Diary of a Rookie: Part 1, English Jets over Uganda

[MrMan95]

This is my first ever AAR. I’m a newbie to CMANO, I bought the game last year, but I’ve only started playing it in the last week or so. Now that I know my way around the game well enough to manage simple situations I thought I might take a crack at writing an AAR. I’m doing this for a few reasons, first off I’ve always wanted to write an AAR, second I thought it might make the experience of playing the game more rewarding and third I hope I might receive some tips from the community while I do it.

For this AAR I’ll be covering the ‘English Jets Over Uganda’ tutorial scenario from Mark Gellis. All being well I’ll write some more, moving onto a more complicated scenario each time, now that all that’s said, let’s begin!

09/06/1973 - Uganda 02:00:00 Zulu

For two and a half years Idi Amin has ruled as the eccentric dictator of Uganda. A series of escalating ‘provocations’ has led the United Kingdom to the point where it feels military action is warranted, so a squadron of RAF aircraft (that’s us!) has been dispatched to Kenya to strike some high-value targets in the Entebbe area. I know plenty of people reading this will be familiar with the A/O and OOB, but let’s go over it anyway.

Our Area of Opperations for this action is in south-western Kenya and south-eastern and Central Uganda. All of our aircraft are based out of Moi Airbase in Kenya, to the best of my knowledge all Ugandan Air Force aircraft are based out of Entebbe Airport. The aircraft at my disposal are:

* 2 Shackleton AEW.2 - These are going to be my eyes, allowing me to leave my fighters with their radars off while patrolling the A/O.
* 8 Phantom II FGR.2 - These are the most powerful aircraft I have at my disposal. Four are set up in a pure air-to-air configuration, with four Sparrows, four Sidewinders, a 20mm gunpod and a pair of external fuel tanks. Four are set up in an air-to-ground configuration, with only two Sparrows, sixty four SNEB 100mm rockets, the same two extra fuel tanks and one double-size fuel tank.
* 8 Lightning F.6 - These are probably my favourite Cold War aircraft of all time, sadly they were designed to shoot down Soviet bombers that made it through the UK’s SAMs, not for air superiority. They all come equipped with two Red Top heatseakers and 30mm ADEN cannons.
* 8 Buccaneer S.2B - My dedicated strike aircraft. Two are outfitted with recon loadouts, the others with four 1000lb bombs and a pair of fuel tanks.

As for the Ugandans, we don’t know exactly what they have in the realm of aircraft, but we do know that they possess MiG-17 and MiG-21 fighters.

Now let’s move onto the actual mission.

In my first few tries of this mission I’ve attempted to gain air superiority first, using my Phantom IIs and Lightning F.6s to clear the skies before I send my Buccaneers to bomb out the airport and the valuable targets in Entebbe. Not today. Today I’m going to attempt to be much more aggressive, to avoid waiting for the enemy. Today I’m going to start out by sending all my Phantoms right in towards Entebbe to launch rockets at Ugandan aircraft on the ground. While that’s happening I’ll have an AEW aircraft forming up just inside Kenyan airspace to give me eyes on everything flying in the A/O. As the Phantoms are attacking Entebbe I’ll have Lightnings forming up to the north and south, hopefully allowing me to swoop in behind Ugandan aircraft that pursue my Phantoms out of the area. The aim is to knock out the Ugandan Air Force before most of it gets off the ground, allowing my Buccanneers free reign, but in a much more timely fashion and with much fewer losses than my previous attempts.

That’s the plan at least, as we know no plan survives contact with the enemy.


In the first phase of the operation I’m going to start by putting all my Phantom’s in the air, arranged in pairs, their first destination will be a rally point just south of Kisumu. This is achieved through the use of a support mission that all Phantoms are assigned to. All aircraft are dispatched in sections, or pairs.

Here’s a picture of the mission points set up: Rally Point 1 is for the Phantoms, 2 and 3 are assigned a pair of lightnings each, but for now the mission is inactive. The AEW point is assigned a shackleton, but it will keep it’s radar off for now.

The first aircraft to take off is a Shackleton, given it’s so slow I’m going to give it a twenty minute head start before the phantoms go up, another ten minutes after that I’ll be sending the Lightings up to their rally points.

About forty five minutes into the scenario my Phantoms and AEW aircraft are at their stations, the Lightnings are only about forty minutes out and we have a contact, almost certainly a MiG-21, as we have detected emissions from it’s short-range fire-control radar. The contact is to the south-east of Entebbe, so we’re going to be taking the Phantoms in at low-altitude from the north-east.

At this point I have a dilemma for myself. I’m not sure whether to use the lightnings and the a2a phantoms as a distraction, to lead the MiG-21 and any compatriots that have been spotted away from the phantoms with their rockets. I was concerned that this might lead to the launching of more fighters from the airport though, so I’ve elected to remain fast and low in the hopes of getting in to fire off my rockets before too many aircraft are in the sky. Then I can keep my Phantoms on-station near the airport to shoot down aircraft as they take-off. I set my Phantoms on a path to come in from the NE at minimum altitude, I’m fairly sure I’m still undetected, I’m inside Kenya still and I’m running no active sensors.

Oh dear. A few more minutes down the line I pick up another two FCR contacts. More MiG-21s, I reckon. Still, there are 24 sparrow missiles in that flight of Phantoms, hopefully enough to deal with anything that they throw at us.

Another few minutes in and things are starting to get a little worse. Looks like five in the air now. I’m starting to think about turning on some Lightning or AEW radars. Though currently there’s no escort for the AEW.

Finally, with the Phantoms 60nm (as the crow flies) out from Entebbe I switch my AEW aircraft’s radar on, hopefully that should give me a better fix on the MiGs and draw them away from Entebbe.

And a few minutes later I have the first major problem of the day. I overestimated the Radar on the Shackleton, thinking it’d be safe to leave the radar on the Phantoms off. Now a contact, presumably a MiG-21, has appeared just 5nm in front of my Phantoms. It could be worse though. The MiG-21 is, to the best of my knowledge, armed only with guns and with rear-aspect only heatseekers. My Sparrows have no such problem. Fox One, Sparrows away!. I start by launching two of the SARH missiles, hoping this should be more than sufficient at such a short range.

And it is, one missile impacts just a few moments after launch, I leave the radar of the group that fired on, but I send them on a slightly deviating course, heading straight south, hoping this should distract the MiGs away from my strike. It works, another contact is bearing in, it’s heading straight to the detached group with their radars on, I fire another pair of Sparrows 10nm out, miss. A second pair does the job. So far I’ve expended six sparrows to shoot down two MiG-21s, is three-to-one a good ratio?

It’s at this point that I start planning my strike specifically and I realise I may have been somewhat ambitious. There are a lot of targets on the ground, I’m not sure what to hit. I’m going to send one group to hit four ammo shelters, sixteen rockets for each. The other ones will fire rockets at a number of tarmac spaces and hangars.

Right now I move my escorting Phantoms up to 12000ft and switch the other group’s radars on. It’s at this point that I realise I had made a mistake, I’d earlier identified five MiGs, there were only two, the other three contacts were ground radars, FCRs for AA guns, it would seem. Luckily the Ugandans don’t seem to have any air search capability. That elation doesn’t last for long, sadly. Another two FCR contacts make themselves know, flying directly at my escorts from the airport. Oh well, still got plenty of Sparrows to spare and they don’t seem to be after my strike aircraft.

Shortly afterwards a new contact is detected, this from a range-only radar. A MiG-17, it would appear. The pair of Phantoms that’ve done all the fighting so far expend their last two Sparrows at the two MiG-21s inbound towards them, one missile for each. Right now’s where I realise I’d made another mistake. Until this point I’d been manually firing all weapons, but I’d forgotten I’d left my Phantoms on weapons tight, bugger. The second pair are firing off Sparrows at aircraft I’ve already got engaged. To make matters worse, no good hits with the Sparrows, time to close in for Sidewinders and guns. That doesn’t start well, a MiG-21 gets off a good barrage and sends a Phantom tumbling out of the skies. This reminds me of that MiG-17, no worries, I target it with a pair of sparrows from one of the strike aircraft. This does require that I switch their radars on though. The MiG goes down, as does one of the ‘21s in the air. That leaves one MiG-21 and 3 range-only contacts, MiG-17s, in the air. At a range of 9nm, the strike Phantoms with their radars on fire their last two missiles at one MiG-17 9.5nm out. They miss the first salvo, then fire again.

At this point things get a little hectic, so I’ll be a little less verbose, all I’ll say is the dogfighting begins. So far I’m down one Phantom to three MiG-21s and one MiG-17. With the aircraft so close I leave them on auto-attack missions, I’m not too confident when it comes to my abilities to manually control a knife fight.

Instead I turn my focus to the SNEB armed aircraft. The Ammo shelters are fired on. One Shelter is destroyed, one takes heavy damage and one light, the other isn’t hit.. Question for the audience: does heavy damage mean that the ammo shelter will be out of ammo, or not? In either event when my planes pass over they spot a MiG-21 on a runway access point, looks like they're about to have some company, unless my second flight of Phantoms can hit it with a barrage of rockets on take-off. The first flight is sent round in a circuit so the other aircraft can fire off it’s rockets too…. Or not, a MiG-17 catches them passing over the airport and knocks it out of the sky. The remaining aircraft is all out of ammo, so I send him jetting back to base at military power.


All's not lost though, the second strike flight knocks down one of the offending aircraft with it’s last Sparrow on the way in. On the way in I attempt to target a runway and an access point with aircraft on them, one a MiG-21 and the other an unknown light aircraft. It won’t let me. Maybe allowing the attacking of spotted aircraft directly rather than just the runway (which apparently rockets can’t) would be a nice feature?

Most of my rockets miss wildly. I’m starting to regret this cunning plan. With all the rockets expended I order all my Phantoms to RTB. At this point I’m down two Phantoms for the loss of four MiG-21s and two MiG-17s. I’m expecting the Ugandan MiGs in the air to follow, so I send my Lightnings in from the north and south. Turns out I made another mistake here, the northern Rally point has a pair of Lightnings, the southern group is just a single Lightning. Still, as far as I’m aware the Ugandans have no idea that they’re there, they’ve not turned their radars on yet. The plan is to slot in behind the MiGs as they pursue.

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And that's all we've got time for tonight. Apparently I need to make enough posts before I can embed images so instead I'm going to link an imgur gallery, it can be found at imgur dot com /a/UO9Oi

Please be gentle, this is my first attempt at an AAR of any type, constructive criticism is welcome and encouraged.

[MrMan95]

Well, it’s the next day and I’m about to start working on the second part of the mission, beginning with the Phantoms making their escape as the Lightnings move in to cover. I’m going to try and keep the writing more concise this time around.

Let’s start with the current situation. I’ve lost two Phantoms, but shot down four MiG-21s and 2 MiG-17s. Looking at currently active contacts it looks like there are four MiG-17s and two MiG-21s in the air. I’m planning to have the Lightnings fly in to knock out the MiG-21s and then knock down the remaining MiG-17s at their leisure.

This doesn’t go as I’d planned, at all. My lightning's manage to shoot down a single MiG-17, three more phantoms are shot down on the way out. In hindsight jetting the Phantoms up to high altitude on afterburners to get out quick may have been a better idea, but I was worried about range.


So, with a little over sixteen hours left, with all my fighters back at base, my Shackleton still in the air providing radar cover with two Lightnings to defend it I have to consider my next move. I only have three Phantoms left, so I fit them all out with missiles and guns. My Buccaneers on the other hand, I’m not sure what to do with. Do I send them in now while the MiGs are (hopefully) on the ground? Or do I wait for them to have cover, albeit maybe missing out on an opportunity to drop bombs unopposed? I decide to go right away. I’ll send the recon Buccaneers in first, hopefully I’ll spot some fighters on the ground and bombs away. I move my Shackleton in a little closer, right to the border, it doesn’t see anything, let's go.

And here I encounter another case of unsuccessful tactics. One of my recon Buccaneers is shot down by AA fire. This mission really isn’t going well.

The first wave of bombers come in next. I have them going fairly slow, at 2000ft, I assumed this would allow for accurate bombing… not so, one bomb misses by half a nautical mile and none make any hits. I decide to send the next wave in against the targets at Entebbe, going a little faster and at around 5’500ft, just below the clouds.

The second trio of Buccaneers are more successful, they hit the Post Office, Ministry of Agriculture and State House, they do hit a small building in the process though, oops.

No targets at the airport are hit though, meaning that there’s around two MiG-21 and four MiG-17s left on the ground, albeit possibly without any ammunition.

At this point I haven’t much to do except wait for my aircraft to reload. I’m not seeing any more fighers in the air though, this is making me wonder. It’s an hour since the Buccanneers dropped their munitions and not a single contact has been spotted by my AEW aircraft. Are the Ugandans really out of ammo? I’m going to wait another thirty minutes, if there’s still no contacts I’m going to load up my Phantoms with SNEB rockets.

Nothing appears, so I guess we’re going to be loading out the SNEBs.


Then, with just over 13 hours to go, I realise, to my horror, that there are two contacts in the air, no radar, so they might be commercial, but they’re flying in close formation, I’m going to guess MiG-17s. I’m going to send four Lightnings to attack them. I briefly lose contact with them, but they reappear shortly afterwards. I’m just going to use my Lightnings on an auto-attack order, to see how they fair. A few moments later I catch that they’ve got FCR radars rather than RO, MiG-21s then, that’s slightly worrying, but still, a two-to-one numbers advantage should make up for that. Both are shot down with guns, but one Lightning is lost in the process. These Red Tops are pretty useless.

So far I’ve downed six MiG-21s, I thought that’d be all of them, not so, it would seem that there’s four in the air right now, I’m going to pull everything back, including my AEW aircraft.

At this point I’m considering my options, and I think I’m going to send my three Phantoms in for a final strike at the water treatment plant. Then call it a mission.

They hit the target, but don’t destroy it, I call it a day when they get back, leaving me with an Average score at 45 Points.

I’ve lost two Phantoms, a Buccaneer and a Lightning, in return I’ve shot down six MiG-21s and three MiG-17s.


And that's it folks, I guess I'm going to write a little summary of how I thought things went:

I lost way to many Phantoms. Losing more than 50% of my top-notch fighters on the first mission really wasn't good, one or two I could have handled, but five left my capability to take action against targets in the air (along with my ability to accurately hit ground targets with SNEBs).

I'm not sure how I could improve on this, I guess running an AAW patrol rather than directly escorting the rocket-armed Phantoms on the way in, in hopes of drawing aircraft away from Entebbe may have made more sense, or switching the radars on the AEW or Lightnings on to act as decoys. Those Buccaneers seem to be hopelessly inaccurate too, do they work better at a higher altitude perhaps?

[Schr75]

Hi MrMan95

Welcome to Command.

I haven´t played this particular scenario, but I think I can answer some of our questions anyway.

Regarding the ammo shelters. I´m not sure but heavy damage will probably have destroyed the ammo inside, but you can´t be absolutely sure.
If you want to know for sure, try loading the scen in editor mode and use god mode to see what´s left.

This is also a great way to learn a lot about this sim in general.


Personally I think I would have gone after the planes on the ground and left the ammo alone, but that is just me[:)]

About using the Bucs. When using dumb boms, the lower you are the more accurate they are. Try attacking as low as possible (but above minimum release altitude) and as fast as possible to minimize exposure to AAA and maximize accuracy.

You have also seen just how lousy that generation of missiles were. Try always to shoot at maximum half of the max range, and preferably two or more missiles at once, since this increases the probability of a hit quite a lot.


The great thing about this sim is that the level of detail is just staggering, and it keeps evolving so there is always something new to learn.

Great AAR BTW, and happy hunting.

Søren

[KungPao]

Great AAR,
Most of the “tutorial” scenario in CMANO are very hard.

My strategy is sending Buccaneer + Air to Air Phantom II + 1 Recon as the first wave. They stay low, no Radar emission. Go to a rally point 20nm away from the target area. Then you can turn on your radar and begin your strike. Phantom II will take care of the 2 Mig-21 on patrol. Buccaneer execute the phase I strike: attack Runway and Runway grade taxiway first. No enemy aircraft will be able to taken off as soon as the runway become “heavy damage, on fire”. If phase I fails, no worry, setup an AAW patrol zone just above the airport, keep the patrol height at 2000- 3000m so that AAA gun fire could not reach your fighter.

Keep your recon patrol around the airport at the height below the cloud but above 2000m, so that it can provide a fix location of those AAA guns to other planes. Use those Phantom with Rockets Pods as 2nd wave. They are very good at silencing those AAA. 1000lbs bombs from Buccaneer is also a good choice, if you have any bomb to spare for this task.
Lightening do not have enough fuel for this Low-Altitude Penetration strategy, so I will keep them as a backup near the border

[MrMan95]

Thanks to both of you! I know I'm not the most enthusing of writers, but thanks for the tips. I'd like to try another scenario for an AAR in the near future (maybe I'll do one every other week or the like) would anyone recommend me a scenario?

[Schr75]

I know I'm not the most enthusing of writers

Don´t feel bad. None of us writes as good as Airborne_rifles, and you are doing really good.

Regarding recommending scenarios. What are you looking for?

An easy surface to surface would be: Battle at Lattakia. Israeli Vs Egyptian missile boats in 1972.

Otherwise try the smaller ones and work your way up.

Regarding the tutorial scen English Jets over Uganda.

I just played it.

A few pointers.

Study your opponent. The AA-2b in the scen can´t engage targets below ca. 4500ft so fly your Bucs in at low level and fast.

The F-4´s radar don´t have look-down shoot-down capability, so any target above or below app. 10k feet from the A/C altitude wont be detected.

I flew my bucs in from the North using terrain masking and at the same time engaged the Mig-21 with my F-4 from the south.
My Bucs destroyed both runways and my F-4 pair killed the enemy fighters.

After the runways are dead, move in with sneb100 and kill the AAA, then the rest of the targets.

I lost one Recon Buc, but after that it was just mopping up.

Søren

[mikkey]

Welcome aboard MrMan95 and thanks for nice AAR!

[MrMan95]

I'll take that all aboard. I think I'm going to spend a week or two getting to better grips, only been playing CMANO for a week so far really. I think I'll try another AAR after that, been eyeing Iron Hand.

[Cik]

iron hand's a good scenario. the only significant stumbling block for me (when i played it) was i wasn't really familiar with all of the russian AGM names. kitchen? kilter? wat?

still, you can use browse scenario platforms probably. there's nothing too hard about the scenario itself; granted it's not easy either due to split airfields, fairly determined air resistance and the presence of SA-10.

my advice, if you do iron hand is: take it slow. real slow.

[Shvak]

ORIGINAL: Schr75


I lost one Recon Buc, but after that it was just mopping up.

Søren

Do the recon Buccaneers actually make any difference?

[Gunner98]

Thanks for the AAR.

The Buc is probably the best low level bomber of its generation - fast and real low is the trick.

The Recon Buc is good as long as it is below the cloud cover.

Been a long while since I played this one but might go at it again.

B

[ultradave]

ORIGINAL: Shvak

ORIGINAL: Schr75


I lost one Recon Buc, but after that it was just mopping up.

Søren

Do the recon Buccaneers actually make any difference?

Been a while since I played this one, but I used it to identify the myriad targets in Entebbe. If you give a recon mission, after some finite period of time, rather than a block that says "Entebbe" multiple targets appear - all the airport ones, and some city ones. Some are not "targets" but things you shouldn't hit.

I don't know if you'd get the same effect flying a couple of Phantoms over the area - didn't try that.