Air Power

This is Steven Petrick posting.

I used to play a lot of a game by Avalon Hill called "Blitzkrieg." Because I played it a lot, I developed a "standard opening" whether I was playing the blue side or the red side. The openings were, of course, specific to the side I was playing, i.e., each tailored to the circumstance and initial set up of the respective empires.

Some of the pieces available in the game were fighters, bombers, and heavy bombers.

I never used them. I literally placed them on the map and paid them no attention as I was usually able to smash my opponents with my "blitzkrieg" strategy, no matter which side I was playing. I would quickly seize key areas, constricting my opponent's options, then mass for assaults on critical locations, often including an amphibious assault deep in my opponent's rear area when he was overly committed to the front.

A critical part of my plans was always the quick seizure of the center of the five neutral countries separating our two sides. I honestly no longer remember why this was so important (production? simply positional?), but it was. And I always (no matter which side I played) got there first and in force and drove my opponent beyond its borders.

There would usually be a short period of stagnation once the battle of Centralia ended when the final build ups were completed before the new battles began.

One day while I playing Ray Millen, I was executing my standard plan when Ray did something.

He deployed and used the air force counters to the front. There were not many of these, both sides in fact had equal air forces, but mine were, of course, all sitting around in my homeland. It was kind of stunning to have Ray's use of air power stop my attack cold, and literally drive my forces out of Centralia, allowing him to secure the critical riverline defensive barrier on Centralia's Eastern Border.

I had, however, learned my lesson, and quickly deployed my own air forces and invested in building them up as rapidly as possible over replacing some of my ground losses. Ray assumed that the Centralia border was secure (and, in truth, in his place I would normally come to the same conclusion . . . after all when I played his side of the game securing that riverline was the goal of my initial operations for precisely that reason). But now air power was massively in play, and Ray was shocked when I launched a major offensive on that riverline, heavily supported by medium bombers and fighters. Ray had not built up his air force despite the victory it had gained him, and now paid the price as I broke the riverline and began rolling his army back to his homeland.