Ahhh, the Italians for Check Your 6! - reminds me of a joke about Italian tires, which I will not offend anyone by repeating here. Italy is an oft overlooked power during the Second World War and in many players minds the Italian armed forces are the butt of many jokes. Italian fighters are similar in many aspects to their ally Japan - lightly armed, lightly armored (if at all), yet maneuverable. Their bombers suffered from a lack of robustness as well as light armament. If one reviews the ratings for Italian aircraft in the various Check Your 6! sources (and a complete list is available as a download on the Downloads page here on the blog), one might become discouraged from the Italian experience - in one game I had one of the best opportunities in my now many games of CY6! - a Fiat G.50 in the tail arc of the enemy at point blank range. Hitting was no issue (I think I needed a 3+ to hit after modifiers), but the damage dice failed me - with only a pair of heavy machineguns on the G.50 I happened to roll boxcars, resulting in zero damage! So frustrating, as gaming the Italians can be. However, if one can latch onto the tail of an opponent, one usually has the advantage in maneuverability and can peck away for a few turns, which might be enough to obtain a kill.
The Miniatures
I have scoured the interwebs to create a list of Italian aircraft available in 1/285 or 1/300 scales, listing only the preferred model (in my opinion, humble or otherwise) for each plane. My quality rankings are as follows (best to least desirable): Flight Deck Decals>Table Top Flights>Raiden Miniatures>MSD Games>Heroics & Ros>PT Dockyard. There are thirty (UPDATE: thirty-five - thanks to slugbalancer on The Miniatures Page) different models/types of planes available for the Italians (and if you know of any other planes in either scale not appearing on the following list, please leave a comment).
The Scenarios
There are three excellent sources for scenarios that I know of that are Check Your 6! ready. The first is the SkirmishCampaigns publication entitled Falcon of the Duce, written by C. B. Stevens, while the second is The Falcon and the Gladiator: The Air War Over the Western Desert, 1940-February 1941, written by Chris Stoesen and available as a pdf download on Wargame Vault. The third is Battles Above 2, written by Brian Dewitt and available via I-94 Enterprises. Falcon of the Duce contains sixteen scenarios featuring Italian ace Franco Lucchini along with background and aircraft information. The Stoesen effort offers thirty-six scenarios, many that feature the CR.42 and Gloster Gladiator (hence the name) along with much background and historical information. Battles Above 2 yields another twenty-six scenarios. The size of the scenarios range from two to thirty-seven aircraft, so there is plenty of choices, ranging from smaller games to massive numbers of miniatures swarming the tabletop. One can download the scenario listing, which includes plane counts, from the Downloads page.
The Stats
I have also cobbled together the stats for Italian aircraft that I could locate from various sources. However, while I have been able to discover thirty-five Italian aircraft available in miniature form, I could only source statistics for twenty. The stats file can also be found on the Downloads page.
Aircrew Quality
Italian fighter pilots, in the early period of the war, were fairly experienced due to their involving in the Spanish Civil War. Contrary to one source, the Italians offered more gunnery training than their British opponents, while overall training time was less. Players may consider rating Italian fighter aircrews as overall skilled, but with a +1 firing modifier through 1940. Also, due to the aerobatic training Italian fighter pilots received, they may take all maneuver aircrew checks at one level higher than their aircrew quality.
When rating any pilots for Check Your 6! I use the following methodology:
Expert (+4) - forty or more victories
Ace (+3) - twenty to thirty-nine victories
Veteran (+2) - five to nineteen victories and/or long service
Skilled (+1) - highly trained and/or one to four victories
Green (+0) - standard training, no victories, and/or little active service
Poor (-1) - little to no training
Conversely, one might consider randomizing pilot skill using the following tables.
Summary
There you have it - about everything Italian in one location. The Italian aircraft are some of the most interesting of the war - colorful camouflage schemes, some sleek designs, lightly armed and lightly armored, and aircrew quality that can range from very good to very mediocre.
Hi, we’ve been working on a few scenarios for a CY6 book on the Med featuring the Italians, and one of the big issues was the lack of radios in the early fighters, while we generally agree the training was somewhat better than the equivalent RAF pilots, the lack of radios was a fairly big disadvantage, hence we decided to place a -1 to the pilot skill when designing and playtesting. +3 became +2, +2 became +1, etc etc. In the case of Green +0, we left them alone, as we felt it didn’t warrant any extra modifications.
ReplyDeleteWe did a similar thing in “Under Southern Skies” if you read the authors notes, you’ll see why we did it.
Great blog, many thanks for putting it together
I can understand that reasoning, but as the Italians had (seemingly) better acrobatic and gunnery training, then to me that reflects the individual. Perhaps a lack of radios could be handled in another way, with a wingman having to pass an aircrew check to stay with the leader, or treat as going out of formation.
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