SPAD

I know very little about the Spad aircraft, but I took my model to battle last night at the NWS, escorting a Caproni CA.3 that was intercepted by a white Fokker D.VII and a brilliantly coloured Halberstadt CL.II.  I flew the Spad and the bomber and Stephen the Fokker and Mark B the Halberstadt.

There's me Spad, blending in well with the terrain.

The Hun.

The Spad flying escort for the Caproni over a town somewhere in France.

Here they come!

The Halberstadt got in a good shot on the bomber (downing it is the German objective), but took fire from both the Caproni and the Spad.  Both the Halberstadt and the Caproni started smoking.

The Halberstadt gets a tail gunner shot in on the bomber, but again takes double fire, and it was close range this time.

The Spad and the Fokker narrowly miss colliding as the Spad gets a final shot into the Halberstadt that sees it explode.  The Fokker gets caught in the fireball, but the Spad continues its circling of the bomber unscathed.

The aftermath of the first encounter.

Can the Fokker make it back?  We calculated it had a 30% speed advantage on the Caproni, but would that be enough to catch the bomber before it left the contested airspace?

A bit more maths determined that the Fokker wasn't going to catch up before the Caproni exited.  Worse the bar was closed and my glass was empty.

I had been trying for this "shot" most of the night.

Our solution to the edge of the world problem was to swap the mats over (we were using two and were able to move them without any trouble).

The Fokker got closer and closer while the Spad did its best to hang back and try and get on its tail.

Bye bye Fokker!

The combination of the Spad and the Caproni's rear gun was just too much.    

Moving the mats to prolong play certainly gave a better and more realistic game. We had swapped them at least twice if not three times (the excitement preclude accurate record keeping at this stage)..

We had made a few mistakes in initially thinking the Caproni had two rear guns and also in a certain white plane forgetting to weave about when it was on fire.

For the record the Caproni had taken 60% damage.  The Spad was unscathed.