Tuesday 30 August 2016

Attack on Siverskaya Airfield : October 1941

Regular readers will know I have a (very) long running air combat campaign based around the war in the air over the Eastern Front. It is not a competitive campaign rather a linear project where the Germans and the Russians alternately take turns in specified missions broadly based on the operations which took place all over the Eastern Front. For our latest scenario (again taken from the excellent Barbarossa : The Air battle by Christer Bergstrom) we have moved to the North and the air Battles around Leningrad.

In an attempt to break the siege the Russian Airforce (VVS) mounted a series of raids on forward airfields controlled by Luftflotte 1. On the 12th October they attacked Siverskaya airfield, with Pe-2 bombers and Il-2's supported by MiG-3 fighters. After a relatively successful attack the Russians ran into the scrambled planes from the airfield but also a group of returning Bf 109's. At the controls of one of the MiGs was Lt Dmitriy Kokorev who up till then had already scored a number of kills, he was sadly killed in the action.

A good set up for the battle. VVS Bombers attempting to kill targets on the ground around the airfield. MiGs to keep off the Bf109s which would come in randomly but no later than turn 6. Each of the planes on the ground together with the fuel dump are targets, we were using my usual amended aeronautica rules.

Snow covers the ground as the VVS attack, Germans have managed to scramble two FW 
but no sign yet of the returning Bf109's. Germans heavily outnumbered at this stage
Those with a detailed knowledge of WW2 Russian aircraft will spot I have had to swop 
the bombers for SB's a deficiency in my collection which needs to be rectified as I don't have any Pe-2's
Russian MiG's fly ahead to clear a path for the second wave of bombers and ground attack aircraft
Bombs are now flying, the fuel dump is ablaze and several planes are trailing smoke.
Out of nowhere the returning Bf109 Rotte arrive to find their home base
being attacked they immediately engage
With planes, bombs and targets all going off or busting into flames the air battle reaches a climax
In the skies above the airfield.

A side shot, at this scale I still haven't been able to find a reliable way to identify altitude, most commercial 
flying bases are just too big for this scale
Eventually with the majority of targets destroyed, and the defending MiG's out of ammo the final
bomber turns to make its way home, we had three more anxious turns with the Messerschmitts attempting to
bring it down which they failed to do, the final shot shows the black smoke billowing into the sky from crashed 
and burning planes from both sides
In the end is was a great battle close as always, two bombers made it back to base and unlike the historical situation Dimitriy was one of the few surviving Russian pilots, with several more kills to his name he is likely to be made a hero of the Soviet Union......until next time😀

8 comments:

  1. Very cool. Never fought a air battle

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  2. Hmm. Missed the first blog post on this subject, so just clicked through to it. All very interesting.

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    1. The campaign has been going quite a bit longer than the blog. But I only manage to play a game every 6 months or so, normally when other games leave a spare evening. Really just an excuse to play something different every now and then with a strong historical context.

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  3. Great report, I do like an air battle.

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    1. Thanks always nice to play something different and it almost always gives a fun battle.

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  4. Intense and beautiful, love the explosions markers and the great looking pictures!

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    1. We don't play too hard to win .....but we do get excited and you have to make appropriate crash noises when a plane gets shot down. The explosion markers are tufts of a strange black fluff which a ate pick up at B&M for a quid, looks great smells terrible😀

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