B-17 Flying Fortress Leader - AAR

Started by Geezer, April 26, 2018, 09:06:41 AM

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Geezer

I cobbled together this AAR while playing my first game of B-17 FFL using the introductory U-boat Campaign.  It was actually a series of posts at the Qt3 forums that I cut and pasted here, so it starts off a bit rambling and then rambles on some more since I'm only doing very minor editing here.   ;)

First week:

OK, got my copy today, set it up, and played one mission of the U-Boat Focus campaign. Before playing I perused the original rules that came with the game and then set them aside. Agree completely with your assessment above. (in response to someone who posted the original rules were poorly written)

However the latest pdf rules version at BGG (Board Game Geek site) is good IMHO. It's written by Dean Brown who is the designer. While only being about a dozen pages longer they are much denser and much better written. I was able to play through my first mission without any show stoppers and felt like I followed the sequence and did pretty much everything correctly. I probably messed up something minor but I never felt lost. Having section numbers makes it pretty easy to find the details quickly when you are following the sequence of play. I'll have to print them out as walking from my game table to the computer and back to check things isn't going to cut it.

Now if only my green and rookie B-17 groups had been able to hit the broad side of a U-boat pen at St. Nazaire we might have a chance at winning the war! Two lousy hits which was not even enough to count as light damage. At least my Spitfire escort shot down some Me 109's. I found the first mission quite fun. My second mission this week is a bombing raid on the aircraft factory at Gotha, Germany. We're making that run without the benefit of any escorts. <gulp>

As an aside I'm reading Raiding the Reich by Freeman again too. A good overview of the air war with lots of great pictures as well.

Edit - Forgot to mention that the Fat Man himself is handling the German air response this month. They were on high alert for our first mission but their response is poor for my second mission and there are no squadrons in the target hex so our bombers might get a free ride to and from Gotha. Fingers crossed.

Edit - Spoke too soon. Forgot there is a hex with two German squadrons along the path. The event card raised their alert from Poor to Average but that has no effect in this case.

Our raid on Gotha dodged a couple of bullets and managed a limited result. As the 91st and 97th Bomber Groups crossed the coast they started reporting bandits. None actually appeared (pulled two No Bandit chits!) so I'm chalking it up to the fact that one unit is green and the other is recruit level. The 97th lined up on the aircraft factory first and weathered the flak with no losses. They got four hits on the target plus set it on fire with incendiaries. Following them was the 91st who took 3 losses to flak. They managed one additional hit which brought the damage to Light. Unfortunately the Germans put out the fires before they could cause enough damage to increase the overall result. The return trip to England was equally uneventful so that ends the first week of the campaign.

Edit - Light damage to Gotha and no damage to St. Nazaire. We will need to improve significantly on that in the coming weeks.

As mentioned above it was possible I slipped up on a couple of things, and I did. Commander Wray, 91st Bomber Group, was AWOL for the mission. Probably drunk in a pub in London. I'd court martial him, but it was a major malfunction in the chain of command and not his fault. I did not see the very fine print on the card indicating he is the default commander and therefore he can be used without spending any SO (strategic options) points. His evasion skill might have saved some aircraft that were hit by flak, but it also gives a negative die roll modifier to the bomb run die roll and that might have meant less damage at Gotha. I also did not see the very fine print of the 301st BG card saying they get a +1 die roll modifier when bombing U-boat pens. That might have made a difference at St. Nazaire.

Aircraft losses for the first week were 15 Spitfires and 15 B-17's (10 strength points total). For week two I'm going to spend 5 of my 18 SO points to bring all units back to full strength (1 SO = 2 SP's replaced). With this short campaign it's not practical to rest them to replenish for free.

Week Two:

We're changing plans for week two. I'm going to run one mission with all groups against the U-boat pen at Lorient, France. The pens give double victory points in this campaign so we'll focus on them. That means the damage at Gotha will be repaired this week, but it's just not worth the effort to split forces and hit it again. Stay tuned... :)

Edit - I also just noticed the pens are hardened targets which negates one point of damage from every bomb hit. Ouch. We need some bunker busters! All the things I missed above were clear in the revised manual, I just missed them.

As mentioned above we were targeting the U-boat pen at Lorient, France for the second week of August. The Fat Man (Goering) must have started in early on the schnapps the day of our raid because the Luftwaffe response was Poor. That meant unless an event card changed things we would not have to deal with any Luftwaffe squadrons for the raid because none were stationed directly in our flight path.

Cmdr. Wray's 91st BG was first over the target. The flak was not a factor and his group managed two hits on the target. It would have been double that if it weren't a hardened target. Next up was the 97th BG who took 3 aircraft losses to flak but still managed two more bomb hits. The 92nd BG was third in line and took 9 aircraft losses to flak. That might have affected their bombing run as they scored no hits. Last was Cmdr. Raper's 301st BG who took no flak losses and scored three hits, due to the commanders air to ground skill. Final result was 7 hits which was light damage to the target. The return flight was uneventful.

We're going to hit the same target again next week because you only get victory points for destroyed targets, and to make sure no damage is repaired if we switched targets. The repair is not automatic but we're going to hit it again to make sure nothing is repaired.

Week Three:

At the end of the second mission I noticed that Cmdr. Wray's 91st BG had enough XP to get promoted from Recruit to Green. Every little bit helps.

Week three saw a return to the pens at Lorient, France. The Luftwaffe was again unable to muster anything other than a Poor response. Goering should feel the noose tightening around his neck already. The random event card was a huge boost, called Combined Bomber Operations that caused 4 hits to the target. Kudos to the RAF for joining in! With the Light damage already recorded that put us at 8 hits for medium damage. The newly promoted 91st had the lead again over the target and got through the flak with only 3 aircraft damaged. They managed to get 2 hits on the target which raised the damage into the heavy range. Next up was the 97th BG and they suffered 6 aircraft hits from flak, and got one more hit on the target. The 92nd BG suffered 3 flak losses but got two more hits. That put us one hit away from destroying the target. Last up was Cmdr. Raper and his 301st BG. They slipped through the flak without damage and put 2 more hits on the pens, destroying them!

The event card for the return leg was, appropriately enough, "The Germans want Revenge". That required a re-roll of the response level with a +3 modifier. Since the campaign card calls for a -2 modifier I only gave them a +1 modifier. Turns out Goering was entertaining his mistress with strict orders not to be disturbed i.e. I rolled a 2+1 = 3 which only raised the response to Average and still required Luftwaffe squadrons to be in the flight path to respond. Without the -2 modifier the response would have been High and 3 squadrons would have scrambled.

The good news is that destruction of the pens gave us 6 VP's. The bad news is that still leaves us with a Dismal rating for the campaign with only one week left. I'm going to consider going after a softer target for the last week given that it's unlikely we can destroy another pen with only one raid. Destruction of any target will raise our performance to at least Poor. Stay tuned...

As an aside, I incorrectly used SO points to replace losses after week one. That only happens at the end of the month, not each week. I misunderstood the rule but saw a thread at BGG that clarified it.

Edit - The 92nd BG got promoted from Green to Average as a result of the XP from week 3.

Final Week:

Week four is upon us and it's my last chance to save my career as Deputy Director of Operations for the Eight Air Force! We need to take out a 4 VP target this turn or I'll be on latrine duty for the rest of the war.

This fact narrowed my choice of targets to three. The aircraft factory in Gotha that we had damaged before, but which was fully repaired by now, or one of two airfields at Bergen or Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Gotha was deemed too far this time as it meant the fighters could not escort for the whole mission. More on that later. We picked Bergen as it required one less bomb hit to destroy, although the flak was slightly better there.
We armed our bombers and added Commander Wilson to the 97th BG because he had the skill to negate any frontal attacks against his BG, a known favorite tactic of Goering's.

Speaking of Goering, after his meeting with Hitler the Luftwaffe was ordered to All Out alert status for the rest of the month. Not a good start. To make matters even worse, the event card indicated our Spitfires were unable to rendezvous with our bombers and so the mission was going forward unescorted. Ugh.

As soon as we crossed into the channel we were jumped by two Luftwaffe squadrons, one Fw-190 and one Bf-109. Both had the frontal attack tactic! From bad to worse! Both bandits went after the 92nd BG and they hit 9 aircraft causing the formation to disperse. That has a negative effect on their air to ground capability. In retaliation the 92nd destroyed both bandits for a small measure of revenge.

We arrived over the target where we expected to find 3 more Luftwaffe squadrons. Two chits pulled were No Bandits and the third was a Bf-110. It made three runs at the 91st BG and Comdr. Wray used his evasion skill to avoid all the attacks without a loss. The 91st then began it's bomb running suffering three losses from flak but scoring 5 direct hits on the airfield! Next in line was the 97th BG. They took damage to 3 bombers but scored another 4 hits on the airfield. It was now heavily damaged and only 3 more hits were needed to destroy it. The 92nd BG was already shaken due to previous losses and they got hammered by the flak with 9 aircraft damaged or shot down. At that point they became Unfit which meant they failed to complete their bomb run. That left it all up to the 301st BG and Cmdr. Raper with my career in the balance. :) The flak was light and scored no hits. The BG came over the target unmolested and scored 4 hits destroying the field!

We earned 4 VP's for the mission and 10 for the campaign which was just enough for an Adequate result. No doubt a promotion is in the works for me...

This is a fun introductory campaign and certainly makes me eager to play a more detailed one that incorporates more of the features and optional rules of the game. I hope a few of you got some entertainment out of reading this rambling AAR.
We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.  George Bernard Shaw