Weather Forecast - Cloudy with Sunny Intervals
Just to give an indication of the cloud formation at the start of my game, and as you can see I went with 6 A4 sized clouds and 1 double A4 one.
It looks quite good from this side the South edge, but:-
I’m starting from this side, the West edge, just by the nearest cloud on the left, the targets are the white rings, and the one in the far middle distance is covered by the large (double A4) cloud bank.
The start was looking pretty open to me and I wasn’t too thrilled about it at all. You can see one enemy plane halfway down on the left but my pilot couldn’t see it, there’s another one further down on the left which is out of sight but the problem is there’s the 3rd enemy plane quite close to my plane. He’s just behind the bank of cloud on the right of the picture but currently out of sight for the opening moves.
My plan is to fly into the cloud on my left, then make a run down to the target on the left side of the board, then into the cloud just beyond it. Circling right to the target that’s hidden and hope it’s cleared by then, before picking up the target on the right and then home for tea and crumpets.
I opted to move each cloud individually and used the paper base to denote the edges of it and as you can see the issue is that long line of cloud on the right, it’s going to cover my last target most of the time.
I decided to use the getting lost in the cloud idea for my pilot but only if the plane spent 3 moves in a cloud or did some convoluted twisting and turning while in a cloud. For the Germans I used my original ideas but slightly modified to take some account of Gary’s HuRhu bell curve thoughts.
Lights Sound Camera – Action.
“God damn it but that Englander was lucky today” said Schleiff, “he was so lucky that I didn’t get to him first, what the hell was he doing nosing around on our side of the lines on his own”. “I don’t know” replied Walter Hubrich “but you were very lucky too you know”. “You and Albert”, Albert just grunted at this, he was in a bad mood, mostly caused by Ltn Friedrich Schleiff but life in general was getting him down and today was just the icing on the cake.
Schleiff ignored Albert Franke and continued speaking in that rather annoying nasal way of his. “I saw him almost immediately I passed the cloud, flying East, as if he owned the sky”.
“He disappeared into a cloud but I reckoned he’d not seen me and thought I could catch him unawares as he flew out of the far side”. Hubrich and Franke had heard the story already and knew they were going to have to hear it all over again.
“Another Schapps” Franke asked Hubrich, pointedly not asking Schleiff, Hubrich nodded as Schleiff continued.
While Francke was at the bar he thought about the day, the cloud was bad, it was hard to fly through it and know where you would come out. Every pilot avoided clouds like the plague, it was impossible to know where you were in that greyish dank mess. He knew pilots could sideslip into the ground without realising it and he didn’t want it to happen to him, what a useless way to go he thought.
And sometimes the cloud would just disappear into thin air. He’d experienced that himself today, one minute no visibility and the next, the cloud was gone and he was in the sunlight.
Hubrich had stopped listening to Schleiff and was also thinking back to earlier in the day. He’d been on a line patrol with Franke, flying parallel to the trenches but on their own side waiting for some Tommy airman to come their way. He’d lost sight of Franke when they’d both gone through clouds and it was a relief when he was through on the other side.
He’d looked to his left and waved when he saw the green Albatros of Franke was still in position, well that’s a relief and then looking over to the south west he could make out the red Albatros of Schleiff but there were no other planes to be seen.
The nasal sound of Schleiff’s voice cut into his reverie. “I don’t know how you missed him Hubrich”.
“Because he was in dense cloud you imbecile” he thought but held his temper as Franke returned with the schnapps. He’d seen the British plane emerge from the cloud and waggled his wings and pointed. Franke had been keeping his eye on his patrol leader and saw the Englander immediately.
They’d both reacted quickly and turned towards the dull green plane.
*************************************************************
“Well Sport what do you think”, I looked at Dusty and weighed my answer carefully. “I don’t think Uncle would choose you to go on this job for any other reason than you were available and on the rota. Why do you think he might”?
“Well Vaggers, you don’t mind if I call you Vaggers” Dusty enquired. “Yes I replied, I do mind, you can call me Vagabond, or John or 2nd Lieutenant but you can’t call me Vaggers”. He looked a little crestfallen but continued, “well I didn’t really cover myself in glory during my last patrol”.
I’d heard about this in the hospital, yes I’d been in hospital again but was back with C Flight and raring to go.
Well not really but that was another conversation and not one I was going to have with Dusty Rhodes.
“From what I heard your windscreen exploded in a hail of bullets, you had blood spattered all over the show and you were facing Manfred Von Richthofen, what do you think anyone would expect you to do”. “Get home in one piece if you can, live to fight another day and that’s what you did”.
“Anyway tell me about today”.
“What a dud mission” Dusty exclaimed, “I had to check out the results of our bombers latest efforts but the weather bods at Wing had given us a duff forecast and it was incredibly cloudy, although I have to say it came in handy when I saw another red Albatros”. “Not I hasten to add, MvR but by then I’d ducked into the nearest cloud and didn’t think he’d spotted me”.
“Coming out of the cloud I could see the target area straight in front of me and went to give it a look see”.
“I’d also seen half the German Airforce and thought it would be a good idea to make myself scarce by hiding in another cloud before they caught up with me.”
“Half the German Air Force” I enquired rather quizzically. “Well three of them at least” he grinned back.
“They were after me like the Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse”. “Weren’t there four of them” I asked, I’d not really paid much attention in Bible Classes at school. “No only three” he replied “and they were coming after me like the hounds of hell”.
Dusty was an Australian and I believe they like to elaborate a story, a bit like Canadians, but I thought ruefully I’d been known to embellish one or two stories myself, sometimes the truth can be a little elastic at times so I wasn’t going to piss on his parade, which I think is an Americanism although why they would want to do that is beyond me.
“I knew if I made it into the cloud I’d have trouble finding my way to the next target point and so decided to cut across them” he continued.
“Well it seemed they didn’t expect that and so I had a slight head start on them as I flew in the direction of the next target point”.
****************************
“I was on his tail” Schleiff whined, “why did you cut across me like that”. “Because I was closer than you” Franke replied coldly. “We are here to do a job of work not to seek glory, and not to fly like a fool in a red plane, imitating great pilots with talent”. The room went silent and then Hubrich spoke, quietly and calmly, “he’s right, he was closest”.
“And he opened fire first”. “Yes but missed” Schleiff pointed out petulantly.
“That’s true” responded Hubrich “but you flew into him, the collision was your fault”. “No it wasn’t” Schleiff was getting angry, “he flew in front of me again, he was to blame”.
“You should have veered off before entering the cloud; it was a stupid thing to do”. Hubrich was getting angry too. He’d been at the front too long and seen too many good pilots die tragic or heroic deaths but deaths all the same, what Schleiff had done was stupid and there was nothing worse than dying a stupid death.
“Both Franke and I were able to fire at the Englander but you just got in the way”, Hubrich continued.
“And then you flew into my plane again” Franke almost snorted, “you are a useless fool” and he was on his feet. Franke was only a short man but he looked very dangerous at that moment and some of the other Jasta pilots were moving towards the argument before it could get out of hand.
“You should be sent back to flying school and then to the Russian front where you can cause less damage. I’ve never heard of a pilot flying into another plane three times but you managed to do that through your incompetence”. Franke was starting to move around the table and Hubrich stepped between him and Schleiff. “Calm down Albert, he’s not worth it. There will be trouble if you hit him”. “Hit him” retorted Franke “I’ll kill him”.
***************************************
“I was in a lot of trouble” Dusty continued, “all three Huns were close and two of them had fired on me, I was getting very nervous”. “I knew I was over the last target area but I couldn’t see anything for the dense cloud”. “The blue Albatros had me dead to rights and I had to do something unexpected”. “Well I thought unexpected might be better than the alternative and so I spun hard to the left”. “I didn’t really have much choice because the right rudder bar seemed damaged and I’d forgotten to take the mallet to hit it, so left it had to be”.
“He must have been expecting me to run for home because he went right as I went left, back towards Hunland and into the cloud. Couldn’t see a thing, I hate it in clouds but at least I was safe. Well I thought that at the time.”
“Then I saw a grey shape turn into a red plane and then it disappeared. There was quite a bang as we hit but the Pup didn’t seem anymore damaged than before but I’ve a feeling that the Albatros might have gone down”.
KILL TO DUSTY.
The red Albatros piloted by the incompetent Schleiff collided a 4th time and crashed. The green plane piloted by Franke is so badly damaged that he has to return to base. The blue plane piloted by Hubrich is in the large cloud and is undamaged.
Dusty has 2 right rudder hits and so is flying in circles to his left and hoping there will be a gap in the cloud.
Hubrich comes out of his cloud and will fly off the table, but I tested to see where he would actually come out and bugger me but it was on the far side.
So he’s still a danger.
“Well I came out of the cloud just in time to see the green Albatros apparently heading home” Dusty continued with his tale “and the cloud seemed to be breaking up a little. I was hopeful the red plane was out of the equation but I’d completely lost track of the blue one. No idea where he was”.
“There was a definite break in the cloud but I still couldn’t see the target.”
“I’d still got the stick hard over and just before I flew into the next cloud bank, the break in the clouds got larger, I could see the ground and the target area”.
“There was still no sign of any of the Albatrii apart from the green one headed home and so I made another full circuit just to be sure of what I’d seen and then straightened up and headed home”.
“Well that sounds fairly uneventful” I thought but decided instead to ask how the spotting had gone.
Dusty frowned and said “a complete waste of time; the bloody bombers couldn’t hit a barn door, wall or roof, even if they were inside the barn. They’d missed everything, I just hope I don’t have to risk my life next time they come back full of baloney about hitting 3 out of 3 targets, especially if some fool at Wing can’t tell the sky is full of cloud just by looking out of his window”.
I nodded sagely wondering “who would plan such a mission”
You might be wondering what happened to Hubrich in the blue Albatros, or you might have lost the will to live but either way I’m going to tell you.
He’d flown into another cloud and was returning to the fray but fortunately on exiting the cloud he came out at a point that took him straight off the table and so to home. An outcome I rather liked and it completed the game in 9 turns.
At one point in the game I thought it had started to rain because the table was wet, a bit of a worry because it meant the roof was leaking but then I realised that I’d used my empty beer glass to hold up the clouds. So let that be a lesson to you all, use 2 different types of glasses, one for the clouds and one for the beer.
There’s always something to be learned from a game of WoW.
Butchers Tally:
2nd Lt Barry ‘Dusty’ Rhodes: RTB – 1 Kill (Schleiff by collision)
Ltn Freidrich Schleiff: COL-FT – 0 Kills
C&W Rolled 11 -2COL = 9 - All well when you crash well.
Ltn Walter Hubrich: (Blue) – RTB – 0 Kills
Ltn Albert Francke: FRTB-D – 0 Kills
FRTB rolled 4+2 = stuck the landing
Hope I didn't confuse things too much by swapping from the German to the British Mess then back and forth.
Cheers
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