The Bagley Field heist - Part 1

Dateline: 8th May 1926

The General Strike is in its fourth day and the situation has begun to spiral out of control. Reluctant to involve the Army, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin has so far relied on the “concerned citizens” of the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supply to keep essential services running; with the Police, somewhere in the middle, attempting to keep order. Fights between the OMS and those on strike have caused numerous injuries, two deaths and (worst of all to the Daily Mail readers) some damage to property. 

Without any centralised orders to do so, small groups of the protagonists have begun to arm themselves with whatever they can find.

Word reaches the ears of the Stoke OMS leadership that guns and ammunition have been secretly moved by the Government into storage at nearby Bagley Field aérodrome. * Apart from a single caretaker the cache will be unguarded. Plans are laid to seize the stash so they can finally overawe the local strikers. At a late night Lodge meeting, two Army trucks are proffered to carry away the haul.  

Unfortunately for the OMS, a spy gets word of their plans to the Stoke Workers Defence Committee and the comrades resolve to seize the haul for themselves instead. Overnight a couple of busses are stolen from the local corporation depot and prepared for a dawn raid.

The mission:

I’ll be taking on the (none hierarchical) command of a small Workers Defence Committee strike force, tasked with seizing the cache of weapons from the airfield. At the end of the landing strip are two Nissen huts, one of which contains our prize. Overnight sabotage of the OMS transport means they have been slightly delayed in setting off. The key to success will be getting there the fastest with the mostest, however the busses I’ll  be using to carry away the goodies have no cross country capability and will become immobilised if they leave a road hex (they have a grey base as a reminder).

Notes: 

All miniatures are Pendraken 10mm and the game will be played against my old nemesis, (Major Clanger) using Norm’s Tigers at Minsk rules (in a period they were never intended for, so soz Norm).

My chaps will enter on the southern board edge road on turn 1 and the OMS will enter from the north board edge when a 1D6 die roll of 3,4,5 or 6 allows.

The first Nissen hut to be entered will be tested to see if it contains the weapon cache with the same die roll as above. The weapons cache will always be in one of them. 

A vehicle must be within an adjacent hex to the hut for the driver and his mate to load it on board. It takes a full single turn to load and the vehicle may perform no other action.

Any single transport is capable of carrying two infantry sections.

A single transport vehicle is required to move the haul to safety - loss of either sides available transport is an automatic mission fail. 

TaM amendments for the period and scenario:

Due to the amateur nature of both sides there is no nomination of a hex that is automatically « in command » all potential hexes in which activity is required in a turn have to be diced for.

Game clock. The attack takes place at 6 o’clock in the morning but after thirty minutes the local police will arrive in strength.

Both sides have a moral rating of two. Lorries don’t usually count towards the force / morale total in TaM, but they are essential to complete the mission and the men involved would be more easily spooked by the loss of them than regulars in a bigger conflict.

Both factions are employing men armed with a mixture of short range civilian firearms. They have a range of 1 hex and a close combat die roll of 1D6. (Very limited in TaM terms).

Neither faction has the ability to make smoke and neither has any anti armour fire capability.

This game is an attempt to work through the basic TaM rules and sequence of play with just a few units per side. Although it will count as the first campaign mission none of the losses incurred will count against the faction force pools on this occasion.

Bagley field aérodrome. Dawn, 8th May 1926. Workers assault transports entering from the south. 

Force pool:

The Workers: 2 x sections of angry workers. 2 x corporation busses.

The O.M.S. 2 x sections of concerned citizens. 2 x « cough » civilian lorries.

My plan: 

I’m going to load all my workers into the leading bus and stop at the first Nissan hut. Keeping the vulnerable transports out of shotgun range I’ll search the first hut for the weapons with one section and send the other to either search the second or disrupt any arriving OMS. My primary target will be the OMS transports.

Major Clangers plan: 

No idea! I’ll dice for the hut he’s heading for when his forces arrive on the board.

This has to be the smallest game (with the fewest units) that I’ve ever attempted. 

And finally:

…a cry for help. If anyone knows where I might get some info on Elizabethan infantry or cavalry flags please drop me a line. I’m after the 1588 plus period but I can’t find anything on the inter web to speak of.

*totally made up place - naturally