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Battle of Britain: The Strategic Game
by Len "Viking1" HjalmarsonAugust 13th, 1940 Day 2 of Eagle Attack.
Whilst on patrol with the squadron I sighted an aircraft diving and leaving a white smoke trail, being pursued closely by another aircraft. After a little while the second aircraft broke away, whereupon the first aircraft flattened out and the emission of white smoke ceased.
I pursued this aircraft which was flying just above the clouds and after 2 to 3 minutes I caught up and saw it was an Me 109. I gave it one 7-second burst from slight deflection round to dead astern closing from 300 to 50 yards. As I broke away to the side I saw his hood go up and the pilot baled out. The machine crashed just to the south of Pluckley Station. I force landed (wheels down) at Lanham as I was shot at myself and was hit in the glycol system.
---Pilot Officer John Burgess,
flying Spitfire P93182
Day 2 begins.
Here you see dispersal of my patrols as the day opens. The biggest issue for Day 2 will turn out to be the weather. The Germans have trouble finding their targets, and my patrols have trouble finding the Germans!
Initially cloud cover was 50%, but the winds at 20,000 feet were at 80 knots to the east. This made it virtually impossible for the 109s to escort the bombers all the way to the coast. This could be the setup dreams are made of!
As noted on Day 1, I was concerned to cover the Sector Ops. I assigned patrols over Bigginhill, Hornchurch, and Tangmere in the south.
I assign patrols to Bigginhill, Hornchurch, and Tangmere in the south
The opening assault was by squadrons of Do17s. As expected, the escort dropped off before reaching the coast.
Only one of the attacking squadrons even came near to their target. The cloud cover was increasing. Only one of my patrols made contact with the enemy, and even then their results were very limited. It was simply too difficult to keep the enemy in sight, and the enemy made good use of the cloud cover. By 9:50 the fighting was finished for the day.
By 9:50 the fighting was finished for the day.
By 11 AM the cloud had dropped to 1000 feet, and my squadrons were all out of action. Oh well, the boys needed a rest anyway.
August 14th, 1940 Day 3 of Eagle Attack.
On my way back from London on September eighteenth I spotted a Squadron of 12 Hurricanes north of Rochester. Attacking from 2,500 feet above them and behind, I shot like an arrow between the flights and from ramming distance fired on one of the aircraft in the rear line of the formation, tearing large pieces of metal out of the plane.
At the last moment I pulled my nose up and leaped over her, then flew right through the centre of the enemy's formation. It was not a pleasant sensation. Again I fired my cannon into one of the Hurricanes from close range. Luckily, the British had had a similar or even bigger fright than I. No one attacked me and as I broke away I saw two parachutes open below the broken formation. I then fastened onto a lone Hurricane who had become detached from the formation, I gave her a burst and she caught fire.
---Adolf Galland3
The three Hurricanes were all from 46 Squadron.
The weather on this third day of the battle was still cloudy, 4/8 at 7 AM. This meant that traffic would likely be light in the morning. In the afternoon the weather cleared somewhat to 2/8. Traffic was going to increase and the boys would be busy.
Day 3: Incoming flight of Ju87s heading southwest
By 13:45 things were shaping up. This flight of Ju87s heading just south of west was looking particularly ambitious. It was time to consider a response.
Clicking on a hostile group brings up the Hostiles Dialogue, where you can quickly order a response. In this case, I clicked on Assign Patrol in the lower right. Each click increased the total ordered to engage by 6. I ordered 18 additional aircraft to engage the Ju87s.
Clicking on a hostile group brings up the Hostiles Dialogue
The bombers were persistent, however, and reached their target anyway. By that time they were being engaged by 24 Hurricanes! For the fun of it, I saved this day before playing it through, then ran it again from the beginning. On the second run, I managed to have the Hurricanes and 12 Spitfires engage the bombers while they were still fifteen miles from the target. This time, the poor Ju87s were so intimidated that they turned around to head for home!
Intrigued, I jumped into the game to have a look. I saw one last flight of bombers dropping their ordnance and turning tail. Two hit the silk just as the Spits came within range!
30 Me-109's fight a 50 knot headwind as they try to catch up and defend their bombers
As you can see, the Me109 escort had almost caught up by the time the bombers reached the target on the first run through of the day. Fighting a 50 knot headwind was probably giving them a royal headache, and certainly depleting their limited fuel.
While all this was happening, a new raid was forming to the east, again directed at the eastern port of Plymouth and the eastern airfields.
Campaign Impressions
Battle of Britain is a great deal of fun. The strategic game plays as strongly as the simulation, rather a feat in itself for a simulation house.
When playing both games as one the Operations Room becomes the center of the action. The use of voice in the Operations Room, as if you were actually there with the Controllers and map keepers, is very effective. The girls will keep you updated on new formations and changes in direction. The play by play includes pilots requesting vectors and receiving them. The Ops Personnel will inform you via voice when a particular squadron makes contact with the enemy.
The ability to jump into the 3d action actually increases the fun of the strategic game, as if the Ops Room really is connected to the real world. I recall how much I enjoyed this with DiD’s Total Air War. You have a larger sense of the battle and the importance of your decisions.
The damage inflicted on the Luftwaffe begins to mount.
After many hours in the Operations Room I’ve found that assigning a combination of squadrons and individual flights gives the best results against bomber attacks. I am guessing that this is because a squadron has to keep track of all its aircraft while running the intercept, where a flight gets in the air faster and is more flexible once up.
I now usually assign a squadron of 12 and a flight of six to a group of 30 bombers. If I have another spare patrol, I sometimes increase this to two squadrons. I avoid contact with the Me109s whenever possible, to spare my fighters and to increase my effectiveness against the bombers, which otherwise are going to do a lot of damage to my airfields, radar system, factories etc.
Assigning the intercept as early as possible helps a great deal. If the raid is relatively close to British soil, I assign a squadron as soon as the raid is detected. If it is more distant, then I AUTHORIZE a new intercept instead, knowing that the patrol has plenty of time to get airborne and form up. This way I reserve my free patrols for quick response.
ASSIGN or AUTHORIZE? That is the question.
I click on the Hostile group to bring up the Hostiles List, which allows me to either ASSIGN an existing patrol or use the AUTHORIZE button to assign a new flight (see the second image under PART II). Authorizing a new flight (not already in the air like a patrol) is pointless unless the new raid has formed a great distance away. In that case, you had better have a spare patrol already in the air.
BoB is another landmark product from Rowan, their best yet. Building on MiG Alley, they have created a dynamic campaign and strategic interaction beyond any other campaign system ever modeled. Dogfighting AI, as with MiG, is excellent.
What did the Operations Room battle look like from the actual underground room at the time? Wing Commander Ronald Adams served as a fighter controller at RAF Hornchurch during the battle.
Wing Commander Ronald Adams of Number Eleven Group was at the very heart of the frenzied activity of the Battle of Britain as fighter controller at RAF Hornchurch.
Young pilots occupy themselves during a lull in the action (Image from An Illustrated History of the RAF, by RC Nesbit)
When I was ordered to report to Hornchurch in 1939 and I first entered the operations room I wondered if I would ever be able to assimilate and understand all the details of this queer room. However, after a few weeks I found myself transferred to the Controller's Chair with all the business of radio-telephony patter to learn, and how to guide our own pilots to make contact with the enemy.
For instance, 'bandits' meant German aircraft; so many 'angels' meant so many thousand feet in height; and the electric phrase 'tally-ho' from the pilot meant that your directions to him had been successful, and he had sighted the enemy and was going to engage him.
The days of that 'phoney' war were interesting because we were learning a new job. We practiced with our aircraft incessantly, and every now and then the enemy obligingly put in an appearance over the North Sea and more often than not was successfully engaged. The radio stations round our coast -- those tall masts that puzzled people before the war -- were able to pick up and identify the enemy. The information was passed to us and our plotters plotted it with arrows on a great table map below us. We could find out the position of our own fighters from their radio transmissions, and so a thrilling game of hide-and-seek developed, while we waited for the 'tally-ho.'
Radar was in its infancy in those days, and the enemy certainly did not appreciate its limitations, or we might have been more worried. The technicians knew, of course, but they did not spill the beans. For it was not all that accurate, and there were times when it could fail to give any information at all. If the enemy had known just to outwit it, which he could have done quite simply, the Battle of Britain would have had to be fought in a very different way, with perhaps a different ending.
Then came the astonishing lull during July that puzzled us. We all knew how limited our resources were, how few aircraft and trained pilots we had got ready for action, and we did not -- and we could not -- understand why the enemy did not come for us at once. There was about a six-weeks' pause. We held our breath during it, and then early in August, 1940 the radar plots began to show enemy assembling in the air behind Cape Gris Nez in France.
There he was milling around as one formation after another joined up, and we went to our loudspeakers when our group headquarters gave the order telling the squadrons to take off. 'Scramble' was the word we used: 'Scramble', we would say, and the Spitfires and Hurricanes would tear into the sky and go off on their course over Maidstone, climbing up to 20,000 feet, to meet the oncoming enemy.
As he came, we would sit there on the ground and watch the plots and gather such information as we could from the Royal Observer Corps and from our liaison officers. We would pass information to the pilots, telling them all the changes in the enemy's direction; how he was splitting up into different formations, what height he was flying at, and trying to guide our fighters to the most advantageous position up in the eye of the sun, ready to attack. The Battle of Britain is summarized for me in one snatch on the radio-telephone from a famous New Zealand fighter. I heard his voice in my ear as he sighted the enemy, "Christ Almighty, tally-ho, whole bloody hordes of them." That will forever be to me the Battle of Britain -- 'whole hordes of them.'4
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Sources
1. P/O Jan Zumbach, Source Unknown
2. P/O John Burgess, Bishop, Edward. Their Finest Hour: Ballantine Books, NY NY, 1968
3. Adolf Galland. The First and the Last: Ballantine Books, NY NY, 1957
4. Wing Commander Ronald Adams, Quoted in Readiness at Dawn: Victor Gollancz, London, 1941
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