20th Air Force - A Solitaire Game of the USAAF Strategic Bombing Campaign vs Japan, 1944-45

From Fortress Games:

Your objective as you take command of the 20th Air Force in September 1944 is nothing short of reducing Japan’s cities, large and small, to smoldering rubble! To do it you’ve got the powerful and sophisticated B29, in ever increasing numbers and with flight crews improving in combat and navigation skills, and a research effort at home developing more and more sophisticated weapons. While initially you must focus on clearing the sky of Imperial Japanese Army Air Force (IJAAF) fighters and blasting Japanese war industries with high explosive bombs, eventually you will develop incendiary bombs which rapidly reduce Japan’s combustible wooden and paper cities to ashes, and their dispersed war industries to ruins. Simultaneously, demolish her ports and kamikaze bases, and mine her waters. In the meantime, research marches on, perhaps you will obtain the ultimate weapon, the Atomic Bomb? Hopefully you will, because you are in a race against time – if Japan can hold out long enough the US will have to launch “Operation Olympic”, the costly planned invasion of Japan, and your strategic bombing campaign will have failed.

The game comes with the 28″ x 22″ mounted gameboard, 3 player aids (the calendar/bombing campaigns aid shown below), 23 page rules manual absolutely loaded front to back with illustrations and examples, 2 dice, and 243 laser-cut thick, sturdy game counters representing almost 50 USAAF and IJAAF groups plus plenty of reinforcing squadrons, “Enola Gay” and other individual B29s of the 393rd Squadron, atom bombs, and dozens of strategic and tactical targets…

RICHLY ILLUSTRATED GAME MANUAL – the “20th Air Force, Second Edition” game manual is replete with illustrations and examples. Some folks learn games easier through illustrated examples but if you’re not one of them, just skip over the many examples – they are all easy to identify in their big blue boxes!