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The Luftwaffe switches targets in my RAF 'commander' campaign! It's lunchtime on 20th July 1940. For the last ten days, the Germans have been attacking coastal convoys. This was how events unfolded in the Operations Room, as recently as the day before - a typical day, until then. A new raid, Hostile 201, 70-plus, is being plotted, likely target a convoy off Ramsgate. The convoy's air cover, 79 Squadron, is still at Hawkinge to the south-west, but should be on station in time. Elsewhere, it's fairly quiet. Twenty four hours later and it's a different story. Raids are coming in thick and fast - slightly smaller, but more of them. And they're going mainly for our outermost airfields. I spent the morning feeling increasingly overwhelmed. Then I decided to do something about it. When the first lunchtime raid came in, heading for the airfield at Tangmere (ringed red, left centre of the screen in the pic below) I diverted a patrol from convoy escort, and another one that was covering an outer London airfield. Three squadrons hit the raid, overwhelming the escorts and inflicting heavy losses on the Heinkels. It didn't stop them bombing and heavily damaging Tangmere, but they paid a big price for it. You can see the raid, Hostile 101, in the pic below, as it withdraws to the south-east across the Channel, still harried by three RAF squadrons. This is me a little earlier, flying as Green 1 with 234 Squadron... ...and here I am, making my contribution to the war effort, attacking Hostile 101 as it heads for its target. But the Huns weren't giving us any respite. Or even a break for lunch, for that matter! By about 12:30, another raid, Hostile 201, thirty plus, was being plotted coming north from France, you can see it near the lower right-hand corner, in the second the Ops Room pic above. Except there was no longer a convoy target there! It looked to be headed for the exposed fighter base at Manston. And I had shot my bolt, with few squadrons ready to intercept it. First off were 605 Squadron's Hurricanes, and I opted to leave the Ops Room and fly as Green Section leader when they spotted the enemy. They are above us, about thirty bombers in three wide wedges. Somebody called out fighters, but all I can see were the Heinkels, and it is those that the boss orders us to attack. It was going to be a race to catch them, before they bombed. As we close from astern, the Huns start turning to port, and with a sinking heart I know we have lost the race. Down below, Manston paid the price! But the Huns would now have to run the gauntlet, and there was still no sign of an escort. A loose pack of Hurricanes was now fast closing in on them as they levelled out and headed back south. ...to be continued!

Flying a sortie in the RAF campaign This is my second mission report from my new (or at least, new-found) toy - A2A's Battle of Britain II - Wings of Victory. In case anyone's wondering, I didn't set out for them all to be called 'A bad day for...' - that's just how it's working out, so far. A bit of a give-away, or spoiler if you like, but I trust it won't last, and that future mission report titles will be a tad more cheerful. Anyhow now that I've made a start with a BoB2 campaign, I'm wondering why I didn't take to it years ago, when I first got Rowan's original, or A2A's remake. Especially since both are so much better with the BDG updates. Now, you can even play a more conventional campaign, as described in the comprehensive BoB2/BDG manual, which enables you to have a log book-carrying, squadron-based pilot persona. This uses the underlying dynamic campaign 'wargame' to generate your missions. But for now I'm doing a conventional BoB2 'commander' (not 'pilot') campaign. The main difference is that the commander version allows you to act as any and all of the Air Vice-Marshals commanding 10, 11 and 12 Groups, Fighter Command, plus jump in and fly any squadron scrambled or tasked to patrol, either on takeoff or on meeting the enemy. Also at other points but the latter is the most interesting, and enables the player to jump in just before the start of any air fight, in any of the aircraft in the squadron about to engage. I opted to start at the beginning of the first phase into which the Battle is conventionally divided - the channel convoy phase, starting 10 July 1940, just after the fall of France. Among the many options, you can set things so that the AI Luftwaffe you will be facing starts the battle mainly by attacking British coastal convoys ('historical' tactics), or using 'optimal' ones - which likely involves going for more beneficial targets earlier, like your airfields or aircraft factories. I opted for 'historical' and as expected, ended up with the RAF campaign AI flying standing patrols to protect convoys, plus scrambling squadrons to intercept raids as they come in. This campaign AI presents you with 'directives' which set rules your deployed forces will follow, and allows you both to vary these or create your own. It also takes decisions on what and when to scramble, abiding by these directives. The BDG manual gives excellent, detailed and illustrated advice on how to do all this, but the AI is quite good for the RAF anyway. I opted to accept all the defaults and let the AI fight the Battle, so that all I had to do was wait for something to happen and then dive in to any action that developed. As each campaign day accelerates and decelerates time as needed, you are not kept waiting staring at the map for long. And even while you are, it's a not uninteresting experience; you can watch convoys moving, patrols orbiting, raids developing and squadrons scrambling, while listening to reports as they come in. 'Hostile seven zero one is now a hundred plus' sounds positively sinister, even though spoken softly in the polite tones of an invisible but obviously efficient and very possibly pretty virtual 1940s WAAF at the plotting table. Above is my campaign map near the end of the first of three sections the campaign day is broken into - morning, afternoon and early evening. The aforementioned raid Hostile 701 is near bottom right, returning to base after attacking Convoy Jaunty (authentic convoy and squadron reporting names are a feature), which is the grey ship marker in the Channel between the headlands at Beachy Head to the west and Dungeness to the east. The blue and white markers are RAF fighter squadrons, either the convoy's standing patrols or those scrambled as the raid came in and now heading home. During this raid I jumped in with 79 Squadron as the leader (the top right blue/white marker) when it intercepted Hostile 701. Here I am contemplating the incoming raid, from a not-terribly favourable position... ...and here I am dealing with a Messerschmitt 110 which objected to our presence... But this mission report is about a sortie I flew the following day, 11th July. A convoy had left the dangers of the channel behind and sought safety off the North Sea port of Felixstowe. Not so safe, as it turned out, for Luftflotte 2 decided to have a go at them. Once again, we were up against a raid reported as 'a hundred plus'. Being keen, I accepted the first offer of combat that the campaign AI offered me, for the first squadron to sight the enemy in the air. This was no less than 242 (Canadian) Squadron, commanded by no less than Squadron Leader Douglas Bader. BoB2 being the stickler for unit-level historical detail that it is, it was no surprise when I therefore found myself in the cockpit not only of a Hurricane, and not only of one bearing authentic squadron codes ('LE') with each aircraft in the squadron with its own unique individual aircraft letter; but my mount was no less than the boss's own machine, LE-D, with my blue and red leader's flash below my starboard cockpit and the unofficial unit emblem, Adolph getting a kicking, adorning the nose. My Corgi diecast 1/72 has the leader's flash on the opposite side, the mirror image A (camouflage) Scheme, and is serial V7467 not P1966, but such minor details apart, BoB2's version is a pretty good replica. Would I do the illustrious pilot justice, whose flying boots this sortie had found me filling? Well, yes and no... ...to be continued!