paired with Nigel, whose played this much more than me. Nigel was Blue 1, I was Blue 2, and Nigel was also the IDF 'honcho', or more experienced pilot, as he was.

The Mysteres are marginally better than Meteors, they turn on a button, cruise, accelerate and dive faster and carry more ammo, but there are only two of them.

We also had Micheal manning the Israeli AA guns and John running the IDF paras as well as running the games.

The Egyptians have no less than four Meteors, Red 1 (Russell), 2 (Divid), 3 (Tim) and 4 (Chris). Russell was the CO, and had to secretly plan the attack. He opted for a cannon only attack, no bombs at low altitude. At altitude 13 they would just skim the top of the mountains before diving into the pass. They would come on two waves, R1 leading on turn 2, R2, R3 and R4 coming on in line abreast on turn 3.

Nigels brother Ian had made up these revised aircraft control sheets which I used for the IDF olanes. They are much clearer and easier to use than the supplied ones, and big enough for me to use tiddlywinks to record altitude, acceleration etc. I used my custom counters for energy, throttle, movement and flight attitude.

The assembled multitudes.

We were all tracking the progress on our own maps, so I don't have to worry too much with blurry shots like this one, but we kept Tims map pinned as the main control map. There was a lot going on so it was useful to have a master reference map.

We didnt know the Egyptian plan up front, but had ot pick a flight profile. All we knew was the Egyptians were coming from the west somewhere between altitude 9 and 61 (approx 15,000 feet). We started in the southwest quadrant at altitude 70, full throttle and a shallow dive to gain some energy. It was a bit of a gamble as the Egyptians could have come on behind us, but we were manouverable enough to  dive and turn.

We were fortunate to retain the initiative for the entire game, partly thanks to Nigels 'honcho' status. On turn 2 Red 1 appeared at the far end of the map, and far away and thousands of feet below us.

We then essentially spend several turns in a power dive to get down to the level of the Egyptians, while also accumulating a mass of energy and making turns and lateral rolls to get into position for  a high speed diving attack.

It takes a while to pull out of a steep dive, so I did a few calculations as to when I'd have to start pulling up. It would be very embarrassing to pile into the ground. The Egyptians kept reasonable formation as they chugged across our front, but Red 2 decided he wanted a bit more altitude to clear the mountains. With only 1 level of clearance it precluding them from some manouvres, particularly turns at 90 degrees, as they result in a loss of altitude. 

The Egyptians all successfully crested the mountains and went into shallow dives to target the northern convoy. Nigel and I screamed down after them. Nigel had pulled out a bit too soon and was at level 15 whereas the Egyptians were all between 10 and 12, whereas I was at 13. The range and height differential meant that Blue 1 was out of range whereas I wasn't. We'd been able to line up as we'd got behind the Egyptians as they made their attack run, so were able to line up as they moved first.

The IDF AA all missed, the Egyptians managed to hit a couple of trucks - it was a hard shot as although the planes look adjacent, they are still relatively high, so the height difference extended the range. Blue 1 was out of range of the Egyptians, but I was in medium range of Red 2 and let fly. It was a decent shot, not quite up the tail pipe, but not a deflection shot either and duly landed a hit which exceeded the Meteors damage tolerance. David failed to eject and went down in flames!

We'd been playing for two and a quarter hours at that point and it seemed a good time to stop and wash up. Tim and Russell both ran the rest of the their attack runs later, but failed to do any significant damage.

That was far more fun than the rather dry account seems. Having Nigel and David playing was really helpful as they corrected a few basic mistakes a number of us had been making around things like turning and diving. Coupled with the practice sessions I'd had before, I actually felt like I was flying the plane and had some idea of getting it to go where I wanted, rather than just randomly setting controls and hoping for the best. I think we all got a lot out of it, and David Isby commented that he was delighted we'd managed to achieve a roughly historical result.

More sessions are planned for the future, but tbh I think I'm 'Air Warred out' at that point. I may come back to it at some point, but it was an interesting intellectual challenge I felt I wanted to beat and I feel I've done that. I've got new things I want to try, and while the occasional bit of retro gaming is fun, I'd like to do some new stuff.