Here is an interesting bit of historical trivia. The US 8th Air Force actually had bases in the Ukraine for a short time. From June to September 1944, the 8th Air Force started a shuttle run of bombers that would take off from England and Italy, bomb targets in Germany then fly on to 3 bases in the Ukraine, Piryatin, Mirgorod and Poltava. The reasoning was mainly to show solidarity with the Russians and to hit Germany from an unexpected quarter.
The mission was called “Operation Frantic”. I don’t think it was much of a success. One reason is that the Luftwaffe bomber arm was still fairly strong in the East. Some Luftwaffe planes saw the American bombers heading into Russia. Then when a shot up P-51 crashed in Poland, it had documents on the Russian bases. Luftwaffe command was notified and they send Fliegerkorps IV, nearly 350 He 111s, to pound those bases while the B-17s were lined up in neat rows due to lack of space. It was the 8th Air Force’s costliest single operation of the war.
I didn’t even know about this until I read it in World War II magazine.
(Anniversary-1941) Chicago rules - Base Rule changes
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With the re-issue of AA50, I thought there might be some renewed interest in the Anniversary Edition of the game. My play group has been playing AA50 since it was first issued, and have found it’s flaws and shortcomings. Along those lines, we created the Chicago Rules to fix the issues and enable a viable Pacific Theater of war. There is a base set of changes that includes changes to the National Objective. There is optional Tech Via Point System that tries to even out the techs values by making the ‘better’ tech cost more. Then to spice things up, we took the National Advantage concept from Revised and added these (also optional), enabling greater variances in strategies that can be employed.
I’ll post the Base Rules here (Chicago rules variant 4.8 - Nov 2017), and the Tech via a Point System (https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=41065.0) and National Advantages (https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=41066.0) in separate posts.
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I was hoping you’d post these!