Squadron Dispatch #13
Dear Squadron Pilots,
Welcome back to Squadron Dispatches. Great news! The first pre-production boxes have arrived from the manufacturer, so I made an unboxing video. And, I’ve got the camouflage and markings finished for the last two models: the German He 111 bomber and the British Skua dive bomber.
New to the Squadron? You can read all previous Squadron Dispatches on the blog at AngelsOneSix.com/blog.
Unboxing the Pre-production Samples
The box is exactly what you’ll get from backing the Kickstarter, so we’re getting close to release. There are a few more details to sort out and a bit of marketing needed to make sure the project funds and you get your own copies.
The popularity of the video and the excitement that the project is generating was a pleasant surprise. Around 80,000 people have seen the video, and a few thousand watched it right through (not a bad outcome for a ten-minute video on social media!).
Pre-production Planning
Some people have asked why I have gone all the way through to the pre-production stage before launching the Kickstarter, and whether that will mean a faster delivery after the Kickstarter.
The first reason is that I wanted to make sure that I could actually deliver before taking anyone’s money. There’s no way I was going to get you to pay for the product, then discover that I couldn’t actually make it. It’s been a long process to get to the pre-production stage, but now I am confident that if you pay me, you’ll get exactly what you expected.
The second reason for going through to pre-production now is that I don’t want this to be one of those Kickstarters that drag on for years before finally delivering (or not) what you paid for. Once the Kickstarter funds, I’ll be setting the factories to work making stuff and shipping it to you as fast as I can. That’ll still take six to nine months (hopefully less, but I doubt more) depending on shipping and other variables out of my control.
While that’s happening, I’ll be working on the second release and getting that ready, trying to minimise the delay between releases.
How Kickstarter Works
Some of you might not be familiar with Kickstarter, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to go over the basics.
Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform. In essence, that means that I put up a campaign, you buy the game and expansions, and then I use the money you paid to produce and ship them to you.
I’m doing it this way because it’s going to cost more to produce the game and expansions than I have available, so I need your help to make this game. It’s sort of like a pre-order, except it doesn’t happen unless enough people decide to buy.
Let’s look at that in a bit more detail. When the Kickstarter goes up, it will have a goal. You and other backers will pledge support, and once the pledges reach the goal, the Kickstarter will ‘go live’. There’s no risk in backing a project that doesn’t go live, as your pledge doesn’t get called upon if the project fails.Once the project goes live, Kickstarter will ask you to confirm what you wish to order (and allow you to add any extras you’ve decided you need), get your shipping details, and collect payment for your order and shipping (and any taxes your country requires). That money (less fees) then comes to me at Savage Mouse Games and we send it off to the manufacturers and get the process of fulfilling your order underway.
Gaming Mats
White Cliffs of Dover 180cm x 120cm (6'x4')
Something we’ve been working on behind the scenes is gaming mats. Specifically, double-sided neoprene (mouse pad) gaming mats in two sizes:
120 cm x 90 cm (4’ x 3’) suitable for a dining table
180cm x 120 cm (6’ x 4’) suitable for a larger gaming space.
One side has the White Cliffs of Dover and the English Channel, while the other has the Kent countryside.
The smaller mat is great for playing at home and easily handles four aircraft a side. The larger mat handles bigger games with multiple players down at the club (or just makes sure you’ll never have to worry about flying off the edge of the world).
We’ll have some photos of the samples for you next Squadron Dispatch. Meanwhile, you might have spotted the countryside as the background to some of the photos of the game.
Here’s a video battle report of Dan’s first battle featuring an old vinyl print of the mat.
Camouflage and Markings
Last Dispatch, I promised to talk about the camouflage and markings of the final two aircraft, the Heinkel He 111 and the Blackburn Skua.
Heinkel He 111 P-2—4. Staffel, I/KG 55
You might laugh, but the biggest reason for picking the 4th Staffel (Squadron) was the colour of their markings! The Me 109 has yellow, the Me 110 has red, and the Ju 87 Stuka has white, so having the Staffel colour as blue seemed like a good idea! Plus, it has a red griffin, similar to the hellhound on the Me 109s of 9./JG 26.
The big, twin-engined Heinkel He 111 bombers were part of the Kampfgeschwader, the Battle Squadrons, of the German air force. Unlike most of the other formations covered in the previous article, Kampfgeschwader 55 retained all of its own groups throughout the period.
Having taken part in the Invasion of Poland and the Battle of France (in which it bombed Paris), KG 55 fought in all phases of the Battle of Britain. It bombed British coastal shipping during the fighting over the Channel in July, RAF airfields (including Heathrow) and Portsmouth in August, then focused on bombing British aircraft production facilities before switching to terror bombing cities.
The camouflage scheme used by the big Heinkels is the standard one used by the twin-engined Me 110 fighter and the Stuka dive bomber. It has the German look of angular black green and dark green swatches on the upper surfaces and light blue undersides.
The Heinkels carried the full suite of markings, with the KG 55 code of G1 in front of a very large cross, then the aircraft letter in blue and the 4. Staffel code, M, on the sides. The aircraft code was repeated in relatively small letters on the upper wings (unusually, inside the somewhat undersized crosses) and then in big black letters under the wings as well.
Blackburn Skua— No. 801 Squadron, FAA
Oddly, the British dive bomber, the Blackburn Skua, has a very similar sounding name to the German Ju 87 Stuka. The names, however, have very different origins. Whereas the German name is just a contraction of Sturzkampfflugzeug (German for dive bomber), the British aircraft is named for the Skua, an aggressive seabird known for its diving attacks on anyone encroaching on its turf.
Skua, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stercorarius_pomarinusPCCA20070623-3985B.jpg
The little known, and much maligned, Skua was Blackburn’s design for a general-purpose dive bomber-cum-fighter for the Fleet Air Arm, the Royal Navy’s air component.
Entering service just two years after the more famous Fairey Swordfish, a biplane torpedo bomber, it was by comparison, very modern.
Being the poor cousin of the other parts of the Royal Air Force, and with limited space on aircraft carriers, the Royal Navy wanted an aircraft that could undertake both offensive missions as a dive bomber and defensive missions as a fighter.
This isn’t as odd as it sounds, since as late as the Battle of Midway in 1942, its American contemporary, the Douglas Dauntless was flying combat air patrols to protect carriers, and actually engaged attacking Japanese dive bomber in combat. Compared to the twin-engined bombers it was expected to face, the Skua was quite fast, and with four .303 Browning machine-guns, well armed.
The Fleet Air Arm carried minimal markings, so the choice of squadron was mainly based on the exploits of No. 801 Squadron over the English Channel during the evacuation of Dunkirk, where they claimed two German bombers shot down.
Aside from these exploits, the Skua is included in its role of dive bomber. With the British Army in dire straights during the retreat to Dunkirk, Skuas were called upon to bomb German convoys and the bridges they were using. Then, after France and the Low Countries fell, it became vital to prevent the Germans from getting all the oil stored in the ports up and down the coast. Since this was most of concern to the Royal Navy, and the ports were nominally friendly, the accurate dive bombers were sent in to destroy the oil tanks, rather than the more indiscriminate heavy bombers.
Unlike the rest of the Royal Air Force with its standardised Dark Green and Dark Earth ‘spinach and sand’ camouflage, the Fleet Air Arm used a much darker scheme of Dark Slate Grey (a greyish olive green) and Extra Dark Sea Grey, with the Sky Gray undersides extending up the sides of the fuselage as well.
This proved to have a somewhat unfortunate similarity to the German camouflage scheme, particularly that of the ME 109 fighter with its light blue fuselage sides, resulting in an attack by Spitfires that shot down two Skuas.
One other oddity you’ll notice is the way the underside of the port wing is white and the starboard wing is black. This was the standard Royal Air Force scheme, right up until just before the Battle of France, when they switched to Duck Egg Blue for the whole underside. The idea was that the Observer Corps, who were responsible for tracking enemy aircraft over Britain (the radar system losing sight of them as they crossed the coast), would be able to easily tell British aircraft from German ones. It appears that the Fleet Air Arm were quite slow in overpainting this with the new colour.
By 1940, the Skuas just carry an aircraft letter, either on the tail fin in the white part of the res/white/blue flash, on the fuselage side, or both. The earlier use of a ship code and squadron number having been simplified.
Skua Decal Sheet
Signing Off
Things keep popping up, so I’ll have to put off the promised articles on the final Hurricane and Hampden prototypes and the campaign flight management app again.
Meanwhile, if you have questions or just want to talk about the game or the warbirds of WW2, join the discussion at facebook.com/groups/AngelsOneSix or discord.gg/6WFTv9m3HD.
Keep your eyes peeled for bandits and watch your six!
Red Leader, Out.
Phil Yates
Designer, Angels One Six
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