Played a scenario with a historical basis last night:
Historical background
On the 17th of December 1917 the RNAS C-class airship C.27 was on patrol when it was attacked by 2 or 3 Brandenburg W.12 float planes from Zeebrugge. They managed to set fire to the airship and destroy it.
Set up
Quick and dirty - I drew the airship by hand so that I could adjust the guns and firing cones before printing a nice copy. 2 float planes are also hand drawn for now, based on this:
https://linen.miraheze.org/wiki/Brandenburg_W.12
I don't have a K manoeuvre deck, so we approximated it by using the D deck without the steep sideslips, immelmann and right angle turns.
The airship had a single machine gun on the top and a further one or two machine guns in the gondola. We used an A-firing gun with 360° coverage for this game. The airship gun had a range of 1.5 rulers, which may have given it too much of an advantage, see below...
The float planes should have B guns, but we used A since I don't have a B deck.
The airship started heading towards the German end of the table and immediately turned (45° per phase) and headed back towards the English end of the table. The idea was that if she made it she would have climbed away from us or reached the safety of friendly coastal defences.
The battle
We started heading towards the airship and flipped a counter to determine which direction she would turn.
I got a shot at the airship, only to have my guns jam immediately. My manoeuvres along the starboard side would have resulted in more damage to the airship, had I not been trying to clear the jam! My son's W.12 remained out of range for now, but we both took some damage from the airship given its long range.
We then both mis-calculated and ended up manoeuvring overlapping the airship card, which is large...
By this point the airship was approaching the end of the table, so we had to turn and have a final blast at it. One W.12 had its guns jammed, but the other managed to deal the final blow when the pilot aimed his gun at the tail fin and the gunner hit the envelope. The unlucky airship drew the explosion card, and down it went.
A fun scenario to play, it felt close, although the airship would have got away with 16/40 hit points had it not drawn the explosion card...
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