Game Development - What if operation Sealion had taken place?

OK - whatever you think is best - having read some of the other posts I know what you mean. I have a number of other related questions such as how quickly can mines be swept and the limiting factor on the capacities of the channel ports (or what's wrong with basing all barges in and sailing from Calais etc).

Would these be better in this post, as separate posts or would you prefer if they went into the other forum as well?

 

Try to get hold of a copy of GDW's "Their finest hour" wargame, it simulates the air, naval and land aspects of Sea Lion, IMO not their best effort , their "Narvik" game on the Norwegian campaign was a lot better game and simulation. As usual their OOB research was great though the Europa system was not optimized for simulating anphibious warfare.
As to aircraft effectiveness against ships the answer for ETO 1939-1941 is really "luck" as doctrine for anti shipping warfare was very immature with the exception of the FAA that enjoyed consistent successes despite obsolescent equipment.
For the "mainstream" air forces a realistic simulation would need to account for the chance of a single plane sinking a cruiser or a 100 plane strike getting no hits as historically happened, possibly the best way to go woud be to roll a dice (possibly a 20 sided one) for each "attacking plane factor" (say 3 to 10 planes accoring to the scale you chose) and only scoring on a 1 for "normal" planes, 1-2 for dive bombers, and 1,2,3 for FAA planes or somethong like that (IMO rolling lots of dice is fun), torpedo planes should do twice as much damage as bombers. This may look very simplified but IMHO as luck plays such an important part going into greater detail will add lots of complexity for very little additional realism.

Mines (and mine stocks, otherwise the German could repeatedly "bluff" the RN into attempting to chase a false invasion to attrition it) are the critical factor, do not forget to have E-Boats in your game, the RN didn't gave a good counter to E-Boats in 1940 and the Germans need all the help they can get.

 

Ok, in no particular order...guys, pick your own bits out!

　


No. the Wehrmacht heavy FIELD artillery that was moved to the French coast (see Kenneth Macksey's book on Sealion - it's a terrible What-if, but the historical details are very valuable!) was to cover half the Channel during the invasion...

...but the big Channel guns later emplaced at Calais were for shelling Dover and the harbour there; for the duration of the wwar Dover was turned as a whole over to the Royal navy, and all the civilians moved out except the few thousands who serviced the port and town and facilties. Dover was IIRC THE most heavily (in sortie terms) bombed and shelled place in the UK...while the British guns emplaced were for counterbattery fire against the German heavy guns in a protracted four year duel!

Torpedoes had to be dropped in JUST the right place...far enough to drop, and come back up to the surface and run true...and yet NOT so far from the target that there was any deviation-over-distance from running true. It still meant dropping them close for accuracy...well within an opponent's light AA screen!

I don't know if they actually tested this...but when the British DID carry out their two sets of tests of its gravity ordnance against barges...which admittedly were single-skinned unarmoured hulls...accuracy from all altitudes in level bombing was of course problematic...but misses even of the largest ordnance available had to be close misses, as I mentioned before.

You now need to think of exactly what a rampaging fast destroyer could do amongst the barges...and remember...a lot of the invasion "ships" weren't barges...

Yes, you had a quite a few impressed cargo ships, and ferries, as well as the ballasted, ramps-added barges. But you ALSO had an awful of of armed German trawlers, and even lots of...well...basically motorboats!

A near miss would be a different matter in among, say, the ballasted steel-hulled barges...as it would be from one amongst the motorcruisers and fishingboats that were to deposit an infantry division on Beach "E" In THAT environment...even just forcing a destroyer to manouver/zigzag to avoid fall of shot wouldn't JUST result in accidental hits and near misses to small wooden invasion craft...the destroyer would be merrily plowing them down!

Also - consider this...what happens as a result of a near miss or an accidental hit on a tug or towing, powered barge? What happens to its tows??? Or...what happens to a string of barges if one in the middle of the string is sunk???

This chaos of course would have pertained even if there were no Luftwaffe aircraft about...with the RN firing on everything in sight...but with the Luftwaffe adding mayhem....!

Yes...and causing mayhem and chaos out of all proportion to the numbers dropped.

The best thing you can do is, as you note, get hold of the books suggested....and actually see the occurances of this happening off Norway and off Crete...and then there's the Dunkirk examples too. But if you want ball park figures - no, they could stand off a LOT of attacks across several hours in the right circumstances..

Just bear in mind that RAF fighters vs. Bf109s wasn't the actual issue, it wasn't about straight combat losses/attrition...it was about airfields close to the coast being rendered unuseable. The asiest thing I can do here is post up the body of a post I put up on ww2talk some time ago regarding airfields being taken off the RAF telex network by raids...but it'll give you some idea of what the Luftwaffe was ACTUALLY doing...and more importantly, exactly how quickly the RAF could recover fields from major attack and being out out of action! Note it only deals with the last week of August 1940, the week when arguably the Luftwaffe had their BEST success against RAF airfields!

In all of the BoB...Manston, being closed for five days at one point, IIRC was the longest an RAF field was actually put out of action; a couple of others were closed to ops for 2-3 days...but apart from those, the ONLY "permanent" closures were Lympne and a.n.other simply because they were hit hard and early in the BoB and it was obvious anyway that they were just TOO close to the coast to react to incoming raids in time to protect the field!

That's a question YOU have to settle! How much to actually leave to the discretion of the player - and how much the player is actually forced to do by known operational constraints

Remember again the example of Crete; von Richthofen had a couple of weeks of softening-up ops against the island BEFORE the invasion...but TWO THIRDS of his aircraft were transferred away on only the third day of the actual invasion to reposition them for Barbarossa!

 

At the end of August - the very last day IIRC - he was already telling Kurt Strudent at Karin Hall that Hitler wasn't actually intending to invade! A fortnight later he told Student again to worry about getting back to full health, not bringing his command up to full readiness for Sealion - as there would be no invasion, Hitler had already decided to turn East!
　

Well, that's the rub, isn't it? Those batteries ordered not to engage until any enemy was within close range WOULD indeed benefit from brilliant accuracy firing "over open sights"....but they'd have a greatly restricted period of time to do so IN! They'd physically get off fewer but better-aimed shots...

 

I don't know how I managed to miss that one! I think given the circumstances a must have and as luck would have it I see that someone put a copy up for sale over at the Geek a couple of weeks ago so I will buy it if its complete and still available. Thanks

I was thinking 1D6 roll per grupen a roll of 6 = on target, roll again: 1,2 near miss no effect, 3 light damage, 4 heavy damage, 5 crippled, 6 sunk
modifiers to first roll +2 if target stationary, -1 if level bombers used, +1 in Ship has no AA capability
modifiers to second die roll -1 for cruisers, -2 for battleships and possibly -3 for the Nelson and Rodney with their heavily armored decks (damage is cumulative. Not quite happy with this as the real probabilities remain elusive but its a start what do you think?

E boats, yes, mines yes - although another can of worms in terms of working out how to deal with them. I think there might have to be a preliminary phase(s) where each side can attempt to mine or sweep certain areas. If such options are taken then those forces cannot be used for other purposes. Supplemental question of importance here is how quickly can mine fields be cleared? is this something that could be factored into 2 hour turns somehow or would it be restricted to the "preliminary phases" days/weeks?

 

Bear in mind that it was NOT the Admiralty's intention for Home Fleet's capial ships to ever operate in the Channel...no matter what the results of pre-skewed Sandhurst wargames of the 1970s! Adm. Forbes specifically refused to come any further south than Great Yarmouth. Capital ship didn't have the sea room to operate in the narrows. That's why the British withdrew destroyers and a couple of cruisers and formed three specific anti-invasion flotillas for operations in the narrows - at Portsmouth, Southampton and the Medway.

These weren't pernmanently constituted - each of the destroyers STILL had other duties - copastal convoy escort, patrols into the Western Approaches, cros-Channel night sweeps etc. - just none of them ever more than three days steaming...the hoped-for warning to be able to broadcast CROMWELL...from their designated ports.

The RN doesn't actually need to fully clear German-laid fields - just marked channels cleared through them To allow British light and coastal forces to enter the Narrows from north and south.

The Germans however were going to spend several days clearing as much of the British fields as they could...while keeping SOME elements in place at the southern end of the Narrows...and tying them together with their OWN fields. Would have meant very intensive operations - they brought quite a few T-boats into the French and Low Countries ports for the job - and likely to be contested...so that these then wouldn't have been available for the invasion flotilla escort job they were THEN supposed to do!

Same issue as German aircraft, really; if they're "used up" in the preparation stages, they ain't there for the main event!

 

Yes a good point. I am thinking that each convoy would need to have a box for recording damage and disruption. damage being loss of barges and ships, disruption would probably equate to delay. The greater the disruption the greater the delay and large amounts of disruption might also cause losses. As losses cause disruption this could eventually reach a critical level that would destroy much of the convoy. I had imagined that sinking a tug could sink all attached barges unless they could break the tow PDQ (in which case the remaining barges are dead in the water) but anything dead in the water is liable to collide with whatever is following in the darkness behind

 

IMO u

What is ia "gruppen" if it's the historical multisquadron unit IMO one roll (even more so with a six sided dice) will not give you a realistic result distribution, also a multisquadron raid is likely to attack multitle targets, for true realism with naval simultions you need to get down to close to individual planes, a reasonable compromise would be having one factor repesent 3 planes and multifactor counters (the venerable AH Midway had gotten that right). But for SeaLion that would mean a lot of counters, tough design choice especially as when the planes operate on other missions much larger counters make sense.
I would go for ten sided dice, though not many gamers are likely to own enough of them to make those very satifying multiple rolls, and try something like this:
To hit roll:
0 for "mainstream"
0-1 for for dive bombers
0-1-3 for FAA aircraft
-1 DRM modifier for stationary targets
No damage roll, bombs are on hit box, torpedoes two.
Destroyers have two hit boxes
Cruisers have 3 to 4 hit boxes
Battleships have 5 to 7 hit boxes
E.Boats, Barges and mechant ships have one hit box but you are probably going to go for multiship counters there.

PS: I have a punched copy of TFH so I could scan a missing part if you need it.

Minesweeping and minelaying is definetly not something I would try simulating with two hours turns unless simulating the Dardanelles in WW1, I would have a "night" turn where this happens though you may want to include mine dropping air missions that were daylight. With all that arty on both sides daylight sweeps, and sailing into gun range with all that explosive on board look like suicide ullikely anyway though I haven't done any research on that..

 

I believe it is the plural of Gruppe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_of_the_Luftwaffe_%281933%E2%80%931945%29#Gruppe
and would count as a "multi squadron unit" as it may have contained up to 30 aircraft

Thinking about it you are quite right concerning the result distribution I will have to re-think this completely.

My original thought was for providing 1 counter for each German Geshwader (~90 aircraft) and each British double squadron. The reason for this was mainly to keep the counter count down. I note that Their finest hour has 1200 counters! Although mercifully most of them are army units which I will not need to model in too much detail that is still a large number.

So a total rethink here. There is no way that keeping the units in Geshwader or squadron groupings will be possible so KG 27 etc will have to go and be replaced by units consisting of aircraft type / quantity as I believe you were suggesting so counters would be for 3, 6, 12 or 24 Spitfires etc. The trick then is to decide how to distribute the counter mix. Some types might cope with fewer larger quantity units whilst some (JU87 for instance) might need a lot of smaller 'loose change' counters. This will take some working out.

Not sure about 10 sided dice. more control but as you say fewer people will have them. I think perhaps 2D6 added together and cross reference against a table with the number of attacking planes to get the number of "on target" results. Each on target result provides a D6 for the second roll ( could be a lot if it was a big force with an element of luck or good circumstances). Modifiers to be applied.

The hit boxes - heavy/light damage - how to record damage needs thought to I will try to post something later.

Definitely multiship counters for the transports possibly even destroyers. Each convoy will have a separate box recording level of damage and level of disruption/delay

Re punched copy of TFH -thanks I will keep you posted.

Re Mine sweeping and laying I think the night will need to be 2 hourly as well as the day given the amount of RN and barge movements that will be going on. Perhaps an additional phase once a day where the forces each side had set aside for mine warfare could be activated for a whole days worth of clearing or sweeping?

 

Oh - meant to say earlier - regarding your comment that ideally minefields should be covered in some way?

I was looking through Lavery again today for something else, and came across a comment that no, the Germans didn't intend to cover them! There was absolutely no provision for doing so in the Sealion plans. They just didn't have the naval units to do so! That's what the southern minefields/uboat combination was for - to allow them to concentrate the KM's remaining serviceable warships at the northern end of the Channel, in the North Sea in effect...to counter any possible action by Home Fleet.

Thus while it might have taken days of German ops....night missions by T-boats, parachute mining by the Luftwaffe etc. to LAY them...it would just take hours for the RN to clear paths through them By September, Dover Command had 11 minesweeping trawlers and 4 magnetic mine-clearing trawlers on strength for example...

Meanwhile - and of course! - the Germans would have had to ver nearly entirely clear the Dover Barrage! As at least two of the invasion flotillas would have been steaming directly through it. Lavery notes that the converted barges and motor cruisers etc. would have had a shallow enough draught to operate inside the barrage I.E. transit it...but the many heavier ships - cargo ships, rail ferries etc. couldn't have.

 

I like rolling lots of dice and I believe lots of other people do, see the success of systems like Risko and Axis & Allies not to mention AH Titan that is great fun.
One way of getting round the problem of the limited availability of 10 and 20 dided dice could be to roll one die for each attacking factors and and the re-roll only the 5 and 6 to get effect, another thing you could use is allowing the player to allocate the factors to targets during combat resolution, this will reduce the need for "small change" counters.
For large raids you coul create a player aid with 10 boxes tracks for each plane type, on combat setup you set markers for the number of commited planes of eache type and start rolling adjusting the number of still attacking planes after each roll, ex:
Germans:
50 Ju 87B
40 Ju 88A
45 Me 109E

British:
36 Hurricanes
24 Spitfires
8 Destroyers

Air to air step:
The British decides to go engage the escort with the spits leaving the Hurricanes to engage the bombers
24 Spitfires engage the Me 109s 4 Spitfires lost and 12 aborted (irrelevant for fighter to fighter combat) for 3 Me shot down and 26 Me aborted this leaves 16 Me able to intercept the Hurricanes
So now you have only 16 Me 109 on the available track.
16 Me engage the Hurricanes shooting down 4 and aborting 16
This leaves 16 Hurricanes that decide to attack the more vulnerable Stukas shooting down 8 and aborting 22 leaving 20 to attack the ships, the Ju 88 are not engaged
AA fire from the destroyers shoots down 1 Stuka and aborts 8 Stuka and 10 Ju 88.
This leaves 11 Ju 87 and 30 Ju 88 to continue complete the bomb run.
The German resolves the attacks by reducing the number of available planes and rolling for each bomb run in sequence (all attacks on an ship must be declared before attcking another ship, you may wish to have all attacks allocated at the same time but it would require some additional bookkeeping) if you distingush between heavy AA and light you may insert a light AA roll by the target ship olnly here for additional realism (IIRC most 1940 era British DDs had only light AA guns or a single 4").
4 Ju 87 attack a DD so he shifts the available Ju 87B track by four boxes, rolls (4, 1, 2, 6) reroll one dice (2) for a hit on the DD.
10 Ju 88 attack a second DD rolls (1,2,2,3,4,4,5,5,6,6) reroll 4 dice for (1, 3, 4, 4) one hit.
and so on .... until there are no more bombers on the trackn to use.
This is a very large strike but can probably be resoved in a few minutes with rolls for both players (= fun).

I believe mines could be played in a daily turn, the Germans can sweep a path in the narrows well within the range of their field artillery that may be very hard for the Brits to re-mine before the actual invasion, The critical fields are the ones laid on the the invasion day to delay thec RN and the inshore ones in range of Britsh shore arty. The latter probably cannot be swept unless the arty is silenced so only shallow draught stuff in the initilial wave, the Germans may start sweeping the inshore fields once they have a beachead but may not get a cleared path on immediately.

 

Here's my first thought re the number of counters for the air units at 1 factor = 3 aircraft. For example the counter mix would include 3 16 factor Do17 counters (69 counter in total) Not the British and Ju87 have smaller unit sizes as they are more likely to be split up in multiple attacks. Presumably there would be some sort of administrative limit on how many different missions could be undertaken at any one time (you couldn't have every single air craft engaged in a different mission for example)
factors, HE111, Ju88, Do17, Ju87, Me110, Me109, Spitfire, Hurricane
4, 0, 0, 0, 5, 0, 0, 3, 6
8, 3, 4, 2, 3, 3, 7, 3, 6
16, 3, 4, 3, 0, 1, 6, 2, 4
32, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0
this based on:
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/UK-Defence-UK/UK-DefenseOfUK-XVII.html
http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/battle-of-britain-1940-strength-reports.html
Number of German aircraft should be roughly correct, British will include all forces in the UK so my need to be adjusted. What do you think re the number of aircraft and the split in terms of size?

Interesting idea to include "aborts" result (effectively put off or chased away or damaged I suppose). I have a copy of AH Flattop and I have just been looking at the mechanics of it some of which may be useable. Seems to be vaguely similar to what you are suggesting with an interceptor to escort attack, interceptor to bomber attack, surface AA attack, bombing attack. Target s have to be nominated ahead of the attack.

Re the mining I am thinking of having an introductory set of phases each on 24 hour long where both sides can make use of the forces they have set aside for mine and counter mine operations. These phases to ens at the discretion of the German player who may then set the clock at any point and start the 2 hourly turns, leaving whatever has been swept or laid

 

You need to add the british bombers to the aircraft counter mix, and the FAA aircraft that may play a critical role if the big ships get involved, I love Battlenine/AH Flattop but IMO the combat system (especially the "one size fits all" 6 sided dice CRT) is it's weakest point, the fighter combat/interception/AA/bomb attack resolution is pretty standard fare, no reason to deviate from a well tried thing unless you come up with something really revolutionary.
I do not think you need "telescopic time" there are lots of things going on in the non invasion turns, German airfield bombing strikes, attacks against barge concentrations, German attacks on exposed RN ships, etc that even preparation turns will see lots of air missions.

One big design coice is whether I you are going wth one big aircraft pool or are going to base planes at individual fields. Even in the former case you may still wish to have a limit on missions that can be flown by British fighters over the channel depending on the number of operational airfields, just add up the number of operational airfields available to the British in the once a day "introductory set of phases", weather etc, not much sense in doing the same for the Germans as the British bombers have better things to do than attempt to bomb airfields with plenty of Me 109, 88s, and light flak around, the RAF should be allowed to attack German fields to "keep them honest" but you are not going to see lots of that in a normal game and the purpose is more likely to be to destroy planes on the ground rather than reduce aircraft capacity.

One thing that could streamline gameplay would be to have off map "mission package" play aids and only one counter per "big strike" on the map, this will also add some "fog of war", always a nice thing, and allow for tricks like having an all fighter formation simulating a strike to catch the defenders at unfavourable odds (don't know if it was done in 1940 but it was in Vietnam against much better radars so it's a possibility).

"Aborts" are not necessarily damaged planes, just planes too busy to further contribute to that combat, actually you may wish to have a different table of fighters and bombers to take into acoount ammo and fuel depletion, bombers are a lot less likely to turn back, I don't believe Stukas did jettison their bombs to defend themseves when engaged by fighters, though multi engined plane accuracy will be much reduced if the bombardier is busy acting as defensive gunner ......

Another thing you may wish to come up with at an early design stage is an "air mission types" table, planes should be assigned a mission on take off and can only change it at a penalty (this will also simulate loading AP rather than HE bombs and the like).

Missions could include
- Airfield bombing
- Port bombing
- Mine laying
- Anti shipping strikes
- Interception
- Ground support
- Terror bombing (Both sides did it within that timeframe but a really bad choice with 20/20 hindsigh, it also would require lots of special rules, attacks by the British could force Goering to pull back some fighters while German attacks should be rolled on something like a "British surrender" track with a big chance the attack will actually increase British deterrmination!.
- ASW patrols (?), don't know if you have the U-boats in the game but if you do you should have these as well.
- Naval patrol (this sacrifices load for range and allows attacks attempts on previously unspotted naval units)
- Fighter sweeps (similar to naval patrol but for air)
- Naval recon (plane carries no bombs)
- ...

Lots of chances for adding tons of (mostly useless) chrome here, but it looks like fun, thinking of Flattop how about "umpired internet play" ? that would be high on my wish list.

Back to the basics, first choices to do in any game
- Timescale (2 hours turns and an administrative phase a day for some subsystems looks ok)
- Scale (4 plane factors and individual ships with flottillas for anything smaller than a DD?, ground units at regiment or batallion size? (batallion would turn it into a monster so I would go for regiments/brigades).
- Map scale (standard operational like 33 Km/hex or area movement like "turnng pont stalingad" and it's DDay equivalent? Chooosing the second may streamline the game a lot!)

Have you already done those? only when theyare filalized it makes sense to look a details of the movement and combat subsystems.

 

Actually - the FAA are/were historically invovled from the proverbial "turn one" Swordfish squadrons flying from FAA fields in the South of England were flying E-boat interdiction missions along the Belgian coast during Dynamo, and after; they were actually quite successful at this! They were bargebusting alongside Bomber Command...and especially through 1940 into 1941 were "gardening" - laying mines in continental port roads'

IIRC at least two FFA Sea Gladiator squadrons based geographically within Ten and Eleven Groups carried the BoB battle honour, and Fighter Command Squadrons were operating from combined RAF/RN fields in certain locations.

This is one FAA role that is almost totally forgotten for 1940; carrier air groups (in the American sense) only represented a quite small part of the Fleet Air Arm, being supported each by several operationally-ready "feeder" squadrons ashore. There were also anomalous FAA squadrons like the two Blackburn Roc squadrons in the North of Scotland that were configurable as light tactical bombers and would have been re-assigned....and IIRC there were several hundred FAA aircraft accounted for under the BANQUET arrangements; I'll have to check back, but IIRC the FAA contributuons to the overall BANQUET had separate operation names

Moving on -

Emphasis on lots!; the Heavy Force was involved in "gardening" as well as airfield raids....there were still unescorted daylight raids going on!...and the blenheim tactical squadrons were indeed atttacking geran airfields as well as barge concentrations during the historical BoB. They weren't too successful at the airfields, however...but ALSO mounted a lot of raids on troop concentrations and stores dumps - one massive ammunition dump at Dunkirk was hit destroying something like 5,000 tons of munitions!

You'd need to check on exactly how many Blenheim squadrons were available SEVEN were to be given over to Army control on the issuance of CROMWELL, accoridng to Brian Lavery...but would be free for raiding on the Continent until then...and of course if the sortie rate could be maintained...some provision for mechanical unserviceability vs. high sortie rate needs to be included in the game And pilot exhaustion...they're STILL free for the same level of historical NIGHT ops against littoral targets on the Continent!

Meanwhile - the Heavy Force is available for the same type of raids they attempted from the 10th of May-on alongside the Oil War targets - attacks by night on transport links and road junctions feeding the invasion ports.

One aspect that ALSO deserves more research today is the re-emerging state of the Army Co-operation squadrons There were still several equiped with Lysanders capable of light bombing - those little wings on their undercarriage spats actually carried an amended form of the Light Series Carrier for light ordnance, and they had been involved in several attacks on German convoys in france in May....meanwhile, other damaged Co-op squadrons were slowly being re-equiped; by the end of Septemebr 1940, for instance, a fighter-re-armed Co-op squadron was being based at the re-opened Lympne airfield (The British moved to re-equip the Co-op squadrons with combat aircraft capable of ground attack - P40s, Hurricanes etc. - and they went into combat in 1941, providing the ground attack element plus heavy fighter cover in the RAF's "circuses" and "rhubarbs" over Occupied Europe.)

 

Agreed British bombers / FAA need to be added, although I suggest at the larger end of the factors per counter scale (so not too many of them).

The problem is making the game manageable. I am sure you are right and there are plenty of things that can be going on at 2 hours per turn in the run up to the actual event, but it will make the game into a monster. If we have a week or 2 run up and at least a week when they are landing and trying to resupply etc then the number of 2 hour turns will make the game unplayable by all bar the most dedicated gamer.

Perhaps 6/12 hour run up turns or at least allow greater actions in preparation turns?

Given the number of air counters already in the game (71) there will have to be some form of pooling as it will not be possible to have all counters in hex in their fields. Perhaps 6+ larger pools depending on rough location / airfleet / bomber/fighter.

The sortie rate is something I have thought about, but like so many other things with this game it is not easy to find the relevant information. Based on my own experience with nothing concrete to go on I’m thinking that a fighter might reasonably be expected to undertake 1-3 missions in a day. Fighters could possibly undertake 4-6 in extreme and/or ideal conditions but accepting that some sort of fatigue penalty should apply. Less certain about bombers but I’m thinking 1 or perhaps 2 per day with a third under extreme and/or ideal conditions. But I’m open to opinions here what do you think?

Is it reasonable to restrict the number of operations that can be planned in any one day for the whole side? Regardless of the sorties flown there must be a limit to what can reasonably be planned in the time available. For instance even if we said 2 sorties/unit a day, it would not be realistic to assume that the number of operations could be 2 x the number of available aircraft with individual aircraft flying independent missions all over the map

Perhaps 10 missions/ day per Airfleet or fighter command group? (Guessing here! Probably should be more than 10 but there needs to be a limit on multiple “penny packet” attacks for playability) even so each mission might still involve a complex mix of units from different air bases.

Talking about operational airfields I was thinking of giving the German player the option of attacking airfields and reducing the British readiness rate. Every hit would create damage that would reduce the number of sorties that could be flown as it would be harder to take off and land/ more congested and planes would end up having to make emergency landing in open fields / other sectors thus slowing everything down. The readiness rate would recover day on day as repairs were made.

Yes this will be a requirement, in part because of the number of counters (67 air counters currently). Also a feature I noticed in Flattop (and no doubt loads of other games).

Problem again here is not what should be included but what can be left out, simplified or averaged with other effects. As I see it every rule and added complexity must earn its keep either by significantly increasing realism or significantly increasing the fun/immersion in the game.

Here’s how I see an air mission in game terms (all normal missions lasting 2 hours):
Attacking player may need to roll to detect target if it’s a moving ship (need to work on this)

Once the target location is decided on (or detected) the attacking player can simply move his units into an off board holding box and move a raid counter into that hex possibly by tracing a route across the board. The only restriction being fighter range limitations.

The defending player then has the option of detecting the raid. Depending on the relative position/distances/raid size/radar/weather/observers/ships en-route/ etc the defending player may be able in attack with a larger or smaller force or may not be able to intercept at all or only after the event.

Defending units that can engage are moved in the same way as the attacking units

The attack is resolved interceptor-escort, interceptor-bomber, AA and bombing

Casualties are removed and units are returned to base possibly in fatigued or damaged state

I agree I would want the German player in particular to be presented with many needy and important missions to fly as possible to reflect reality. For example escort, intercept, attack RAF bases, attack RN, attack industry/rail/road network, terror attack, supply the beachhead (paradrop) , standing patrols over the beachhead or convoys

Not sure about U-boats probably should but the added overhead in units and rules might not be worth it. Perhaps

No problem with a little chrome if it pays for itself by adding sufficient fun/immersion.
Umpired games over the internet will have to wait post publication for Vassal or similar.

Time scale 2 hour turns with administrative phase every 24 (or perhaps every 12 hours). Possibility of preliminary phases at a different time scale in preparation.

Aircraft scale was 3 aircraft per factor but now you mention it 4 per factor would also work and might even lessen the counter load slightly so say 4 aircraft per air factor.

Ships: Cruisers and above 1 counter per vessel. German destroyers 1 counter per vessel (as there are so few and they are a little more powerful) everything else is a flotilla of 3-4 (at 3 British DD per flotilla that still means 18 British DD flotilla counters).

Ground units: as I said right at the beginning the intention was to attempt the air naval conflict rather than any potential ground conflict. That said some thought must be given to ground units in that they are the whole reason for the operation and their landing or destruction would contribute greatly to victory points. Perhaps regiments would work. I doubt the German forces would be using more than 9-12 of these in most scenarios (room for discussion here )

Map scale: I was thinking 10 miles per hex to provide some significant sea space and provide at least a couple of hexes across the Pas de Calais. The map would include the area roughly from Harwich to Le Havre and Southampton to Ostend which would have been the main areas of interest.

Possibly might also consider some off map reinforcement tracks (east and west) for the movement of ships from further afield such as Plymouth / Liverpool and Rosyth / The Humber. The nearer boxes being open to air attack with fighter escort for the closer in western track and by bomber only for the mid range boxes on both east and west.

I have not played Turning point Starlingrad but I see that it’s an area based game. In the past I have not been a great fan of area based games preferring hex grids for accuracy in movement distances. That said I can see that in some situations it does offer an awful lot of simplification for (in this case at least) a relatively small amount of loss in realism/accuracy especially as the ship movements will be a little vague / need detecting and the areas might relieve some of the counter congestion. I will think about that and post back

 

During the first couple of days of the war in poland, the Luftwaffe's CAS aircraft - Hs123s and Ju87s...were carrying out up to a dozen sorties a day...greatly reduced to 2-3 sorties a day for a couple of days when the Ju52s bringing up their fuel and ordnance were diverted to supporting fast moving frontline ground units instead

One thing NOT to confuse is the potential sortie rate with the rate of appearance over the target A good history of the Crete invasion for example will give you a sortie rate for Richthofen's aircraft softening up the defenders...but they could only appear over Crete every 3-4 hours IIRC - x-amount of flying time from the mainland after dawn for the "Morning Hate" - then back again, refuel, rearm and return...during which time the defenders could attempt to repair damage, remove signs of damage remove and treat casualties, repair any damaged camoflage, bring up AA munitions etc.

Raids consisting of large numbers of aircraft require formation time over France; this was when radar could "see" them historically, as they circled waiting for all aircraft to formate and fighter escort to arrive. So the larger the formations, or the requirement for them all to arrive oer the target in a short period of time - large bombing waves, waves of Ju52s dropping FJ etc., - the fewer actual sorties can be flown during the day because of all the stooging-around time

Another issue affecting sortie rate - and this issue is a factor that will increase in scale - is damaged aircraft returning home and blocking flightlines, aprons etc. It will affect both sides, of course - but historically it affected the Luftwaffe more notably; sortie rates of transport Ju52s carrying the FJ to Crete plummeted for various reasons through the first 3 days of the invasion as runways in Greece were blocked with wrecks. Ditto in Norway as the wrecks of the FJ's initial Ju52s cluttered the runways at Stavanger-Sola.

One thing to research is thus the number of diversionary airfields both sides have available; I've found this information to be very hard to find in the past, usually only appearing anecdotally or in the records of specific squadrons or airfields. Patrick Bishop for example has in his Day-To-Day Chronology of the BoB a map illustrating forty-sseven "notable" fighter and bomber bases in France and the Low Countries....but not an exhaustive list, nor a list of diversionary fields.

 

I will have to simplify and average as far as possible to avoid complexity, but I think there would be room for a couple of FAA units if they played an important role (and don’t take up too many counters!).

How many of the units you speak of were drained of pilots into fighter command during the Battle of Britain? I assume that of the several hundred you mention a large number would have been for use as a last ditch desperate expedient? I can’t imagine that there were any even half decent pilots amongst them. I can almost imagine my father being one of them – he had a few lessons in flying a Tiger moth before the war and even managed one solo flight - but landed rather heavily and the instructor got very irate so he left it at that and never flew again.
BTW I think carrier ops are out of scope – just too few too far away.

I think Blenhiem squadrons are in under the bomber category and perhaps a single Banquet unit of low quality under some circumstances. As I have said else where the real problem is what to leave out rather than what to put in. It would be easy to build a monster game with thousands of counters that required 100 hours+ to play (in fact Their Finest Hour which is the nearest game to this includeD 1200 counters). That said need to keep a mind to accuracy and a little extra interest/fun doesn’t go a miss.

Serviceability is an interesting point all round.

 

A wholly different service from 1938; the RAF had NO call on them.

Operation BANQUET and the FAA equivalents not only mobilised students with at least a few hours' solo time...they mobilised advanced students, instructors, the training staff and students from Operational Training and Operational Conversion Units, from Bomber Command's nightlfying schools etc. In other words many of the pilots mobilised for operations under BANQUET were very experienced pilots.

No, I don't hink you've grasped what I meant; carrier air groups of at most two dozen aircraft...sometimes right down at a single flights of fighters etc. - were kept operational by bringing in trained, operational pilots and aircraft from FAA "shore" based squadrons. In other words - there could be anything up to two or three times as many Swordfish bombers/torpedo bombers flying operations out of UK airfields as off RN aircraft carriers at any one time And any other FAA type.

In fact - this was EXACTLY the case; in 1940 and 1941, a number of FAA Swordfish based on land in the UK operated as light tactical bombers, minelayers and u-boat hunters. They later did the same from Malta IIRC, and in North Africa. The Fleet Air Arm didn't just operate off carriers Think of it more as "naval aviation" in the American sense.

I don't suppose this is the time to point out that Op BANQUET was expected to mobilise in excess of 1,000 aircraft from both services? The RAF's OTUs alone, for instance, were expected to produce 16 squadrons'-worth of BANQUET aircraft...!

There's remarkably little material on BANQUET loose in the community outside Kew And I've seen a lot of it! The actual Operation has many more..."layers"...than the few scarce hints hint at....

First, there were the "BANQUET Lights" - these were the single-engined trainers like armed Tiger and Puss Moths. Then t

Moving up to here were other formations using anything and everything in the RAF's inventory...as well as a number of individual formations...

"BANQUET Evanton" (!!!) for instance - a training unit of heavy bombers for air gunnery and bombing training based at RAF Evanton and then equiped with HP Harrows formed cohesive unit within BANQUET as "Banquet Evanton"...

Then there was "BANQUET No. 70 group" and "No. 71 group" - that were actually No. 70 & No. 71 (Army Co-operation Training) Groups!

Moving up to Bomber Command...! There was ALSO a BANQUET scheme to form the training units in No. 6 and No. 7 Groups Bomber Command into BANQUET formations - both to carry out offensive ops all on their own AND to provide immediate replacements for front-line BC units during the invasion, using the BC OTUs aircraft and crews They were to operate as "BANQUET 6 Group" and "BANQUET 7 Group" respectively.

THEN there was "BANQUET CEILING" (Formerly known in the early summer of 1940 as" ALERT") - this was the BANQUET formation that moblised the FAA's training aircraft of all types!

Believe it or not - Op BANQUET wasn't formally cancelled until October 1943! Right up until then the MoS was experimenting with new, 20Lb gas ordnance that would fit on the Light Series Carriers the BANQUET Lights could be equiped with!

Some day I'll get to Kew, I've got file numbers for the few extant files dealing with BANQUET - but it does appear that possibly every training formation was given a parallel BANQUET identifier for offensive/defensive ops in the event of invasion!

 

This is a good point. Larger formations = more warning = fewer sorties. I imagine a lot of fighter time will have been spent on the ground waiting for the bombers they were due to escort to take off, climb circle line up and head off towards the target before the fighters could finally race off to join them at the last minute.

My understanding is that a forward operating airfield could be set up fairly easily. A nice big grassy field. A few dozen tents and some camouflage netting plus some lorries and tankers/ a bowser or two in the background and away you go.