Help with Battle of Britain Kriegspiel

[Last Hussar]

For sometime I've wanted to do a Battle of Britain kriegspiel.

I would Umpire, and have a list of when radar, observers etc call in the spots. The table would be the plotting table. The players would be the Control room staff (it's ok, I'm not going to make Orcs dress up as a WAAF).

So I would say 'x' is reporting 'y' at 'z'. The team then relay their orders to airfields, and I would determine arrival times, results etc.

My renewed interest in this is I have asked my parents to get me a repro control room clock for Christmas.



Any thoughts/suggestions/websites etc you would give?

[Last Hussar]

{Deleted}

[Last Hussar]

[sunjester]

The table would be the plotting table. The players would be the Control room staff (it's ok, I'm not going to make Orcs dress up as a WAAF).

Thanks a bunch! Now I have to try and get that image out of my head!!!

[Last Hussar]

Well, to get that image out of EVERYBODY'S head, anyone have any suggestions?

[pierre the shy]

If you like detail there's always Gary Grigsby's Eagle Day to Bombing the Reich: https://www.matrixgames.com/game/gary-grigsbys-eagle-day-to-bombing-the-reich

A bit of a classic but looks like its been heavily updated recently.

Not played it myself but I did spend large chunks of the mid 80's playing Grigsby's earlier "Fighter Command" on an Apple II+. Plan your raids then sit and watch them either succeed brilliantly or get shot out of sky.     

[paulr]

A while ago I came across this set of operational level rules that look interesting. I've not had a chance to play them yet...
https://miniaturewargaming.com/blog/battle-of-britain-rules/

I also came across this youtube link, including WAAFs, which you should find interesting

[Last Hussar]

On the 'Tote Board' each squadron had the following statuses

Released (not available);
Available (able to be airborne in 20 minutes);
Readiness (airborne in 5 minutes);
Standby (pilots in cockpit, airborne in 2 minutes);
Airborne and moving into position;
Enemy sighted;
Ordered to land;
Landed and refuelling/rearming.

While mostly obvious, a couple of questions.

"Released" - what does it mean by 'Not available' (I KNOW WHAT NOT AVAILABLE MEANS!) - that is, is the squadron stood down for more than a few hours, etc? Is it something that could change at short notice, or is it something planned.

What causes the change from Available->Readiness->Standby? Why would a squadron be at a lower alertness? Is it just resting pilots/food etc?

How long would you give from the point the squadron landed to Available? - that is how long to refuel and rearm?

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Changes of status are ordered by Group. I think Released means the aircraft are being serviced.

This is a guess but -

20 mins, Pilots at dispersal mostly kitted up.

5 Mins at but not in the aircraft

2 Mins - in with engines running

[Last Hussar]

Yeah, my guesses correspond; I wonder what the trigger for change would be. There is that trade off between resting the pilots, who would need to be as comfortable as possible as the BoB was exhausting, and having the planes at readiness.

I want the game to be 'real time', so readiness will be important. What stops the players having them all at standby?

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

All at 2mins would wreck the engines and exhaust the piolots. Reckon the status change was prompted by info from Chain Home and the Observer corps. also I suspect you could go direct from 20min to 2 min

[Last Hussar]

What I'm thinking is they are at 20 mins, and the count starts when fighter command says "Go". Maybe allow FC to give a Go without a target, but if no target by +5 mins then they return to -20.

[Ithoriel]

It occurs to me that if you are sitting in the aircraft with the engine running you are depleting your onboard fuel supply. There's no point being at two minutes readiness if you only have ten minutes flying time.

[fred.]

A while ago I came across this set of operational level rules that look interesting. I've not had a chance to play them yet...
https://miniaturewargaming.com/blog/battle-of-britain-rules/

Great find Paul - LH, this should give you most of what you need


I think you may be worrying far too much about the differences between the readiness levels of squadrons and what tiny impact that has vs all the other variables that come into play for interceptions. 

[Last Hussar]

I think I've downloaded those, going to try again this weekend on the computer rather than tablet.

What I am actually after is something a bit different to those, different to a traditional wargame. I want to run a kreigspiel for Fighter Command in real time.

Instead of nice discrete turns the players would be reacting to information in real time.

The Umpire (me) would have a timetable of reports; the Luftwaffe would be preprogrammed, and there would be a "game time" clock. This might be set at, say, a 1000 start, even if the game started at 1:25 pm. When the time was 2:25, the game clock would therefore say 1100.



As events came up on the list they would be reported to the players. So at 1005 I might say

<station1> reports aircraft forming at <location>
<station 2> reports 30 aircraft heading 290 over <place>

Then at 1015

<station> reports <thing>.

And so on.

The players then have to decide who to scramble when, and against who. Do they scramble on the basis those two tracks are actually the same raid being reported by different Observer Corps stations, or do they wait to make sure it is really just one?