ADPC - Melbourne Squadron
Game Reports
2000 season - Social - held at Northern Suburbs Games Association (13/08/00)
Western Front, Dec 1917.
3 games, all with Sopwith Camel F1 (150) vs Fokker Dr1.
First game was 3 Camels vs 2 Fokkers. 2nd round of firing resulted in 1 Camel pilot with a light wound, and another had his feul line cut. The fokkers turned for home, leaving the surviving camel to cover his wingman. The wounded pilot didn't survive, but the disabled plane made it home.
Second game was 2 Camels vs 3 Fokkers. Again it was over quickly, with the same pilot again having his camel shot out from under him (survived the trip home again). There were several tailing attempts, with no-one being overly successful. 2 of the fokkers retreated early, with the third being shot down.
Third game was fairly long, 3 Camels vs 2 Fokkers. There was now one pilot (2/1)
on each side with the rest being rookies or 1/0 pilots. The fighting was intense,
with 1 fokker breaking away, tailed by a camel. The hapless camel pilot was
reversed, maneuvered in an attempt to avoid being shot & forgot that the DR1s have a
stall of 50. This resulted in a half circle, a 300 ft side shot and the camel got a
cut feul line and tail fabric tear at 9800 ft... As expected the tail fell off, as
there was no way to avoid the tear rolls on the way to the ground. A second Camel
had a wing fall off on the last turn before the Fokker headed home.
End result was: Camels: 2, Fokkers: 3. With all the kills going to the same 2
players.
2000 season - Round 20 (07/10/00)
North Sea, December 1917.
Forces: 2 Sopwith Baby's vs 3 Friedrichshafen FF49s on a antishipping strike against HMS Engadine and 3 British freighters.
Sopwith's open with bottom and side attacks against 2 of the FF49s (the 3rd stays high
out of range) with no response due to out of Rflx arc. Pedr's FF49 starts smoking
immediately. The first 2 then come down to attack range, lining up HMS Engadine with
2 torpedoes. Brendan's torpedo hits, causing major damage; unfortunately Pedr
misses. Machine guns open up from the freighters, against Brendan's FF49, failing to
hit. As the first 2 peel off, Doyle's FF49 comes screaming in for a torpedo run,
hitting the Engadine again and making sure she'll go to the bottom.
Brendan's FF49 get targetted by 6 machine guns, doing minimal damage, while Pedr gets hit
by the 2 Sopwiths. General maneouvering takes place at low altitude (to avoid the AA
guns) with several hits being traded. Pedr and Brendan (both with 3 engine hits by
now) hold a quick conference on their radios and then hit the deck to head home and cover
each other.
Michael jumps onto the tail of the escaping FF49s, but gets too close on the second turn
and misjudges the approach angle, resulting in 5 HO hits. 4 go into the engine and
the fifth kills the pilot outright. Doyle's FF49 meantime has been tangling with
Simon's Sopwith and disengage's as Simon head's back to help his wingman; alas too late.
Net result is one downed Sopwith Baby, 2 badly shot up engines on the FF49s and HMS Engadine holed and sinking.
We actually made a few gameplay mistakes (first time we'd used 2 seaters) in that we forgot the +1 initiative for the FF49s. This would have made a different game; especially when it was realised afterwards that the Sopwith pilots needed to attack from further away, as they prevented the ship based machine guns from firing for 4-5 turns. There were several other setup mistakes as it was the first round I had hosted myself; most of them balanced out in the end.
2000 season - ADPC Round 22 (07/11/2000)
Date: August 1918, British vs German
Location: Western Front; over the front (36 wide)
Fokker D.VII (185) vs Sopwith Dolphins
Altitude: 16,800 feet!
8. Michael Hill +81 Fokker D.VII (185) (1/0) - 1 kill
6. James Graewolfe +34 Fokker D.VII (185) (0/0)
5. Pedr Gurteen +24 Dolphin (0/0)
4. David Hoad +20 Dolphin (0/0)
3. Simon Hoad +19 Fokker D.VII (185) (0/0)
2. Doyle +17 Fokker D.VII (185) (3/1)
1. Cian Nieman +1 Dolphin (1/1)
1. Brendan Robertson -37 Dolphin (0/0)
2 brand new players this game (James & David), both did very well, considering they were up against aggressive players. 3 of the Dolphins had single wing lewis guns, which were used to good effect against players attempting top shots in the first few turns of the game.
The aircraft started a long, long way up, with the nearest cloud at 12,300 feet. Fairly normal start, with play degenerating into a melee against whoever moved ahead of them.
Turn 3 saw a tailing chain with Brendan at the start, Michael second and Cian bringing up the rear. Michael was successfully reversed, but neither aircraft targetted him, as I was stuck in a circle (the only target available after this was Doyle HO from 300 feet; both of us hit; neither of us hit engine or pilot, everything went into the LW, CW & RW on both) and Cian had a juicier target in Doyle.
Turn 4 was good for the Allies, with all four German's moving first. 2 german's ran away out of range, leaving their wingmen to be plastered by the allies. By the end of turn 4, several players were looking to escape due to heavy damage (Doyle was one; he was attacked 6 times in 2 turns by 3rd man in for about 30 points, I was another with only 2 hits left in the RW).
On turn 6, I tried to escape by voluntarily falling OOC after being reduced to 1 RW hit; not reading through the section properly, I rolled for distance dived, resulting in a 50' overdive due to damage. You guess what happened to the wings...
Turn 7 & 8 had 3 other players dive into the clouds, which left 4 players (Michael, James, Pedr & David) all unwilling to escape and take the point penalty. They proceded to duel at point blank range for several turns (~ turn 11) before the allies finally escaped into cloud due to accumulated damage. David had a fabric tear from turn 5, which finally reached the point of only 2 RW left & he needed to dive 950 feet to escape... fortunately he rolled a 5 and got away.
Cian's pilot (1/1) did extremely well until it came time to land; 85% chance to land... failed, nose in crash. 60% chance to survive crash... failed.
Pedr's endgame comment was "As soon as I get back, I'm going to beat up the armourer for loading all those blanks in my Vickers." This was after 6 shots at 100' or less for 5 misses...
2000 season - Social - held at Northern Suburbs Games Association (19/11/00)
Date: September 1916, British vs German
Location: Western Front; over German lines (54 wide)
British DH2s balloon busting against Fokker Eindekker IIIs, fixed (3/0) pilots.
Altitude: 2,300 feet.
4 players, myself, Frank Copeland, Andrew Dynon & ???.
The defending German's started with a height advantage of 600', which turned into a disadvantage when the British simply dived away towards the balloon!
Once the DH2s reached attack range (500' altitude), the first aircraft was jumped by
both Eindekker's, with the second attacking from the opposite side of the balloon; which
unfortunately for him was inside the free-fire zone for ground attacks.
End result for this turn was: 1 exploded & burning balloon; 1 DH2 with multiple crits
(including a LW result of no opposite turns/banks), and the second DH2 was hit by 3 AA, 3
MGs for 20+ HF (including 7 possible pilot hits).
Because of the LW crit, the attack angle (and being tailed), the first DH2 had no choice but to immelman at 100 ft; this resulted in a burning aircraft (failed the 15% roll) and a mutual kill (he won the cut for kill). We simply had the aircraft burn (not destroyed), as it gave the pilot *some* chance to get away. He made good use of this time to get 20% of the way over the front lines, but overturn flip crashed (5% landing chance), survived, was captured & failed to escape.
The game petered out after that as Frank successfully escaped the clutches of the vengeful E.IIIs looking for their own kill.