I just wanted to officially state the obvious: this campaign is on indefinite hiatus. Interest among the group has petered out. I may still fly some missions occassionally, and if I do I’ll post them here in case anyone else still wants to do them.
The campaign straggles on! I’ve posted Mission 5 and plan to consolidate the stats for the campaign so far, real soon now.
I’ve just posted the next mission on the Current Mission page. We also have two guys (Tom and Keith) who are going to be joining us starting with Mission 2. I plan to post a total of 40 missions for this campaign, so that even with aborts and losses I hope everyone will have a shot to complete a tour of duty with some of their men. Anyone who completes their 35 missions before we reach 40 are free to stop the campaign, or they can rotate new crew into the aircraft to fly out the rest of the campaign.
Tom and Keith - email me at siddgames at gmail dot com with your plane name and crew list. Also, I suggest you sign up for accounts on the main Green Country Gamers site so you can gain access to our forum there. (I’ll try emailing you guys with the addresses you listed in the comments in case you don’t see this.)
I’ll try to get the Campaign Status page up in the next few days so we can see our totals. I think our first trip out, out of 7 registered aircraft, resulted in:
That’s 1 Japanese Victory, 1 20th AF Victory, and 4 Draws so far.
We’re slowly getting geared up to start our campaign. Some people have submitted their aircraft/aircrew information, which can be found under “Current Roster” in the left sidebar here, and a few of us have undertaken some practice missions and written a review or two; you can find these in the B-29 forums on BGG:
I hope to post the Mission 1 for our campaign next week. I think we’ll start with two weeks per mission, and only increase the frequency if everyone is willing.
As our copies of Khyber Pass Games’ “B-29 Superfortress” have begun to arrive, I’m starting this, the official blog of the 66th Bomb Group, to document our efforts at strategic bombing of Japan to hasten the end of the war in the Pacific.
I plan to get a better theme up here when time permits, and possibly some other features, but for now, as we receive our games and prepare to relive and simulate the perilous missions of the 20th Air Force, I leave you with an excerpt from the diary of CPT Stanley Samuelson of the 881st Bomb Squadron, 500th Bomb Group.
When I arrived at the plane, everyone was all set to go. Each of our fourteen guns had over 500 rounds of 50 caliber ammunition, and the cannon in the tail was loaded and charged. The front bomb bays had extra gas tanks which made a total of 8,000 gallons of gasoline. Because of the extra gas, our bomb capacity was only 10 five hundred pound bombs. Our take-off weight summed up to a total of 138,000 pounds. Twice the weight of the empty ship. Lt. Shinn, the engineer, started the engines at six-twenty and fifteen minutes later we headed out for Japan.
The flight to Japan was uneventful except that one of our engines started to heat up. Six-and-one-half hours later we were cruising along at 28,000 feet; very near the Japanese mainland. When the clouds broke, Mt. Fujiama stood out on the horizon like a beautiful painting done by a master. It was a beautiful sight and one that very few people will ever witness during this war. It was hard to believe that below us lay one of the rottenest countries that ever existed. No one gave one thought about being knocked down over this country when we first approached the target area.
Soon after leaving Mt. Fujiama and heading for Tokyo, what we most feared, happened. One of our engines just up and quit on us. Life was really at its lowest ebb - there was no mistake about that. We fell behind the rest of the group and just then the dead engine cut back in again and began to purr. It was too late to catch up to the group so then we tried to dump our bomb load. Another disappointment - our bomb racks froze and we couldn’t get rid of them. By that time our outfit was so far away we gave up all chance of catching them and commenced looking out for ourselves. It was at this time we blew three exhaust stacks in one engine and she began spitting out flame. To add to our troubles our bomb doors broke down and couldn’t be retracted. This created more drag and caused us to loose altitude, making us a beautiful target for enemy pursuit. We didn’t have long to wait for pursuit and when they saw us all by ourselves, all the Nips in the sky came on in for the attack. All the gunners stood by with fingers on their triggers. The interphone soon began to buzz. “Three pursuit - five o’clock low. Four pursuit two o’clock high. Two pursuits twelve o’clock level! ” Things got hotter than hell and the guns began to crackle in all directions. Jap single and twin engine fighters came in raking us over with machine guns and cannon. Our new gun sights were really doing their stuff, for every time one of our gunners cut loose at a Nip, he and a few others would turn tail and run. Cpl. Goulooze was the first to nail one for sure. Three of the gunners saw it spin down into the clouds trailing black smoke. Many of the enemy pursuits were hit in some degree or other. All the gunners were so busy keeping them off that no one was particular whether he definitely knocked one down or not. This battle, between “Snafuperfort” and forty Japanese fighters lasted for almost thirty minutes. We came out without a scratch. How this happened we’ll never know and neither will the enemy.
Naturally all of us heaved a sigh of relief when the last fighter turned for home. However, we were far from happy. Our gas was very low and we still had 1,400 miles to fly over water.
About an hour out from the target, Lt. Shinn crawled back into the bomb-bay and released the bombs by hand. All the damage we did was to kill a few fish. Loss of this extra weight increased our speed by about ten miles per hour. We nursed our plane home for about seven hours. Saipan came into the radar sight by eight o’clock and after not too smooth a landing I taxied the plane up to our parking place. There was about one hour’s gas supply remaining when we finally cut the switches.
Two Superfortresses were lost on this first Tokyo raid. One crashed in the harbor at Tokyo after colliding with a fighter and the other ditched just outside of Saipan after running out of gas. The following morning all twelve men on this crew were picked up by the air sea rescue. So ended the first mass raid on Tokyo; the battle for Japan proper had really begun in earnest. Immediately after landing, each crew was interrogated and given something to eat. There was also a bit of liquor for those who wanted it, and I was not the exception! After a good meal we were all set to hit the sack for a good twelve hours.
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