Adlertag 2023 Battle Report

The Cunning Plan and reality
I had an idea to run a narrative Blood Red Skies event in August – and as Adlertag (Eagle Day-the first day proper of the Battle of Britain was 15th August and the nearest available Sunday was the 13th, I was damned well going to do it then. This of course showed an almost Goering like ignorance of reality. Not only is this a weekend in the middle of the school holidays, making attendance by people with families and the like less easy, it also coincided with Britcon, the biggest wargaming tournament event here in the UK. I also was planning something a bit different – three linked games representing a single Luftwaffe bombing mission, with the results of each game influencing the next, so game 1 was Escort Duty, Game 2 Priority Target, and Game 3 The Way Home. Each German player would play as a Fighter unit responsible for looking after a section of bombers to the target and home again, while the RAF players would rotate in as different opponents on each mission – both sides carrying forward losses from game to game. The Luftwaffe would start with eight planes, plus bombers, and the RAF would have six, plus two replacements available to fill gaps. “That’s cool and will work” I thought….. The only problem was we had space for maybe eight players total. In the end however due to the issues highlighted earlier, we only got four attendees (gulp). At this point I had a moment of inspiration, or possibly a moment of madness – rather than play games of one v one, why not cram it all on one table with two Luftwaffe players (Me and Mark) and two RAF (Paul and David) – what could go wrong? Turns out almost nothing.
Game 1 started with all sixteen (16) Bf109s escorting six He111s facing off against six Hurricanes and six Spitfires. Ok this was obviously unbalanced but actually not that much as the RAF were really only trying to weaken the Luftwaffe as they approached the target. I think this also may hold the record for the most planes in a BRS game I’ve ever taken part in, with 34 planes in the air at once. Any fears I may have had about BRS not handling big numbers were quickly forgotten. Everything worked smoothly and at the end of turn six one of my Bf109s was shot down but the bombers were intact. We broke for lunch.
Game two saw the target – Manston Airfield at one end of the table and the massed Luftwaffe formation at the other. The target looked an awfully long way away! Spitfires and Hurricanes were soon diving in but this time around the RAF decided to try and bypass the escorts and hit the bombers. This proved successful initially as one He111 was shot down in “my” formation and a second decided to jettison their bombs and head for home as with an engine out if it was shot down it would cause the Squadron (ok Kette) to break. Mark’s trio were ok except one lost an engine but with no immediate risk of a Squadron break he flew bravely on. The escorts attacked the RAF Squadrons, and broke both due to accumulated Boom Chits, with only one Hurricane and one Spitfire actually shot down at the break point, however as the dogfight continued to the end of the turn two other RAF fighters went down. With the fighters driven off the four remaining bombers attacked Manston. One hit was scored by the high flying He1111s however Mark’s damaged bomber was unable to climb to get out of AA range and was shot down by a Bofors gun on his attack run. Honours at this point were very much even, with the Luftwaffe losing three bombers and a fighter and the RAF losing four or five fighters.
Game three was planned to the “The Way Home” however we decided as it was 3.30pm we would call it a day. I mentioned before the game played smoothly even with over thirty planes in the air, but that did mean each turn was proportionally longer than had we been playing smaller games in parallel.
General consensus was we all had a great day and are keen to try something similar again in September – probably Pacific based next time.
Cheers