In 1940 as Britain faced an imminent German invasion, a new board game called Air Raid Menace was produced by the games manufacturer Midland Distributors based in Leicester. Described as ‘a game of Skill, bringing into play Aerial, Naval, and Land Forces on Sea, Land and Air’, it was based on a cross between chess and draughts. An ‘Entire British Production’, Air Raid Menace was produced by an (anonymous) designer who had also invented a similar game about the First World War called ‘War Tactics’ or ‘Can Great Britain be Invaded, 1915’.30 That game, according to the immodest manufacturer, was ‘acknowledged by Royalty, Admirals Earl Beatty and Sir John Jellicoe, Lord Kitchener and many other State Officials’ and as a result ‘many thousands were sold throughout the world’.
The earlier game War Tactics, the first edition of which was produced in 1911, was played on a board map featuring Great Britain, Denmark, Belgium, Germany and a part of northern France. The map was divided into a series of squares, players using counters representing dreadnoughts, torpedo boats, cruisers, submarines and early aeroplanes to attack or defend Britain. Designed for two people, the winner was the player to occupy their opponents capital or the one with the highest score. In contrast, by the Second World War the game board only showed a stylised map of Great Britain reflecting the threat of invasion being very real in 1940.
Air Raid Menace was also designed to be played by two people and came in a large red box with a picture on the front of St. Paul’s Cathedral, an anti-aircraft gun, a Defiant fighter and a Whitley bomber. Inside was a large map board, divided into twenty-two squares, showing Great Britain (minus Ireland) with a number of key ‘Capital, Town and Naval Bases’ marked on it from Wick in the north to Portland, Portsmouth and Dover in the south. The right-hand side of the board was cordoned off and labelled ‘Air Raid Menace, Attacker’s Sector’. Each player had twenty-six pieces, defender’s pieces were marked black on red and comprised of eight anti-aircraft batteries or land forces, two aircraft carriers, eight ‘swift’ battle planes and eight bomber aircraft. Attacker’s pieces were marked white on black and comprised of two aircraft carriers, twelve swift battle planes and twelve bomber aircraft. The rules of the game stated:
In 1940, as Britain faced an imminent German invasion, a new board game called Air Raid Menace was produced by the games manufacturer Midland Distributors based in Leicester.
Air-Raid Menace is a War Game of skill bringing into play Aerial, Land and Naval Forces, for the occupation of the capital, large Towns and Naval Bases of the defenders or the destruction of the attackers. The Game is intended to make the mind alert and give the player a good idea of the relative positions of the English Naval Bases, principal Shipping Ports, large Towns and Cities.
The game also patriotically stated:
The Players have vividly brought before them the tremendous responsibilities and un-looked for contingencies one has to face and overcome or perish in the attempt. These are the daily toils of our brave Squadron Leaders and Men. With this new game you can immediately be placed in the theatre of war and become a Squadron Leader and give your own orders as to attack and defence, and perhaps by this simple game you can be brought to realise the horrors which have to be graced, and the promptitude with which a decision has to be made.
Air Raid Menace particularly prided itself on its realism in comparison to other similar games despite the concept being based on the flawed idea that any invading or attacking forces would bomb Britain from the air only and not use U-boats, warships and naval craft.
The designer wrote:
In the majority of war games the players are robbed of their organising capacity and originality by the inventor of the game, who decides beforehand by dots, lines and squares, the direction and position a piece or man must be moved, thus destroying the interest of a keen player; but in the game of Air Raid Menace each player has the full liberty of working out his own ideas by the movements of his pieces and defence, and also the bringing into play his reserves and should he prove the victor he has the satisfaction of knowing his own capabilities have gained him success.
The designer also boasted:
The game has been thought out on the principles employed in actual warfare to-day (based on the movements of chess and draughts). As it is possible for Swift Battle planes and Bombers partly to destroy any number of naval bases, ships, towns etc these far-reaching agents of destruction have had given to them special movements, which have to be taken into account when reckoning the final scores.
When the real air raids came the Germans conducted mass air attacks against industrial plants, ports, towns and cities, just as the game Air Raid Menace had predicted. In an intense bombing campaign many targets were destroyed, the media coining the term Blitz (from Blitzkreig or Lightning War) to describe the destruction. The Blitz was meant to pave the way for a Nazi seaborne invasion codenamed Operation Sealion but following their defeat in the Battle of Britain the Nazis called the invasion off, so luckily the game of Air Raid Menace was never put to the test.
An ‘Entire British Production’, Air Raid Menace was a game of ‘Skill, bringing into play Aerial, Naval, and Land Forces on Sea, Land and Air’ and was based on a cross between chess and draughts.