Finest Hour 1/600th

With all the fuss about Cruel Seas, which should be one of my birthday presents on Friday, I expect I'll be tied up with that but, in the longer term, I've been thinking about a 1/600th scale air wargaming project for 2019. I really enjoyed painting the Tumbling Dice models for Bag the MiG, MiG Alley and Target Locked On! last year and now feel much more confident about getting reasonable results in this smaller scale. I also like the idea of being able to paint an entire squadron of fighters or bombers in one go, even if it is at the expense of specific squadron insignia or finer details. 

The focus for my thoughts has turned once again to Finest Hour, the Battle of Britain campaign supplement for the first edition of Bag the Hun. I have always wanted to give this a go but in 1/285th scale the numbers of aircraft to be painted made it unfeasible, with the Luftwaffe bomber formations being a particular stumbling block. However, in 1/600th scale this is less of an issue, especially if I fiddle the system a bit to reduce the maximum numbers of each bomber type to a top limit of twelve rather than a full on eighteen aircraft!

5/6/7 on the 3rd Roll are now 9/6/3 not 15/18/0

I've had a go at editing the relevant table (6.3) in the rules and have come up with this, which I think will keep the numbers manageable for painting and on the table space, whilst also retaining the impression of a bomber formation. This means that if I focussed on just the first campaign phase of the battle, the Kanalkampf, I'd only need to paint up twelve Ju87 Stukas, twelve He111's and twelve Ju88's, in addition to twelve Bf109e's and Bf110's, with a couple of reconnaissance Do17's to round it off. I think this is approaching the limit but would not be impossible by any means...

...and it would double up nicely with Scramble for Britain too!