Kaunas - One of your planes is missing!
Post-WW1, warring factions marched all over the Baltic vying for territory. In the spring of 1919, the Baltic Landwehr (German-backed militia) temporarily held Riga, the capital of Latvia. The Allied powers intervened to stabilize the situation with the British tasked to keeping a lid on Landwehr aspirations in Latvia. At this time Lithuania was fighting for its existence with first the Bolsheviks and later the Poles. When the German presence was ordered to leave Lithuania, they left behind various aircraft including a pair of Friedrichshafen G.IIIa bombers which ended up being stationed at Lithuania’s Kaunas Airfield.
This fictional scenario has a Landwehr special ops team sneak onto the Kaunas airfield, board one of the Friedrichshafen bombers and begin its flight to Riga to bomb British forces there and incite an insurrection. The airfield quickly notified local authorities and contacted the British in Riga that trouble is headed their way.
Crash is flying the bomber, Baltic Bob is piloting the yellow Lithuanian Fokker D.VII and Wrong Way is in a green British SE5a. The goal of the bomber is to fly off the other end of the game board toward Riga. Both Baltic and Wrong Way are to shoot down the bomber before it leaves the board. If the bomber escapes, it wins. If the bomber’s escape is foiled, the scout pilot who has scored the most damage on the bomber is the victor.
No altitude rules and the boom card is worth half the original damage points.
Close up of the Friedrichshafen G.IIIa. It’s made by JSM Warplanes.
The pursuing scouts: British SE5a and Lithuanian Fokker D.VII.
The bomber heading north towards Riga with the Lithuanian Fokker on upper left and British SE5a on the upper right.
The bomber trades close range fire with the British resulting in both sides being jammed while the Lithuanian circles around.
The bomber’s rear gun engages the SE5a while it’s wondering what the Lithuanian is doing.
The Lithuanian does an Immelmann and is now in a perfect position to engage the bomber. Such a clever Baltic! The British pilot suffered a wound in the previous turn so his gun is jammed an extra turn.
The Fokker turns and gets in a close range shot causing the bomber to smoke and take more serious damage.
The Lithuanian follows up with another right turn lining up perfectly on the bomber’s tail with another short range burst with devastating effect.
The Lithuanian presses his attack causing the bomber to catch fire with the SE5a inflicting rudder damage on the bomber.
It’s all too much for Craig’s bomber which “crashes” to the ground nowhere near Riga. Wrong Way scored 15 damage points against the Landwehr bomber while Baltic Bob scored 11. So the victory goes to the British SE5a.
The SE5a sustained 6 damage points plus a wounded pilot while the Fokker only took 1 damage point.
The damage inflicted by both the SE5a and the Fokker was quite high from the beginning resulting in a convincing win for the Allies.
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