After much prep work, I recently kicked off the campaign. Without further ado:

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June 4, 1942 – Somewhere in the waters off Midway Atoll

Ensign Paul Paulson flies wingman for Dick “Bastard” Blanchard. He lost a bet, it happens, and no one likes flying with Bastard. They cruise some distance from their carrier: USS Lake Erie (CV-2)*. They fly what is known as a Combat Air Patrol (CAP), a defensive mission around their carrier. For a moment Bastard wags his wings and begins a turn towards some clouds. Paul wonders if he saw something, they know the Japanese are supposed to be out there somewhere.

As they round the towering clouds Paul sees it, a small black shape moving in the direction of the carrier. Bastard turned in towards this mystery aircraft. It could be a Japanese reconnaissance aircraft, or it could be a US reconnaissance aircraft returning to base. There was only one way to find out, and that was to get closer. Quickly the two Wildcats closed the distance, but not quick enough.

The bogey turned and moved in a short orbit and as they got closer Paul realized that he could see the US fleet in the distance…which meant so could the bogey. Suddenly the bogey turned and got larger. It was coming towards them, and it was actually slightly above the pair of Naval Aviators. Head to head means it happened fast, the bogey crossed paths with the pilots dead above them. Looking up Paul and Bastard could clearly see the big red “meatballs” on the wing. It appeared to be a Japanese reconnaissance float plane.

Dick was fast and yanked his wildcat in a break turn to follow but Paul, the rookie, was distracted by the encounter and didn’t see the turn. As Bastard came out of the turn he looked for his wingman and found no-one. He cursed his luck at having to fly with a rookie. Slowly Paul realized his mistake and came around to form back up on Dick’s wing. Dick slowed to get his wingman back, but this disorganization cost them the chance to bag the enemy plane. Looking out at the blue expanse before them it was nowhere to be seen. There wasn’t enough fuel to hunt it down. It had slipped through their fingers…

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This was a fun little scenario I used to catch up on the rules of Bag the Hun. It didn’t take long and served as a great refresher. Rookie pilots (Sprogs in the rules) are tough to utilize when it comes time to do harder maneuvers. Both sides started as Bogeys as I wanted to explore the spotting rules. Dick and Paul had a simple objective of spotting and eliminating any enemies. The Japanese E13A “Jake” reconnaissance plane had an objective to get within two hexes of the opposing board edge and roll a spotting check on the US fleet from there. If successful they would then attempt to escape via their own board edge.

Rules wise this played out with Dick and Paul trying to “sneak” up on the bogey using some clouds. however some lucky card draws for the Jake saw it careen across the board. Random starting altitudes had it start at ALT5 while the Wildcats started at ALT3. This mean the Japanese floatplane got to claim the Altitude Bonus card a few times. Why didn’t the Wildcats climb? Well climbing is expensive in terms of speed point cost and they were already running flat out just to try to catch the Jake. They failed a few spotting checks to see what the bogey was as well.

The Jake quickly flew down to its objective and passed the spotting check on its first roll. Immediately it turned for home, having earlier spotted the prowling Wildcats. Next it flew right overtop of the Wildcats. Dick and Paul tried to turn back to catch it, while also gaining altitude (a maneuver called a Chandelle) but Paul failed his maneuver check and flew straight ahead…away from the Jake. Dick for his part made the turn. Yet a small bit of bad luck let the Jake claim another Altitude Bonus card immediately followed by its normal activation. Quickly the Jake put an insurmountable amount of distance between itself and the US pursuers.

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Chapter 2 will be up shortly and will follow the other six pilots as they escort a doomed flight of torpedo bombers in a valiant attack on the Japanese fleet. The actual inspiration for the next mission can be found here.

^{_{*The USS Lake Erie is a fictional carrier bearing the carrier designation of the USS Lexington, which in reality was sunk one month earlier at the Battle of the Coral Sea. In our fictional world the US redesignated a freshly launched carrier with the Lexington’s number in a bid to confuse any Japanese intelligence. I chose this as to not displace a carrier operating at the time of Midway and later in case they need to feature in the story. In reality the USS Lake Erie was not launched until 1993. The name refers to the US Navy’s victory on Lake Erie during the War of 1812.}}