Somewhere over southern England, 1942

Recently, Julian picked up his copy of "Scramble", a set of rules that he's had for over a decade but had not tried.

Reading them, he was enthused. Working through them, carefully, over a day, he was 'a devotee' of them. Yesterday we caught up, chez-il for a play test.

Julian gave me the rules to read prior to the game. I could see what he meant. They are well written, organised logically and even include a fabulously humorous 'aside' with 25 'rules of the air'. These include:

"In the ongoing battle between objects made of aluminium going hundreds of miles an hour and the ground going zero miles an hour, the ground has yet to lose."

And,

"A ‘good’ landing is one from which you can walk away; a ‘great’ landing is one after which they can use the plane again."

The rules are sufficiently detailed so as to model flight of the little planes and to provide mobs of decisions and considerations for we ground-pilots as we move our miniature version around and try to get hits on our opponents. You are not adjusting ailerons, rudder, throttle and flaps, but the effects of these to turn, climb, dive, bank, roll, fly straight ahead; or various combinations.

Being our first game with the rules—and my 'virginal' flight during World War II—he devised a relatively simple scenario; sufficient planes and types to make it interesting, but not so many for two 'rules novices' to handle.

Two He-111H-16s have just left their target zone and are heading to their base in France, accompanied by two Me-110E-1s.
All planes 1/700 from Julian's collection. He has painted them, but they are currently unmarked. His daughter is going to apply decals, utilising her youthful eyesight, which is both a generous and marvellous bit of input to dad's hobby, I reckon.

A flight of Mk VC Spitfires had another idea.

Aeroplanes really move. Fast. You could say that they fly along. Julian used a combination of 'mapped' movement and arrangement on the table so that we did not need to chase one another around the entire room, down the drive, across the paddock... The planes were set-up in their relative positions and altitudes. We then rolled for initiative. The player who lost the initiative moved first. Movement of each of his planes was plotted on the paper. The winner of the initiative now moved his planes, which were also plotted on the paper. The planes were then placed in their new relative positions on the table. So, the planes moved around, while 'the earth stood still'!

Julian tracked the movements of the planes on a piece of paper.

The rules use the 'unit (U)' approach to movement and ranges, so are completely scaleable. This also enabled one version of U on the paper (U equivalent to 4 mm) and another on the table (U = 5"). Julian had calculated the latter so as to represent U at a natural scale of 1/700, that is, 1:1 with the planes. Unfortunately, our planes were going too fast and far, so he had to adjust this to U = 2".

We also, unwittingly, played the movement incorrectly. It is supposed to be alternated, with each side moving a single plane or formation in turn, beginning with the player who lost the initiative. Initiative used the skill of the highest ranking pilot (by the rules scaled from 2 to 14) as the only modifier to a roll of a D10.

Our error was no matter. In fact, by using Julian's plotting prior to moving on board, we could easily do simultaneous movement. Simply write down what each plane is intending to do in its ten seconds (length of a turn), then plot the moves of each plane, adjusted for any necessary tests of the pilot's skill, and place the models. Simple, effective and much, much more betterer, in the opinion of this little black duck.

Firing is conducted at the end of the turn. Planes of the player with the initiative fire first, with all damage and/or critical hits applied immediately. We did this correctly in the game. We could either use the same approach with simultaneous movement, or make a logical decision as to which plane fires first and do a roll off only for the individual situations that require one.

Both sides successfully spotted one another. I climbed and turned, right and left, with the two Me-110s, while the He-111s flew for home as fast as possible.

The Spitfires descended and came in for a long-range shot at the bombers.

Here we had a long pause, discussion, checking of some statistics of estimated actual hits, consulted the values allocated to planes in the rules and made some calculations. The driver? Far too easy for an average, or even novice pilot to hit at long range. Julian had found this in his solo play test and thought that he had 'fixed' it by changing the penalty for firing at long range. His test was a dogfight. Bombers are easier to hit, correctly, but with the way in which hits are converted to damage, he was gonna cause serious damage to both bombers from one, three-second burst of fire, from two fighters per bomber, at long range. Then he'd have a large handful of D6 to roll at a 1 in 6 to produce critical hits. To quote from an email that Julian sent to Andrew Finch in which he outlined his philosophy and asked the author's opinions of his proposed changes:

"Air wargames where there are huge casualties are just of absolutely no interest to me at all....  So, all the proposed changes below are intended to try to get closer to history, which will probably mean no casualties at all in most encounters. Fine by me!"

We settled on a simple adaptation of the system in the rules; scale down gunnery skill and reduce the damage per hit. A hit is produced when gunnery skill + weapon modifiers + 'situation' modifiers*  > defence value of the plane. A hit results in a number of damage points according to the weapon that inflicted it, e.g. two per machine gun, three per cannon (in rules damage is this no. x value of a D6!). Damage goes against the DAM statistic for the plane (more for bombers than fighters, more if the plane had a bit of armour). For each hit, roll a D6 to see if a critical hit is inflicted. We still have the 'box crossing', that is, blowing bits of the plane off until it falls out of the sky, but it is more likely to be seriously disabled or even brought down by the effects of the critical hits. Our changes worked in this game. Hopefully they will stand up to further testing.

(* Situation modifiers are range, relative position, use of an extended burst of fire (with chance of reducing ammo.) and firing a single or three guns, since ordinary fire is for pairs of guns.)

With our adaptations, his Spits inflicted 15 of points of damage on one bomber (against a DAM of 53) and wounded a crew member (from a critical hit), but only three points on the other. The tail gunners of the bombers missed.

Julian had allowed the Germans a 'little surprise' in the form of two FW-190s that could 'march to the sound of the guns'. Now was their time.

NOW we had the real tension of air wargaming. What to do, how to outwit the opponent and get into a good position for firing?

I lost the initiative and so moved first (all planes as we were erroneously doing). I got one of the FW-190s to dive to the altitude of the Spitfires and to execute three turns,  intending to end a bit ahead of the initial location of the Spits, hence a bit behind their new position. Each turn is effectively done as a 30º tangent to a turning circle, that is, turn 30º move according to the manoeuvrability factor of the plane, then repeat if wishing to turn more. A 'tight turn' of 60º is also possible, but requires a successful roll against pilot's skill, where failure leads to loss of altitude. "The pilot spends the rest of the time to recovering the aircraft assuming he has not hit a cliff or the ground." Turning like this is a clever mechanic that works really, really well and is far easier than numerous templates for planes with various levels of manoeuvrability.

The second FW-190 turned once and then flew straight ahead, maintaining its higher altitude. The bombers continued to fly straight ahead, as fast as their little engines could propel them, while the Me-110s continued on their wide turn, intended to bring them behind the Spitfires. They turn a bit like battleships!!

Julian sent two Spitfires directly at the bombers, to try to get into point-blank range. Range is divided into point-blank (U), effective (2U) and long, determined by weapon's maximum range. The other two made a single right turn and flew straight ahead, intending to end behind the first FW-190.

Julian plotted the moves and we placed the planes to see what happened!

Not quite as intended, but a really interesting ten seconds! The two Me-110s are to left and right, just off the mat. One of the FW-190s is at the same altitude, at the back left of two of the 'rearmost' Spitfires, which in turn are behind, but to the right of the first FW-190. Ahead of the latter are the other two Spitfires, behind the bombers.

A closer view shows the FW-190 at higher altitude (out of focus), two 'rear' Spitfires targeting the other FW-190, with remaining Spits and the He-111s furthest from camera.

Another view from behind the two 'rearmost' Spitfires.

Julian had 'missed by that much', so only one of his Spitfires got to fire at the FW-190. Mind you, he had positive modifiers for close range and behind the tail, but only an average gunnery skill for the pilot. He failed to get over the 16 required to achieve a hit with either of his three-pairs of guns (i.e. three rolls of a D10 and three separate calculations)—getting a maximum of 16, from memory. The rules use ≥ defence value#, but we made this greater than.

#For most planes, especially bombers, there are separate defence values for loaded and clean; higher and lower respectively.

The two other Spitfires took their shots at the right-most of the bombers in the photo. It was able to return fire. The FW-190 behind the Spitfires had the angle for a long-range shot.

Bursts of machine gun and cannon fire from the 'forward' two Spitfires brought the damage on the right-most bomber (in the photo above) to 11, while killing one of the crew and causing damage to the plane's rudder (acrobatic factor (AB) reduced by one). The bomber returned fire, with the 'tiger in the tail'—anyone else recall that issue of the Commando comic?—but he missed.

The FW-190 at lower altitude, the one that had survived the attack of the Spitfires behind him, was able to fire at one of those to his front (see angle in photo). Julian made him an ace (but not ace of aces), so he had a gunnery factor of six. He was not 'on song' on this occasion—i.e. I did not roll high enough—so missed... 'by that much'.

We did not have time for another turn, so 'talked it through'. It turned out to be of no matter. I would have continued to fly the bombers home, tried to bring the FW-190s in a position to fire at the Spitfires and brought the Me-110s around and forwards more so as to (hopefully) be in a position to dive on the Spits in the turn following. For his part, Julian's flight CO would have called time and the Spitfires would have got out of Dodge, or Dodgeton-upon-Sea, as it was likely called!

Action over. It had been an action-packed 30 seconds!!

Not to mention a fabulous day spent working through the rules and enjoying the aerial 'contest'; as well as plenty of side discussions, mirth and general friendship. A bloody marvellous way to spend a Thursday. Thanks so much Julian!

I super excited for the next action.

I am sure that, for example, we could handle a full B-17 raid, with fighter escort and 'boggies' coming in from above. In time, it would be marvellous to do a ground support action with "Scramble" for the aerial part (blink of an eye) and ground rules for the rest. Alternatively, Julian is thinking about a carrier action, provided he can find a decent set of naval rules:

"finding a decent set of them has eluded me these past fifty years (literally), but with your help I think the quest might yet find its goal, especially if a set can be modified. Victory at Sea, General Quarters and Stations Manned & Ready (the A&A set) are all potential candidates. Watch this space!"

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!