As Europa grows and evolves, so do its component systems. Case in point is the air system first presented in Drang Nach Osten/Unentschieden. It has been provided with a carrier-based aircraft scheme in Narvik, totally overhauled in Their Finest Hour, modified for re-fitting, to DNO in a 1976 draft, and updated in Case White. Most Grenadier readers are' familiar with these developments, but probably fewer are aware of the most recent (barring the always imminent Marita- Merkur) addition to the system: the 1977 draft extending the 1976 revisions for the eastern front through the end of the war and beyond.

The two drafts are now available as an eight-page "adapter kit" for plugging the Europa basic air combat and replacement systems into DNO/UNT. Along with the revised air system, this double draft also contains the fruits of the Workshop's efforts to upgrade the original research.

The factors of most aircraft units have been revised to reflect this new information. In particular, the ranges have been reduced to conform to the actual operational radius rather than the theoretical maximum. This reduction varies from none to a few to several hexes; in some cases the change is radical - the Russian Pe-2's drop from a range of thirty hexes to thirteen.

The Order of Appearance now conforms to the bi-monthly air replacement system as opposed to the original schedule which listed the production of machines on a quarterly system and sent them into the game on a monthly basis. The OA has been extended all the way through March 1946. The Group Allowances (pilots and air crews) for the Soviets now include Russian, Siberian, Lend-Lease, Guards, and Exiles. The Germans have allowances for East Front, SS, Volks, and Homeland. In addition, there are aircraft and crew data for Finn, Slovak, Italian, Hungarian, Rumanian, Bulgarian, and Swedish forces.

Some of the old air missions have been altered, and some new ones added. Patrol attacks are at the Air Zone of Control radius as outlined in Their Finest Hour. Interception is at half of the unit's printed range. Escort, air transfer, air transport, strategic bombing, and ground attack are mostly unchanged from the first DNO rules. Two new missions, glider and glider tug, appear along with glider units as part of the large section on glider borne assault and transport operations. Air superiority missions have been deleted due to the revamping of the defensive support mission. Instead, it is flown in the phasing player's turn and remains in the air over the supported hex in the following player turn. This "out of phase" system is also used for harassment missions, flown to hinder the entry of enemy troops into a hex, and interdiction missions, which may be used after 1942 to completely deny hexes to the enemy.

The air system is divided into day and night operations with certain missions unavailable to night aircraft. The Aircraft Replacement Charts from Their Finest Hour are utilized for funneling air units in and out of the game. Very importantly, the draft rules reduce stacking from five units to a maximum of three per air wave, and all bombing, air combat, and flak attacks are resolved using the TFH tables.

The draft material also provides an altered sequence of play for air operations, new airfield stacking rules, and revised flak rules. In addition, an even twenty-six A through Z special cases cover a multitude of east front idiosyncracies. Fighter-bombers and extended range flights are permitted as in TFH. Other special rules include provisions for Soviet air Guards, reduction of German bombing efficiency in snow turns, increased bomb load at short range and die roll modification for increased dive bomber effectiveness.

Aircraft are classed into several main categories: harassment (obsolete), bomber, dive bomber, fighter-bomber, fighter, interceptor, glider, and transport. They are further subdivided into day and night machines, and according to propeller, jet, or rocket propulsion. Specialized aircraft are also coded as requiring all-weather airfields, having anti-shipping missile capability, or being armed for the "tank-busting" role. Such coding allows for rapid identification of planes like the Ar234C night jet interceptor requiring special runways.

In an attempt to investigate the second segment of the draft, I decided to graft the new air rules for Unentschieden to John Gordon's "Citadel" scenario from the first issue of The Grenadier. His rules did not include any provision for mating the action with the draft, so I improvised as necessary: converting the aircraft he called for to the corresponding planes in the revised OB's, filling in the aircraft replacement charts with an approximation of likely levels in each of the boxes, and calculating roughly the proper group maximum for each side in 1943. Then I sat down with a batch of blank counters and created the necessary units with their revised factors.

Playtesting

Playtesting against oneself has its disadvantages, but circumstances dictated that this would be the case. Undaunted, I counted out hundreds of Soviet rifle divisions and pitted my left hand against my right.

The scenario I found interesting enough, if a bit unbalanced. ..but that could have been due to the solitare nature of the contest. Had not Mr. Gordon made provisions for the reduction to kampfgruppen of German infantry divisions destroyed in battle, the game would have been impossibly one-sided. The campaign continued long enough for the Soviets to overwhelm the Germans, and long enough to gain some insight into the workings of the new air rules. I'll use the remainder of this article to discuss some of my observations.

The reduction of air ranges seemed to be the most important change in the game. Practically every airplane lost some of its range, limiting its radius of operations for all missions. This reduction was even more serious for fighters under the new interception and patrol attack rules.

Interception is at half range and patrol attacks are performed according to Air Zones of Control ... for German planes, the AZOC is half the printed range; the Soviet AZOC begins as a one hex radius, increases to two in October 1942, and is up to half normal, meaning a fourth of the printed value, by the start of the scenario. The AZOC radius resulted in decreased area of operations for defending fighters, obviously. This in turn required fighters either to be more thinly spread along the front to protect against enemy incursions, or to concentrate around vital regions. Gaps were opened where there was no air defense, stimulating a larger number of small missions rather than a few heavily escorted mega-group stacks. It essentially became less risky to send out bombers.

I was initially very wary of patrol attacks, remembering how time-consuming they are in Their Finest Hour. Again, the limited range was the system's saving grace. With only a moderate number of fighters, limited ranges, and a lengthy front, it was easy to avoid most patrol attacks. Otherwise, the rule could have been burdensome. In my testing, I found patrol attacks to be useful but not of pronounced importance.

Still on the subject of limited ranges, they necessitated bases closer to the front lines. This made airfields much more vulnerable to overruns by enemy ground offensives. I was able to fool myself several times and send tank raids against exposed forward bases. An outgrowth of this was the need for both attacker and defender to constantly build new airfields as the front lines advanced and receded. Engineers were kept busy and supplies were expended, usually fetched by headquarters in the guise of hod-carriers (one of my favorite gripes, but that's another article altogether. The optional rail airfields were helpful and proved a refuge for several overrun, fleeing groups that had no other fields in range.

I specifically sought the opportunity to try harassment and interdiction missions, but without luck. There never seemed to be a hex where it would have made a difference. I was glad to at least threaten myself with the possibility of such action. (Marc Miller later suggested using harassment against a hex containing one's own ground units to help prevent them from being overrun.)

Unlike the strategic bombing campaign waged by the Allies in the west, the air war in the east remained primarily an adjunct to the land battle, with most of the missions being either ground attack or defensive support. The new rules did a good job of opening air space for the bombers to operate, but the main benefits still went to the ground troops.

Perhaps there could be provisions for bombing oilfields or factories...how often they would be used is another matter. The war in Russia simply was not a contest made for thousand-bomber raids against vital production centers or ceaseless terrorbombing of cities.

There was a dearth of night aircraft in the scenario, and their value was questionable, as they were limited to missions of less immediacy, mostly strategic bombing. This seemed to go hand in hand with the lack of a strategic bombing campaign. At least everyone was assured uninterrupted sleep.

Most combat losses under the Europa system are taken as aborts, and aborted aircraft are returned to the game through the ARC by repair. In Their Finest Hour, one die is rolled each turn to see how many planes a player may repair and return to duty, a procedure that results in a constantly growing backlog of aircraft and crews sitting out the war. For the eastern front, two dice are thrown for repairs, and it seemed to work out much better. Priority had to be established and aircraft had to wait their turn, but there was a steady flow of planes back into the battle. On the other hand, while I didn't reach snow weather, I wonder about reducing the repair roll to one die in such conditions (at least for the Germans) to simulate the increased difficulty of getting planes back into action.

The short range bombing mission with doubled bomb load was a gift from heaven in several instances. It seemed impractical for short-legged planes like the IL-2m3 to operate with their eight-hex range reduced to a third, but for the forty-hex range Ju88A's it was a regular occurrence. Conversely, I was loathe to send planes on extended flights with reduced payloads unless conditions were very favorable.

The die modification on air to air combat for the superiority of German fighter pilots ended just as the scenario began, and was replaced with the modification for Soviet air guards. I had a few in play, and tried to keep them together, two per wave of three units for optimum performance, to scare my alter-ego.

Rudel, as always, was a cute toy to play with, though thoroughly unlucky this time around. His role is unchanged.

The revision of the defensive support mission was a big improvement over the original version, especially since I was playing solitaire. The "out-of-phase" missions (defensive support, harassment, interdiction) did raise some issues which I took to GDW. One thing that concerned me was the problem of what fighters could attack what bombers. Originally, the answer was very murky: in response to earlier queries, the Workshop had replied that (under the old rules) it was legal for "escorts" in a hex to attack enemy planes on a mission in the same hex. If the same reasoning of "escorts turned interceptors" was applied to the new rules, it would effectively allow interception of out-of-phase missions by fighters at full range. The hex with enemy aircraft would simply be targetted for a bomber mission with a strong escort, and the fighters could then attack the out-of-phase bombers.

Some quick skimming of the rules and a consultation with Marc Miller confirmed that such nonsense is not allowed under the new draft. "The purpose of escort is to ... protect other aircraft. .." and they may not initiate attacks on enemy planes.

This led to a further question. When escorting out-of-phase missions, fighters were unavailable for patrol attacks and interception in the following player turn. This seemed to penalize the attacking player, especially since there was nothing from which the bombers had to be protected in the ensuing turn; the escorts might as well return to base. Marc explained the reasoning behind the rule: since the out-of-phase missions (and their escorts) are committed to react to enemy operations, the aircraft are "on call" for longer periods of time. Hence their lessened availability for other missions.

This discussion with Marc also brought out the fact that defensive air support is really targetted to a specific unit or stack of units rather than a hex. In a mobile situation, the defensive support would be committed to a motorized unit which could move, attack, move to a new position and still receive the air support in defense. Essentially, this allows sending such missions to empty hexes in anticipation of someone being there after the exploitation phase.

The draft material is a significant upgrading of the too-often obscure original rules. While still not a totally unqualified success, the system is perhaps the finest yet developed, encompassing as it does every facet of European Theater air operations - from ground support to dogfights to strategic bombing to carrier missions to gliders and fitting hand in glove with the equally detailed simulation of the land war. By the time they have been thoroughly playtested and edited, the new rules should be a trouble-free and pleasurable addition to DNO/UNT.