Back in the wide blue yonder....

Bf 109 E 4 Tropical - simple paint scheme and very effective looking

Wednesday evening at the club was the usual night of good fun and banter. This week saw us taking to the skies once again courtesy of Mr Fox and his collection but with my pair of Bf 109 Fs making their debut. We also had a new recruit to the club, a young chap that despite being a die hard Warhammer 40K and Lord of the Rings player was more than happy to give a historical (or should that be hysterical?) game a go. We duly obliged and so Mr Fox picked a brace of Hurricanes and his erstwhile young wingman a pair of Spitfires. We were playing a scenario set over Malta and so the bad guys (under the command of yours truly) consisted of the aforementioned 109 Fs and a brace of Italian Folgore fighters. I should point out that the Italian planes flew very nicely, looked the part but were sadly undergunned - definitely a triumph of style over substance!

As ever the action was fast and furious (unless you were driving a Hurricane of course!) and ended when the 109s blew both of the Spitfires out of the sky (literally, none of this 'death by a thousand cuts' nonsense) and dented one of the Hurricanes courtesy of one of the Italian fighters.

The young recruit enjoyed the game (I hope I did not put him off too much as his command did not last particularly long!) and is now considering buying the game for his own purposes which can only be a good thing as new blood in the hobby is always welcome.

Mr Fox was pleased to see the game out having not been shot down and so we followed this up with the start of 'one on one' dogfight with our preferred aircraft of choice - in his case a Hawker Typhoon and in mine, an FW 190 A. There was much furious manoeuvring and Mr Fox managed to coax the lumbering Typhoon into some truly herculean turns in his attempts to avoid the much nimbler FW 190. We traded shots and I managed to fire at him more than he did me but to no effect. Sadly we ran out of time to finish this but I would like to tackle this again.

Mr Fox also showed me some of the decals he had acquired from Old Glory 'Lil' Flyin' Fokkers!' range which I had also planned to get at some point. They are very nice indeed and so the order will be sent off forthwith. My other pair of 109 Fs have arrived and I am also getting another two starter sets. The rationale behind this is so that I can use 4 Me 110s with two pairs in different paint schemes. I am planning to repaint four of the 109 Es in the tropical scheme for early 1941 and also 4 of the Hurricanes in the desert scheme.

Much to plan and ponder but in the meanwhile the games have been enormous fun to play and so once again many thanks to Mr Fox for the use of his collection.