Berlin Nocturne, May 1954

 Another trip to the good old days of the Cold War with John B, this time something of a Berlin Noir theme with a Le Carre-ish plot in 1954 Berlin. The twist being that we were all the baddies - KGB, GRU and STASI.

As ever the session was enhanced by Johns provision of lovely maps. I found this one particularly helpful as is shows all the Allied and Soviet sectors and their respective HQs. 

A pretty motley bunch of spooks in dodgy hats assembled, naturally on the hottest day of the year so far, but at least it was set in May so we didn't have to wear coats as well. I was on the KGB team along with Mark and John A. Tim G, Russell and Micheal were GRU while Terry and Pete were Stasi. We all had team and individual briefings, and to add to the general paranoia, Stalin had recently died with Malenkov taking over and a purge currently underway of Berias adherents. 

The main issue confronting us was an apparent breach in security with various top secret items appearing in the hands of western intelligence. The KGB actually knew that it was because MI6 and the CIA had penetrated the comms infrastructure, but hadn't told the other agencies as we needed to protect our source, BLACKBIRD, at all costs on the orders of Moscow Central.

So, we needed to gently point the others in the right direction while protecting BLACKBIRD, and making sure to deflect any blame on us for leaks by pointing out moles. I was personally responsible for running BLACKBIRD and had to make daily trips to the western zone to liaise with him.

A few of us realised that this was based on Operation Gold, a brilliant intelligence coup whereby western intelligence constructed a tunnel to directly intercept Soviet communications. Here is a period map of the U-Bahn and S-Bahn - lots of tunnels in Berlin.

This knowledge didn't help much in the game as we could only work on the information we had available. In the end we came up with a cunning scheme to insert false information at various points in the system and try to determine the location of the leaks(s).

Things became rather fraught when my personal assistant was murdered via a staged suicide - she had access to BLACKBIRD material, and later major Popov of the GRU was actually killed in a shootout with French security forces while meeting a contact. Clearly the leak was getting out of hand.

Despite various technical measures, nothing really helped, and following Major Popovs demise, I was called to an urgent meeting with BLACKBIRD, who had been compromised. Moscow Centre approved his extraction, and my team devised an operational plan which may have borne a distinct resemblance to that in 'Funeral in Berlin'. It went rather better than the GRU mission had done. I rolled and 11 on 2D6 which helped, so BLACKBIRD aka George Blake was successfully evacuated to Moscow.

Following that we were able to inform the other agencies of the security breach and we were able to reroute our comms securely. irl the KGB sat on the knowledge of Operation for Gold for 18 months (!) to protect Blake.

The one thing we didn't managed to do was identify the mole in our midst, Major Burkhardt of the Stasi who was a double agent. We had our suspicions but could never get enough proof, but overall a good outcome for the KGB as we got Blake out. We even managed to purge a Beria traitor in our midst (Mark) who ended up in the gulag after unilaterally jamming the GRU wireless network. Less good for the GRU as they lost their main asset (GOLDFINCH) and Major Popov into the bargain. It transpired in the Kripo debrief that my PA had been murdered by neo nazis, but that will be another thread in a later game.

That was an excellent game, greatly aided by team breakout rooms and extensive use of private messaging which meant lots of secret stuff going on.

Air War - Mysteres over Mitla

 After the previous outing with SPIs Air War, John organised another Zoom session, this time with rather more players. To keep things (relatively) simple, this was another early jet cannon encounter, this time over the Mitla Pass in 1956 during the Suez crisis. Israeli paras had seized the Mitla Pass and the Egyptians sent a flight of Meteors to attack them. The Israeli top cover was a couple of Mysteres. We had no less than seven players for this, plus John running it and once again we were graced by the presence of the games original designer, David Isby, to keep us all straight.  

My home made Air War setup has expanded considerably! This was a six map sheet game, and coupled with the QRS, control sheets for six aircraft, my laptop, dice and various charts and tables, it all took up quite a bit of room. I had to use the chairs either side hold various other bits of paper as my back isn't up to standing up over a table for two hours wearing my headset.

I said the scenario was 'simple', well it isn't really. All those counters are various types of IDF ground forces blue = trucks, red = M3 halftracks, green = occupied buildings, red = quad .50 cal AA and yellow = ammo dump. The Egyptians get various amounts of VPs for destroying them. I'd actually misplaced the ammo dump, it should be up by the AA guns. 

The real complexity is the terrain. The four sheets either side of the central two are ground level 8, the four hex columns either side of the pass are ground level 12, and the base of the pass itself (where all the targets are) is level 4. So the Egyptians need to crest the hills either side of the pass, dive down and then run along the trench blowing stuff up. As we played this on 4th May, Star Wars day, it seemed entirely appropriate that we were playing a flying trench assault game - their is even a 'Death Star exhaust port' in the ammo dump.

The simplicity was mainly that we weren't using missiles and the targets are all static - much easier to hit than something flying around!

Here are the good guys, a pair of Israeli Mysteres. As I'd been practicing, I was elected to be Israeli and was paired with Nigel, whose played this much more than me. Nigel was Blue 1, I was Blue 2, and Nigel was also the IDF 'honcho', or more experienced pilot, as he was.

The Mysteres are marginally better than Meteors, they turn on a button, cruise, accelerate and dive faster and carry more ammo, but there are only two of them.

We also had Micheal manning the Israeli AA guns and John running the IDF paras as well as running the games.

The Egyptians have no less than four Meteors, Red 1 (Russell), 2 (Divid), 3 (Tim) and 4 (Chris). Russell was the CO, and had to secretly plan the attack. He opted for a cannon only attack, no bombs at low altitude. At altitude 13 they would just skim the top of the mountains before diving into the pass. They would come on two waves, R1 leading on turn 2, R2, R3 and R4 coming on in line abreast on turn 3.

Nigels brother Ian had made up these revised aircraft control sheets which I used for the IDF olanes. They are much clearer and easier to use than the supplied ones, and big enough for me to use tiddlywinks to record altitude, acceleration etc. I used my custom counters for energy, throttle, movement and flight attitude.

The assembled multitudes.

We were all tracking the progress on our own maps, so I don't have to worry too much with blurry shots like this one, but we kept Tims map pinned as the main control map. There was a lot going on so it was useful to have a master reference map.

We didnt know the Egyptian plan up front, but had ot pick a flight profile. All we knew was the Egyptians were coming from the west somewhere between altitude 9 and 61 (approx 15,000 feet). We started in the southwest quadrant at altitude 70, full throttle and a shallow dive to gain some energy. It was a bit of a gamble as the Egyptians could have come on behind us, but we were manouverable enough to  dive and turn.

We were fortunate to retain the initiative for the entire game, partly thanks to Nigels 'honcho' status. On turn 2 Red 1 appeared at the far end of the map, and far away and thousands of feet below us.

We then essentially spend several turns in a power dive to get down to the level of the Egyptians, while also accumulating a mass of energy and making turns and lateral rolls to get into position for  a high speed diving attack.

It takes a while to pull out of a steep dive, so I did a few calculations as to when I'd have to start pulling up. It would be very embarrassing to pile into the ground. The Egyptians kept reasonable formation as they chugged across our front, but Red 2 decided he wanted a bit more altitude to clear the mountains. With only 1 level of clearance it precluding them from some manouvres, particularly turns at 90 degrees, as they result in a loss of altitude. 

The Egyptians all successfully crested the mountains and went into shallow dives to target the northern convoy. Nigel and I screamed down after them. Nigel had pulled out a bit too soon and was at level 15 whereas the Egyptians were all between 10 and 12, whereas I was at 13. The range and height differential meant that Blue 1 was out of range whereas I wasn't. We'd been able to line up as we'd got behind the Egyptians as they made their attack run, so were able to line up as they moved first.

The IDF AA all missed, the Egyptians managed to hit a couple of trucks - it was a hard shot as although the planes look adjacent, they are still relatively high, so the height difference extended the range. Blue 1 was out of range of the Egyptians, but I was in medium range of Red 2 and let fly. It was a decent shot, not quite up the tail pipe, but not a deflection shot either and duly landed a hit which exceeded the Meteors damage tolerance. David failed to eject and went down in flames!

We'd been playing for two and a quarter hours at that point and it seemed a good time to stop and wash up. Tim and Russell both ran the rest of the their attack runs later, but failed to do any significant damage.

That was far more fun than the rather dry account seems. Having Nigel and David playing was really helpful as they corrected a few basic mistakes a number of us had been making around things like turning and diving. Coupled with the practice sessions I'd had before, I actually felt like I was flying the plane and had some idea of getting it to go where I wanted, rather than just randomly setting controls and hoping for the best. I think we all got a lot out of it, and David Isby commented that he was delighted we'd managed to achieve a roughly historical result.

More sessions are planned for the future, but tbh I think I'm 'Air Warred out' at that point. I may come back to it at some point, but it was an interesting intellectual challenge I felt I wanted to beat and I feel I've done that. I've got new things I want to try, and while the occasional bit of retro gaming is fun, I'd like to do some new stuff.

The Killing Fields

 Another week, another cheery episode in late twentieth post colonial history, this time Pol Pots reign of terror in Cambodia. This was one of John Bs periodic polmil committee games, and we'd actually covered the period from the winding down of the Vietnam War to Pol Pots rise (1970 to 75) in a previous game. This stuff is all pretty grim, but we are all (mostly) old enough to remember it well. It all shaped the world we live in now, so worth revisiting.

Always nice to have some period maps, these are the Cambodian Miltary Districts in 1970. We used this map a lot in the previous game as it was very much focussed on the war inside Cambodia. This time Pol Pot in his bizarre alliance with Prince Sihanouk had just taken Phnom Penh in 1975 as Saigon fell around the same time.

Six players represented the main factions - Sihanouk, Pol Pot, Thailand, Vietnam, China and the Soviet Union, while two others took on rolling parts as eg The Gang of Four, Chairman Mao, Kurt Waldheim etc. Unlike last time, the US was completely out of the picture as this was very much the first major foreign policy challenge for the new Vietnamese government. 

I was cast as Yuri Andropov, short lived Soviet premier, but at the time head of the KGB, so my role was very similar to my role as regional CIA chief last time - run interference, promote Soviet interests etc. with special forces and covert support. Specifically I had to topple Pol Pot, support Vietnam and damage Chinese interests in the region while promoting those of the USSR.

Given a lot of the action more concerned the surrounding countries, this map was rather more useful, particular for tracking the regions free of Pots malign influence, location of refugees/insurgents etc.

The action opened with both Russia and China shipping in supplies to their clients, Vietnam in my case and Cambodia for the Chinese. Pol Pot set about his agrarian revolution with steely eyed determination and made no particular bones about its brutality.

A decent turnout with eight players and an umpire. The chat feature in Zoom was very helpful for negotiations between rounds, each of which represented a year. We broke for the evening just as Sihanouk had been rescued by Vietnamese commandos (!), and Chinas 'exercise' along the Vietnam border had fallen into chaos while the world looked on appalled at Pol Pots Maoist fundamentalism.

In 1979 the Vietnamese launched their liberation effort and managed to install Prince Sihanouk in Phnom Penh, but failed to decisively defeat the Khmer Rouge in the region northwest of the capital. China ineffectively tried to ship in ground forces through the ports on the south, and the Vietnamese rather ineffectively tried to stop them with their newly captured navy (over 1,300 ships were captured from the RVN). 1980 ended in something of a stalemate with Pol Pot still active in the countryside but increasingly hemmed in on all sides, the Russians increasingly distracted by Afghanistan and the bellicose attitude of President-elect Reagan while the Vietnamese were stuck with their very own 'Vietnam' in Cambodia. Thailand had never been seriously threatened by communist subversion and was doing rather nicely.

And this ended with a rather worse result than historically as irl the Khmer Rouge were comprehensively smashed by the Vietnamese, and reduced to a long drawn out guerilla war which dragged on until the 90s. China had at least been revealed to be a paper tiger and a considerable portion of the Cambodian population saved from Maoist genocide. I know this stuff isn't for everyone, but it is very unusual to play a game where the KGB are the good guys! Many thanks to John for organiseing such an interesting and informative game.

Air War solo training flights

 After our foray to Korea with SPIs 'Air War', there was some talk of another go, this time over Sinai in 1956 (Meteors vs Mysteres). As I had little clue what was going on in the last game, I thought I'd better practice a bit!

I added to the stuff I'd printed out for the last game with a full set of (printed) rules for flight and cannon combat as well as the data cards for Mysteres and Meteors. I also made up a battle board with four of the geomorphic air combat sheets and made some generic counters (red 1-4 and blue 1-4) plus some control counters for things like banking. 

My initial plan was to treat Blue 1 as a target drone flying across the map at 15,000 feet at constant speed 3, while Red 1 was at 16,500 feet and could practice manouvering around it and maybe set up an attack run. These are  both Mysteres which are actually pretty good early jets, very manouverable and relatively fast.

I'm just using little blue dice to track most things on the aircraft control sheets. You can just make out the aircraft attitude counters I made on the bottom right tracks - a very clever 2D display which shows both the degree of aircraft bank as well as the angle of dive or climb, including 'pull outs' and 'pull throughs' ie the top or bottom of a loop or split S.

One complication is that the movement point track has three markers on it - throttle, current MP and energy from dives. I'm just using three dice with 1,2 and 3 respectively showing, but I should probably make some specific counters for those (T,M,E or something).

Anyway, my plan of doing some gentle manouvres with Red 1 while Blue 1 chugged along steadily soon went out of the window. Blue 1 accelerated and made a hard turn to starboard (these old jets don't accelerate very fast!) which lost it both speed and altitude but put some distance between it and Red 1. Red 1 meanwhile banked to port then went into an inverted power dive which lost lots of altitude but gained lots and lots of speed and energy while heading in directly the opposite direction to Blue 1.

Blue 1 had completed a turn to port at low speed (they turn much better slowly) and was now facing Red 1. Red 1 meanwhile executed a Split S and roll and ended up facing Blue 1, albeit at much lower altitude. I'd accumulated a ton of energy in the dive, and I planned to use it to climb back up. My brain exploded at that point and I couldn't face the next few turns required for both sides to get lined up in what would almost inevitably be a head on pass with a very low probability of hitting anything. I had however learned a huge amount about the turn sequence and how manouvring worked. I needed to come back to it again and practice some more stuff. I'd really like to figure out how to do an Immelman and a barrel roll, but mainly to get a better feel of how to anticipate the position, altitude and speed of the aircraft as otherwise neither a turning fight nor boom and zoom are going to be possible. 

A few days later I set the game again with a couple of aircraft with the aim of working through more manouvres. In the interim I'd made up some custom counters to track throttle, energy and movement points as they all share the same track, and I'd colour coded and numbered the aircraft attitude counters to match the planes so I could tell which track related to which plane easily. We started off with Blue 1 and Red 1 (B1, R1) cruising along at throttle 3, MP 3. B1 at altitude 70, R1 at 75. (or 'medium low' - it affects acceleration, turn speeds etc).

This time I left B1 to just fly straight, accelerating to maximum speed but keeping straight and level. R1 wanted to try a loop (or 'wing over' as the rules have it). To execute a wingover you need to go into a type 1 (shallow) climb, then two turns in a type 2 (steep) climb, enter a pull through (ie vertical and pull the stick back) and finally the wing over which leaves you inverted and but reversed 180 degrees. It is quite a handy manouvre to practice as if you get into a pull-through, you can do an Immelman from there and choose how many points of turn (up to six) and roll you do - ideal to bounce an unsuspecting enemy. That is five moves or 12.5 seconds of real time.

Anyway, these old 1950s jets proved to be rather hard to loop in. I discovered I wasn't going fast enough to actually enter a type 2 climb! So had to level out, hit the throttle for a few turns to speed up (acceleration isn't instant as the turns are so short), and then try again. Of course what I should have done was dive first.... anyway 

I finally got to the top of the loop, meanwhile B1 had managed to fly off the far end of the board and come back on again at the bottom, barrelling along at 5 MP. At the top of the loop, I realised to my horror that my airspeed was about the reach 0 but managed to avoid stalling. Having survived, I executed the wingover and ended up inverted with an airspeed of 1, but eleven altitude levels above B1 (iirc each level is 250 feet?). 

As B1 was close by, I though I'd try and execute a pursuit.

This doesn't look too promising does it! It took me a couple of moves to turn 180 degrees by banking at 90 degrees and pulling hard Gs. I lost a bit of airspeed and altitude pulling such a tight turn but was still well above B1. Time to dive and get some energy. Diving both increased my speed to the airframes maximum, 6 (just below the speed of sound), gained energy, reduced the height difference and l

closed the gap.

It took a few turns but eventually I caught B1, and loosed off a rather hopeless medium range cannon shot which missed.

By now I'd accumulated masses of energy, so was able to pull off some very fancy manouvres. I rolled left to line up exactly with B1, my dive had actually made me undershoot the altitidude, but I was able to level off, burn some more energy to pull up a couple more altitude levels and then boost my speed using yet more energy to set up a perfect shot (above). I believe diving then pulling up right on the enemy's tailpipe is called a Yo Yo.

Point blank range with four cannon, Impossible to miss. KABOOM! goes B1.

I called it a day there as my head hurt once more, but I felt I'd got on top of the manouvre system at least. I think the main lesson was that these underpowered jets really can't do the same looping manouvres as prop planes and turning was the way to go in a cannon fight. The boost from accumulated (dive) energy from the very last engagement was a revelation however as it allowed extra manouvres at the last minute to set up really good shots.

OK, feel a bit better prepared for our next team outing now. I'm really not sure why I'm demonstrating this level of obsession with mastering a dead air warfare system from 45+ years ago. An intellectual challenge to be beaten, or something.

Air War revisited

 There was a certain degree of chatter on the WhatsApp group about SPIs 'Air War'. I did play it a few times at the University wargames club in the early 1980s, but have little memory of it now. We agreed to set up a remote session to play through a few moves and remind ourselves of the joys (?!) of the game. At the time it was reputedly one of the most complex wargames ever designed, and long pre-dated decent computer flight simulators. 

As usual you can find the entire thing on https://www.spigames.net/ if you want to recreate that mid 1970s experience! You just need a few plain hex maps, a few aircraft counters and a printout of the aircraft control sheet and data sheets.

Half a dozen of us turned up (me, Nigel, Ian, Tim, Russell, John B) and we were also very fortunate to have the games original designer, David Isby, on the call. Along with working for SPI, David has written many books on military history and worked as a national security adviser on Afghanistan among other things. Amusingly he said he designed Air War when he was at Law School and before he actually learned to fly a plane.  

The others all set up their copies of the game, I just got out the aircraft data sheets and control sheets with the rules up on another monitor. The control sheets looked quite, familiar, this was coming back to me now. The idea was that we'd play through the introductory scenario side-by side as a play along (2 x Mig 15 vs 2 x F-86 in Korea). John B was lead pilot for the US and Ian D lead pilot for the North Koreans.

The fundamental premise of the game is that it tries to model the physics of flight through the application of forces in various dimensions, coupled with the flight characteristics of individual aircraft. The turns are short (2.5 seconds) so you can actually model the process of each manouvre eg you cant go into a steep climb without going into a shallow climb first, you bank before a turn, the degree of bank may result in loss of airspeed etc.

Along with the obvious things to track (altitude, speed, ammo etc) the critical track is the 'aircraft attitude' track, which is essentially a 2D representation of the different positions of the plane in three dimensions (climb,dive and bank) as well as some specific things to track the energy gained during a dive and degrees of turn accumulated. To turn one hex vertex requires you to accumulate 30 degrees of turn, and as these are jets doing 500mph through 500 foot hexes, it takes several hexes of movement to accumulate enough 'turn' to physically re-point the counter without tearing the wings off the plane.

So to pull any sort of manouvre, even just a 90 degree turn let alone an Immelman, requires a degree of forethought as it will take several (very short) moves.

The scenario starts with both flights of planes parallel (US blue, NK red), the MiGs are 1000 feet higher) and a few thousand feet apart. The MiGs have cannon, the F86s .50 cals, so the  MiGs have to get in close but hit hard, while the F86 have a much longer range, tons more ammo but dont land such heavy blows. The MiGs are more manouverable at lower altitude and the F86 superior higher up, but both planes turn much better than 1970s era jets. Neither of them is powerful enough to pull off a vertical climb though.

The aircraft data sheets list the energy costs and altitude and direction etc changes for various types of manouvre, and where appropriate, the differences any different altitiudes.  

Apologies for the blurry picture. Each plane resolves its move individually and fire is resolved at the end of all movement. There is an initiative system and a system for determining 'advantage' which allows a plane to go later in the turn. So ideally you want to have the advantage, wait for the enemy to move, and then skilfully fly your plane to within one hex of their tail and blow them out of the sky.

If only it was so easy! The US banked right and climbed gently (type I climb) to gain altitude, which cost them some speed. The NK banked left and dived to come down towards the US planes. The first turn took us about 30 minutes while we figured out how the various control settings actually moved the plane. After the first turn, things speeded up a lot as we just flicked through the rules or delved our memories as to how things worked.

We ended up with both sides at the same altitude and facing each other! Ian had obviously played this more recently than the others and showed a certain degree of competence in manouvering the MiGs, however as so often happens in this game, he slightly misjudged where the planes would end up and it was the US who got off the first shot! At medium range and maximum deflection (he'd at least planned that) they missed hopelessly though. Ideally you need to be within 2 hexes and on the targets tail and that clearly wasn't going to happen in any sensible length of time so we called it a day having exercised the major mechanisms over 90 minutes or so.

That was a lot of fun and nice to trawl through the depths of my brain for this stuff. It did remind me of the main issue I had with the game at the time, while it models the mechanics of flying very well within the limitations of carboard counters, is very hard indeed to actually fly the planes to get them where you want them to go without lots of practice in energy management and how the various numbers interact. Flying the same thing in a computer flight sim is a lot more intuitive once you understand the basic principles of powered flight. You can still mess up manouvres, overshoot, stall etc but it all happens much faster. Anyway there was a certain amount of enthusiasm to repeat the experience, but this time using planes armed with missiles, and it was great having David participate, even if he said he felt like a dinosaur talking to a load of paleontologists at times.

La Septieme Wilaya - Paris 1961

 Paris, September 1961 and the war in Algeria shows no end in sight. John B put on a cheery game covering the authorities response to a planned Algerian Nationalist (FLN) offensive in Paris, complicated by the disgruntled OAS colonialists - Day of the Jackal and all that. 

Rather like our Berlin Noir and Siege of Leningrad games, it was greatly enhanced by Johns provision of period maps. This one was a high resolution map of 1960s Paris, and somewhat useful for figuring out where things were as much of the action took place in les banlieus.

The session was run as a committee game, with us all taking on various roles in the French security forces, headed by Interior Minister Frey (Micheal).

I was cast as this lovely chap, Jacques Furet, head of the Special Services Detachment of the CRS and veteran of the Battle of Algiers in the late 1950s. While the CRS is mainly known for riot control, it is a paramilitary force outside of the Police line of command with a major anti-terrorist role too. Unlike the Gendarmerie, it is a civilian force and not liable for overseas deployment.

I had 10 companies of CRS available, around 1400 men, heavily armed and not averse to banging heads together.

Vive la France! An excuse to wear a lot of silly hats, but mainly berets and kepis (I do have a kepi, but Furet isn't in the police).

I wont run through the entire cast, but Jim was the Police Prefect and John A his trusty deputy with around 7000 police in the Paris area. There were various obscure police intelligence units represented - some 500 detectives under Tim, Russell and Ian both ran undercover infilitration and intelligence units with bizarre acronyms as names. Pete ran a military intelligence detachment. All the units were real, and by and large the characters were all real people too.

This was a more detailed early 1960s Metro map, which came in handy as the incidents unfolded.

Briefly, following the murder of a policeman and a bomb outrage at a school it became apparent that the FLN were active in the city. Intelligence led us to believe that they were operating in areas heavily populated by Algerian immigrants, specifically Clichy in the northwest and Bagneux in the south.

As might be expected, various intelligence gathering and public order measures took place. My main job was deploying units of the CRS to areas of potential or actual unrest, while maintaining a reserve for contingencies. The situation wasn't helped by the OAS who kept stirring things up with a number of provocative shootings across the city.

This was also a very useful map, showing the central Arrondisements. Clichy is north west of the 17e arrondisement and Bagneux southwest of the 14e.

The situation continued to spiral out of control with large demonstrations, 150 detentions of 'people of interest', unrest at the Sorbonne and a curfew imposed on Clichy and Bagneux and the Metro closed. Gunmen made an appearance in Clichy and a CRS officer was shot. The rules of engagement were loosened. In a dire development, a Sorbonne student died under enhanced interrogation.

Intelligence assessed that there were no less than 75 armed FLN operatives in the city, organised as three platoons and a huge demonstration was planned for the centre of Paris, to coincide with armed uprisings in Clichy and Bagneux. As Tuesday evening drew to a close, the Interior Minister passed our assessment of the situation on to President De Gaulle and requested that the Army be placed on stand-by to aid the civilian power.  There had already been one coup attempt, there couldn't be another.

And on that happy note, we broke for the evening.

Things duly went from bad to worse, there was considerable unrest on the streets, not helped when we imposed a citywide curfew. There were more murders of policemen, but so far we'd not managed to capture a single actual FLN terrorist, just local hard men along with incarcerating most of the Muslim clergy in the city. The police complained the CRS were going over the top in their crowd dispersal approach, the CRS complained the Police were being too heavy handed.

Matters came to a head around a large demonstration in the city centre planned for 17th October. The Interior Minister gave us permission to ban any gatherings of more than five people, so our plan was to prevent the demo from even forming up by dispersing and then arresting any large groups making their way into the city centre. We designated a football stadium as a holding area for detainees and soldiers were drafted in to provide perimeter security.

Intelligence indicated the FLN intended to stage an armed uprising to coincide with the demo. It also indicated the OAS planned an assassination campaign against the FLN leadership and leading left wing intellectuals. We were fairly sure there was at least one OAS mole in the command team and the displeasure of most of us was passed on, although it was indicated that a short term blind eye would be turned to attacks on the FLN, given the failure of our own intelligence efforts.

The day of the big demo arrived, and despite our best efforts and thousands of arrests, a large group assembled in the city centre. Rioting broke out in the football ground and even worse, police and CRS came under fire in Clichy and a fierce gun battle raged. The two CRS companies in Clichy were tied up engaging the terrorists, but the police reported they had captured dozens of terrorists, so many that they couldn't hold them and they were 'escaping into the Seine'. Another unit of CRS were despatched to escort the prisoners back to Police HQ, but when they arrived, there were only three left. Bodies washed up in the Seine for days afterwards, the police had murdered the prisoners.

On that rather sombre note, we ended having finally regained a measure of control of the streets and saved De Gaulles regime (again). The game was based on  the real life October 1961 Massacre, which was covered up by the French State for decades. It only came to light in the late 1990s following the conviction of the Police Prefect for his role in the deportation of Jews to concentration camps in WW2. In real life the FLN won Algerian independence in 1962, and De Gaulle managed to hang on to power until 1969 after changing the way Presidential elections were conducted. He finally resigned following the uprisings of 1968.

The only bright spot was that however repressive the measures we'd put in place in the game, they were relatively mild compared to what the French Police and CRS actually did. One of our group had first hand experience facing the CRS in 1968, and said they weren't any better then. Civil Wars really are nastiest, and I cant help being reminded that the perpetrators of the holocaust were just ordinary people, but part of an organisation and culture which promoted racist violence from the top down. It is more shocking as France is supposed to be a western democracy, not rounding up and murdering its own citizens. I'm sure nothing like that would happen today.

An interesting, thought provoking and somewhat depressing session. Wikipedia notes on the massacre here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Paris_massacre 

Sandinista!

No, not the slightly dubious Clash triple album I hated at the time but has since grown on me to become one of my favourites, but a trip back in time to those jolly days of US intervention in South America. I'm sure that will never happen again. 

Nice to see the boys wearing fedora, although I miss their spiky hair. 

 

John B once more took us to a scene of Cold War revolution and conflict, this time 1980s Nicaragua. It was another polmil strategy committee game, and this time even less structured than usual, being more a free Kriegspiel, albeit still structured into turns and using dice to determine the outcome of actions.

The game started in 1981 as Ronald Reagan came to power, and ran in yearly turns until the late 1980s.

There was the odd map, but the 'action' was essentially resolved over four major areas of Nicaragua, North, South, West/Pacific coast (Mangua) and East (Mosquito Coast) with Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south.

The general cast list was as follows:
Daniel Ortega, leader of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua: Me
Eden Pastora, aka "Commandante Zero", former Sandinista and leader of the moderate ARDE Contra faction: Mark
Adolf Calero, leader of the hard-line FDN Contra faction: John A
President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, moderate leader of a key front line state: Terry

William Casey, US Director of Central Intelligence and fervent anti-Communist: Tim
Vladimir Kryuchkov, head of the First Chief Directorate (overseas ops) of the KGB and hard core Cold Warrior: Jerry
LtCol Oliver North, USMC: Pete

Senator Gary Hart (D, CO): Micheal

I'd been a supporter of the Nicaraguan struggle for independence from US interference back in the 1980s, and even received a letter of thanks from the Nicaraguan Foreign Minister for my efforts. So naturally I was cast as Daniel Ortega, leader of the FSLN.

My main aims were to keep the Sandinistas in power, resist US/Contra (FDN) aggression, build up my forces and to avoid being a Soviet stooge. Sadly we inherited a catastrophic economic situation from the Somoza regime, and were seemingly beset on all sides by interfering super powers. 

Much of the time it was the usual rogues gallery on view.

I won't bore you with a blow by blow account, but essentially the FDN were very successfully equipped by the CIA. Despite the international outcry at the atrocities perpetrated by the the Contras, Congress was somewhat late in banning Federal funding for the FDN. Although the Sandinistas successfully built a coalition of defence with the ARDE and foreign volunteers, it wasn't enough to stop the FDN armoured column with air support(!) fighting through to Mangua. 

Fighting continued around Managua for two years by the Contras weren't powerful enough to suppress the rest of the country, but neither could the Sandinistas retake the capital as illegal US support continued to be flown in thanks to Ollie North.

By 1987 both the FSLN and FDN had had enough of being big power playthings and agreed to a ceasefire and free, supervised, elections. As a show of goodwill, the FSLN released various captured US airmen to Senator Gary Hart, greatly aiding his 1988 presidential campaign. At least not one Cuban had set foot in Nicaragua. 

Against resources like these, what hope did we have?

That was a great game, and tbh only increased my respect for all the leaders of small countries who have been buffeted by the winds of foreign imperialism in the last century and the current one. As Ortega, there was just so much stuff to fix, and no way to do it as an endless round of new problems were thrown our way. Yankees and Commies go home!

A really good way to bring back to life those conflicts which were such a big deal in the 1980s, but seem to have been forgotten about now. In the new age of imperialism and power politics, we are doomed to forget the lessons of history.

We have now started using the AI transcript and summary feature in Zoom to record these things, and while the transcript is gibberish (being a speech to text translation of each participant window), the summary isn't bad, here is an example excerpt. All hail our new robot overlords:

Nicaragua's Political Turmoil and International Involvement

In the meeting, Adolf Calero discussed the overthrow of the Sandinista Government by three well-equipped and well-trained brigades, backed by the United States. John then presented a speech by President Arias condemning military actions and inviting representatives from the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. to the Pan Central American Conference for regional peace. William Casey, Director of Central Intelligence, announced the U.S.A.'s support for President Arias's call and their provision of

covert intelligence to assist the FDN in their campaign to overthrow the Sandinista dictatorship. Daniel Ortega, representing the Sandinistas, opposed the FDN's attempt to impose their proxy regime by force and condemned the CIA's mining of the port. Kryuchkov from Moscow supported President Arias's call for non-intervention and continued to discredit the CIA's involvement. Eden, representing the 

ARDE and the Mesquites, offered support in the defense of Nicaragua.

Medevac!

 The ever fertile mind of Ian Robinson this week brought us 'Medevac!' - a game simulating the process flow for casualty triage, evacuation and treatment in a near future conflict. Fundamentally it is a flow chart with casualties moving through various stages of the treatment pipeline, and it is mainly intended to highlight the decision making at each stage and potential bottlenecks.

The game is being developed in conjunction with the Royal Army Medical Corps, but the overall framework is flexible enough to cope with other armed forces ways of doing things. This sort of stuff is very familiar from my time spent doing process analysis, modelling and optimisation in the latter days of my IT career.

Here is our "battlefield" , casualties will appear each turn (15 minutes) based on OR casualty rates for brigade level engagements at various combat intensities. We can evacuate up to ten casualties per turn to the Unit Aid Post, which is next in line.

There is a possibility of 'friction' however, which prevents us moving anyone - air/artillery strikes, drone attacks or whatever, which are a real problem for casevac in Ukraine. At the moment it is 'all quiet' so nothing is happening.

Ooer, suddenly we are into low intensity combat and five casualties rock up. These are classified in standard British Army usage into triage levels T1, T2,T3,T4, with 1 being the most urgent. T4 are dead or mortally wounded. Each casualty has some personal info, rank, arm of service etc, wound location and estimated surgery time. In this bunch we've got one T2, three T3s and a T4. Two of the casualties are 'red' (enemy) who have very Russian looking names. There is also a civilian in there with a rather Estonian looking name.

There isn't any friction so we can evacuate all of these back to the aid post.

The intensity of combat ramps up to high, and we are suddenly getting ten or more casualties a turn, and coupled with occasional interdiction, we can't evacuate everyone, so choices have to be made, which is the whole point of the game. We started out with a very Iraq/Afghanistan approach of evacuating the most critical casualties, but in an ultra modern high intensity conflict, that may not be the best approach...

After a few turns of fighting, the Unit Aid Post (UAP) was brimming with casualties, some of whom started to die on us. Obviously we needed to get them out of there and back to the field hospital, and to do that we needed transport, for which we had one Chinook and three Landrover ambulances.

So, who gets a ride in the ambulance? The main problem is limited transport capacity, again based on Iraq/Afghan practice, the more serious casualties take up more room - British Chinooks were actually fitted out with a mobile operating theatre. So eg our ambulance can take 1 x T1, 2 x T2 or 4 x T3 or combinations thereof.

We loaded this one up with a T2 and 2 x T3, including both our Russians and stuck some more serous casualties on the Chinook. We probably made some bad loading decisions with the first wave of casualties as at that point we didn't have that many to handle.

And here is the problem with ambulances - the little white boxes on the left are the areas they need to travel through, so at best they take three turns to get to the field hospital, although in this case this one is interdicted, so delayed a turn. While they are being transported, the casualties may degrade in condition, so there is a fairly good chance T1s and maybe T2s will die on the ambulance ride.

The main problem though, is we just don't have enough transport to deal with the volume of casualties coming in. The ambulances at best take six turns to do the round trip, while the Chinook takes two, the UAP is soon piled with casualties.

Things are a bit calmer at the field hospital. The first casualties have arrived (2 x T1 and 1 x T3) via Chinook and spend a turn being prepped for surgery. Once they are in the hospital, they stop degrading significantly in game time, so at least they won't get any worse. When they arrive they take a turn to prep, but again, we weren't exactly overwhelmed with business at first. 

There are four surgical teams, and each casualty goes into surgery with a minimum number of turns required to deal with them plus a randomised surgery completion time once the minimum is complete. In our enthusiasm we had failed to notice that one of the T1s needed 12 (!) turns of surgery minimum, complete on a 5+ - so that was one surgical team out of action for 15 turns straight away. Many of the T3s were 2 turns, complete on a 3+.

So once the floods of casualties started to pile up at the hospital, we tended to prioritise the least critical just to get them sorted and out of the way with one 'lane' reserved for T1s. Once out of surgery they went into the recovery wards, three wards of eight beds each. Our recoverees were a mixture of armed forces, civilians, prisoners and men and women, so we also had to decide how to partition up the allocation of wards and beds, bearing in mind the need to guard the prisoners.

I won't do a blow by blow account, suffice to say, all the major sections (UAP, ambulances, surgery) were utterly overwhelmed by the volume of casualties - 120 in the course of the game covering around five hours. As a result we had to seriously think about prioritisation at each step and ended up selecting a good number of T3s, many of whom were NCOs and ended up packing the ambulances with them. The T2s generally got to ride the chopper and the poor old T1s got left in the UAP.

Longer term, we considered changing the way the ambulances and choppers worked, and just packing the casualties in without special treatment for the T1s and T2s in the transport itself - so essentially a reversion to WW2 practice and also the practice adopted by NHS Ambulance services after a brief experiment with paramedic roadside treatment which actually reduced overall survival rates from RTAs.

That of course was the main point of the game - to identify potential bottlenecks and discuss both how you would prioritise treatment and longer term, how you might change the way the process worked, allocation of resources to the various stages etc. In that it succeeded admirably, so a very interesting and informative game. Lets just hope we don't get into a serious shooting war soon. 

Some of the lessons from Ukraine in a world of intense and indiscriminate missile and drone warfare is that casevac can take days, helicopter and softskin evacuation is virtually impossible anywhere near the front line (Bradleys are being used as frontline ambulances) and that hospitals can only be in place for around 48 hours before they get stonked, so they have to move repeatedly. Dear me. Can I get back to pushing toy soldiers around please?