Summer Solo Game - London's Burning

An He-111 bomber over East London (Wikipedia)

For this year's summer solo game, I selected Avalon Hill’s London’s Burning game. If you aren’t familiar with the game, it is a solitaire boardgame where you control a couple Royal Air Force (RAF) fighters during the Battle of Britain. The game system controls the German air raids through chit pulls and die rolls. I used the VASSAL boardgame engine and London's Burning module to play the game (mainly so that I didn't have to worry about setting up and picking up the game or storing things between sessions). I really like VASSAL for solitaire games and recommend it for those of you with limited table space or that can’t leave a game out between playing sessions.

I chose to play the standard scenario, which runs from August 13 thru September 6, with random weather. I put my main air base at Kenley airfield and drew 2 Hurricane pilots (Holmwood and Palmer) to start the game and 2 Spitfire pilots (Richey and Clisby) in reserve. My main strategy was to forward base my aircraft at the southeast satellite airfields (Manston and Hawkinge) until the Germans damage the radar sites and then deploy further back. I wanted to minimize the flying standing patrols to minimize pilot fatigue. I also wanted to try to keep both fighters together on intercepts as much as possible for mutual support. With my forces set up, it was time to start the game.

Day 1, August 13, started out well for the RAF with the Hurricanes attacking out of the sun on the first raid, knocking down all the German planes, including an Ace Me-109.

Hurricanes bounce the first Luftwaffe raid and get an Me-109 Ace

A couple more Germans were downed during the rest of the day’s raids, while damage was done to the Dunkirk radar station and Detling airfield. I repaired the radar during the night phase to keep the early warning system up.

On August 14, Holmwood was wounded and put out of action for 3 weeks. He was replaced from the by Richey. The Germans again damaged the Dunkirk radar station and also hit Hawkinge airfield (fortunately, I was using Manston as my satellite airfield when they hit Hawkinge). The damage to the radar and airfield forced me to pull back from the forward deployment.

August 15 was a light raid day, with only one afternoon raid. During that raid Palmer downed a Do-17 for his 5th kill, making him an Ace. But Richey was wounded and put out of action for 4 weeks, essentially putting him out of the game. Clisby was called up from the reserves and I was starting to worry that I would run out of pilots.

Luckily for me, the weather turned bad for the next 3 days. This allowed me to repair all the bombing damage and get another pilot (Stone) in the reserve box.

August 19 saw a raid on Dover that I missed intercepting, but no other action. The tempo of raids picked up on the 20th and 21st with attacks on airfields and the first raid on London.

The first raid on London

On August 22, Clisby downed an Me-109 to become an Ace. But both pilots were starting to feel fatigue, limiting the number of raids I could effectively intercept.

Clisby (in the Spitfire) gets his 5th kill

On the last raid of the day Palmer’s plane was damaged, but, luckily, he was not wounded and could return to action the next day.

At this point things were starting to look grim for the RAF. Both of my pilots would be starting the day with some fatigue and there were a lot of damaged spaces on the map. But the poor English weather (really the random weather die roll) came to my rescue for the next 10 days as the south of England was blanketed in rain storms. This allowed me to repair almost all the bomb damage, rest up my pilots, and get some more pilots, including the Hurricane Ace Kowalski, into the reserve pool.

The Luftwaffe got a couple good days of weather to restart their bombing, but paid a heavy cost as my rested Aces hit the bomber formations. Palmer had to bail out during an afternoon raid on September 3, but he safely ‘hit the silk’ and was ready to go for the next day. Bad weather returned on September 4, but then cleared up for the last two days of the game. However, by this time the game was already decided. Even with some strong raids to do some last bits of damage, I had been able to use the bad weather to repair most of the earlier damage and the game ended with a resounding RAF victory.

Without the weather reprieves, I would have had a much tougher time with the game. 10 days of bad weather allowed me to repair almost all of the damage done by the earlier raids. That coupled with all the Luftwaffe planes I had downed made it an easy win.

The lads chatting about the terrible weather during the summer of 1940 (Wikipedia)

I hadn’t played London’s Burning for many years and it was fun to pull it out again. The system still provides an interesting game with a lot of player decisions. It does make me wonder if the system could be adapted for other World War II situations (maybe Malta, Guadalcanal, or Rabaul). But that will have to wait for another time, as the next thing on the agenda is International Naval Wargaming Day on August 6.