AAR SP: Alone in the Snow

[Anonymous]

AAR

„Alone in the Snow“
Scenario designed by Herman Hum

Based on an original Harpoon Classic HDS-II-scenario
Database: Players DB 7.4.7

Game engine: H3 ANW 3.8.0 Release Version
Aircraft Logistics on

A. Foreword:

Herman rebuilds a lot of HC scens, especially those of the HC HDS-II-Battleset, with AGSIs permission. “Alone in the Snow” belongs to the HDS-II-GIUK-Battleset, Herman´s favourite.

Sweden´s situation is difficult, but not hopeless: It faces an airborne Russian invasion. Sweden has got several squadrons of fighter-bombers in order to keep his bases intact, especially to save Visby.

B. My experience

1. Start is November 21st, 1997, at 00:30 AM.

2. First thing to do: Change all Gripen loadouts into AMRAAMs.

3. Launched one flight of four Viggens from Visby.

4. At 00:43 all four Viggens are shot down. They are totally outgunned by Flankers and Fulcrums with Alamo missiles.

5. About 00:52: The air attacks against Visby have begun: first hits. So here is the dilemma again: If I keep my outgunned aircraft on the ground, they are hammered there – together with their base. If I make them airborne they fell victim to a real turkey shooting.

6. At 01:00 I launch two more Viggens from Visby in the hope of shooting down some attackers.

7. Seven minutes later both are shot down. Humiliating.

8. First blood! At 01:35 my AMRAAM equipped Gripen kill two Fulcrums and manage to run aways from a cloud of Alamos.

So is that the right tactic: To keep the Viggens ground in order to wait for the Russian helos and to conduct surprise counter attack with the Gripens on Russian fighters?

9. After several dogfights we have 03:00 AM. My Gripens perform on nearly equal terms with the Flankers and Fulcrums, but will it be enough?

I have to survive for another 21.5 hours!

Hadn´t thought that even AMRAAMs are barely equal to those Russian killer missiles.

Ok, back to my orders: I must not lose more than 24 ac; I have to kill 20+ helos and I have to protect Visby.

That will become a race against time. I need to keep enough fighters to perform my own turkey shoot on the Russian helos. But if I do no protect Visby against air attacks I will never see those incoming helos…

10. Its 08:00 AM. I lost 20 ac so far – too many, I fear. My tactic has been to aggressive. I got about 17 Russian fighters and fighter-bombers, but the kill-ratio still is bad for me.

And there are 16 more hours left. Of course the Russian helo pilots will wait as long as possible before they board their machines in order to capture Visby.

11. At 09:07 its over: Four more Viggen shot down in a failed attempt to stop the next attacks on Visby.


D. Resume

This one is a brain-teaser. Even the “AMRAAM-updated version” is very hard because of several reasons:

a) The Swedish side pays heavily for not having any jammers or AEW birds.
b) Finding the right tactic is extremely difficult: Keeping the birds grounde will lose by losing Visby. Sending them to fight means sending them to the butcher.

The right way to win it may be a mixed strategy: First - Ferry all Viggens to a backward base, loading them with AAW missiles – and keep them on the ground. Second – Sending pairs of AMRAAM armed Gripens to defend Visby and run away after firing from max. distance.

I´ll try it!

And I´ll try the original HC scen in order to compare both versions.

Thank you for another fine rebuilt, Herman!

Ralf