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The USO entertains the troops in the
form of Ruth Evinger and Kaarin Engelmann. |
The Top Squadron in action. Great
bombardiers but lousy German fighter pilots apparently. |
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The FUBAR squadron in action with
its crack Me-109 pilots. |
The FUBAR squadron with their "winnings". |
Milk
Runs Still Pack 'em in!
Our B-17 tournament features historical missions of
the Mighty Eighth USAAF, and this year we conducted missions
from December 1943. This marks a time after the second Schweinfurt
raid in October 1943 during which less dangerous missions were
conducted as the Mighty Eighth rebuilt their strength. Our targets
this year were in Germany and Norway. The Norway raid was on
the Telemark Heavy Water plant and was designed to disrupt the
German atomic bomb efforts.
Because
of the "safer" raids, we wound up with scores that
were tightly bunched from top to bottom. This resulted in eight
ties throughout the standings, including a tie for first place.
All the ties were broken based on a priority of bombing performance
followed by crew survival and enemy aircraft shot down. We also
had a tie for fifth place, with the "loser" of the
tiebreakers obtaining the sand plaque.
Again this year we had a few planes make it back to England
in very poor condition. Greg Smith and Kaarin Engelmann both
had severe crash landing modifiers, bailing out crewmembers before
one brave soul tried to land their planes to enable their severely
wounded crew members to survive.
Most notable of all was Dave Long, who did something that
set a record which will never be broken and can only be tied.
Dave managed to lose his plane over enemy occupied territory
on all three missions, which is not that rare as Dave has done
that before, thanks to his German counterpart, Jim Miller, who
has quite a record of shooting Dave down. But the unique thing
was that Dave rolled for crew survival and POWs, and against
the odds, he managed to have 10 POWs on the first mission, second
mission AND third mission, for a grand total of 30 POWs this
year. That record can only be tied, never broken, and given the
slim odds, it will be awhile before we see someone racking up
more franchise loyalty points at Stalag 17 than Dave did this
year.
During our offseason, Michael Coomes designed two magnificent
squadron trophies, one for the best squadron performance and
one for the worst, which is known as the FUBAR squadron. If you
don't know what FUBAR stands for, well, let's just say it is
one of the top ten acronyms you should know as a boardgamer -
just ask Private Ryan. The trophies Michael designed are perpetual
prizes, with placards to be engraved each year, like the Stanley
Cup. These trophies will sit with each squadron next year as
we enter our 23rd year of the WBC B-17 tournament.
As always, we encourage you to come out and enjoy the fun.
See you in August .
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Keeping score ... |
The prize table ... |
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Top squadron fliers Stephen
Munchak, Peter Pollard, Roger Covington, Eric Stranger and Bill
Thomson |
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