Hawker's Disaster

A lunchtime quickie! I set up and played my Hawker's VC scenario for 'Spandau and Lewis' today. This is similar to the Louis Strange one I ran the other day, with a plane fitted with a lashed up gun taking on two-seaters. In Hawker's case, though, he has three to deal with, coming on steadily over a few turns, but all needing to be shot down. And his gun fires sideways rather than backwards.

It's a scenario which relies on spotting, but I didn't have the rules to hand (most of S&L can be played from memory), so I made up some quick and dirty rules on the fly. Here's Hawker stalking his first opponent.

He got this close before the German spotted him, sadly ruining the bonus he was hoping to get on his first shot.

The German recce'd their target, whilst Hawker tried to get in a decent shot. But the dice weren't with him and his first two bursts inflicted precisely zero damage.

Hawker gamely plugged away at his target, and by flying really close managed to score some hits, but took some back from an observer now unburdened from the actual task of observing.

Two other German planes were on table by now. Despairing of bringing down the first plane, Hawker switched to one of the ones that hadn't seen him yet, lined up a great shot and then alerted it by missing with every single bullet.

To be honest it was a mercy when the second plane shot him down

So, a complete failure for Hawker there.

The third German plane flew down the table unrecorded by the camera, messed up the post-recce turn and flew off the board. I used my new 'Going Off The Board' rules and it was lost somewhere over the British lines. So the Germans lost a plane today, but no thanks to Major Hawker.

I have the gun on his Scout firing directly to the left. Looking at pictures of it, and having played this scenario three times now, I think the answer is maybe to be more conventional; have it as a front-firing gun (the effect he was trying to achieve), but with the Restricted Arc modifier applied to account for it firing off-centre.