Hawker vs Richthofen

With the addition of the new Wings of Glory miniatures to my collection I was able to re-fight, almost accurately, the final fight of Lanoe Hawker VC against Manfred Von Richthofen on 23 November 1916. With Brumowski's red Albatros D.III standing in for Richthofen's plane (I know, I know, it was an Albatros D.II and not even red...) and a DH.2 with Hawker at the controls. All explosion cards were removed from the deck as we wanted this to be a game of skill between two aces and with Motörhead turned up to eleven the duel was on!

The initial set up:

The two aces close in on one another...

And let off a burst of fire...

The two planes shoot past each other

Turning as quick as they can to try to get another shot in:

It became a contest of turning circles:

Which Hawker appeared to win by setting the Baron's Albatros on fire:

The Baron did a quick Immelmann turn to get a broadside on Hawker:

 But Hawker survived and slipped past

And the turning contest began again:

Until the two aces looked down their sights at one another and squeezed the trigger:

The Baron triumphed as Hawker's DH.2 burst into flame and plummeted to the ground!

Another game lost, at least I can console myself with knowing this was a historical outcome. A post-game check of the damage cards showed that Richthofen would have only needed one more damage point for the game to have been mine! So close, yet so far away!