Deep thrust on german soil
Scenario about an american heavy bomber formation, escorted by P47 fighters, attacking German mainland. It’s early 1944. Five players, Vittorio refereeing.
Rules basic have been found on the internet, we have heavily modified them, they can be found here.
The scenario
American forces
- 20 B17J heavy bombers
- 16 P47 fighters, early version
German forces
- 8 BF109
- 4 FW190 D
- 4 FW190 A armed with rockets
- 4 M110
- 8 ME 262
- 1 M163 Komet
The scenario
At the beginning of the game, the box and two groups of 4 P47 on the two sides.Two groups of german planes on the front left of the bomber formation, BF109 and FW armed with rockets.
The BF109 engage the escort while FW attack bombers from head-on, all rockets miss (need to amend the rules).
Some damage is done to the leftmost group of three B17s.
The defending P47 manage to bring down a BF109 and then chase the Focke Wulf.
The german interceptors continue their run and attack the rear left group of bombers, flames from one motor! But they get heavy losses and some fighters dive for safety.
One of the P47 gets friendly fire by a rear turret of a B17.
No sign of other enemies.
The german heavy fighters are coming, all equipped with rockets.
The american escort running to chase them!
Fabrizio is one of the top american fighter pilots, from Brooklin NY, with italian origins.
The german ace is dashing towards the bomebr formation, from the rear.
The P47 try to catch him, they manage to put a few holes on its tail.
The german fighter gather to attack the lonely damaged B17s… Three of them go down in flames.
On the other side of the formation a new attack!
The escort struggles to attack the newcomers, they were far in the front of the box.
A fourth bomber goes down…
The german ace fires his cannon, but he is going so fast that only few bullets are fired on first and then second B17, without much damage.
A FW armed with rockets tries to finish the B17, but misses.
Some of the escort flies to the back of the bombers to meet the last FW still capable of menacing the americans.On the left side the escort has bee most succesfull, only one out of the initial 14 planes is still around.
But the FW fires and fires until he ammunition ends.
On the other side the combat is still fierce.
The M110 manage to put cannon hits on the american planes.
But they are shot downed or convinced to abort their mission by the escort.
The ME262 appear, the P46 escort trying in vain to chase them. The jets will manage to run across the bomber formation in one pass, then leaving the battle.
Few good shots are placed, but the american defensive fire is accurate, two ME262 are damaged heaviliy.
Last action of the german ace, before going in flames…
Few more pictures from last minute of combat.
The game ended with 4 B17 downed, one badly damaged returned safely home. One P47 was downed.On the german side, one M110 returned damaged to base, 2 out of 4 damaged BF109 returned home. All FW190 returned home, four with some damage.The red M163 was downed, while two ME262 returned home with few bullet holes.
We definitely like the way damage and kills are handled during game, with the battle going to an end when most of the airplanes are hit and left the battle. The mechanism of assessing damage at the end shows that most of the planes leave the battle due to some form of damage or just due to morale or mechanical failure during combat. Only a fraction of the planes partecipating to the battle are really downed, as it was in real life. We could not accept the game being played until one side suffers 100% of the losses.Heaviest losses are sustained by damaged bombers who may not return to base with just one or two motors still going, in general when planes are far from the home base, i.e. the americans.