The Big One: Northern Fury #34 - The Longest Battle

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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.

[Gunner98]

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

[FrangibleCover]

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."

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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.

[Gunner98]

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....

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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.

[Gunner98]

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

[FrangibleCover]

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.

[Galahad78]

Waiting for more, really entertaining!

[FrangibleCover]

Waiting for more, really entertaining!

Thanks! Keep the comments coming everyone, and ask any questions you have.

[FrangibleCover]

Session 11

I continue to stare at the T-AGOS-9 Victorious, way the hell in the southern ocean on her way to Cape Town. I’m not getting her for a while, I think, but she’s going to link up with the Outeniqua and Isaac Dyobha down there and all three are going to transit north in company. Such a task group still has no ASW capability, but at least it can fend off a raider or two.

On the morning of the 27th, FF 1084 McCandless reports that she is exiting Charleston harbour, activating from the reserve. I look for her at Charleston and she is not there. I look for her elsewhere, then in the OOB screen. She isn’t here.

I decide to go for a probe over Venezuela to see what’s going on. I can see OECM aircraft in the interior and some sort of patrol aircraft loitering over the Lesser Antilles. Venezuela doesn’t have any OECM aircraft, so that’s either a gift or a real Soviet, and if the Soviets want to do something down here, I want them to not do it. My E-3, E-8 and six Vipers all move forward from their defensive positions and Greenling puts her ESM mast up. I discover that the Lupos I thought had gone to Trinidad have now turned around and Greenling immediately abandons her picket station and starts working into their baffles. I kill a couple of F-16s and identify the aircraft over the Antilles as a Falcon 20 SIGINT, but can’t really achieve much with limited fuel and more F-16s scrambling in response. To do this properly I’d need to sortie the tankers forward, and I don’t want to do that while the Lupos are still here, acting as radar picquets.

Not long later, however, my E-8 slips into position over the Windward Isles to get positive identification back on the Lupos and support Greenling. While out there, she finds six objects on the Venezuelan coast near Trinidad, tentatively identified as vehicles. Perhaps an AShM battery to interdict the passage?

Greenling manoeuvres around the back of the Lupos and then heads in, at high speed and maximum depth, keeping under the layer and behind its target. As I’ve said before, I’m not a confident submarine commander and I want to give myself every possible chance here.
When I think I’m near enough, I loose a single Mk.48 Mod 4 (no ADCAPS here, this is a Permit). The wire breaks immediately, for whatever reason, and I creep to the side to break datum. The torpedo travels about half the requisite distance before the Venezuelans react, and their reaction is very confused: Each ship begins to sail in circles as they accelerate and the Mk.48 simply homes in and does the job. Buoyed by her success and weighed down again by ballast water, the Greenling charges around to dispatch the other two Lupos. They’re more ready to react this time, but the quality of their reaction is still terrible, it’s like they’re detecting the torpedoes but not getting a useful bearing. With only three Mk.48s remaining though, Greenling is dangerously short on ammo. I’m going to bring Trepang down from Florida to replace her, then cycle her up to port and try to replenish torpedoes. I’m also going to offload her illegal Tomahawks and her pointless nuclear SUBROCs, over half of my ammunition load consists of weapons I’m not allowed to fire. As I’m finding where to send the Greenling, I notice Charleston seems to be the only place that I can rearm anything. No replacement ammunition is available for ships that aren’t American, and the Americans can only go to one place (which has absolutely loads of Tomahawks and Harpoons).

A swarm of aircraft can be seen over Lt.Col. Teofilo Manodez AB in Venezuela, which is the one that the USAF struck in CF #4. Russians? A strike? I start to detect Fox Fire radars, it’s MiG-25s. I think they’re just reacting to the loss of the Lupos, they don’t seem to be moving offensively, but their presence is very much worth noting.

My bastions have their first success, detecting a diesel submarine ascending from the depths in the Mona Passage between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. I have it on a VLAD buoy at five nautical miles and keep it as it goes deep again, but despite it obviously being very loud while creeping on batteries my pingers identify it as a Tango. The nearest strike option is a Sea King, so the Tango gets to sail about a little more before my helicopter finally arrives and… is overtaken by my faster P-3, which one-shots the B-380 Gorkovsky. Next time, Sea King, next time. This is an interesting contact as well because the Clark and the Banckert Group had both transited that strait, so the Tango either just arrived or managed to miss both interceptions. I’m glad to have it though, because the next thing that’s going through that strait is the big Panama convoy.

I get a Skunk contact directly off Charleston! What the hell is that? My nearby freighters flee and a P-3 charges in for a look, but I think I’ve already worked out what’s going on here. Sure enough, it’s a Knox-class FF crewed by ‘biologics’. I’m glad I haven’t torpedoed any whales yet. Looks like McCandless has spawned correctly but not switched sides. A quick bit of Lua sorts her out.

[Gunner98]

Great reporting, thank you. The ammo reload situation was a struggle with me manually filling magazines which then disappeared. The problem got fixed and I also leaned a bit more lua so I will fix that.

Cheers

B

[FrangibleCover]

Session 12

Atlantic Part 1

Sturgeon arrives off Ad Dakhla, Western Sahara. She can’t actually get into the anchorage without surfacing, so I have her sit outside instead and watch for traffic coming in or out. I don’t know if I’d get away with slipping into the anchorage on the surface, but I might try it overnight. I send one of the EP-3Es down to help her find things, basing temporarily out of the infamous Tenerife Norte airport. Hopefully it’s less dangerous when you have a FLIR turret, and nobody else to hit. Once the EP-3 is on station I try a BOL shot into the harbour from outside, but forget to set the torpedo to cruise before I go. Not to worry, it seems to clip the spit protecting the harbour and detonate. I didn’t even know they could do that! I work the EP-3 in a bit closer but I can’t see anything other than the AO in the harbour. That suits me fine.

Having functionally no time limits is really strange for my pace of operations. My current plan is to have the Key West Zoo reactivate the day after tomorrow, give me one day of intensive strikes on SAdlB just to finish the job off, inactivate for another few days and only then proceed to Puerto Rico to begin operations against Venezuela. That’s basically me blocking out the entire run time of a standard ‘long’ scenario for messing about before achieving what I want to do, and I’m doing it like this so that I can move a couple of submarines around and think vaguely about detaching my handful of Floridian F-16 ADFs to the fight. As long as I have Soviet operations in Venezuela curtailed (looking mostly at the port and the ELINT) next week, I’m happy, it’ll take that long to get the Rio convoy up here anyway.

Now that I’m starting to assemble convoys at the Azores and Bermuda, I can confidently say that Command’s terrain avoidance routing system completely falls to bits in archipelagos. The ships seem to be completely unwilling to use passages, even very wide ones, between islands and instead want to loop way around the outsides of things.

Venezuela

Greenling finds herself in the perfect position to take a Harpoon shot at the other Lupo group. Because their SAMs are at the stern and their Fast Forty CIWS are on the sides, the Lupo is nearly defenceless against straight-down-the-throat Harpoon shots. At least, I hope… I look again at the briefing - “under strict guidance for Harpoon - only to be used when no other weapon system will achieve the effect”. I think I’m comfortable with that against this target, the Lupos are very dangerous warships (killing one gives me more VP than an Oscar!), the Greenling is red on Mk.48s, which are also her only self-defence weapon in these dangerous waters, and if I don’t attack now it’s going to be days before the Trepang gets down here and is able to make an attack - if she isn’t sunk herself. I refer this decision to CINCLANT, here represented by a friend who is reading the AAR, and he tells me not to engage and to just shadow the frigates until Trepang arrives.

I decide instead to go and do some more fighter skirmishing. If I can keep knocking down Venezuelan CAP fighters without loss, it puts me in a much better position to deal with MiG-25s and anything they might have set up as interceptors. Of course, as soon as I say that I lose one of my ADFs to another F-16, although not without taking down a pair myself. Two more F-16s rise up to chase me away, then another two. I swoop in and pick up the Falcon SIGINT aircraft before scarpering, although I have to down all four other F-16s to escape. On the way out I have to do some fancy tanking to save another ADF, which I’ve run past its fuel limits to dodge the Venezuelans. Ten dead Venezuelan Falcons total takes a big bite out of their rated dozen aircraft, but State tells me we sold them twenty four so I’m not relying on that. I can certainly see another two up on CAP, which are replaced by another pair when they go bingo. The Lupos are really MVP for the Venezuelans at the moment, I’m having to fight inside their radar envelopes and dodge their SAM envelopes as I fight. There are no other Venezuelan radars emitting, everything they’re doing they’re doing based on ELINT and the Lupos.

I probe again a few hours later, this time taking a Compass Call with me and going all the way around the Lupos. They can’t see where I am, but I’m sure they have good enough ELINT to know that I’m out here. Good. I knock down the first pair of F-16s, passing them between my two flights of ADFs and boxing them in with long ranged Sparrow shots so that I can engage without retaliation. The Sparrows have pretty poor accuracy themselves, but they allow my F-16s to control the engagement against their F-16s and take the best possible Sidewinder fights. This strategy would be even more successful if my micro wasn’t bad, but I still manage to burst over the Venezuelan heartland near El Libertador without further opposition and catch three different support aircraft in more or less the same place. First I hunt down an OECM Cub, then I rip down a 707 tanker and finally after a long chase, a MiG-25RBT. It wasn’t even afterburnering away from me, it was just cruising quickly. No further aircraft emerge from El Liberatador. Perhaps the eleventh and twelfth F-16s I shot down really were the last two? However, further to the south there is a veritable swarm of MiG-25s up again. I have nothing to stick around for and everything to run away from, so I beat an organised retreat, covered by other F-16s.

South Atlantic

In the Falklands, I am being forced to consider the possibility that the Argentinians don’t intend me any real harm. They’ve not started anything and currently all of their surface ships are sailing away from the Falklands, with the Drummond now way the hell up north of Puerto Madryn, on a course to go to Buenos Aires. The Learjets are staying well out of Falklands airspace. Is deterrence working? Am I the one acting provocatively? I’m still not happy with the SSKs sniffing around the Falklands, though. One is even on the surface now, either dropping off SF or failing to navigate the shallow inlets south of Stanley properly. Nevertheless, the next package to go down south is ready. Another 747, four more Tornado GRs and a VC.10 tanker. I also dispatch the Tristars just in case, although I should think the VC.10 is carrying enough fuel for everyone. It’s lucky I did, the Tornados identify that they don’t have enough fuel for the journey and immediately set off to refuel from the KC-135 off Puerto Rico! I manage to forestall them with an unscheduled sip from the Tristars and off they go to the Falklands.

Meanwhile on the islands, the SSK Santiago has managed to sail into Low Bay in Lafonia and gotten stuck. I’m positioning Jupiter and Puller at one outlet each and then I intend to just keep her trapped in here until… I don’t know. Either until they fight me, surrender or starve. I can get supplies helicoptered down from Stanley, they can’t.

Atlantic Part 2

After a quick fuel stop at Bermuda, the JFK prepares to embark on her next mission: A sweep of the Mid-Atlantic while escorting the SURTASS ship Prevail. I don’t want to slow a real convoy down with the Prevail, but I want her on the other side of the Atlantic, so JFK makes sense as an attached unit, which can also dispatch S-3s to rapidly localise and engage any CZ contacts she gets.

Night falls over the Sahara and Sturgeon begins her special operation. She surfaces completely and begins to sail into the inlet where the Berezina is hiding, flying a large Nigerian flag. I still don’t understand what Nigeria has to do with all of this, but obviously the Soviets are keeping them on side. Even with this approach, no dice. I can’t get over the sand bar at the entrance to the inlet, and I wonder if the Soviets can. My EP-3 is forced off station by fuel concerns and I turn Sturgeon's radar on to try and keep the spot on the Soviet AO. This is absolutely stupid, but I seem to be getting away with it so far. Sturgeon tells me she’s in range, so I let an ADCAP go. The torpedo runs for 1200ft and then explodes on the bottom! The shock knocks out Sturgeon’s sonar, breaks the still-open torpedo tube and shatters the radio antenna. That’s quite enough of this, now only Harpoon can achieve the effect. Perhaps not thinking as clearly as I could be, I expend the maximum of three Harpoons at the Berezina. It’s lucky I did, her point defences take down two of my missiles as they go in. I also get a momentary contact on two Land Roll radars, associated with shore based SA-8. It’s lucky I didn’t go on to my Plan C, which was to fly the South Africans up to Cape Verde and take it out with bombs. The Berezina has taken a Harpoon and I’m fairly confident she’s going to sink soonish, so Sturgeon slips away and heads for deeper waters where she can deploy her towed array and get some situational awareness back. Mission accomplished.

[FrangibleCover]

Session 13

With the successes over Venezuela, I move an E-8 forward to conduct a radar reconnaissance of the coastline. I’ve not seen anything on the ground, no SAMs, no radars, nothing but the contact near Trinidad. The E-8 also doesn’t detect anything along the whole coast between Punto Fijo and Puerto La Cruz, which sets me up for bombing it later on. The ADFs escorting also knock down another MiG-25RBT while they’re there. I’m not sure why these high performance reconnaissance bombers are just being used as ELINT platforms, but I’m not going to complain.

My EP-3 comes out again to find that the Berezina is still afloat. I take a parthian shot with the Sturgeon’s last Harpoon, which connects again but a long reconnaissance with the FLIR turret still shows only moderate damage to the AO. I’m out of ideas here, to be honest. Perhaps I’ll run a European ship down here and kill it with my ‘free’ Otomats or Exocets? She’s astonishingly heavily armed for a replenishment ship, I must say. Who else fits a whole point defence SAM system, light guns and CIWS to their oilers?

Quick bug report: The FFG Emden comes out of the Med, which the initial report on ships I’m supposed to receive agrees with, but the pop-up when she appears says she’s at Portsmouth. I’m still not really sure what to do with all these new frigates I’m getting. I could start running ‘small’ convoys with the ships that are randomly spawning, but they won’t be properly escorted and I’m worried about losing the whole shebang to an SSGN. I also feel like if I do run those convoys they’ll probably end up with the cargo ships loitering at Bermuda and the Azores waiting for a big convoy to take them across the Atlantic, which won’t form until the current large convoys have cycled through anyway.

I get a message that the AOE Supply is going to enter my area of operations and give me some fuel in return for an escort to Norfolk. This is hugely problematic, because the way I’ve been running things so far means that I have loads of fuel availability and absolutely nothing anywhere near where Supply will enter my area of responsibility, equidistant between Ireland and Newfoundland in the area I deliberately chose to avoid because of the submarine risk and proximity to occupied Iceland. I honestly think she’s going to spawn right onto a submarine and die, but I feel like I’ll be in even more trouble if I don’t even attempt to escort her, so I’m going to send the Type 21 ‘frigate’ Active to pick her up and transfer her to Halifax for a start. Just like the real RN, I don’t mind losing a Type 21.

I was given this instruction as a warning for ‘tomorrow, at 1100Z’, but the Supply arrives today at 1100! Even worse, she’s still under 2nd Fleet control and will be making her merry way to Norfolk in a straight line at 22 knots. That’s simply unescortable, I can’t commit the sort of assets required to make that work and I’m nowhere near where I’d need to be. If I still had the CP-140s at Gander I might have a chance, but I think I’m just going to have to leave her to her fate and hope. If she makes it to the Eastern Seaboard I can try something with the Canadians, I guess.

The first rays of dawn peek over the horizon at Key West and I dispatch the zoo again. If I’m really quick I think I can manage three strikes in one day from most aircraft, and that’s going to be enough to finish the job. I also decide to try one of the Tigers with cluster bombs, on the basis that they’ll definitely penetrate the HAS even if their internal effect sucks. Generally the bombing is pretty good, with two HAS visibly collapsing and many damaged. The cluster bombs don’t work though, allegedly failing to penetrate. Another HAS burns out as the aircraft withdraw, plus three more later on.

Another superb VLAD sonobuoy gets me another SS off southern Portugal. It’s at two knots and deep, a very impressive pick up by the buoy. It’s a Romeo, but Romeo’s are still dangerous when they’re sat like this one is: Deep, slow and right where I want to move ships over. An American and a Spanish Orion are both racing for the kill. The American arrives first, but the Spaniard is the only one with buoys left and reacquires the Romeo after it slips off the VLAD. There’s a little scuffle overhead as both aircraft try to turn around fastest, but the Spanish aircraft lands the first hit and then the American screws up their run on the perfectly stationary cripple. Points to Spain for this one as a second NEARTIP finishes the job against S-350.

As I finish up for the day I start to worry about my little test run from Chesapeake to New York. It’s definitely been in the receipt area for over a day and it hasn’t given me any points or any indication that anything is happening with it. Any ideas as to what might have happened?

[Gunner98]

As I finish up for the day I start to worry about my little test run from Chesapeake to New York. It’s definitely been in the receipt area for over a day and it hasn’t given me any points or any indication that anything is happening with it. Any ideas as to what might have happened?

Not certain what might be going on here, were these ships from Europe to the US?

B

[FrangibleCover]

As I finish up for the day I start to worry about my little test run from Chesapeake to New York. It’s definitely been in the receipt area for over a day and it hasn’t given me any points or any indication that anything is happening with it. Any ideas as to what might have happened?

Not certain what might be going on here, were these ships from Europe to the US?

B

No, one of the randomly generated ships was Chesapeake - New York, starting from Chesapeake Bay. I thought that was fair enough, it's coastal traffic, but perhaps that's a bad generation? None of the transatlantic shipping has had time to transit yet.

[FrangibleCover]

Session 13

An opportunity forms as the Venezuelan Lupo group separates around the Isla La Blanquilla. Greenling might be close enough to intercept one while avoiding the other two, so I get her to close in. Some faffing about is necessary, but eventually she sits deep and silent right in the path of the isolated Lupo. I take a single shot, down the throat, and try to use the wire to hold it under the layer until the last possible moment. The Lupo detects something anyway though, and begins a headlong 30 knot charge… towards me? Did it get the launch transient but not the torpedo running? The other two Lupos turn towards me as well, evidently this approach was not as stealthy as I hoped. At only four nautical miles the separated Lupo, the Mariscal Sucre herself, realises the position that she’s in and turns to run, but it’s much too late for that. The Sucre has just enough time to turn towards port before she rolls over and sinks. Greenling withdraws, flush with success, while the Venezuelans move to pick up survivors. In the warm waters of the Caribbean and this close to a friendly island, I think they probably shouldn’t. I’ll only sink them again.

The second strike of the day takes off from Key West. I think I am going to manage three strikes in a single day, a testament to my ground crews. This one is very concentrated on the six HAS on the north-eastern side of the facility and manages to take out all of them. At low level and with no opposition, these experienced instructors are terrifying even with iron bombs. The F-5s take longer to reload and make their second attack in the afternoon, knocking out another shelter. I can really feel the difference between the Mk.84 2000lb bombs and the other, smaller bombs used by other aircraft. Perhaps I shouldn’t have made my first F-5 strikes with the 750lb M117 demolition bombs, I was thinking more about the word demolition than the weight.

Convoy AB01 sets off from the European side of the sea bridge, headed by Jeanne d’Arc and her increased complement of helicopters (kindly donated to by Doyle and Klakring earlier in the scenario). At the same time, a small convoy consisting of the Lupo class Orsa, the Baptiste de Andrade class Cerqueira and a single merchantman sets off for Tenerife, to provide an attack capability against the secret Western Sahara submarine base, to get the merchant moved and possibly to escort the damaged Sturgeon back to Rota. At almost the same time, VP(R)-62 activates from reserve and I can more or less fill the Mid-Atlantic Gap. The CP-140s seem to have loads of loiter time and not enough buoys to use it, so I send them out to the long range patrol and assign the reservists to the western side. BA01 is approaching the middle of the Atlantic more or less unmolested. Incidentally, it turns out that L.F. Wade was, at the time, NAS Bermuda. I didn’t realise there were actual military facilities here, I thought I was just filling the place with Electras and hoping someone on the ground still had parts for them.

For the good of the few rather than the many, I take the CP-140s from the Halifax route patrol and assign them to escort the Supply as much as possible. Nothing will be going to Halifax any time soon, but the point of these fixed patrols is to detect submarines transiting across the lines or moving to lie in wait on the swept paths that my convoys are frequenting. I hope this doesn’t come back to bite me. I also hope it works. The Grayling, deploying from Groton and immediately swapping her TLAMs for more ADCAPS, estimates the Supply’s course and starts to sweep it in reverse from Connecticut to as near to Newfoundland as I can get before rendezvous. I don’t like the idea of a 22 knot run along half the East Coast to sweep the seas for her, but I’ll do it.

Another large transfer of aircraft to the Falklands begins. Three more Tornado fighters, four more bombers, two more Nimrods and a VC.10 set off for the islands, aided again by the Tristars. Once these aircraft arrive there’s really not much more that the Falklands need, that’s enough fighters to annihilate the Argentinian air force, enough bombers to sink any landing ships they can come up with and enough patrol aircraft to sweep the seas around the Falklands of even the stealthiest submarines. I’m a little worried about overcommitting forces down here, but this is the only place I can get British air ammunition so evidently I’m supposed to use them down here. I even have another eight strike aircraft and two tankers at St. Mawgan which I’m supposed to deploy south, although they have a few loadouts in Cornwall they could use. Perhaps Whitehall knows better than I do about Argentinian air strength, but then why so many strike aircraft? I begin to form a cunning plan.

I have now worked out what has gone wrong with the test cargo ship, just after moving it out of the area to see if that helped: I have to keep the ships in the receipt area for three days! That’s a lot longer than I expected and might really cramp my operations, but that’s what the rules are. Generally, though, I think the convoy war is going really well. BA01 is now halfway across the Atlantic and not exactly moving subtly, I was definitely expecting to run into something out here. Perhaps this is just my strategy of only using the southern route and they’re all up between Halifax and Britain, but I have been running into a few subs on my routes.

At Rota, USN ground crew complete the stripping of one of the British Airways 747s. In the absence of a Combi and without anyone taking them from my command, I have decided that I’ll convert whatever I have for the role. The first class lounge is loaded with grubby shipyard workers and the expanse of the main deck, with a hole cut in the back for access from the luggage compartment, contains a variety of spare components for a Sturgeon class submarine. The aircraft sets off for Tenerife again, to meet up with Sturgeon and effect repairs on site. My maintainers stand around, looking at the entire fittings of a 747 piled in a corner of the tarmac. While the maintenance offices and crew lounges at Rota will be known as the best appointed in the USN, I might have to pay for BA to buy a new aircraft. Nevertheless, I’m going to do the same thing to the other two.

Dusk rolls in over Key West and I call off the third strike. Two in a day is pretty decent work and I’ve taken out most of the shelters I was targeting, with another burning out in the night. With no air action from Cuba since day 1 and most of their basing structure in ruins, I think I can afford to divert effort down to Venezuela now.