A major offseason statistical timekiller: If chiefsplanet members were B-17 crews...

[Rain Man]

As some of you know, I've got a fixation with B-17 bombers from the World War II era. I've got this really cool simulation game (pencil and paper, not computer) of B-17 missions over Europe. It can track each crew member's history, as well as the success of an individual airplane's mission. It's a majorly cool game if you're into wargame simulations, and is called "B-17: Queen of the Skies." It's made by Avalon Hill.

Anyway, over the past few years, I've been running missions whenever I've been in the mood, and I've got records of almost 300 missions now. I thought it might be fun to use these for an interesting statistical time killer, so you could see what your fate would have been if you had been drafted into the Bomber Corps back in the early days of WWII.

I've got enough missions to run a group of 20 bombers, each with a 10-person crew. If you're interested in participating, do one of the following:

1. If you've got less than 4,000 posts and want to be on a crew, volunteer for service by stating so in this thread. Please don't pm me; just make a post.

2. If you've got more than 4,000 posts, you'll be in by default unless you post or pm me that you DON'T want to be included. If you don't want to read about yourself blasting German fighters out of the sky or falling 20,000 feet to your death in a burning aircraft, you might want to opt out.

Since I've already run the simulations, you'll have no responsibilities other than to watch what happens, discuss it, brag or curse, and maybe make a decision once in a while about reassignment if a bomber crew has casualties. This is just something to watch and ponder your fate. We'll run the game until somebody gets 25 missions, and it'll probably meander on through much of the offseason since it'll take me a while to post each mission.

Crews will be determined randomly, and the hierarchy on the crew will be determined by post count unless a person particularly wants to move down the hierarchy to take a certain position. If there are casualties, you can move around in the crew. (We'll assume that flying lessons come easy to you.) The hierarchy will be:

1. Pilot
2. Copilot
3. Bombardier/Nose & Port Cheek Gunner
4. Navigator/Nose & Starboard Cheek Gunner
5. Engineer/Top Turret Gunner
6. Radio Operator/Radio Room Gunner
7. Tail Gunner
8. Ball Turret Gunner
9. Right Waist Gunner
10. Left Waist Gunner

The way it will work is like this: I'll assign you to a crew, and I'll randomly assign your plane to a mission. Every week or so, as I have time, I'll post the results of missions. Each of the 20 bombers will have a mission in a thread called "B-17 Mission 1" or something like that. Once everyone has flown a mission, the survivors will go on to a new thread called Mission 2, and so on. There will be some shuffling of crews as time goes by, as crew members find themselves without planes or vice versa, and I'll post those changes as we go.

Within a thread, you'll read a summary of each plane's mission, its encounters with enemy aircraft and flak along the way, and its bombing success. The interesting part is that you'll read about any damage to the plane, any casualties to the crews, and/or any enemy planes hit by your own fire.

I'll add more explanations along the way.

Mods, let me know if this is a problem or distraction. It'll be 25 threads in total, one for each mission, and will probably result in one thread that'll bounce off and on the front page through the whole offseason. If it's a bother, we'll move it to another part of the board or just forget about it, but I think it'll be fun.