 May 9, 2009 - 9:57pm | Just played in a very cool "beer and pretzels" table top wargame recreating the RAF raid on the German ship Tirpitz in Norway WW2. This was done buy the sister squadron that did the bouncing bomb blowing up the dam that got more publicity. The bombs for the tirpitz raid were smaller versions. the game ran with 12 players trying to navigate the Norwegian Fijord suppressing the flak lighters and setting up for the run on the Tirpitz. which had 12in of metal and tons of flak producers. the guy running it at the club had worked up this game for a convention. End result was a TPK (total party kill) on us but 2 pilots manage to drop their bombs with one being a near perfect drop and for the first time for the guy running the game the Tirpitz was sunk. out of 25 planes in 3 runnings of this game only 3 planes have ever survived. He had written us off as we had not really tried to communicate with each other much and instead we played billard balls with each other. It was a lot of fun but we really needed to work together. I was struck by the similarity to the Death Star trench battle from Star Wars. Totally inspired me but I dont really need another project building a Death Star trench for an 8' table. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 May 10, 2009 - 9:14am | I always thought the Tiripitz was blown up by a Tallboy(a 12,000 lb bomb commonly used by the RAF in WWII to take out submarine pens and similarly hardened targets). That situation always reminded me of many Age Of Sail naval battles, where one fleet bottled up another up in some inconvenient roadstead and proceed to smash them to pieces. You can conceivably do this as a near-orbit scenario, with the enemy dreadnaught cornered in orbit, behind fortresses, ground defenses, massed fighter formations, and escorts of its own, with the opposing fleet consisting of assault scouts, frigates, destroyers, a carrier and maybe a cruiser or two(sending fighters in by themselves is a one-way trip....). Hmmm.... "You're everything that's base in humanity," Cochrane continued. "Drawing up strict, senseless rules for the sole reason of putting you at the top and excluding anyone you say doesn't belong or fit in, for no other reason than just because you say so." —Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stephens, Federation |
 May 10, 2009 - 5:44pm | She was, eventually, but there were numerous raids against her including midget subs, torpedo bombers from aircraft carriers, seplane attacks, attacks by Mosquitoes using sea mines and topedoes and no less than three sucessful RAF attacks with Tall Boys. Throughout the course of the war I think there were no less than about 14 planned attacks against her. Check out the Dambusters for an insight into where Lucas got his inspiration for the Death Star trench run - shot for shot in some places.... G. |
 May 13, 2009 - 3:43pm | A better scenario for this in a SF game would to be hunting the ship in an asteroid field. Have a battleship hiding out for repairs in one mined and escorted. Seem more apropreate to me. I've thought about how this scenario could be played out for a long time, and when considering the speed at which ships move you are not going to see fighters swarming over a Death Star's surface in SF any time soon. Unless they have reason to move slower, that's when the scene from Empire Strikes Back asteroid chase comes into mind. In every age, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same. |
