All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor - Fleet Air Arm in Blood Red Skies (part 1 Home Grown Fighters)

Blood Red Skies is now reaching another milestone. Next year the "cunning plan" is to see the current Battle of Britain starter set replaced with an updated Midway themed one. With this will come an understandable shift in emphasis to the Pacific theatre, with some more US and Japanese releases. Don't worry, there will be European planned releases too.

All this has had me thinking about carrier planes, and British carrier planes in particular. History has not been kind to the Fleet Air Arm and their home built designs. Aircraft such as the Fulmar and Barracuda are not well regarded. The usual view being that they were sub standard and were replaced with superior US designs as soon as possible. As these are unlikely to ever see "official" Warlord releases I thought it would be worth looking at the FAA types in Blood Red Skies. I should stress these are not "official". I've discussed some with the games' designer Andy Chambers and he is not 100% convinced on some, but I'll explain why when I get there.

Before we start I think I should explain about why the Fleet Air Arm planes were designed the way they were. In the 1930s the Royal Navy had a good think about the wars they were going to be fighting. British carriers were expected to fight in support of a conventional fleet action, in close proximity and part of the battle fleet. The carriers would provide a scouting role, finding the enemy fleet and counter enemy scouts. When the expected fleet action was in play, carrier aircraft would provide spotting for the fleets' guns, and torpedo attacks against the enemy battle line. In thinking this, the Royal Navy was not alone. Only very radical thinkers were advocating the ideas of carriers as a separate striking force. It should also be stressed that no-one really envisaged a fleet acting in close proximity to enemy land based fighters - Britain planned for wars against Germany, Japan, the USA, France and Italy, but none of these plans really thought the whole of Europe would be hostile  to a RN Fleet. Accepting that was the expected role of the carriers, and under the usual peace time budget pressures, the Royal Navy designed their carriers and their aircraft accordingly.

So first up let's look at the fighters.

Carrier borne fighter aircraft would not be expected to fight single engine land based fighters. They needed to be able to operate against un-escorted bombers and to keep enemy scouts away. Given the expectation of the type of attacks, ie high and medium level bombing, or low level torpedo attacks what was needed was simply to break up the enemy formations. Uncoordinated attacks by small numbers of planes were not thought to be a great threat. Under constant budgetary pressure there was also an acceptance that the fighters would need to provide a secondary recce role. This recce role in particular meant there needed a second crewman to help with spotting and navigation - something quite important when operating out of sight of carriers as experience had showed single seat planes suffered a particularly high loss rate when operating more than 20 miles of the home carrier as they frequently got lost and pilots did not have the time or capability to do their own navigation. A premium was therefore placed on long range, endurance, heavy armament, large ammunition capacity and a second crewman to act as navigator or observer. Dogfighting was not a consideration.

Faced with these narrow design requirements, it can be argued that the fighters the FAA deployed were actually not that bad. The problem was, they were asked to fight a different war.

Firstly the Blackburn Skua.

A bit of an odd looking bird, but good range, and two seats. The Skua was also expected to act as a Dive Bomber and could haul a 500lb bomb from Scotland to Norway and deliver it with accuracy. The Skua wasn't that bad when deployed in it's designed role(s). As a fighter it proved perfectly adequate against Axis bombers, claiming some of the first kills of the war against German aircraft over the North Sea. They also sank the cruiser Konigsberg by divebombing during the German invasion of Norway. The problem was the Skua was really just too slow as fighter. The Skua suffered heavily when engaging fighters later in the campaign however, and the low speed was shown to be inadequate against more modern bombers so it was quickly relegated to training and support roles, ending the war as a trainer or target tug. So here is my take on the Blackburn Skua in BRS.

Nation	Type	Date	Speed	Ag	Fp	Traits	Points cost
British	Blackburn Skua	1938	5 (225mph)	1	1	Deep pockets, Dive Bomber, Turret (Rear, Fp1)	16

Next up, the Fairy Fulmar.

The Fulmar was a recognition of the need to increase speed and firepower. If bombers were getting faster you had less time to keep them in your sights and needed more guns to kill them quicker. The RAF was deploying 8 gun fighters and the Navy could see the point, 8 guns were the new norm, and the Fulmar was 50 mph faster than the Skua. It was also a well built and robust plane, with excellent range and endurance, but again was required to perform a recce role so had a second seat in the back. As with the Skua it was never designed to dogfight with single engine fighters, and suffered accordingly. In fact probably the worse loss was to Japanese Val dive bombers that caught some Fulmars scrambling to get airborne and shot down several after dropping their bombs. That being said, in it's designed role it proved effective and in fact accounted for more enemy aircraft than any other FAA type. I should add the "Robust" trait is marginal, but we do need a Trait to counter Deep Pockets or it would be almost impossible to make a Squadron break through Boom Chits in BRS if it only had the "Deep Pockets" Trait.

Nation	Type	Date	Speed	Ag	Fp	Traits	Points cost
British	Fairey Fulmar	1940	5 (272mph)	1	1	Deep Pockets, Robust,  -Sluggish-	16

The Admiralty were not all fools (!) and even before the war started had tried to hedge their bets by buying some single seat fighters. The only problem was they thought the Hurricane and Spitfire would not be suitable to operate off decks so ordered a naval version of the biplane Gladiator. The Sea Gladiator was already obsolete but they were available. As it happened they saw very limited service as carrier fighters, but a dozen did operate from Malta at the start of the war in the Med and made quite a name for themselves.

Nation	Type	Date	Speed	Ag	Fp	Traits	Points cost
British	Gladiator \ Sea Gladiator	1937	5 (254mph)	3	1	Tight Turn + Biplane +	27

The Sea Hurricane.

When the war started it became clear that it wasn't going to go the way they planned and that the Skua and Sea Gladiator were not really adequate. Fulmars were on order, but still not available, and anyway there was a growing recognition that maybe a single engine single seat fighter would be needed. The problem was there was little available. The RN took a good look at the new US Wildcat, liked it, but at the time the versions available lacked folding wings that was thought essential to get them below on carriers operating in the Atlantic and North Sea. They also looked at the Brewster Buffalo but the consensus was they were better off with Gladiators - which is saying an awful lot. Then events took a hand. In June 1940 as Norway collapsed 46 Squadron RAF was stranded there. They and their Hurricanes had been ferried over on HMS Glorious and had flown off her decks to operate from Norwegian airfields. As it became clear Norway was lost and would need to be evacuated the Squadron CO, keen not to have to abandon his planes, thought they could land back on Glorious. The Navy were, well, a bit sceptical. The Hurricanes were not fitted with arrestor hooks and none of the pilots were trained in deck landings, but a combination of planning and fortune meant all ten 46 Squadron Hurricanes landed safely. Sadly it was all in vane, as shortly afterwards Glorious was caught and sunk by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.  The lesson of 46 Squadron was not lost however. This proved conclusively single seat fighters could operate off British carriers. The Admiralty wanted to get Spitfires suitably navalised and put on carriers. The only minor problem was the RAF were in a bit of a flap over the need to get Spitfires for what we now know as The Battle of Britain and they had priority. Would Hurricanes do?  Hurricanes were going to be easier to get, and had comparable performance to Wildcats. A quick program of modifications followed and the Sea Hurricane was born. It should be noted these were all conversions from existing RAF stock rather than new build, so many were already worn air frames and fixed wings but they were available and went into service in early 1941. They were a mixed blessing. The Sea Hurricanes were more capable air to air fighters than the Fulmars, but had much less range and endurance so were pretty useless as recce planes. Later versions were updated with quad 20mm cannons. All in all the Sea Hurricanes were adequate, but were never going to be great. They never managed to fix the folding wing problem, and usually were stored in the open on deck or on outriggers, with all the problems that entailed.  In Blood Red Skies you can just use the "normal" Hurricane stats for Sea Hurricanes, or if you fancy the cannon armed versions they would look something like this.

Nation	Type	Date	Speed	Ag	Fp	Traits	Points cost
British	Sea Hurricane IIC	1942	7 (342 mph)	2	2	Tight Turn, Robust	36

That leaves only two home grown fighters to see service. The Seafire and the Firefly. I'm NOT going to go into great depths about the Seafire - that will have to wait for another day, but needless to say it was great in the air but the problem was really getting it there and then landing it afterwards. In hindsight the Seafire was not a great choice as a carrier aircraft and more were bent and broken in landings than lost through enemy action.

So the last home produced fighter that the FAA used was the Fairy Firefly Mk1.

This is sometimes thought of as an upgraded Fulmar, and indeed it did share some of the features of the earlier plane, but in reality was a whole new aircraft designed from scratch. A big single engine, twin seat fighter \ recce aircraft, it spent quite a long time in development until it was finally cleared for operations. Where the Firefly differed from the Fulmar was it was fitted with Fairy-Youngman flaps - similar to those fitted to US P38s. These when extended gave the Firefly excellent slow speed turning and handling capabilities - very useful when operating off a carrier. Combined with a big powerful engine and four 20mm cannons the Firefly was a capable fighter, but slow in comparison to contemporary single seaters. Pilots found the flaps allowed the Firefly to turn inside not only the Spitfire, but also the Zero, but the extra weight meant these tight turns could not be maintained. The Firefly also could carry a respectable rocket or bomb load, and served well as a fighter bomber in the later years of WW2 and then soldiering on into the jet age when they were one of the main FAA types flying in the Korean War.  We do have a problem with stat -ing the Firefly in BRS (and to a similar extent the P38) because their rather impressive turning capabilities really only kick in at low speeds. Andy is toying with a new low speed turn trait, but that will probably only happen when \ if BRS reaches "version 2" so he suggests Tight Turn as a solution, and he is sceptical of the Ag 2 rating but it's my blog so..........

Nation	Type	Date	Speed	Ag	Fp	Traits	Points cost
British	Fairy Firefly Mk I	1943	6 (316 mph)	2	2	Deep Pockets, Tight Turn	32

If you would prefer the AC approved version drop Ag to 1 and reduce the points to 26.

So there you have it - my take on FAA fighters in BRS. Hope you found that useful. Next time I will look at the planes that were supposed to take the fight to the enemy - the bombers.

Cheers