Australians Over The Trenches

Last night the Gong Garage Gamers played 'Spandau and Lewis', my WW1 air rules. We used John's 1/300th models.

John came up with a scenario based on an actual action on 17th December 1917 in which a lone Australian Flying Corps RE8 spotting for an artillery battery was attacked by a formation of German scouts. They fought alone for a while, before being reinforced by another RE8, then a second. The Germans were driven off, but the crew of the original AFC plane were dead, their plane continuing to fly in circles afterwards.

You can read an account of the action on Page 203 of this link.

In our game a lone RE8 had to fly the length of the table, under attack by three Albatros DIIIs. Both sides got random reinforcements - the Germans a couple of Fokker DR1s (because John ran out of DIII models) and the Australians a couple of lone RE8s.

The lone Australian RE8 - Geoff looks somewhat stricken beyond it:

The Germans prowl about menacingly:

The first attack. Caesar's DIII put bullet-holes in my RE8, and my observer failed to do anything back:

The German attacks intensify, but Caesar failed to swing onto the RE8s tail, and received more ineffective fire from the observer:

A second RE8 appears:

The Germans pursue the RE8, neither side doing much damage to the other:

Caesar finally edges his Albatros into a rear-shot position, only for his guns to jam:

And the RE8 manages to get a shot at a rookie Albatros pilot. It misses:

Here comes the Triplane!:

Caesar got his guns back in action, only to roll a complete set of misses. Needing to roll a 4 or better on each dice for a hit, he rolled, over two turns, eight dice and failed to score higher than a 3 on any of them ...

The end - Caesar finally inflicts a hit, killing the observer on the RE8, but not before the observer finally manages to get a telling hit on the pursuing German. However Geoff's triplane rakes the RE8 with bullets, and it crashes. End of game.

To be honest I was amazed that the RE8 lasted as long as it did. Really it was only Caesar's appallingly unlucky dice rolling that kept it alive. Saying that, my observer fired off most of his ammo for very little return in the way of hits, so the Germans should have taken more damage too.