“A Bloody Paralyser of an Aircraft”
In 1915 Captain Murray Sueter, director of the Air Department of the Royal Navy, made a request to Frederick Handley Page for a “bloody paralyser of an aircraft” for use as a long-range bomber. By September 1918, a Handley Page 0/400 had joined the 1st Squadron, Australian Flying Corps in the Palestine Theater.
After Simon's aka Monse recent Staaken game and Dan's aka Camelbeagle twin Handley Page game, I thought I’d try a similar “big bird” scenario. A Handley Page is returning from a bombing run in the 1918 Palestine Theater when intercepted by two aging Ottoman Albatros C.IIIs. The objective of the 0/400 is to escape off the other edge of the table ... er … the western end of the desert. While the Ottoman’s try to down it.
The bomber is in auto mode flying due west while I play both Albatros C.IIIs.
The Handley Page 0/400 is facing west heading back to 1st Squadron AFC from its bombing run on Ottoman positions while both Ottoman two-seaters (one brown and one blue) are closing in from the north.
The brown Albatros gets a close-range shot while the others exchange long range fire. The Handley sustains engine damage of one. So no stalls need to be played – yet!
The blue Albatros and Handley exchange fire with no damage but guns jams on the forward guns of both.
The Handley’s rear gun causes rudder damage on the blue Albatros.
Guns unjammed, the blue Albatros and Handley exchange fire again causing gun jams on both, this time on the rear gun of the Handley.
The brown Albatros finally gets back into the fight causing minor damage.
The brown Albatros makes some telling shots with fire and rudder damage and more hits on the Handley.
Things heat up even more with more hits and fire damage on the Handley. The brown Albatros’ gun is jammed and sustains major damage.
Now the blue Albatros and the Handley exchange fire with the Albatros taking a crew hit taking its rear gunner out of the fight.
At the top of the next round, the Handley takes more damage from the onboard fires.
As the Handley nears the western outskirts of the 1st Squadron , it explodes from shots taken from the blue Albatros combined with the accrued damage from the running gun fight.
The Handley sustains 39 points of damage including 15 for the half-boom card.
The blue Albatros took a lot of shots but only 5 damage points and a wounded observer. Meanwhile the brown Albatros only took 3 hits but sustained 8 damage points.
A victory for the Ottomans but if the Handley could have received average amount of damage on the last turn instead of the boom card it may have made it.
I tried this scenario earlier but in that game the Ottoman’s starting position was to the right corner of the table almost even with the Handley. They had terrible shooting and even difficulty getting into the firing arc for the Handley. It escaped off the western edge of the “desert” with little damage. Not a very interesting result. Putting the Ottoman’s further up the table edge in this game got the action going straight away.
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