Monthly Archives: September 2007

•

Yet another British war game to add to the pile, this one from 1922: The Raider.

A copy of a new game called "The Raider" has been received from Enstone and Lilienfeld, of 47, Berners Street, W.1. The game consists of a large sheet divided into squares, the whole showing a view of a battle-front seen from the air. The game is played with miniature attacking and defending aircraft, and is further complicated by machine gun and shrapnel barrage, contrary winds and failing engines. Moves are made by throwing dice, the object being for the attacking force -- 3 in number -- to reach and bomb a village and return intact.

The defending force is 9 in number, and these take off from two different aerodromes. The game, which was invented by an officer of the R.A.F., is so designed that experience in the gentle art of scrapping in the air is of considerable value to the players. The price is 5s. net.

Incidentally, Messrs Enstone and Lilienfeld, by whom the game is made and marketed, are ex-officers of the R.A.F., and they have besides a most amazing selection of "Brainwave" games and implements with which to pass the time amusingly.1

This is rather interesting, especially given the timing: about 5 weeks after P. R. C. Groves popularised the knock-out blow in a series of articles The Times. I think you could just about knock together a boardgame in that time; on the other hand, Messrs Enstone and Lilienfeld might have working on it for some time and it may just be a coincidence. The object is to bomb (or defend) a village, which could be considered a civilian target, though given that the map is described as a 'battle-front' I'd say it's more likely that it's being attacked to support ground operations. The defenders out-number the attackers by three to one, which seems unusual in these sorts of games: normally the forces are quite symmetrical. It suggests a "bomber will always get through" mentality, but it could also just as easily be the result of the way the game is set up (for example, perhaps the defending player gets to choose where their aerodromes are, but does so before the attacker: they would then be at a severe disadvantage unless they had more units to play with). And the suggestion that the game is 'so designed that experience in the gentle art of scrapping in the air is of considerable value to the players' implies that the rules allow the possibility for aerial manoeuvring and are in some sense intended to be "realistic" rather than abstract (as do the rules about AA, wind and engine failure), though I wonder how that works given that movement is said to be based on die rolls.

Google seems not to know about The Raider so presumably it wasn't a big seller, despite the Aeroplane's best efforts.

  1. Aeroplane, 3 May 1922, p. 312. [↩]

• 5 Comments

•

Of course.

I cancel a planned1 trip to Hamburg for a conference in order to extend my stay in London by 4 days, so I can hit a few more archives and libraries that I really wanted to look at. And what happens? A 3-day tube strike, which started this afternoon and finishes the evening before I leave. To make matters worse, the places I want to go have been closed for the last week or more, and so I haven't been able to confirm any appointments. So I don't know where I'm going or how I'll get there. I'm so glad I decided to stay the extra days.

Actually, it's not as bad as all that: one of the places I can walk to, another is on the Piccadilly line, which is my local line and is one of the few still running. But it will probably be packed solid. Again, getting to Peckham will in theory be ok, since the Northern line is also still running and so I can get to London Bridge and thence to Peckham Rye by National Rail. But of course, like every other poor sod using public transport I'll have to factor in long delays and leave much earlier than I otherwise would. Just what I didn't need to be doing when I've already got too much to do before I leave!

If only there was another way to travel ...

Dragon Rapide
...continue reading →

  1. Well, more like "vaguely thought about" than "planned", but still. [↩]

• 10 Comments

•

In some ways it seems as if I've only just arrived in London; in others, it's like I've been here forever. But I now have just under a week left here, so I'm racking up a lot of "last times".1 Today was the last time I visited British Library Newspapers at Colindale, which is where I've spent most of my time, actually -- nearly every day there for the first month, the odd day or two since then.

So, to mark this occasion, here's a picture of a TARDIS:

Hendon police box
...continue reading →

  1. Though also still a number of firsts: yesterday was the first time I wandered past Buckingham Palace. For those non-Australians who might not know, Buckingham Palace is where the Queen of Australia lives when she is not back home. It's a nice enough little holiday house; though I did wonder why the Union Jack was flying and not the Australian flag -- seems rather un-Australian, if you ask me. [↩]

•

Raymond H. Fredette. The Sky on Fire: The First Battle of Britain 1917-1918 and the Birth of the Royal Air Force. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1991 [1966]. Even though it's now over 40 years old, this is still the best book around on the Gotha raids on Britain in 1917-8.

F. S. Northedge. The League of Nations: Its Life and Times, 1920-1946. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1986. Similarly, library shelves aren't exactly overflowing with histories of the League of Nations, so I nabbed this when I saw it!