Masters of the Air Turn 2

 This Turn starts with reinforcements. Germany has one figher and one pilot to fly it. It has a fighter next Turn but no Pilot (it can only make one pilot every 2 turns). So it can either choose to put a fighter in France or  Germany into reserve now so it's Pilot is available for next Turn or pay 2 Victory Points (VPs) to put either a ground attack plane or medium bomber or fighter unit from Italy or the Eastern Front into Reserve (it's assumed that by doing this you cause a major weakening on those Fronts). They put an older fighter in Stuttgart into reserve. There's also no Rumanian figher so that is removed. The Germans should have an additional heavy fighter so the Ju88 is placed in NW Germany and the Bf110 night fighter placed in souh Germany. The Commonwealth (CW) should also have a heavy fighter instead of a third single engined fighter so the Mosquito night fighter is chosen instead of the older Spitfire VB. The CW deploys a Tempest fighter with a Pilot to fly it.  The US gets a P51C Mustang in the US with 2 Pilots - one to fly the new plane plus one 1 to go into Reserve. Italian planes go into Reserve but can be rebuilt in future turns. The Pilots go into reserve but the Flak stays. Germany also remembers to have started building a new Flak unit so puts it into the Production circle from last Turn.

The US moves B17s to Foggia and fighters to Bari to the south of Foggia. Germany pays 2 VPs to rail move a factory from Dortmund to Stettin in Eastern Germany (the plan is to move factories away from the Ruhr within striking distance of bombers with full bomb loads and the range of existing Allied fighter escorts). Mustangs move towards East England. Bf109Es move south to reinforce Italy whilst Bf109Gs move north to Munich in case the Foggia based bombers try to hit South Germany.

In the next phase British night fighter Mosquitos accompany massed British heavy bombers attacking Dusseldorf at night whilst a massed RAF and US fighters accompany a Wellington and Liberator striking Cologne next to it. The Flak is divided against both targets but Hitler demands the Luftwaffe day and night fighters try to intercept. The German fighters are outnumbered badly but exchange aborted fighters and causing 2/10 Pilot losses and bagging 1 VP each. The sole remaining fighter is badly outnumbered so gives up. Flak drives away the Wellington but the Liberator causes 1.5 Production point losses. At night the agile Mosquito gets a slight advantage over the Ju88. It causes enough of the Ju88s not to be able to harm it in a further round of combat so the Ju88 goes home without doing much damage to the Mossie. Mosquito bombers join the two heavy bombers. Only the Mosquito bomber is turned back by the flak and the two heavy bombers cause a maximum 3 Production points lost and destroy a Factory (for a bonus 3 VPs). Ouch! Flying fortresses in Foggia do a long range bombing mission to hit the Ploesti oil fields. It's bombing factors are halved to 3 and it only causes the loss of 1 oil (doubled to 2 VPs). Germany has a scare there! if the oil fields were permanently damaged then that would be a major blow to the oil starved Axis. 

The next phase is Stormy weather so the Turn ends. after this. The Bf109s in South Germany move to protect the Rumanian oil fields and Bulgaria's obsolete biplane fighters move into postion to help intercept US bombers whilst they overfly Bulgaria.  A Bf109 moves to South Germany to protect Munich and the Austrian oil field. On the plus side for the Axis they haven't lost one whole Pilot yet. On the negative side they conceded 7 VPs to bombing. 

Now in the Production phase the US uses both its plane allowance and 1 VP to allow it to start producing longer range P51 Mustang D. They can reach Berlin from East Anglia. This will be a big shock to the Luftwaffe who are assuming that US fighter escorts have only two figher units reaching 10 hexes but the Mustang D will add an escort with 12 hex range. The UK hstarts building a heavy Mosquito day fighter. The Germans start to rebuild an Italian fighter. With no aircraft to build the Germans build an anti aircraft division to use as a mobile flak unit. The Turn ends with the Axis on 3 VPs and the Allies on 19. The Allies can quickly dominate France which only has one Axis Fighter and one medium bomber. The Allies can allocate 3 RAf fighters to attack France and use their Wellington plus 2 US medium bombers to support any invasion there so they are close to achieving air supremacy.