Bombing the Reich
The Royal Air Force was already having a bad night when Cyril Barton’s Halifax bomber was attacked first by a Junkers 88 and then a Messerschmitt 210 while on its way to Nuremburg. No one was killed, but as damage mounted and German night fighters continued to attack, the navigator, air bomber and wireless operator misunderstood a signal and bailed out.
Pilot Officer Barton pressed on. He reached the target, released the bombs himself, and turned for home. A damaged engine had lost its propeller, and two fuel tanks were leaking. Despite strong headwinds and without navigational aids, he made it back to base. On approach, two of the remaining engines ran out of fuel. By then, the plane was too low to allow a bail out. Flying on one engine, Barton managed to crash land the plane. He died, but the remaining three crew survived. Barton was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.
The raid on Nuremburg on March 30-31, 1944, was the most deadly of the war for the British bomber force. It had been a “maximum effort”, involving 795 RAF bombers: 572 Lancaster, 214 Halifax and 9 Mosquito pathfinders. One in eight, 95 of those bombers, were shot down. Britain lost as many flight personnel that night as it did during the entire Battle of Britain. Despite dropping about 2,000 tons of bombs, the raid killed just 74 Germans on the ground.
While the losses in the March 31 raid were exceptional, the Royal Air Force alone would lose 8,325 bombers during the course of its strategic bombing campaign against Europe. More than 44 per cent of pilots and crew on British bombers died; another 8 per cent were captured after being shot down.
This horrific loss rate was captured in a British game about the nighttime bombing campaign. Bombers over Europe has typical wartime features. It consists of a single sheet of light brown cardboard, 15.75” x 10.75”, printed with dark brown text and board features. Oddly, it allows players to start their bombing flights from Moscow as well as London.
It is a roll-and-move game, with targets ranging as far away as Scandinavia, Italy and Bulgaria. Each target city is assigned a value, from 1 in Oslo and 2 in Paris to 8 in Rome and 6 in Budapest. The numbers increase with difficulty rather than strategic value: Berlin rates only a 4.
A player landing on any of the dark spaces has his plane shot down. Each player is allowed 10 missions. The winner is the one who scores the highest value of points from targets reached successfully. The high ratio of dark squares (40 out of a possible 179 spaces) is a depressingly accurate reflection of the casualty rate facing wartime bomber crews.
In a trial two-player game, using two six-sided dice for each roll, 11 of the 20 planes were shot down before returning to base. That is remarkably close to the overall 52 per cent casualty rate for British bomber crews during the campaign.
A more colorful and optimistic view of the air campaign can be seen in the game Bomb Berlin! This Snakes and Ladders variant features a Halifax heavy bomber on the box and Bristol Blenheim medium bombers on the board. The 100-space playing surface is placed at an angle, like a diamond. Red single-engine planes act as ladders, swooshing upward, while black twin-engine German planes plunge downward trailing smoke.
Bomber Command (above right and below) is another Snakes and Ladders variant. Each player has four bombers. Players take turns rolling a die. A 6 is required for a plane to leave its base. Along the way, pieces may land on squares that move them ahead or back. Each player keeps moving the first plane until it reaches the target and bombs Berlin in the middle of the board. Then the next plane may leave base, and so on. The first player to have all planes reach Berlin wins the game.
Bomber Raid, a 1942 American game from E.E. Fairchild, had players take both raiding and defensive roles. Each player controls four bombers and one searchlight. Bombers try to fly from friendly territory across to the enemy side of the board. If they arrive directly over one of the target rows, they score points: from 10 for an oil depot to only 2 for bombing a city.
On each turn, a player rolls one die. That roll can move a single bomber up, down, forward or back, or to rotate the searchlight beam by that many spaces along the number track across the top and down the middle.
If after moving the searchlight beam, it sits across a square with an enemy bomber, that bomber is shot down. Players may also shoot down an enemy bomber by moving to a space facing the enemy and at the same height.
The winner is the player to score the most points by the time all bombers have either completed their run or been shot down. The rules note that the best strategy is to play cat and mouse with the enemy searchlight, luring it toward one bomber so another one can scoot past into enemy territory.
Once the United States entered the war, the number of American air war games expanded. Even though the U.S. mainland was never really threatened with attack from the skies, these included educational games aimed at teaching players to recognize enemy and friendly planes alike.
Spot-a-Plane, for instance, was approved for release in 1942 by the U.S. Army and Navy Air Forces. Players vie to be first to reach "Mission Accomplished" at the end of a 54-space track. However, movement is determined by their ability to recognize the silhouettes shown on the game’s playing cards.
On their turn, players draw the top card from a deck that is concealed by a “hangar card”. They then place it on the board and study it. When they are confident that they have identified the key aspects of the plane, their card is covered by a Blackout Card.
The player is then handed the Master Intelligence Chart, which includes the silhouettes of all planes in the game.
When they choose a plane, their card is turned over, showing all of the details about that plane. If they correctly identified the plane, their piece on the board moves forward by the number of spaces indicated on the card.
The rules provide for more difficult versions for advanced play. With the first advanced rule, if the player thinks he can identify the plane without reference to the master card, he advances double the number of spaces if correct. Second, if all players agree before the game, the Master card is not used at all. Players must identify the planes directly from the silhouette card, and only move the normal number of spaces if correct.
The track on the board also includes blue and red spots. When landing on such a spot, the player draws an Army Flash or Danger Flash card respectively and follows its instructions. These generally require either advances or retreats along the track, or provide a unique opportunity.
Squadron Scramble was a rummy-type card game that doubles as an aircraft-recognition training aid, approved by the National Aeronautic Association. The 52-card deck is divided into 16 sets of 3 plus 4 wild cards. Each set shows an individual aircraft from three directions: overhead, side view and front view. The deck includes 2 British, 2 German, 3 Japanese and 9 American planes.
Air Combat Trainer is a more ambitious game. It had approval from the War Department, as well as from the Air Youth Division of the National Aeronautic Association. As part of its mandate, the NAA had organized a Junior Air Reserve “designed to provide boys and girls between the ages of eight and sixteen with a basic knowledge of aerodynamics and related subjects though club activities and projects”.
The game pieces are cardboard cut-outs showing specific models of American planes either from the side or from an angle. Silhouettes of both Japanese and Nazi planes were included for recognition purposes.
However, the main aim of the game is to teach players how to maneuver planes both in attack and defense, and in both dogfighting and bombing roles. The playing board was an open sky showing both horizontal distance and altitude, with a slightly curved horizon. Player aids included mission spinners for both the attacker and defender, and a triangle to calculate release points for both high-level and dive bombing.
The Army Air Corps Game takes players through the three stages of US pilot training during WWII. By the time it was published in 1942, the Army Air Corps had already been expanded to the US Army Air Force.
The board has a 38-space track illustrating the many elements of pilot training from the orientation flight and basic flying maneuvers through dogfighting and night flying to gunnery, tactics and precision bombing. The board has a built-in spinner with three rings corresponding to the stages of training.
While similar in theme to the Canadian Be an Airman, players do not move along a track. Rather, they spin in turn and place a wooden block of their color on the corresponding space on the track. They use the inner red ring until all red spaces have been filled, then the middle white ring until that is filled, and finally the blue ring. The first player to fill all the spaces wins. Duplicate spins are wasted, but there are opportunities at each stage to fill in missing spaces without spinning the number.
Air-Attack is an American game that addressed both bombing and air-to-air combat. This pits two players against each other with specific objectives to bomb. The game pieces include plastic airplanes that move openly on the board and wooden pegs that secretly mark both targets and anti-aircraft locations on each player’s defensive board.
Each player must defend three objectives, each of which occupies 10 spaces on the board. Before play starts, each player inserts six black anti-aircraft pegs and 10 colored target pegs within the 30 possible spaces in his defensive objectives. These pegged cards remain hidden.
Planes start from their respective airports. In turn, each player uses a spinner to determine the total number of moves he can make. The game’s spinner is dual purpose. An outer ring of numbers runs from 2 to 12 (excluding 11) and governs movement. The inner ring, with numbers 1 to 8, resolves combat.
The movement total can be divided in any way desired amongst 1 or more planes. Pieces can move in any direction including diagonally. When a plane ends its move on an enemy objective space, the owning player marks down the number of the space.
At game end, players score a point for each objective space hit containing one of the opponent’s target pegs.
However, if a plane ends its move on an enemy anti-aircraft space, the defender eliminates the attacking plane.
This is one of the first wargames to include an odds-based combat results table. This became a feature of most wargames from the 1960s onward. Air battles occur any time a plane from each player find themselves in adjacent spaces. However, each player’s strength in the battle includes all friendly planes in a linked formation (i.e. that form a connected chain of occupied spaces).
In this game’s Combat Chart, the columns represent all possible combat combinations from 1 to the maximum 6 planes on each side. Combat is resolved using the 8-point inner ring on the spinner, with the random result matched against the appropriate column.
Results are expressed in terms of planes lost by one side or the other, or exchange results where both sides lose planes. If, after losses are taken, enemy planes are still adjacent, combat continues, with the odds column modified accordingly.
Once one player loses his last plane, the opposing player gets three additional moves. On these spins, he may count as possible hits every objective space passed over, not just the one a plane ends on. However, planes still may be shot down by anti-aircraft guns.
At the end of the game, players score one point for each enemy objective peg successfully bombed, and two points for each enemy plane downed. The player who clears the board of enemy planes gets a 10-point bonus.
Not all games about the air war over Europe involved strategy. Some, like Victory Bomber, were purely a matter of physical dexterity.
The game box has an insert with a pattern of holes to catch wooden projectiles. The holes have point values ranging from 5 to the black bordered “Victory” space worth 100. The goal is to score the most points with each shot.
The projectiles are fired by a metal spring launcher which is placed 3 to 10 inches from the bottom of the box.
The projectiles have a wide end and a narrow end. If the narrow end lands in the hole, the point value is doubled. A player who lands the narrow end in the Victory space wins the game instantly. Otherwise play continues until one player reaches a total of 500 points or more.
Hornet is very similar. It has more realistic board art, showing an overhead view of a port with circles and values around targets. It uses a wooden see-saw device as a launcher. The players press down on the short end to make the bombs loaded onto the hole in the long end fly toward the board.
Another air-defense game went back to traditional target shooting. The target board for Wings is set into a pair of wooden supports. Behind this vertical board are nailed two slanted wooden ramps. At the bottom of each ramp is a window in the target board.
The actual targets are cardboard pictures of planes, mounted in a small wooden bar. One player places the planes at the top of a ramp and then releases it. The other player aims the game’s gun and tries to shoot the target when it appears in a window. As in skeet-shooting, players can agree to make the game more difficult by releasing upper and lower planes at random or simultaneously.
The game has a unique patented gun. It is made of wood and metal like many others, and is designed to shoot elastic bands. These are stretched from a notch at the front of the barrel back over the trigger mechanism.
What is different about this gun is that the release mechanism is a cogged wheel. It is designed to allow multiple elastic bands to be loaded. Pulling the trigger releases one band and moves the cogged wheel so that the next loaded band is ready. Up to six shots can be fired without reloading.
Toy Creations Inc. came up with a pair of game elements that were sold separately but work well together. Bombs Away! is a dartboard. However, the dartboard is printed with the overhead view of a city. The dartboard includes both legitimate targets like factories, docks, railways and an airport, and forbidden targets like hospitals marked with a cross. Players are penalized for hitting these.
The company also produced the Eagle Bombsight. This is a cardboard box designed to be held horizontally. Players look through two holes on one end, and an angled mirror provides a view of whatever is underneath.
Four bombs are loaded vertically in the far end of the box. These squat darts have a wooden body, sharp metal tip and four papery fins. Each bomb is released by pulling on a wooden lever on the top of the box.
The dartboard can be hung on a wall as a vertical target for regular darts, but it makes a much better game when placed on the floor and used as a target for players using the Eagle Bombsight.
Dexterity bombing games came in all shapes and sizes. The Bomber is a small hand-held box with a glass top.
A cardboard bomber that looks as if it is about to crash into the ground is held loosely to the inset board by a metal peg. The peg goes through a slot in the bomber that allows it to shift and rotate.
There are six wooden cylinders, and players have to juggle the box to get all six into the cut-out spaces on the bomber's wings.
Much larger and more elaborate is Bomber Ball. There is a target board set into the bottom of the box and two large, three-dimensional cardboard ships intended to be placed on the floor. The bomber is a large flat cardboard shape with four holes for bombs along its fuselage. Holding the bombs in place is a cardboard panel that can be drawn back, allowing one bomb to drop at a time. The game comes with both marbles and softer chalk balls as bombs (which make it easier to see where a bomb has hit).
After the Battle of Britain, the emphasis of Germany’s aerial efforts was on defense rather than offense. This was presaged by the early-war game Adler Luftverdingungsspiel (Eagle Air Defence Game).
The rules say that the game was developed by a Luftwaffe officer raise awareness of the challenges of both conducting and defending against air raids, adding that “while the game should be and wants to be a game, its deeper meaning lies in the ever-present thought of the protection of the Fatherland.”
The game was re-issued later in the war as Adler Luftwaffenspiel (Eagle Air War Game), in a Europa edition whose box featured the flags of Germany’s conquests (shown earlier on the page Enthusiasm for War).
It is quite a bit more complex than Adler Luftkampfspiel. Pieces include six numbered bombers and fighters for each player, as well as six dice: one black, three white, one red, and a white one showing six different colors on its faces.
Both bombers and fighters must follow specific tracks. Players initially must roll for each numbered bomber in order. Once they all have crossed a “break point” eight spaces from base, the player may roll for any bomber on his turn.
Any bomber landing on the break point has engine problems and must return to base. A bomber landing on that point for a second time must make an emergency landing and is out of the game.
When any bomber crosses a yellow “alarm point” at mid-board, the enemy’s corresponding numbered fighter may start moving. Bombers roll only the single black die, while fighters may roll up to three white dice. A player with one or more fighters active rolls both the black and between one and three white dice simultaneously and moves one of each type of plane.
A fighter must move forward on its own track until it intercepts the corresponding bomber track. After that, it moves on the bomber track and may move in either direction along that track. A fighter that lands on top of a bomber shoots it down. The fighter, having accomplished its mission, is then removed from the game.
As a bomber approaches its target city, it also must survive flak (anti-aircraft) fire and dodge barrage balloons. Each bomber track has six flak spaces numbered 1 to 6.
Whenever an enemy bomber is sitting on a flak space, the opposing player adds a red die to his mix when throwing dice. If the number on the red die matches a flak space with a bomber on it, the bomber is shot down.
Any plane, bomber or defending fighter, that ends its move on a barrage balloon space crashes and is out of the game.
Once a bomber reaches its target, its player rolls the multi-colored die. The resulting color defines the type of bomb that has hit: white is a dud, yellow is a time-delay bomb, blue has hit the water system, red is an incendiary (fire bomb), black is high explosive, and the red-cross symbol means civilian casualties.
Once a bomb hits, civil defense comes into play.
The defending player adds the multi-colored die to his next three rolls. If the die matches the color of damage done, it is considered successfully fought.
The bomber, meanwhile tries to return home. Once it has dropped its bombs, it may roll the black die three times. The rolling player must declare before rolling whether he is rolling for a returning bomber or one still on the way in. If a bomber lands on the “break point” on the way home, it belly lands. Otherwise, it lands normally when it reaches base and is considered to have completed its mission.
In the example shown here, a red bomber has just bombed the Kaserne (Barracks) and rolled a red cross for civilian casualties. On blue’s turn, a result of 6 on the red (flak) die will result in the leftmost red bomber being shot down. Blue fighters could land on (shoot down) red bombers on a roll of 3, 6 or 7, so the blue player will have to decide whether to roll 1 or 2 white dice for the fighters. The uppermost bomber is on its way home and may roll the black die three times if the player commits to that plane or the one over the factory before rolling.
The winner is decided on points. Players get 10 points for each enemy plane shot down by another plane, and 8 points for each enemy plane downed by flak or a barrage balloon. A bomber forced to make an emergency landing gives 3 points to the opponent. A returning bomber making a belly landing earns 10 points, while one landing normally after a successful mission earns 20. Players also get points for the bombs they drop – from 0 for a dud to 10 for a high-explosive or civilian casualty result – and for their civil defense efforts (5 points if damaged is suppressed on the first die roll, 4 on the second and 3 on the third).
Flieger und Flak is a more basic air defense game. It really is just an airplane race with opposing players' anti-aircraft guns as obstacles.
The board has a white path winding around the outside of four colored circles. The track has alternating red and black plane outlines showing direction of movement, and one light-colored outline per circle.
Each circle is filled with a web of white dots and lines, and a colored point from which that player's planes start. Each player gets four planes and three anti-aircraft guns. These can be placed anywhere in the home circle.
Players roll dice to move. On a 4, the player must move a plane from his base to the colored dot on the track, and then rolls again to move that plane.
A plane landing on a red outline of an opposing circle must enter the circle and eliminate a gun by landing on it. The defending player in turn may shoot down a plane next to it by rolling a 1. Planes leave the circle via the light-coloured outline. The first player to get all surviving planes back to base wins.
The agony of those on the receiving end of Allied bombs was captured by Marsch den Luftschutzraum (March to the Air Raid Shelter). As in Britain during the Blitz, the game was intended to teach children about how to protect themselves both in preparing for and during a bombing raid.
Alarm
The illustration on the box cover is grim. It shows two weary nurses carrying a stretcher into the shelter. A scared mother with her infant in arms follows them down the stairs. In the foreground, a civil defense worker in a gas mask sprays water on a hot spot. The aggressive and optimistic tone of early war German games is gone. Even the celebration of Youth Air Protection Day at space 61 shows a group of Hitler Youth cloaked in gas masks.
It is a typical roll-and-move game, with spaces that provide bonuses or penalties.
Those who read The Siren magazine (space 11) have the latest information on air protection and move ahead. Showing that you are not afraid of incendiary bombs hitting over your head (25) grants a big leap forward, as does reporting an unexploded bomb to the police (45).
On the other hand, leaving clutter in your attic (36), failing to help out in a bucket brigade (56) or forgetting to keep pails of water handy (66) sends players back or makes them lose a turn.
The first player who reaches the end space (70) must immediately shout “Air Raid Protection is Necessary!” or be sent back to space 60.
Adler Luftkampfspiel (shown earlier) was re-issued during the war, with an “export” edition offering rules in all European languages. The export version can be seen in this 1943 magazine advertisement by its publisher Hugo Gräfe.
A second advertisement from the same publisher offered an unintended late-war testament to the illusion of victory.
It appeared in late 1944, showing well-dressed German children happily playing one of the company’s “instructive and exciting” games.
Just weeks later, on Feb. 11-13, 1945, Allied bombers completely destroyed the city of Dresden, where Hugo Gräfe had its headquarters and factory.
