Forza Italia!!!

This week saw us dipping our toe in the water of a WW2 air and sea campaign at Guildford.

We've just concluded an excellent naval campaign based around a Japanese invasion of Port Moresby in which the allies somehow managed to snatch victory from the sinking carrier of defeat [although I'm still not entirely sure how we managed...my Australian Admiral had been brushing up his handy Japanese phrases for weeks...].  This inspired us to have a look at a Mediterranean based campaign...we've still some way to go before this gets off the ground but Keith and I thought we'd brush up our skills at Bag the Hun, the excellent air rules from Too Fat Lardies.

Keith obliged by providing the planes and his rather neat double sided mat from Hotz Mats.  I have one of these with 3" hexes which I've used for 1:300 planes but Keith's mat has [I think] 1" hexes and he has some really neat 1:600 planes.



The scenario pitted 2 pairs of the Regia Aeronautica's elite Fiat CR42's against 2 Blenheims that were trying to get safely across the Med.  Bag the Hun is a deceptively simple system which encourages formation flying and, like many TfL rules uses a card activation system.  Neither of us had played it for some time and it took us a couple of turns to get back into the swing of the manoeuvre system.

The Falco's [or should that be Falchi] buzzed around the Blenheims blazing away to little effect.  The leader of Flight #2 was so keen that he'd expended all his ammo in 2 passes and had to settle for becoming the wingman to his less experienced colleague.

The Blenheim's were able to return fire but this also proved pretty ineffective and both sides continued to display some neat formation flying if nothing else.  A damaged fuel line on one of the Falco's all the tailgunners were able to achieve while the Italians managed to kill a gunner and reduce their effectiveness but little else.

After several turns the RAF reinforcements which had steadfastly refused to appear finally turned up... a flight of 3 Tomahawks.  The Italians fired a last blast at the Blenheim's, forcing one to take evasive action by diving... Keith then had a couple of nervous turns as the pilot struggled [and failed] to regain control and continued heading for the Med before he finally managed to pull the plane out of it's dive. 

The Tomahawks which eventually turned up.

The Falco's buzzed past the fighters and rapidly headed for home, having decided that the fight had suddenly become a bit unfair.  Here the Italian Junior Ace who was leading Flight #1 showed why he was the superior pilot by rapidly overtaking his colleagues and heading for the table edge at record speed!

Zoooom... the Falco's break the sound barrier while heading for home!

So, a really enjoyable game where no one died!!  I'd guess the reports back at the respective bases would tell how the Blenheims had been badly shot up and almost certainly destroyed while the Falcos also had to battle against dozens of RAF fighters, or that the bombers had come under wave after wave of Italian fighters and had driven them off with British pluck!  Medals all round I'd say!!!