A Fresh Start

Lt. Carruthers watched the little monoplane ahead with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension, already it had completed half a turn to port and he knew it would soon be back behind them. He felt a slap on his shoulder and turned to see Captain Downs gesturing, “We’re getting the Hell out of here, boyo”, he shouted, “That’s one of the Hun’s new single-seaters – they’ve been causing quite the stir further up the line”

Half an hour later the little monoplane had landed back at Pont de la Croix. “Schnapps”, the pilot, Rittmeister Fritz Engel, called to the steward as he strode into the mess.

“A little early, don’t you think Fritz?”, said Hauptmann Zeigler, barely looking up from his newspaper.

“I don’t see that as any of your business, Max”

Zeigler shrugged and allowed himself a half smile. He didn’t know why, but he always got some satisfaction from getting under Engel’s skin. From down the hall there was angry shouting; someone was being carpeted.

“What’s bitten the commandant?”, asked Engel.

“Jager didn’t get lined up on the target and they had to go around again. You heard that Schoneberg was killed?”

Lt. Jager was the Major Sommer’s pilot. Sommer was irritable at the best of times, but he’d wanted their first offensive mission to be the very model of precision and it had been chaos; the four aeroplanes had bunched up and Sommer’s had had to go around as Jager hadn’t been able to line up on the target without risking a collision.

“No, I hadn’t. Pity”

“Ground fire. He, and his vizefeldwebel Wolf. It is a pity, Schoneberg was a decent sort”

* * *

Henry and I had started a campaign set in 1915 a few months ago using the free ‘Eindecker’ rules in Miniature Wargames 396 from April 2016. To be honest, neither of us were that enthused and the campaign stalled, but when we discussed it a few weeks ago we came to the conclusion that the rules, in the ‘Wings at War’ family from Tumbling Dice (not to be confused with ‘Wings OF War’ by Ares Games), had felt a bit ‘flat’. One of the things that WaW does really well is model energy but almost all aircraft in Eindecker are restricted to one level, which sort of negated this aspect. A quick tweak to allow four flight levels as in their other rules and Hey! Presto – we had an enjoyable game.

As we’d lost touch with our last characters we rolled up new pilots and observers for our formations; ‘A’ Flight, 76 Sqn RFC and Feldflieger Abteilung 8E of the Imperial German Army. Instantly we felt a connection with our fictional flyers; my favourites being Lt. Schoneberg, a bumbling well-meaning Prussian aristocrat and his pilot Wolf, the cheerful son of a gamekeeper. Unfortunately they were both to be killed in the first mission – ah, well – c’est la guerre!

This campaign, the first of five in a meta-campaign which will take us from the Autumn of 1915 to the Spring of 1918, is one where the Germans are looking to be on the offensive. We will be ‘in theatre’ for 8 campaign weeks, during which time I hope the German army will go ‘over the top’ and make some gains. Henry will try and stop that from happening, and with good reason; if, by the end of the deployment, the Germans fail to advance Henry will have an advantage in the next campaign in that he will start with a flight of shiny new DH2s which will vastly outclass my motley collection of Albatros and Aviatik two-seaters and even eclipse my pair of Eindeckers (flown by Engel and Zeigler, if they last that long). If the German advance is successful then he’ll have to wait to receive his DH2s as replacements in the next campaign which will be set on the Summer of 1916.

My C/I formation being shadowed by the rather shadowy Lt. Blanch…

Against the odds, on starting this new campaign, it was actually a British build-up we saw in the first week; the British put men in to the line in the south of the salient, in the Railway Wood and Fleurs d’Ete sectors. This was an unlucky start for me as a potential surprise British offensive would mean that it would be very unlikely that there would be a German advance. To mitigate this I loaded all my two-seaters with as much ordnance as I could muster and went to bomb the supply areas behind the lines at Fleurs d’Ete.

He thought he had me here. He was wrong 🙂

Henry is terrified of my Eindeckers; I had one in the sector flown by Engel. Henry had two aircraft, the FB5 Gunbus with Carruthers and Downs and a BE2C flown by the rather odd, aristocratic and not entirely trustworthy Lt. Blanch with his observer F/Sgt Atkins. Blanch put his nose down almost immediately and headed for the safety of the British aerodrome at St Crispin Eglise while the Gunbus and Engel played a bit of cat-and-mouse. Henry was nervous anyway and was well and truly spooked when Engel pulled of an immelmann turn to get onto his tail, albeit at a flight level below. He knew that I had the energy to climb up behind him so he took the risk to dive down through cloud and escape, leaving my C/Is to bomb their target unmolested.

Messrs Downs and Carruthers having a bad day

Of my four aircraft, two scored hits and one was shot down. In the post-game admin the British withdrew a battalion from Fleur d’Ete due to the disruption to their supplies and I hope I have stalled any thoughts of the Tommies going over the top instead of my boys.

All in all a fun game and one which most definitely has got us enthused again. With the Christmas break I’m hoping we’ll get another couple of games in over the next week.

As an aside, I’ve had a few messages to say that the blog has been missed and to subtly check I’m okay. I don’t want to turn this blog into anything too personal but I would like to say thank you guys; I really did appreciate it. My mental health has not been brilliant recently, and it’s sometimes difficult to engage even with those things one enjoys, but I am feeling a lot better and I’m really looking forward to blogging again.

Best wishes, and a Happy New Year to all!