6 replies to this topic

[Tom Oxley]

Working my way through FAI, and in the Air Ship Operations, I am not seeing special damage listed for the Sky Car entries on L56 and SL9 airship charts. Am I missing something in my reading? Wireless, Elevator and Rudder all show up in Damage Descriptions, but nothing on Sky Cars. Thanks for the assistance.Tom

[Cpt M]

The Sky Car is not directly listed due to its limited use (as far as can be determined the Germans only used it during air raids over England). For our group, we don't count any damage against the Sky Car, but if you want, you could adopt a house rule for this by folding it into the Wireless damage roll (on reroll of a D20, 1-16 would count towards the Wireless; 17-20 counts towards the Sky Car).

[Tom Oxley]

Thanks. The name threw me a bit, but I have a memory from the old war movie with the Zeppelin bombing London, that there was some sort of basket that was lowered to be below clouds while the zeppelin flew above. That must be what this refers too. My freind got me started reading through the rules for an upcoming game, and I've been itching to get my 1/6000 scale zeppelin on the table for some time, so I'm enjoying the details for them.Tom Oxley

[Lonnie Gill]

Tom,Please excuse the delay in this reply; I had to wait until my copy of Douglas Robinson’s The Zeppelin in Combat was returned. It is a great read with many interesting aspects of this fascinating aspect of aviation history. Look for it in the library if you haven’t seen a copy.As Coastal mentioned in his post, the Spahkorb, or sub-cloud car, was not included in FAI as it was rejected by Strasser, head of the German Naval Air Service. Invented by Kaptain Lehmann and his executive officer, Freiherr von Gemmimgen, of Z XII, it was used by the Army, but only twice on naval missions. Z XII used it to bomb Calais on 17 March 1915 and LZ 90 jettisoned her unmanned Spahkorb when its cable ran away while being lowered on 3 September 1916. Like many other aspects of Zeppelin design, it was a very creative solution to the occasional problem of observations below a solid cloud layer, but not always practical. It weighed over half a ton, hard to justify with the limited lift available, and could get tangled up with the W/T aerial when deployed.Rumor had it that crewmen, however, liked it as it gave them a chance to smoke when deployed.Eclectic but fun, dirigibles can add some interesting variations to scenarios. They really look great in a game as well. You’ll also want to check out the LTA Option in the Bonus Files when Sudden Storm is released for more on the USN ZRS dirigibles in the ‘30s and some simple miniature conversions.Cheers,LONNIE

[Tom Oxley]

Thanks! I havent had a chance to get my WW1 toys on the table yet, but got to play the FAI game run at Cold Wars this past weekend, so with that familiarity with the system, I hope to get my ships on the table in the near future. Having this idea of what we are talking about, and reinforcing what I thought it was, is an excellent addition. I'm looking at a series of board games to run some campaigns in the future, and one of the board games brigns zeppelins in, so this will be an interesting addition to the table. May have to get a second pack of the German zeppelins and see what I can find for the US models a bit later.Tom Oxley

[Kenneth D. Hall]

Thanks. The name threw me a bit, but I have a memory from the old war movie with the Zeppelin bombing London, that there was some sort of basket that was lowered to be below clouds while the zeppelin flew above. That must be what this refers too. My freind got me started reading through the rules for an upcoming game, and I've been itching to get my 1/6000 scale zeppelin on the table for some time, so I'm enjoying the details for them.Tom Oxley

I believe the scene referenced above was from the 1930 film Hell's Angels.

For whatever that's worth.

[simanton]

"Hell's Angels" is my recollection too. I thought the special effects of the burning and crashing Zeppelin were just about perfect!