Wooden Leg 1985

[fitzpatv]

This mission covers the Israeli air strike on the PLO HQ in Tunis in 1985. As the briefing says, it is little more than a tutorial without in-game advice and does not constitute much of a challenge.

You have 6 F-15D Eagles with GBU-15 glide-bombs and two more with Mk82 'iron bombs'. There are two Boeing 707 tankers airborne off Crete and two more in reserve at Ben Gurion. Both tanker groups have refuelling missions pre-assigned by the AI and these are trustworthy unless you fancy deleting them and creating your own. You also have a missile boat with a helicopter for rescuing downed pilots, but this is probably there for historical accuracy only and plays no active role.

Though you are warned to avoid detection by Libyan or Egyptian radar or patrolling USN vessels, there don't seem to be any in practice. Don't overfly Libya or Egypt, to be on the safe side!

In theory, the Tunisian Air Force could react to the strike with F-5 Freedom Fighters, but this probably happens only if you delay excessively.

The PLO base consists of eight buildings, all of which can be destroyed by a single GBU-15 and it has no air defence whatsoever.

I set-up seven missions, one for each of the GBU-15 planes to hit a specific building and the other for the Mk82 aircraft to follow-up and hit the general target area. I tried to launch planes in an order that would support this but, inevitably, the Mk82-carriers got ahead of the others, though I've little idea how. I made the mistake of assigning minimum and maximum ranges to my missions, wrongly thinking that this referred to weapon release range, when it actually governs base-to-target distance. Easily corrected, but it may have contributed to the strike order problem by delaying two GBU-15 planes. There was some eccentric movement around the tankers by some planes, which might also have contributed.

Regardless, the strike was a total success and all eight targets were obliterated. The AI tanker missions got all aircraft home safely, even though some planes hogged more than their fair share of fuel. A Triumph with a maximum score of 800, though I doubt whether I'll play it again.