Korean War and ACW Ironclads?

A little dated now (published in 1998) but covers all the aerial combat I am likely to be interested in!  A great primer on the subject.

I hope everyone had a good Easter!

Indulge me, it is a moment of whimsy to be sure, but a welcome one! As part of my recent haul of aviation books offered up on Freecycle there was one in particular that caught my eye, the title you see above by Ivan Rendall. I have mentioned before that I have played a lot of aerial games although these have mostly been of the board variety and even then the palette is rather modest. For jet combat my experience was solely down to the SPI game Air War which was complex but a lot of fun at the time - especially as most of our early games involved non missile carrying types and so inevitably the Korean War featured.

I never really studied the war in great detail but the chapter devoted to Korea has been something of a revelation. Plenty of late WW2 propeller driven types and a basket of early jets makes for a truly diverse range of match ups, all of which means some interesting games. A mixture of old and new technology with the older stuff being very much at the pinnacle of piston engined aircraft development.

Rather like the naval side of the American Civil War….

There you had sailing ships that were pretty much at the technological summit of their development mixing it with steam power and those newfangled ironclads. The two struck me as having this in common!

Essential research material and there are few other titles produced by Osprey that would be handy to add to the collection

Anyways, enthused by the revelations of the Rendall book - incidentally I should mention that this title is by no means the definitive word on the subject, as some of the more pithier reviews on Amazon pointed out - and remembering that the well known aerial gamer, blogger and prince of the project list, Jim Jackaman, had covered this particular war using 1:600th Tumbling Dice models and the Mig Alley rules, I decide to take a further look. Naturally this involved a modest degree of expenditure in terms of research but it will be fulfilling a need I didn’t know I had - actually that is not entirely accurate, I had planned a small aerial project but had gotten no further than the Battle of Britain. The first step was to secure a copy of the rather timely written book you see above.

In an exchange with the aforementioned Mr Jackaman he suggested that the Mig Alley pack plus a couple of extra packs would be more than sufficient for a nifty little set up which will be fun to do. 

Anyhow, planning for this and the various other bits and pieces I have on the go will keep me occupied whilst Laurel and I both deal with the bout of Covid we now have - her first and my second!