Cold War Hotshots - Aerial Combat in the Jet Age, 1950-1967

Cold War Hotshots is an attempt to produce a fast and enjoyable game of aerial combat which can be played out on an ordinary tabletop. This set covers both real and hypothectical conflicts set in the period between the outbreak of the Korean War and the Six Day War in the Middle East. This, of course, was the dawn of the jet age, and (at least in the front-line inventories of the major industrial powers) saw the rapid replacement of piston engined combat aircraft by this new and far superior propulsion system. Nevertheless tactics remained basically similar to those which had been worked out in previous conflicts. The gun, for example, was still the pricipal fighter weapon in most situations, and although guided missiles came into widespread use during the 1950s, a decade later the US Air Force belatedly realised that guns were still needed when tangling with the agile North Vietnamese MiGs. The focus here is mainly on just this sort of close range dogfight, which is not the only - or even the most common - type of air combat operation, but is perhaps the one which best lends itself to an interesting game. It continued to be an important feature of post-war conflicts, despite regular predictions by "experts" that fighter combat - and indeed manned aircraft in general - were becoming obsolete. Nevertheless we also cover the specialised interceptors which became common in the 1950s, as well as an assortment of bombers and ground attack aircraft, even if their main function in the game is to be attacked by the fighters!