Aiming at Bomber Crew Members

[hokusai]

I could not find anything in the house rules sections about targeting crew members of a bomber.
So, I have been experimenting with my own rules. I hope I did not reinvent the wheel, though.

Targets

Crew members are represented on the airplane base by the origin of their respective defensive fire arc. Pilots are represented by the base center.

Procedure

1) Announce aimed shot

A player that whishes to perform an aimed shot must announce his intention BEFORE the movement phase.
He indicates which crew member he is targeting.

3) Check aim

In the shooting phase, place the ruler from the center of the attacker's base and point it towards the targeted crew member.
The aim is correct if following conditions are met:

(a)
The target is inside the attacker's fire arc and the ruler reaches the target without crossing any other airplane base

(b)
The ruler passes through the relevant edge of the target airlplane base, e.g.
- rear edge if rear gunner is targeted
- front edge if front gunner or pilot are targeted
- any edge if dorsal turret gunner

(c)
If the target is reached in the second half of the ruler (long range) the attacker must also have the consecutive
fire aim bonus. In case of short range the bonus is not required.


4) Resolve shot

-If the aim is correct:
Draw damage counters according to attackes's fire power.
If all counters are zeros the shot is a miss. If at least one counter is non-zero, the target is hit.
In either case put all counters back as they do not count for the total damage tally.

-If the aim is not correct:
the shot is a miss. No damage counters are drawn


Playtesting

I have played several games with an automatic B17 or Lancaster against two Bf109. The bomber's missions was to reach the opposite edge of the table, 140 cm from the start.

It quickly became apparent that it was almost impossible to obtain the aim bonus against a B17. So I disallowed the consecutive-fire bonus for bomber defensive fire.
Still the fighters were crippled quite often. On the other hand, if I relaxed the conditions by dropping (c) it became
too easy to knock out the dorsal turret. To my taste an aimed shot should not be too common.

Naturally, the fighters performed better against the less armed Lancaster. In some games, aimed shots were unnecessary when the official multi-crew damage rule would silence several gunners in one standard shot.

In summary, it was fun to play with this rules in this simple setup. However, I'm not quite sure yet whether the conditions (a) (b) (c) are optimal, though.


Any feedback?

[Flying Helmut]

Personally, I wouldn't allow Targeting of Crew members at all.

Belting along at 250mph+, buffeted by high altitude winds (and the slipstreams of other bombers), under a hail of fire from surrounding aircraft, just hitting the plane at all is difficult enough, let alone crew members!

Have a look at WW2 gun camera footage - even "walking" the ammo impacts along a fuselage or wing results in 50% or more of the ordnance missing the target plane entirely!

Just my personal preference, you understand...

[flash]

I could not find anything in the house rules sections about targeting crew members of a bomber.
So, I have been experimenting with my own rules. I hope I did not reinvent the wheel, though...

With the extended crew damage provided in the rules maybe not a wheel that anyone thought necessary before.
Could be handy for WW1 against a Staaken! I'd suggest to look to make it a contested draw - ie the target & the firer draw chits - if the target ties or wins he doesn't get taken out (replace the chit) but the plane takes the damage inflicted by the firer?

[milcoll73]

i doubt at closing speeds involve a pilot would be able to aim at individual flight crew. even aiming at general areas of a target would be rather difficult.

[hokusai]

Thanks for the comments, I see the problem. Even if the pilot aimed at specific areas, the probability to actually hit those areas would be just negligibly higher than random.
I guess such rules would rather make sense in "Tanks of Glory" of the other thread.