I’ve always wanted to run a Bag the Hun campaign using the Finest Hour supplement for the Battle of Britain with 1/285th scale aircraft, but there wasn’t any interest at the club so I shelved my plans a long time ago. However, my recent 1/600th scale games for the Khalkhin Gol project over the summer have convinced me that I can manage to run quite large games on a solo basis, with several flights on each side and bombers on autopilot. So, one thing I’m going to add to my ‚to do‘ list for 2022 will be a Battle of Britain themed solo campaign, based on the system in Finest Hour and using 1/600th scale Tumbling Dice magnet based model aircraft.

To give myself something to aim for, I rolled up a squadron for the RAF today, using a combination of the mechanisms in the supplement and a bit of cherry picking. A dice roll identified the unit as No27 Squadron, which was actually based on the North West Frontier flying Westland Wapiti light bombers at the time, but in my campaign it will have been disbanded and reformed as a fighter squadron in 1939. The squadron is based at Middle Wallop airfield in 10 Group, which is just up the road from me and so an ideal choice. The squadron is equipped with the Hawker Hurricane Mk1 and has a generous compliment of seventeen machines, although one is currently U/S.

As the timeframe for the campaign will be the Kanal Kampf in June 1940, the pilot generation system has given me a total strength of sixteen aircrew, so I will have four spare pilots in reserve and a full complement of twelve for my four sections. The Squadron Leader is a Top Ace, having achieved twelve kills during the Battle of France, and is leader of ‚A‘ Flight, Red Section. The other section leader in ‚A‘ flight is a Veteran of the fighting in France too, so a safe pair of hands at the helm of Yellow Section. The leader of ‚B‘ Flight and Blue Section is a newly minted Junior Ace with five kills over the beaches of Dunkirk, but the leader of Green Section is a Sprog, fresh from advanced training (I decided that he was a well to do and well connected pre-war private pilot, so promoted to section leader on the basis of his supposed flying experience rather than any combat skill).

Luckily, there is another Junior Ace pilot in Green Section to shepherd its newly appointed section leader, backed up by a solid Regular sergeant pilot in the number three slot. The other section pilots are a mixed bag, with two more Veterans and Regulars, together with a couple more Sprogs, sprinkled around the squadron according to the random dice rolls that I made. The reserve pilots are all Sprogs, as you’d expect but there is a single Regular to give the CO some options when it comes to replacing losses and rotating pilots during the campaign. I may well dip into the character generation system in Squadron Forward to flesh out the identities and backgrounds of each pilot, but I don’t want to over complicate things at this stage.

In terms of preparation for this solo campaign, I’ll obviously need twelve Hurricanes based and painted but will also have to paint quite a lot of Luftwaffe bombers and fighters too. The Kanal Kampf gives m the option of using Ju-87 Stukas, so I’ll need twelve of them plus twelve bombers to start with, probably Heinkel III’s as they are really nice models. As fighters I will need twelve Bf-109’s and, as it’s still early days in the Battle of Britain, I’ll also need twelve Bf-110’s as fighter escorts. A couple of reconnaissance aircraft would also be useful, so I can add a Ju-88 or Do-17 in that role, with the option of expanding up to twelve aircraft in the bomber role later on. This is quite a lot to do but still manageable if I do it in stages (I have fiddled the encounter table to fix the maximum number of aircraft at twelve, which is more than enough to deal with!)

This will all kick off in 2022 but it’s always a good idea to plan ahead!