Bomber Command Handbook

I made my customary monthly trip into town to the barbers this afternoon, although there's not much left up top to actually be barbered, and popped into the local Oxfam second hand bookshop as you do. I now have a good hardback copy of the Bomber Command Handbook, which I didn't have in my library but which will be extremely useful for Target for Tonight background research, especially on early war bomber tactics and technology. It was a bargain at less than the cost of a BLT sandwich, price comparison being cutting edge as I was a bit peckish shortly afterwards. 

Target for Tonight 1940-41

I got my order of assorted RAF medium and heavy bombers from Tumbling Dice today for my Target for Tonight solo campaign project later this year. I included some early war aircraft in the mix including some Wellingtons, Hampdens and Whitleys, some of which I already had from my old 1/600th scale coastal warfare project, and I must say they are the best of the bunch compared to the slightly portly Lancaster and Halifax models. In fact, they're so good I'm thinking of setting my games in 1940-41, before the Lancaster was introduced and started to dominate the strategic bombing campaign. I'll have to do some more work to develop the aircraft sheets and the technological framework for the games, but apart from that it should be a fairly straightforward switch. Worth a thought anyway?

Pauke! Pauke!

I'm moving on to some background reading in advance of my Target for Tonight project, which I'll be starting next month if it all goes according to the plan. I have both of the books in this series, as digital copies, so it will be useful to track the developments in night fighter tactics and technology over the course of the bomber campaign, as well as the electronic counter measures used by the RAF. This is one of the more convoluted aspects of the game which I really need to get a grip on if I'm to run realistic, historically accurate scenarios.

Tumbling Dice Target for Tonight

I've been back at work this week so, as it's now Friday, I thought I'd spend a little pocket money on a small selection of 1/2400th scale Tumbling Dice models for Target for Tonight, opting for the less expansive option of one of each type of bomber rather than a full set of multiple aircraft. I'll being playing solo, at least to start with, so this approach made more sense and also gave me the opportunity to have a Lancaster, a Stirling, a Halifax MkII and MkIII, a Wellington and a Whitley, rather than just six of the bog standard Lancasters. I've also gathered together some enemy night fighters from the spares box on top of which I have ordered a pack of Dornier 217's, so that the only thing I won't have is an Uhu. Not bad!

Target For Tonight Rules

My old school paper copy of Target for Tonight arrived in the post today, so I now have a copy that I can actually study and annotate without having to peer through a digital letterbox, which is great. It's actually a proper A4 sized black and white softback booklet, which makes it a lot easier to navigate the various tables and charts that you need to get your head around for the different stages of each mission. In other news, the post festive squeeze to the finances means that it will be quite a while before I can send off for some lead to equip my bomber stream, so I'll have to make do with a lone Lancaster or two for the meantime, while coming up with a bargain basement, el cheapo approach to the terrain tiles, night fighter and bomb run boards.

The Red Line

I finished reading Lancaster the other day, which was both well researched and very interesting, so I decided to start The Red Line by the same author, even though it covers some of the same ground. It focuses on the disastrous raid on Nuremberg in March 1944 but also details the experience of air crew throughout the war, with an emphasis on first hand accounts based on interviews, backed up by documentary sources. I haven't decided if I'm going to tackle Target for Tonight as a project next year yet, so some background reading will help me to make up my mind.

Target for Tonight

I've been reading Lancaster by Jon Nichol over the last few days and it has inspired me to have a go at Target for Tonight, the rules for which are available as a paperback book. It's a novel set of rules that uses beer mats or similar tiles to represent the inward and outbound stages of a raid over Germany in 1943-45. 

The game uses 1/1200th or 1/600th and 1/300th scale aircraft, with a role play style system for generating crews and missions. It is also ideal for solo play, as each stage of the mission is generated using a random series of  dice rolls from tables. It's another potential project for 2022 but something else will have to be shoved sideways to make it fit in.

The best bit is that it needs only a small number of models, some basic scratch building and a bit of photocopying to set up, so a quick and cheap project with no big cost or time involved. I'd be using 1/600th scale models and possibly more than just the Lancaster, for which the rules are designed, as I like the idea of deploying some Wellingtons instead. Not only that but Dan at Flight Deck Decals has some excellent RAF squadron code sets too!