Session 5

While loading the scenario, I am informed that the Cuban ‘Ship Strike’ mission can’t launch some of its aircraft because the flight size limit is two and I’ve killed all but one of the aircraft with the relevant loadout. Spoilers, but I was going to go back to Cuba and try to get some more hits anyway. Worth knowing for the scenario overhaul though. I also notice that the scenario has a large Designer Notes section with all sorts of handy hints. This would be very helpful to have in the Side Briefing, where I can read it during the scenario.

Two of the Spanish Harriers smash up the commerce raider they spotted and return to the PdA. The other two continue to Ascension with the Tristars, intending to take on the other raiders closer to the island. The South Africans are doing a good job of keeping an eye on things, the ELINT equipment allows them to localise the commerce raiders quite effectively. With the concept proven I assign the two EA-3s I rebased down to Cape Verde to patrol the area between Recife and the coast of Africa.

As a demonstration of the attention splits required by this scenario, I notice that Broadsword has completely overshot the Jeanne d’Arc convoy and needs to turn around. Not a big issue, she’s in probably the safest area of sea I have, behind Jeanne d’Arc and assisted by buoys from the Atlantiques, but another incident like this could be pretty bad for me. To show off how my attention is pulled one way and then the next, I'm submitting this session unedited, with things being reported as they happen. I really don't mind this, I think it models the command environment more realistically than 'just' managing the north Atlantic convoy crossings. There's a whole war happening.

With no convoys expected at Puerto Rico for a while, I’m temporarily putting the bastion down and rearming the P-3s for a single Harpoon sortie. I don’t think I can act directly against Venezuela without losing VPs, even though they’re shooting at me and making aggressive moves towards my bases, but I can certainly sink all of their ships. I had been planning to move everything to the Windward Passage, but the JFK group has been having real difficulties with shallow water areas of the northern Caribbean and I don’t fancy trying to run convoys through this area. Puerto Rico is a better receiving bastion for traffic from the South Atlantic and has a straight shot through deep water to both Panama and Bermuda.

The EC-130s, which I’d been holding on the ground in Cuba in a state of terror over losing them, depart for Puerto Rico. I’m expecting them to do some very good work for me. The entirety of my AFRC F-16C squadron is also readying to go across. Despite my assumptions about Venezuelan intentions, their SAGs seem to be moving at five knots and generally sticking to the area around Venezuela rather than coming towards me as I assumed. Honestly, this is a perfectly stable state of affairs and I don’t feel the need to kill them if they don’t come north. I then get a message telling me that they’re going to confiscate my F-16Cs on the 26th, two days from now, some excuse to do with the largest air battle ever happening in Europe. More thinking required.

My second Brest convoy terrifies me by stumbling into a school of tuna at point blank range. I very nearly turn them into bycatch, but resolve that surely no Soviet submarine would be moving at one knot away from a juicy, defenceless convoy. The fish proceed directly under the Westdiep and disappear, just to rub in how bad my sonars are.

The first Nimrod, now positioned down in the Falklands, identifies the ship slipping around the cape as an Argentinian MEKO, and another MEKO coming down from Puerto Deseado. A vessel I wouldn’t mind having on my side, were circumstances different. I wonder if I can board them? Further sniffing along the Patagonian coast reveals that the only radar Argentina has is a single AN/TPS-43F, which can’t cover the airspace over the Falklands. Will they ever learn?

My E-8 picks up a civilian type Furuno radar in the Yucatan Strait. In the absence of anything with useful capabilities, I launch a HU-25B to go and have a look at her. In DB 502, these aircraft will have a SLAR and an IR turret, but right now they have nothing. Regardless, some peering through the windows identifies the contact as a Honduran PB that isn’t even worth my time to sink. I toy with the idea of sending one of the Coasties to fight it, since they’d win and I've not managed to get them a win yet, but the warnings of a Cuban Foxtrot in the area mean I’d prefer not to.

I’m getting messages every twelve hours or so, informing me of one or other set of ships I’m gaining. It looks like there’s a fair number of good escorts on the way, and also a lot of submarines. I’m not really sure that I’m keen on the subs, but I suppose they can sweep convoy lanes like the MPAs are. Bumbling around the North Atlantic at five knots trying to hear someone else bumbling around the North Atlantic at five knots really does feel like a hiding to nothing…

I set up an automated strike on the HASs at SAdlB, the Cubans are so cleared out at this point that I’m happy to just send individual aircraft as they rearm. I’m going to do a couple of days more of strikes and then stand down the Key West wing for training duties, as instructed. Because I can only strike occasionally, there’s no point in holing the runways, it won’t achieve anything.

The A-4s from Puerto Rico sink the other Venezuelan patrol boat, the one which initially shot at me. I see my actions as justified under the traditional legal framework of qui maledixerit ferietur, and I’m going to kill the other little PB off Panama, but any further actions against Venezuela are going to be in response to them actually threatening me.

and also a lot of submarines. I’m not really sure that I’m keen on the subs, but I suppose they can sweep convoy lanes like the MPAs are. Bumbling around the North Atlantic at five knots trying to hear someone else bumbling around the North Atlantic at five knots really does feel like a hiding to nothing…

I think that you'll find some of your best sonars on those subs. Useful to patrol gaps in your convoy lanes.

Glad you're being pulled pillar to post, that is certainly one of the key things I was trying to do. Otherwise ASW work can, as they say, be as exciting as watching paint dry

B

Gunner98 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 09, 2023 4:11 pm I think that you'll find some of your best sonars on those subs. Useful to patrol gaps in your convoy lanes.

The problem I have here is that I'm caught between the simulation and the game. I'm not a confident submariner, so I don't trust myself to handle the submarines properly while operating completely independently, I fear I'll lose the game. At the same time, I don't want to play my 'usual' way with my submarines, taking advantage of the absence of a comms divide to use them as reconnaissance assets for MPAs, that's gaming the simulation too hard and it's only fun up to a point.

I absolutely am making use of my submarines: I have two in the Florida Strait where I don't want to operate MPA as much, I have one on her way out to the mid Atlantic, I have one heading down to the Western Sahara, I have one stalking the Venezuelans and my subs down south are starting to achieve some results (next update). I'm just... more comfortable with a good frigate or a P-3. That could be a fun thing to do for a scenario of this type actually, special actions for horse-trading your assets with your sister commands. "I'll give you a 688i and a Churchill for a Spruance ABL and a Cassard." A logical extension of the "Buy some tankers for points" and "Sell Garibaldi for points" actions. Hell, you could even do stuff with timings: "Let me keep the 93rd TFS for another week and I'll give you the Jeanne d'Arc in two weeks."

Session 6

Continuing to worry more about the Caribbean than the point of the scenario

So, upon consideration, I’m going to use the F-16s for a single extra strike on Cuba and pack them off to the air bridge with plenty of time to spare. I’m not worried about Venezuela if they’re not coming for me. This then calls into question my whole strategy with the Kennedy, Nicaragua and Honduras have been completely quiet and the only thing I can actually bomb is the radar at Bluefields. Venezuela doesn’t seem to fancy having a go at me. I don’t really want to go along the coast of Venezuela, I’m going to route everything going to Panama north of that, so I don’t need carrier-level striking power there either. I’m toying with the idea of moving the AH-1Ws and (I’ve never tried them on carriers but I think they’ll work) the RQ-2s from Gitmo down to Panama, but I think that’s a good idea that’s a waste of carrier time. I’ll try it if I end up running PdA or JdA down to Panama, maybe. JFK is going to go to the north of Puerto Rico and then strike out for the open Atlantic and the air gap.

Of course, as soon as I make this decision I spot a pair of suspicious contacts south of Haiti. My trusty Mk.82 S-3 should be enough to work out what they are, if not simply kill them. Turns out they’re three Venezuelan Federacion class PCFGs, hanging out where they can trap convoys running between Panama and Puerto Rico in a pincer of Otomats against the western Lupo group. Again, they are nowhere near Venezuelan territory and are sat in the middle of the ocean, completely silent and completely stationary. That’s not legitimate freedom of navigation if you’re not navigating anywhere, that’s laying in ambush. The S-3 isn’t going near these things, they can shoot back and I’m not losing a valuable patrol aircraft just because it’s nearby. Instead I whistle up the strike element of the Guantanamo air group, who have the big anti-ship Mavericks that are perfect for the job. Three kills with three missiles and it’s home for tea and medals.

Down off Panama, the PC-13 Independencia is fleeing from the rapidly closing Tattnall. I feel bad about things and consider breaking off, but then I see F-5s heading towards my task group from Nicaragua. Given that I’ve been blazing away on the radars this whole time and the Nicaraguans did nothing, the Venezuelans have obviously reported my position and called a strike on me, the rotters. Tattnall turns out and unleashes both 5” guns. A MiG-21 shows up as well, then a number, and I start to worry. I hurry the South Carolina back towards her charges at the canal exit and scramble the F-16s. I probably didn’t need to worry, the F-16s cut through the MiGs that approach me, South Carolina kills a Tiger with a speculative SM-2 shot and most of the MiGs don’t engage. I then get overconfident and charge in over San Andres island, resulting in a number of MiG kills and my F-16s winchester, running away from a pack of angry MiGs. Judicious use of the afterburners gets me out of the way, but I think this is probably an indication for South Carolina and her group to pick up the boats and get going.

To my elation, Eloy Alfaro arrives on the scene, loaded for bear and ready to single-handedly defeat the Socialist menace. I had intended to slip her up to Bluefields and try to take out the surveillance radar with her 4.5”, but upon inspection she hasn’t got a 4.5”. The DB photo is wrong, she’s a Batch 2 with the Exocet tubes, except without any Exocet. She carries torpedoes aboard, but her Alouette can’t use them, she hasn’t got any tubes and they’re weird A.244s that nothing else uses, so I can’t cross deck a helicopter from something else, not that I have any spare helicopters. I appoint her Panama guard ship and forget about her, hopefully for the rest of the scenario. If she finds anything I don’t know what she’s going to do about it.

South Atlantic

Opossum gets a subsurface contact! It’s basically inside her bows, but I’m very proud of her anyway. She then immediately loses it again, but I know roughly where it is and I call the Nimrod back to base to get her buoy tubes filled up. It turns out that she’s basically unable to keep the contact on her bow sonar, so I have to use the flank arrays even at only two nautical miles. The contact is doing four knots and seems to be extremely quiet. Almost certainly an Argentinian SSK, but Opossum can’t get the identification. For now, I switch her to active sonar and set her to shadow the Argentinian in the most annoying manner possible. The Argentinian decides to do the same to me, resulting in a strange four knot dogfight/ballet. Both submarines continue this for so long that they are forced to periscope depth and they continue to snorkel around each other.

The Harriers set off into the South Atlantic, with a 707 to guide them. To my horror, the 707 decides that it has a responsibility to positively visually identify the target and descends into weapon range. The commerce raider misses twice with its Gremlin launcher and then gives up and blows it from the sky with a ZPU-2. That’s humiliating, but lesson learned. The Harrier avenges it, and its sister blows up another commerce raider. Neither are officially ‘dead’, but they’re aflame and merchant ships rarely recover from that.

As it ferries down, my Nimrod R.1 spots what can only be a Drummond-class corvette, on the far side of the Falklands from home. It’s quite near to Endurance and Green Rover, and armed with Exocet, but Endurance is armed with Sea Skua so I’d call it a fair fight. Fair fights are for suckers, so the Endurance group diverts around the Drummond’s plotted location. Instead I dispatch the Groton to shadow her. My other Nimrod passes over the suspected Argentinian SSK, but it has now stopped moving for some reason and I can’t get a clear ID using my buoys either. At this point I don’t much care, it’s just for my mental Argentinian OOB.

North Atlantic

My Canadians are late. I was told that I would get a pair of St. Laurent class FFHs on the 24th, it’s the 25th and they’re not here. I should say, while I’m thinking about the date switchover, that the occasional weather changes are fun without being arduous and definitely switch up my search capabilities. I’m sure they’ll also affect my LGB usage when Argentina kicks off. The Canadians are still late at midnight in Halifax time, so it’s not that they’ve forgotten to use Zulu either. Not to worry, there’s nothing much at Halifax right now, they can take their time.

The Latouche-Trevielle joins up with the second Brest Convoy, giving it a towed array. While rearranging the formation and sighing my relief, I notice that the Leander which I had been positioning as a forward sweep/torpedo decoy is the Arethusa, which should actually be a unique Batch 1B Leander with Ikara and the towed array. I haver a bit and then decide that I can just… put it on in the editor. Suddenly my convoy is superbly defended and I’m much happier.

As I’m not doing anything else with them, I send my two Rota based EP-3s out on a long range sweep of the southern North Atlantic. I never really fly P-3s in a straight line like this and I’m astonished by my forecasted range, they can sweep a huge area of sea.

if those Canucks don't show up it may be a lua problem... on the other hand if it is HMCS Ottawa I know the Capt from that timeframe and he is probably on the lash somewhere....

Session 7

Sturgeon, cracking along at 22 knots and maximum depth on her way to the Western Sahara, suddenly gets a very close Goblin. It’s at the same depth as her and doing fifteen knots itself, so I chuck a pair of ADCAPs first and ask questions later. Sturgeon crash stops as the torpedoes come out of her tubes and the contact resolves as an SSN, but the torps fail to track on the vague contact, which has apparently sped up again and then disappeared from my passive sonar. Somehow, I can’t hear any counterfired torpedoes in the water, so I assume my opponent didn’t shoot. Then I hear a pair of detonations, merely two and a half nautical miles away but still further than I thought I was shooting. Evidently my sonarmen were wrong about the range and my ADCAPs connected successfully. I assume the enemy was some sort of rattly old November that it didn’t detect me, but it turns out it was K-388, a Victor III and winner of the Northern Fleet efficiency award in 1991. I have literally no idea how I got away with this, but I am a bit happier about my submarines now. Sturgeon accelerates again, but to a slightly more reasonable 15 knots so she can keep her towed array deployed.

Meanwhile, my attempt to break contact with the Argentinian SSK has gone much too well, I’ve completely lost it. Opossum works back in with her active sonar off but can get absolutely nothing. I go for one ping only and confirm that it still hasn’t moved from its last known position. Should I send a Sea King out and ask if they need rescued? Eventually diving the Nimrod into close visual range allows me to identify the submarine as a submarine. A couple of hours later it begins to move again and I can identify it as a Type 209. If I had this much trouble with her, how much trouble will the two TR1700s give me?

Clark joins up with the Banckert group screening Puerto Rico and immediately assumes group leadership, ruining the formation. Bloody Yanks. I give Banckert her task group back and set them to wander around the southern shore of Puerto Rico.

A check of my reinforcement list reveals that I will receive the Sturgeon-class SSN-664 Sea Devil some time in late March. I elect to keep this information from the captain and crew of the Sturgeon-class SSN-664 Sea Devil, currently off Bermuda and patrolling the mid-Atlantic. I guess the Philadelphia Experiment rumours were true?

Further Tristar-enabled Harrier sorties smash up another commerce raider. She looks seriously damaged and unlikely to bother me again. I decide that PdA is actually more useful as a Sea Control ship here than she is sweeping the probably submarine free route down to Brazil, so I get the Rio convoy moving. Other Harriers take out other commerce raiders, although I lose one to gunfire while finishing off the raider that killed the 707. It’s been much too effective.The Nimrod armed with Harpoon also chucks a couple off at a raider that’s a bit far out for the Harriers to be trusted with the job. Its emissions stop as I withdraw, and I assume it slips beneath the waves. Something that I’ve noticed, having lost six aircraft, is that I’ve had no ejections so far. Are they supposed to be in this scenario?

A new Goblin turns up in front of the JdA group, detected by an active buoy from an Atlantic but uncomfortably close anyway. Duguay-Trouin’s Lynx closes on it, hovers to deploy the dipping sonar and get a proper track and ID… then torpedoes the contact anyway. Luckily, it starts to dive and accelerate, so it’s a good shoot. Another Victor III, K-255, nailed. It’s an important reminder about WRAs though, not necessarily as important in the North Atlantic but liable to start a war if I get it wrong near Argentina.

The first wave of my final strike on SAdlB sets off, carrying much heavier bombs than previously used on many of the aircraft. The zoo swarm out of Key West, delivering an extremely concentrated strike on the southern HAS. I can see the structures collapsing as my aircraft flash over. A few aircraft need a couple of runs to get their bombs off, mainly because they’re straying too low to drop safely, but they can get away with it. With the defences eliminated, I don’t much care. This attack is effective enough that I take the southern HAS off the board for the second wave, I’ve destroyed five of them and severely damaged all of the others. Pleased with the overall effect, I stand the aircraft down and return them to their training duties, although a pair of TF-16s keep real Sidewinders loaded just in case.

The second wave is composed of the remaining fourteen ready F-16Cs from the 93rd. They’re each loaded with four Mk.84s and almost too heavy to fly. They aren’t even carrying tanks, so I’ve had to make a maximum effort sortie with my KC-135s to ensure they can get to the target and back. The attack itself is annoyingly ineffective, with a lot of over-hitting on targets that are already destroyed, but I can see five more HAS go down and others take damage after a gratifying last-minute uptick in performance from the straggler aircraft. In the end I don’t need to tank, I think because my aircraft spent much less time at low altitude than expected, and they return to Homestead to go into Reserve and transfer to Europe a little early. Another two HAS burn out for a total of twelve in one strike. Not too bad without PGMs, I think.

To my astonishment the Honduran patrol boat that had been in the Yucatan Strait appears in the Florida Strait, almost right under my E-3. I don’t know how I missed it moving, for a moment I wonder if it actually teleported. Unfortunately for it, this puts it in a position where the cutter Knight Island can intercept it and shoot it up. Surely the greatest sea battle of WW3 begins as Knight Island closes, then turns away and starts to run at an angle once the Honduran gives chase. I have better range on my 25mm but worse speed then the Swift-type boat, so I have to do this to take as much advantage of my reach as possible before the Honduran can close for 20mm. My first salvo of 25mm misses completely, and then I find out that it will take over an hour to get more ammunition to the mount! 20mm fire begins to arc towards the Knight Island, but then slows and stops like a draggy missile. Evidently, both parties are having strange weapon problems. A strange game of cat and mouse ensues as my cutter can make just enough ground to avoid most, although not all, hits. Eventually though, the enemy boat gets enough hits to really start to slow down the Knight Island. She sweeps the decks with her .50s, managing to knock out all of the weapons. In desperation, I call in the Florida ANG and their 20mm Vulcans, who take a couple of sighting passes and then start handing out some real hits. The Guaymuras is dead in the water by the time they run out of cannon ammo and Knight Island limps away to Key West. That’s going to be the last of the cutter action for me, I think, if they can’t even credibly fight a patrol boat and they cost 20 points when I lose one, it’s not worth having them at sea.

This scenario was built before the downed pilot script was a thing, but there was talk of a SAR mission being added at the time so I included all the SAR aircraft. High on the list for the rebuild

The Island class cutters should be worth less than other ships if you lose them, on the list. I think there is a role for them but you're pointing out that they can't do much, perhaps I'll add some smuggling operations or patrol boxes for them.

Great AAR, thanks

B

Gunner98 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 12, 2023 10:24 am This scenario was built before the downed pilot script was a thing, but there was talk of a SAR mission being added at the time so I included all the SAR aircraft. High on the list for the rebuild

The Island class cutters should be worth less than other ships if you lose them, on the list. I think there is a role for them but you're pointing out that they can't do much, perhaps I'll add some smuggling operations or patrol boxes for them.

Great AAR, thanks

B

The Islands are 20 points and the frigates are 25, that's a bit steep. If they were ten points and the gun worked (not your fault, like), they'd be fine. The SAR script will also increase their utility, most of my air losses have been somewhere that an Island could have rescued the pilot.

Session 8

American Littoral

At SAdlB, HAS continue to burn out after the raid, two more so far. I have tried to use a pair of A-4s from Gitmo to bomb out the Guaymaras, but they didn’t quite have the fuel to do it and are demanding six hours on the ground at Homestead to have a long lunch. I therefore apply more force than I could have and the Spadefish, which had been sprinting towards the area to help, hits her with an ADCAP. To quote the message log exactly “FNH 101 Guaymaras vanished”.

The big Texan convoy runs into a Goblin contact south of Pensacola, detected on active sonar. It’s ten nautical miles from the nearest escort so I can afford to launch helicopters and check it out. TMA reveals it’s not moving at all. A Seasprite reveals it’s not on the surface and not magnetic. I’m almost certain it’s a false contact, but I hit it with a Neartip anyway. It doesn’t react, but the Knox class Truett does and hammers an ASROC into it just for kicks. It’s a false contact, but I think I’ve done my job anyway.

The freighter I sent from Chesapeake to NY seems to have gotten away with it. I’m not going to run this route without escorts forever, but I’ll take the risk on a couple more if they’re supported by some of the P-3s from Oceana, including a tanker that’s supposed to go to New York and back. I really hope I don’t get too much coastal traffic of this type, I’m not set up to deal with it.

Venezuela

Clark, in the Banckert Group, detects a Vampire. I shiver in fear initially, but realise that actually this might be something I can get away with. The detection is at an incredible 180 nautical miles and I’m close to both Monoz ANG base and to the JFK. The Banckert Group immediately reverses course to try and dodge any terminal seekers, Munoz and the carrier start to scramble fighters and a P-3 sets out from NAS Roosevelt Roads to hunt for the culprit. I’m pretty sure this isn’t the Venezuelans, this is an SSGN. It’s even quite near the Greenling. In total I detect four medium altitude supersonic missiles, which in theory isn’t a problem but I’m wary after that first Oscar engagement. Luckily the F-16s sweep them up quite handily. I keep them airborne just in case, but I send the Tomcats home. My EP-3, which is chilling out in the Eastern Caribbean keeping an eye on the Lupo groups, suddenly spots a pair of attack aircraft visually! I have to admit that this is something I never considered, I thought she was safe there because her powerful ELINT sensors would detect fighters almost as soon as they took off, but if they don’t send fighters after me then I’m stuffed. Luckily the aircraft slide past the EP-3 without a second glance, obviously in the attack role. Clark starts to detect compatriots for them from some distance away and I start to scramble the other F-16s. I suspect this is designed as a coordinated attack on the Banckert Group that hasn’t quite been coordinated right, but as my F-16s approach they start to run out of fuel thanks to their sprint to intercept the missiles earlier.
A single group manages to get into visual range of the Mirages and shoot one down, at which point I’m notified that I have violated Venezuelan neutrality and been fined 250 points. Alright then, I guess killing all those mariners was okay? The Venezuelan strike is mis-targeted, I suspect confused by the Banckert Group’s change of direction, and the remaining Mirages are downed by my reserve F-16s.

More contacts start showing up over Venezuela, an OECM aircraft and a pair of F-16s. Time for my EP-3 to leave, I think. My P-3, meanwhile, picks up the Juliett that launched the missiles, K-67, and gives it what for. That means I can clear all of my aircraft out of proximity to Venezuela, which suits me. Just in time, as yet more Cyrano radars light off including the Cyrano IV units of the dangerous Mirage 50EVs. These too are unescorted and taken down fairly easily.

I seem to be getting points for sinking Venezuelan ships but not downing Venezuelan aircraft, I suppose with the intent that the ships are dangerous interdictors of my convoy lanes and the aircraft are brave defenders of the Venezuelan homeland. I also notice that I’m not getting points for sinking commerce raiders, meaning that I really can’t afford to be losing aircraft against them. PdA turns around and heads for Rio again.

South Atlantic

I am able to launch my first reinforcements for the Falklands, three Tornado F.3s and a 747. I try to do the fuel maths to work out what the optimal tanking plan is, but give up when the database tells me that each external tank contains thirty minutes of fuel (At what throttle setting and altitude? For which Tornado variant?) and just launch them with both Tristars. Once airborne, the little fuel stats window is much clearer: I need 6.9 hours of fuel and I have 6.4 hours, so one sip off the Tristars about an hour out from Ascension should be fine. One of the BA 747s also heads out, hopefully full of Rapiers and the like. The whole thing would probably have run itself fine without any intervention from me, but for the first ferry flight I micro everything just to be sure it works out properly.

Over the Falklands, or really more off Argentina, my harassing Tornado spots not one Learjet, which have been rippling over the Falklands for days now, but two. Does this indicate a reconnaissance surge before an attack? If so, where are the Trackers? Another Learjet lifts from Capitan D Daniel Vasquez Airport. I’m frankly confused now, these are terrible reconnaissance aircraft, why are they launching more of them? Are they going for the Operation Mikado landing at Stanley Airport or something? They seem to shuffle around for a while and then mostly return home.

Session 9

South Atlantic

I have suddenly remembered that Brazil has an aircraft carrier. I wonder if I’ll get it…

The Tornados arrive in the Falklands and immediately begin to rearm for air to air operations. The 747 arrives as well, with no observable result and no scoring effect. This is a pre-cargo scenario and I can’t see any actual forces I was supposed to pick up, so I assume this is WAD and they just don’t do anything.

Just for style points, Tireless pokes her periscope above the water and gets a picture of the stern of D 12 Heroina, the Argentinian MEKO between the Falklands and Argentina. I’m tucked nicely into her baffles and she doesn’t react at all. Ideally I would then burst-transmit the image to Northwood and then have someone take it down to the Argentinian embassy, that would show them. A couple of hours after this stunt another periscope goes up, a Goblin contact detected on the surface by my Nimrod. That’ll be another Argentinian, then, very close to Stanley and obviously intending to intercept local traffic. I continue to shuffle my submarines around, I’m pretty close to being positioned to sink all three spotted Argentinian surface vessels immediately upon the commencement of hostilities.

Caribbean

I dispatch my full support aircraft force from Tyndall to Munoz ANG Base in Puerto Rico. The Cubans are done and I don’t need further assets up here, and hopefully if I can hide them away in Puerto Rico everyone will forget to take them back away from me. I had difficulty tracking some of the Mirages at low level during the Venezuelan attacks, so I want the E-3s, and the KC-135s are always useful. Again, the E-8 isn’t the focus of my efforts, but I’m prepared to be surprised by it. On their way down, they pick up the Boghammar on the far side of the Bahamas again. I’ve now concluded that I’m not going to run any ships through that area, so I can actually just ignore it.

Knight Island makes port and begins to repair. Her captain keeps sending me messages about her repair state, which because I have the pop-ups on to tell me about unit damage, keep interrupting me! There’s nothing to be done though, I need those pop-ups for other operations. Luckily, she is repaired quickly.

I send one of my E-8s out to have a prod around Venezuela, which draws a pair of Venezuelan F-16As out to meet me. After the sort of hit rolls I’ve only otherwise heard of happening to Fitzpatv, the PRANG fighters sort them out with no losses. I think my engagement geometry was quite bad, the aircraft were taking shots that were very horizontally close and very vertically separated, which the missiles didn’t seem to like.

North Atlantic

Having now flown the CP-140s and Nimrods for a whole, I can find the size of the Mid-Atlantic Gap. It’s a 700 nautical mile hole between where my CP-140s run out of buoys coming from Bermuda and where my Nimrods run out of buoys coming from the Azores. That’s really not too bad, especially since both aircraft have loads of endurance to play with. I need to patrol the gap with ships for now, but as soon as I get some extra P-3s from the reserves I can probably cover that. That’ll only be a couple of days now. At Bermuda the last of the first set of ships arrive and I begin to assemble the huge convoy to cross the Atlantic. 172 cargo ships and escorts assemble around Bermuda and shuffle around, with some due to wait here for convoys from Europe and others due to brave the Atlantic to the Azores, becoming the first to make the crossing. I don’t think I’m going to send any escorts back to the East Coast before they have something to escort, even with ships to escort starting to build up again.

The transatlantic convoy sets off, taking with it over a hundred and fifty merchants, the cruiser Long Beach, the destroyer William V. Pratt and four Towed Array frigates, as well as HMCS Protecteur to keep the escorts replenished and sweep with her CH-124s. Mostly I’ve been using the default group names, but I’m inspired enough to actually designate this one Convoy BA01.

More vampires, in the Bay of Biscay this time. This one is a supersonic sea-skimmer, detected at only 19nmi and on the beam of the convoy in such a way that it basically can’t fail to hit a merchantman. It’s also only a single shot, as though my enemy intends to fire their missiles one by one into my merchants. Helicopters flock into the air but I’m not at all convinced of my ability to find this SSGN with only a bearing to go off. Newcastle desperately launches some Sea Darts but they have no chance of intercepting in time and I lose a 3000TEU container ship. I sit and wait for the other shoe to drop… Is that all they wanted to sink, one container ship? Where’s the rest of the giant Oscar salvo? My convoy is spread out and vulnerable to this sort of attack, but it’s not coming. It takes forty minutes to detect more Vampires, these appearing in more or less the same relative place and behind my helicopter sweep. I had hoped that the helicopters would be able to get a visual detection of the launch in the gathering light, but obviously not. Newcastle gets one missile and almost immediately another appears. Perhaps I am seeing the launch site, much closer to me than I assumed! Sea Darts slam into the SS-N-19s, achieving many more hits than they have any right to, but another merchant takes a hit, this time a long range tanker which begins to burn and flood. Only three missiles again? My helicopters come up short on the nearby search pattern… I don’t think I’m going to get this one without a lot of luck.

Session 10

Kills so far:
1x Cuban Kilo
3x Kilo
1x Romeo
1x Victor I
3x Victor III
1x Oscar I
1x Juliett

Losses so far:
1x Brooke FFG
2x Perry FFG
1x Merchant
Written out like that, I feel pretty good about how the core scenario is going. Everything else is just for fun. I’m also due an apology to the navy, government and people of Canada, the notification of the two horrible little excuses for FFHs was for the 26th, not the 24th. The captain of HMCS Ottawa has been located in a bar in Sherbrooke and told off, not least because the Ottawa is currently off Bermuda.

The Convoy War

The Banckert group detects a Goblin, close and fast! Very fast, 19 knots. No games here, the Clark, which is the detecting and nearest ship, chucks off a Neartip down the bearing as the group slows, launches helicopters and turns on the active sonar of the European frigates. Good god it’s close, 1.2nmi and it doesn’t seem to have launched at me. It’s identified as an SSK and it starts to dive and twist under my attacks. I keep at it with the helicopters while the torpedoes close in, but there’s no need and my initial panicked BOL torpedo gets me the first one-shot kill of the scenario against the Kilo B-960, the newest Soviet SSK. I have to regard this as another close shave, I don’t know why the Kilo didn’t launch and if it had I’d have a 50/50 chance of losing another Perry.

The good news continues as my Atlantique gets a Goblin next to the Newcastle group. This is more or less right where it should be for it to be the SSGN. Unfortunately, this happens just as my helicopters run out of fuel from their searches, so it’s up to the Atlantique again. My buoys classify it as another Victor III… Does that make sense? Can they launch missiles? The database says no, as I imagine my seamen frantically leafing through Janes 1994, but perhaps this is some unannounced Victor IV SSGN? That, or there’s another submarine lurking out there, taking targeting instructions from the Victor. The Victor is the K-244 and goes down in two hits, but as the helicopters triumphantly return to the convoy they see the tanker that was hit by a missile earlier turn turtle and slowly sink. I’m going to keep searching this sector with the Atlantique, but I can’t devote it here forever. They have until they’re out of fuel and then that’s it.

VF-124 #7 crashes at sea after running out of fuel. Horrified, I look up to the JFK and see #5 go down, alternately following the S-3 tanker above the carrier and breaking off back to its patrol before taking any fuel at all. It continues this behaviour for at least ten minutes before succumbing, hovering at all times within ten nautical miles of the CV. I watch it do this, because I want to understand what happened to #7. In frustration, the Vice-Admiral aboard the Kennedy kicks a bulkhead, which collapses to reveal a false wall with two pristine F-14Ds and their Phoenixes behind it. The crews from VF-124 are fished from the sea, told not to do something so bloody stupid again and united with their new mounts. If it were A-4s I’d probably have just taken the hit, but I’m not losing Tomcats like that. This then happens again to #6. For this one I just declare one of my spares to be airworthy now, and then turn off the refuelling on the JFK’s fighters. I’m a mere 15 points down for this, I’ll add them back at the end.

South Atlantic

Matters in the Falklands continue to develop in a satisfactory manner. In addition to the Tireless quietly stalking the MEKO ‘Heroina’, the Seahorse is in a similar position on the MEKO ‘La Argentina’ to the south of the islands and the Groton is stalking the Drummond to the north. The 747 sets off from Mount Pleasant, presumably evacuating dependents, extraneous personnel and any islanders who wish to leave. I doubt they’ll have filled all 500 odd seats with that. Instead of going to Ascension, which is infamously dull, they’re going all the way to RAF St. Mawgan in Cornwall, which is lovely. I’m actually very happy with my situation down here now, although I think my SCTF could stand to be reinforced a little. I wonder if I can persuade any of the Chileans to come around the cape, they’ve got the perfectly acceptable Condells, Counties and Batch 3 Gun Leanders, plus some decent little FACs. Thinking of which, the patrol vessel Dumbarton Castle should be somewhere around here, as indicated on the Northern Fury website. She’d be an utter liability, of course, but she’d be here. The Lewis B. Puller arrives at Port Stanley after an epic thirty knot run across most of the South Atlantic, and then realises she has made a minor navigational error and arrived at Port Harriet, the next inlet south of Port Stanley. She shamefacedly creeps around the headland into the actual harbour, watched by a single penguin, and refills on AVTUR as quickly as possible.

After the Puller reemerges, I’m all ready to go. I’m tracking the Argentinian SSK off Stanley, I’m shadowing the MEKOs, I’ve temporarily lost the Drummond but right now she’s north of 46° South and not really threatening the islands. The only problem I have is that the Argentinians aren’t bloody starting anything and it’s taking a reasonable amount of my concentration to remain at this level of readiness. Eventually one of the Argentinian ships will slip my tail, and I think I only have the SSK (another Type 209, the Santiago) because it’s snorkelling. I toy with the idea of deploying the South Africans to Mount Pleasant, where there are stocks of British 1000lb bombs they can use, but honestly I think that the South Africans are being kept on side by the crimes of the Soviets in starting this war and by the anti-communist sympathies of the armed forces. They’re not going to want to bomb Argentina.

The Periphery

The JSTARS identifies all of the Venezuelan frigates as Lupos, which I already knew, but now I can have their radar, sonar and weapon ranges overlayed onto my map. I wish there was a way to manually set an ambiguous contact as a certain platform, it would really help in situations like this where my sensors can detect it’s a Venezuelan Lupo but can’t tell if it’s from now, ten years ago or ten years into the future. Not long after, I lose them again as all six Venezuelans start steaming towards Trinidad. There’s really nothing I can do about an attack on Trinidad, but if they go for it then the gloves are coming right off.

The capable Peruvian FFG Montero arrives at the exit of the canal. For the time being I instruct her to form up on the Eloy Alfaro and protect the canal zone, but she’s not going to be kept on second line duties forever. Almost simultaneously, 93FS are taken off my hands and sent to Europe, less two of their aircraft that I lost for them.

Everything then starts to fall apart in the South Atlantic. I lose the Drummond again and have to fish about for her quite a lot before reacquiring her on the towed array. The Heroina reverses course and runs right over the Tireless, detecting her for sure. I try to slip under the layer but she still seems to be tracking me, so I sprint away and hope to approach again. She certainly can’t hear me very well as long as I’m slow and not right under her, so I can escape into her baffles again. Submarine work in the shallow waters around here is dodgy though. I reestablish my various tracks, but continue to worry.

I end this session at midnight on the 27th of February, the start of Day 4.

Waiting for more, really entertaining!