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

[FrangibleCover]

Session 14

More frigates continue to pour in, including the Leander-class Sirius, which is not a Batch 1 with Ikara as the briefing says but is instead one of the excellent Batch 2TA ships with a very modern towed array. I’m very happy to have one of these ships, I wish I had more of them. Argonaut is due to join me on the sixth and I suppose the other three are with the fleet, along with most of the other British TA frigates. I think it says something about how immersive I find the Fury scenario series that I constantly think that my theatre should be getting this and that asset and in return I’m willing to offload my random crap onto other commanders. In most other scenario sets, I’m not thinking about the wider war and other force commitments at all. The Almirante Lynch also arrives from Chile, having come through the Canal. She’s not particularly useful up here, but she’s at least better than the Alfaro. I really should find something to do with these two ships.

Sturgeon completes her repairs at Tenerife, with the sonar fixed but one torpedo tube permanently out of action. That’s fine by me, honestly. I’m going to sortie her and have her sweep opposite the little surface action group I have heading for the islands. In other sonar related news, the SURTASS ships I’m moving across the Atlantic proves its worth by getting a Goblin at least eighty nautical miles away. The contact is a baleen whale, but it’s heartening to be able to do that since a whale has approximately the same sonar characteristics as a Victor III if the database is to be believed.

My cool but risky convoy towards the Western Sahara plan instantly goes to the dogs as two torpedoes are detected in the water. My mini-convoy scatters and Orso launches her helicopter, and I call in a P-3 from Lajes, but I can’t help but feel like I’ve already lost this engagement. My ships begin circling, just like the Venezuelans did, and I have to take them off autoevade to try and get them to work. The cargo ship takes a hit, unsurprisingly, but she’s a big Panamax job and one hit doesn’t seem to have slain her. The big wake homer pursuing the Orsa passes right under her keel and she goes into a hard turn to try and break the homing for the counterattack. Unfortunately it doesn't work and on the next attempt her stern disappears in a pillar of water. Orsa’s helicopter gets a torpedo near the target before being forced to withdraw for lack of fuel. The Cerqueira, not fast enough to evade, attempts to go dead in the water and force a miss while the enemy submarine is distracted, but I lose her too. The final Soviet torpedo goes haring off into the distance. A bad show all around, even after Orsa’s helicopter avenges her mothership. The engines on the merchant are also dead, so it’s just going to sit here waiting for another submarine to claim the VP. I’m going to be able to recover the helicopter by sprinting the Espero south to meet up with it and offloading one of the Espero’s helicopters onto the Stromboli, which is a relief.

The lesson of this is obvious: Stick to the plan, stick to the patrolled routes. There’s also perhaps an element of the principle that if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right. I sent out a pair of poorly equipped ships and they got sunk, while I have some good ASW ships waiting around for convoys to arrive. If they had been accompanied by, say, one of the French TA frigates, would that have saved them or would that have lost me a ship that I want to keep? This chastening experience also sort of puts me off using the Alfaro and Lynch for anything useful, they don’t have the sonars to survive in their own SAG.

[Gunner98]

One does like it when a plan to surprise a player works

There are a lot of old and odd FF configurations out there, dovetailing them into the right task is key to this scenario

[FrangibleCover]

One does like it when a plan to surprise a player works

There are a lot of old and odd FF configurations out there, dovetailing them into the right task is key to this scenario

Yes, the sheer variety of ships in this scenario is bewildering! I have five or six different fits of Leander alone, and all of my Knoxes seem to be marginally different database entries. I agree about the right task, but there's also a significant element of the right task for right now: I want the Type 21s in the South Atlantic fighting commerce raiders, because they're pretty good surface combatants for a NATO ship and they fire 'free' Exocets instead of Harpoon, but to get them there I'd have to send them out on their own or slowly shuffle them down escorting convoys that they don't have much relevance to. Meanwhile, I have five USN vessels in the South Atlantic that are all superb anti submarine escorts but are being used against commerce raiders and Argentina because if I don't use them, I don't have anything. I can sort this all out in slow-time, but as we've just seen I can't freely shuffle all of my frigates around the world to get optimal distribution without my enemy having a say.

[FrangibleCover]

Session 15

Six hours pass without anything of note happening. The pace of the scenario is definitely slowing down, and the performance isn’t good enough to allow me to just zip through nothing happening. Honestly, what I’m calling a “session” is no longer one session of play, but enough play to think I have enough writing to be worth reporting. Finally, my Jags and Buccs ready at St. Mawgan, along with instructions to use one of the Tristars as a munitions mule. Happily, a ‘cargo’ 747 is approaching St. Mawgan so I can use both as fuel trucks, which helps me out. These aircraft are going to Puerto Rico, via Lajes, to support operations there, as are the two Tristars from Ascension. I feel like the intention of these aircraft is to go to the Western Sahara, but I also think I’m not really supposed to be at war with Venezuela. Annoyingly, the Tristars are supposed to go back to the UK after they’ve done the ferry mission, but I can deal with that. I also use another 747 to carry cluster munitions from Key West to Roosevelt Roads. I am absolutely sure that a 747 that has been bodged into cargo configuration should not be carrying cluster bombs, but also I think I might need them.

The short-hull Perry-class Duncan is running down the last threatening surface raider, aided by her Seasprites and the ELINT aircraft. As she crests the horizon, the raider turns to fight me. In theory, this is a decent match up for the raider, we’re both carrying 76mm guns and she’s carrying more of them. In practice, I’m perfectly willing to use SM-1s to negate that advantage. As I’m closing to do this, I am told that the raider isn’t in the DLZ of the missiles, which I doubt, but I’m happy to close further to ensure accuracy. I can control the range here, I’m faster than the raider. Ten Standards plunge into the converted merchant’s upperworks and she goes dead in the water, flooding and on fire. Was that overkill? Perhaps, but I’d rather expend more ammunition than I should have than lose a Perry to something it could beat just fine. I close to finish with the deck gun, treading carefully to ensure I can withdraw out of the range of any return fire, but I didn’t need to worry. I expend most of my gun ammunition missing the raider, but she has no response to me at all and finally I just settle down to wait until she sinks.

Wondering about that Venezuelan ground contact near Trinidad that my E-8 picked up, I decide to send one of the Guardians from Panama over to check it out. I close and close with the marked location, but don’t see it. Then my Guardian crests the ridgeline at the top of the Paria Peninsula, next to Guiria, and spots it on the down-slope. SAM! I order the Guardian to drop to minimum altitude in a max rate turn, but a business jet is not the right tool for this job. They go right over the Kub site, identifying it and a port facility at Guiria on the way, as well as a pair of missiles approaching them from a hidden site. They spot the SA-8 just before the first missile blows them from the sky. Oops. Even more oops, apparently the Guardians are High Value aircraft and cost me 15 points to lose! Lesson learned, I suppose. Since this base doesn’t appear by default and is defended by a similar Soviet SAM network to the one in Western Sahara, the likelihood is that it’s a secret base, being used by Soviet submarines to rearm in the Caribbean. I wonder if I should check out the coasts of other hostile nations for similar facilities.

To my utter astonishment, Supply has arrived off St. Johns without being filled with torpedoes and supersonic anti ship missiles. Only another thousand and something nautical miles to go. Another thing that has surprised me is that European ships can replenish at sea despite saying they can’t, which is a relief. The differences between fuel types appear to be real, but I’m not sure if the quantities of each type of fuel are really tracked individually or if I could put diesel from my T-AOT into a proper oiler and then take it back out of the oiler as gas fuel for my Perrys and British frigates. I’ll only try that when I need to, I think. I’m also not sure if I’m supposed to be using the T-AOT that started in the fast MSC convoy as an oiler or if it’s a cargo ship and needs to go to the US to get me points.

Off the Plate estuary, the corvette Drummond has defeated her tail, the LA-class Groton. My most capable submarine has been completely bamboozled by this corvette which has never spotted her, because we’ve now gone so far inshore that she can’t maintain depth while trailing closely enough to stay in touch. This sounds sort of daft, so far from the Falklands, but my worry is now that Drummond will escape from the Plate estuary into the South Atlantic convoy lanes like a reverse Graf Spee.

[Gunner98]

Am pretty sure the fuel types are tracked separately. They each have a different value for lua usage.

B

[morphin]

Hi
i'm also on this scenario.

How do you carry cluster muntions? I have the 747 on the key West but it seems not possible to load

" I also use another 747 to carry cluster munitions from Key West to Roosevelt Roads."


Thank's

[FrangibleCover]

Session 16

South Atlantic

The raider that Duncan has caught is showing a remarkable inability to sink. I back off and finish her with another seven SM-1s. Expensive, but I don’t want her guiding other stuff in while she’s lying there. Duncan’s next destination is going to be Rota, or an American AE if one shows up like Supply did. Speaking of Supply, her 22 knot run has resulted in her running out of fuel off the southern coast of Newfoundland! I consider the logistics of getting one of my precious tankers out to her and refuelling her, especially with sufficient fuel to continue her pell-mell pace, and end up just editing her bunkers full again. I think this whole thing would work better if Supply was on the player side and there were some sort of time limit to get her to Norfolk or else lose points?

My creeping terror in the South Atlantic turns acute as the PdA group picks up a Goblin. It’s a biologic, but it’s also a reminder that I can’t afford to ignore the submarine threat anywhere. Regardless, the Principe de Asturias group splits off Recife. The Brazilian frigate Defensora and the Spanish Perry accompany the US-bound ships to Puerto Rico, while the carrier herself, the Liverpool and the Spanish Knox move towards Cape Verde and a link-up with the Duncan and TG Stump. This is quite dangerous but, I think, necessary. Convoying the ships from Rio to Cape Verde to the Azores to Bermuda to the US would simply take too long.

Caribbean

The 747 and Tristars land at Munoz with their charges, disgorging a variety of weapons. I’ve concentrated on precision strike capability for the Buccs: Martels, Paveways and the necessary ancillaries. Regrettably, the ‘Kodak Kids’ of 41 Squadron don’t have any Jaguar Recce Pods to take, so they’re relegated to dumb bombing. Luckily, the BL.755s at Key West have already been moved to Puerto Rico, so I don’t have to spend too much mass transporting them from Cornwall. St. Mawgan appears to have four identical ammunition facilities, all carrying a worthwhile quantity of precision weapons. Is this a bug or a feature? For now I’m emptying one facility and if I can use the others, I have plenty more 747 sorties available and I want to leave some room in this one for some maintainers and spares. Given the age of the Buccaneers, I’m sure to take as many spares as I can find. My orders are to fly the Tristars home, and I toy with the idea of using them to refuel a strike ‘incidentally’ and then ferrying them home via Bermuda but decide to just send them right back to the UK.

Trepang relieves Greenling off Venezuela. Greenling has done a truly excellent job as my only real anti-surface asset down here for almost a week and is going back to Charleston for torpedoes and some well-deserved medals. Trepang, however, is a newer and more capable boat and I’m very glad to have her. She immediately races into action against the two remaining Lupos, conducting similar 30-knot rear approaches to Greenling a few days ago. The first Lupo never even realises she’s under attack before the ADCAP hits, after which her sister turns sideways and slows down. Is she listening for more torpedoes in the water? Then, astonishingly, the ship I hit starts turning to conform to her movements, slowed, damaged but not sinking. I follow up with a second ADCAP, which is spoofed twice by her Nixie and thunders off towards the Windward Islands. I launch a third ADCAP before the target memory on the second one kicks in again and it turns around to finish the job. Three torpedoes for the one ship, I’m lucky I didn’t try it with Greenling. My third torpedo still has the wire attached and I try for the final Lupo with it. Extremely careful handling gets me close, but the Nixie works again and I don’t have enough puff left to reattack. Perhaps there’s something about the Mod 4 Mk.48s on the Greenling that allows them to ignore Nixies when the newer ADCAP can’t! The fourth shot just plain old misses as the engagement descends into farce. Happily the Venezuelans appear to be even less competent than my submariners and aren’t chucking aircraft and lightweight torpedoes everywhere like I would be. Shot five finally connects and, chastened, the Trepang heads off towards the secret base. If you didn’t think the Greenling’s crew deserved medals before, you should now.

South Atlantic Islands

I have to say, if the whole Argentina thing is a deliberate decoy to get me to concentrate vastly more force down here than is deserved, it’s working like a charm. I have a good squadron of fighters, my best squadron of bombers, four MPAs, an ELINT aircraft, three tankers, two good frigates and six submarines down here doing little to nothing. My ‘come and take them’ attitude to the islands is turning into outright hope that they try something soon and I can sweep the floor with them and get everything going north.

In more hopeful news I reacquire the other Argentinian SSK off the north-western tip of West Falkland as she comes up for air. I harass her with a Nimrod as I assign Gato to shadow her, although ominously my passive sonobuoys can’t detect her even while snorkelling. The Nimrod is pretty low on fuel, so I actually use the ELINT Nimrod, which is in the area, to cover the job while the sub-hunter refuels and gets some more active buoys. Hopefully the Argentinian crew don’t realise that the extra aerials on this Nimrod means that it can’t drop or listen to buoys and it’s totally reliant on the highly trained intelligence analysts inside trying to spot the periscope out of the window. Now that I’m looking at the situation more closely though, I don’t think she has come up for air, I think she’s been forced to the surface by the depth of the water under her. Gato is struggling as well among the islands and skerries of the Falklands coast. Everything around here is so shallow and the sonar conditions so poor that my active buoys also aren’t working. Eventually I resort to Gato sitting in her baffles at close range, holding her on the active sonar. The anti-submarine torpedoes of the Salta class are pretty rubbish but at this range there’s still the possibility of a mutual kill in the event of hostilities. If I have to sacrifice one sub to clear all of the others for action in the North Atlantic, I’ll do it, and I’d rather it was the old Permit Gato or the deeply elderly Opossum than anything else I have down here.

Groton, off the mouth of the Plate, now has two different contacts, the Drummond I’ve been shadowing and another MEKO that has shown up and trapped her inshore. This is a sticky situation, but I haven’t been spotted and I’m well within international waters anyway, protecting the trade from my important trading partners against Soviet predation. Even if they do catch me I can probably break contact out to sea. Three of Argentina’s four MEKOs at sea indicates something worth watching, I think, and I’m a little concerned to find a whole extra frigate at this stage of the game. I’m going to assign the ELINT Nimrod to run a few patrols around the place to try and find anything else that’s at sea before it runs into my near-unescorted column of merchants moving from Cape Town. MEKO versus Strike Craft will only end one way, and the Canberras won’t help much either.

The Rest

Convoys AB01 and BA01 pass through each other, watched silently by Sea Devil. For just a moment, an incredible 260 freighters occupy the same patch of the Atlantic. Protecteur swaps between convoys, because I need an oiler with the JFK group, but other than that the two flotillas simply pass through each other.

I am notified of another P-3 reserve unit activating, which I shall have to think about the disposition of. Regardless, I call it a day for this session at 14:00Z on the 2nd of March, precisely one week into the scenario. Four more to go. 20% done. Good grief, this is a big scenario.

[FrangibleCover]

Hi
i'm also on this scenario.

How do you carry cluster muntions? I have the 747 on the key West but it seems not possible to load

" I also use another 747 to carry cluster munitions from Key West to Roosevelt Roads."


Thank's

Cheats! I play in the editor habitually, which I appreciate not everyone does. This scenario was designed around that expectation though, as you'll find when you get the Tristars at St. Mawgan. What I'm doing is putting a cargo aircraft at a base, noting down what I want to move, editing those munitions out of that base's magazines, flying the cargo aircraft to the destination and, once it arrives, editing the same munitions into the new base's magazines. If the cargo aircraft were to be lost, so are the munitions. It's a bit of a faff, but it gets the job done. You're probably also going to find that you need to use the editor to replenish the munitions aboard a number of your ships, since the only naval magazine is in Charleston. I've not done any of that yet, but I'll explain how I'm going to house rule it when I do it.

[FrangibleCover]

Short update, I'm unable to play next week so I decided to post what I have.

Session 17

Checking around my P-3 units, almost all of my reservists are activating in the next few days. My first priority for them is setting up the sweeps between Cape Verde and the Azores, since my southern convoys are starting to near the area. The linear patrol between Cape Verde and the Canaries also acts as a barrier patrol against subs coming to and from the Western Sahara refuelling facility. I’m not really sure if attacking ports and refuelling stops like this makes sense, so far only one submarine has attacked me and gotten away, and if Opossum’s fuel consumption is representative then their diesels aren’t going to need to refuel at all, she still has seven weeks of diesel in the tanks and she’s been snorkelling a lot. Will any Soviet submarines actually be inconvenienced by my strikes? On the other hand, the convoy war isn’t going to end at the end of the scenario, I’m sure there will still be loads of submarines out there and they’ll need to refuel at some point. Plus, it might get me points, and points mean… CINCLANT forgives me for invading the Western Sahara, hopefully.

At Bluefields in Nicaragua, my scrappy little South American frigate flotilla slips inshore and destroys the only air search radar in the region. I’m not really expecting any further threat from this direction, but if something were to turn up, knocking that radar out means that they can’t vector their interceptors onto my F-16s as easily, which should help.

Since I have a captive target, I decide to use the Argentinian submarines to test out the MAD gear on my Nimrods. It turns out that a pass right over the top of one at 1000ft isn’t enough to get me a hit, even when they’re very shallow. Another attempt at the very minimum safe altitude of 300ft also achieves nothing. Is it the shallow water around here that’s stopping me from detecting anything? I remember in other scenarios I’ve had great successes with my MAD, most notably the Kuril Sunrise Live scenario where my Tu-142s could basically only detect submarines with the MAD and still swept up AIP-equipped SSKs very efficiently. Has it been re-tuned since then? Regardless, the fact that I can’t rely on my MAD means that I can’t necessarily use it to distinguish between sea life and submarines in situations where I only have active sensors or I have no time to listen to the contact before firing. My regrets to the whales, I suppose.

After a few close passes from the Nimrod, the Argentinian sub runs aground on a minor island. After much shuffling around and a very inopportune bingo fuel from the Nimrod, the Salta gets free, but they’re definitely much too close to the islands for sensible submarine operations. Gato hands the track off to Opossum, my least valuable submarine, and claws for some sea room.

Good news and better news over Venezuela, a probing E-8 has seen no air defences around Barcelona and also is now picking up the air defences around Guiria. It’s even identifying them, somehow, two SA-8s and an SA-6, plus the other SA-6 I already know about. A shame, if I’d known the E-8 could do IDs then I could have avoided losing the HU-25. In addition, I detect a large number of fixed facilities such as ammo bunkers, fuel tanks and piers. It looks like this place is big, and intended to be used heavily. This probe upsets the Foxbats at Manodez and they charge into the air after me, but by E-8 is sensors dark and long gone before they arrive. I can get a good count as they circle disconsolately: Six aircraft. I can take that!

Munoz Air National Guard base is a hive of activity, with the regular ANG facilities constantly servicing their F-16s and the taken-over airport facilities taking care of a variety of wide-body surveillance and refuelling aircraft. Meanwhile, the British contingent has tucked itself away next to the cargo terminal, which is preparing to receive another flight of weapons from St. Mawgan’s stocks. As the sun sinks over the base, bathing the whole area in an orange glow, another four ship of Buccaneers touches down and head to the cargo terminal to be provided with much needed spares. The South Africans have arrived, and so have their tankers. Overnight and with less drama, the Key West Zoo moves into Roosevelt Roads. At dawn, I’ll be ready.

[Galahad78]

Very interesting, as always! I'm still catching up with the last few updates, but just came across a comment you made that was just in line with something I was just thinking:

Having functionally no time limits is really strange for my pace of operations.

I was thinking that your AAR reminds me of War in the Pacific game, with so many relocations, basing, rearming, units that you lose because higher command needs them elsewhere, new units you receive, etc. that's its being a really entertaining read. Kudos to you and your AAR and to Gunner for such a great scenario!

Edit:

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.

Quite ironic as we retired our last Orion last year, with no proper replacement in sight (CN-295...come on...). It's not like Spain doesn't have coast to defend...

Second edit: re. Duncan and her showdown with the commerce raider, weren't an option the Mk-46 torpedoes she carries, to finish the raider off? That would have saved some precious SM-1s.

[FrangibleCover]

Very interesting, as always! I'm still catching up with the last few updates, but just came across a comment you made that was just in line with something I was just thinking:

I was thinking that your AAR reminds me of War in the Pacific game, with so many relocations, basing, rearming, units that you lose because higher command needs them elsewhere, new units you receive, etc. that's its being a really entertaining read. Kudos to you and your AAR and to Gunner for such a great scenario!

Thanks for your comments, people saying they're enjoying it (or saying I'm stuffing everything up and should go back to the tutorials) really keeps me going, and this is a scenario with a long way to go.

I know what you mean about WitP, although it's a larger and less wieldy beast than Command. I'm certainly very reliant on missions and on leaving units to just get on with things as best they can, although I'm having to do all of my ship shadowing off Argentina manually because a patrol or strike mission against a non-Hostile target results in your sub attempting to ram it. The scenario notes also talk about player buy-in and how it's very possible to cheat in this scenario in many ways, which I think also makes it something of a solo roleplaying game. I'm doing the work within the limitations the scenario lays down, even though I could flatten everything with TLAMs and reverse all of my merchants into the starting port to get endless free points.

Quite ironic as we retired our last Orion last year, with no proper replacement in sight (CN-295...come on...). It's not like Spain doesn't have coast to defend...

Second edit: re. Duncan and her showdown with the commerce raider, weren't an option the Mk-46 torpedoes she carries, to finish the raider off? That would have saved some precious SM-1s.

It's certainly a pan-NATO scenario (plus South Africa and the South Americans), but I would point out that regardless of who got the kill, the Spanish P-3 would never have picked up a quiet SSK at long range with its DIFAR/DICASS buoys. The VLADs are the true heroes of this engagement.

It's the same in the UK, we've had a big gap between retirement of the Nimrod fleet and Poseidon entering service. We've gotten away with it, but it wasn't good. Just whatever you do, don't buy HU-25s, they're the same VP cost for worse sensors than any other MPA!

Duncan could probably have finished the job with Mk.46s in real life, but in Command that doesn't work. Neither did the gun, apparently, and I wasn't going to use a Harpoon, so it was down to the SM-1s. To be honest, in real life if the ship wasn't firing back or making headway I'd probably have attempted to board her for the intelligence value and then either scuttled her with onboard charges or (preferred option) take her as a prize and send her in to Recife with a scratch crew and a promising lieutenant.

[Schr75]

Hi FrangibleCover

Love your AAR. I´m thinking about starting this monster of a scen up again myself because of your AAR.
I just have to note that you shouldn´t feel bad about not using Mk.46 torpedoes against the raider.
The Mk.46 is strictly an ASW torpedo both in Command and IRL.
It is incapable of engaging targets above a depth of about 15m to prevent it from attacking its own launch platform.
So even if you wanted to, you couldn´t have done it, so SM-1 was probably the way to go since Harpoons were out.

Looking forward to your next AAR.

Søren

[FrangibleCover]

It's wonderful of you to say so, Søren, but before we begin to think about the next AAR I should finish this one! I've seen people say both ways on an anti-surface mode for lightweight torpedoes, but it doesn't matter, I can get SM-1s at Rota just fine. I'm intending to "pay" for missile rearms by offloading my Harpoons and Tomahawks, as the briefing suggests I would be made to do. I'm sure Fleet will be happy to trade in a few SAMs for a huge increase in hitting power, and my various ships must be carrying over 100 TLAMs.

[Schr75]

I meant the next part of this AAR
I know it will take you quite some time to finish this behemoth scenario, so no rush

Søren

[fitzpatv]

Massive though it is, this scenario is a lot shorter than War in the Pacific, so you have a prayer of finishing it with a lot of dedication. I tried playing WitP a few years ago and, had I continued, I'd still be playing it now. Absorbing, but far too long, too much is beyond your control and it is really depressing having to take the pain as the Allies with no end in realistic sight, taking consolation in any local successes you can achieve. At least the unit database was informative.

As a matter of interest, how much can you actually see when playing in the editor i.e. are the Soviet subs all visible?. I assume not from your posts. Truth is that I've never tried using the Editor because there is so much else to do in the game. In any case, I prefer to play without that advantage, but that's personal choice.

[FrangibleCover]

Massive though it is, this scenario is a lot shorter than War in the Pacific, so you have a prayer of finishing it with a lot of dedication. I tried playing WitP a few years ago and, had I continued, I'd still be playing it now. Absorbing, but far too long, too much is beyond your control and it is really depressing having to take the pain as the Allies with no end in realistic sight, taking consolation in any local successes you can achieve. At least the unit database was informative.

If you can believe their unit database

A while ago now, I took part in what was theoretically to be a short intro to WitP. We had just the Guadalcanal Campaign, six players per side, a GM doing all the inputs so that we didn't have to learn how to, it was as easy as it could be. That ran for months and never got anywhere near finishing before everyone lost interest. I have no idea how you play it in full.

As a matter of interest, how much can you actually see when playing in the editor i.e. are the Soviet subs all visible?. I assume not from your posts. Truth is that I've never tried using the Editor because there is so much else to do in the game. In any case, I prefer to play without that advantage, but that's personal choice.

If I were so inclined, I could use the editor mode to view the Soviets, unpick the triggers to tell when Argentina will come in, actively manipulate enemy missions and orders to avoid my merchants and attract my sub-hunters or simply teleport everyone across the Atlantic into the recieving zones. I'm not doing any of those things, by default the editor mode supports play in the exact same information environment that normal scenarios do. I just play in the editor mode to allow things like the munitions shifting that I've been doing or minor manipulations of the scenario, like when I lost three Tomcats to their aerial refuelling bugging out and them not having the sense to return to the carrier instead of pursuing the S-3 until they ran out of fuel. That's not fair, it's not realistic and it's not the intended play experience, so I can fix it.

Once I'm done with the scenario I will likely open it back up in the editor and take a look at the events and enemy starting dispositions, I'm always interested in seeing what lies behind the scenes. Until then though, no peeking!

[Gunner98]

Yeah, playing in editor mode is exactly the same as in normal mode as long as you apply discipline to what you do. Using the editor features to fix things that are obviously out of whack is fair ball and adds a lot of flexibility.

B

[Galahad78]

I played a WitP:AE Grand Campaign as the Allies against the AI. Took, IIRC, two real-life years. In the beginning, I was doing one-day turns, checking all the reports and tweaking all ports, TFs, etc. That was unassumable. In the end, I settled for two-day turns, checked combat reports quickly for important/interesting stuff and checked on-going offensives. Once in a while I did some house-keeping with squadrons, TFs, ports, next offensives, etc. I admit this was way suboptimal.

It was enjoyable but quite stressful in the end. I do not know how the MP players do it.

[tylerblakebrandon]

Really enjoying this AAR. Nothing like a good Fury AAR to make your day.

[FrangibleCover]

Session 18

HMS Sovereign is a good attack boat and has spent the last week snooping around the ports of Argentina to absolutely no avail. I’m taking something of a risk here, but I’ve decided that I’m going to move her up to the convoys unless a final Nimrod sweep can spot anything for her to shadow. I’ve not seen any indication of what I expected to find around the ports, which is a collection of well-loved WW2 transports and civilian ships suitable for the invasion of the Falklands. I am aware, however, that a lot of Argentina’s shipping is missing. I’ve not seen either Type 42, any MEKO 140s, two of the Drummonds and one of the big MEKOs. I’ve also not seen either of their very scary TR1700 SSKs. There is the potential for an extremely dangerous task force to be lurking out in the South Atlantic somewhere, but Sovereign is doing nothing about it by sitting off Puerto Deseado.

The Radford/Dale group arrives at Hamilton in Bermuda and begins to pack into the dockyard to refuel. The Westminster, evidently having sipped fuel beautifully through a long transit at an inefficient speed for warships, graciously allows the Americans to go first. She’s gone from the Bahamas to New Orleans to Bermuda without stopping and she still has half of her fuel! Meanwhile the big ‘specialist escort’ Knoxes have only come from New Orleans and they’re pretty much running on empty. As soon as they enter port the workers are all over them though, removing the Harpoons and TLAMs from the ships. If Fleet wants them though, they shall have to pick them up themselves. With that job done, Westminster will be able to refill her magazines from the stocks of 4.5” shells at HMNB Bermuda.

As my aircraft arm on Puerto Rico, we notice that we don’t have any AIM-9Ns for the F-5s. Every other strike fighter I’ve got has been fine to just carry bombs, but my F-5 pilots are insistent that they won’t go over Venezuelan territory without a pair of heaters on and the Navy ground crews at Roosevelt Roads are insistent that the older Navy Sidewinders aren’t compatible with the Air Force fittings on the F-5E. I have also noticed that the Navy ground crews at Key West have been rather lackadaisical with the F-5s, leaving arming them to last with the result that jobs that should take only four hours end up more like six. I shall have to draft a memo about treating aircraft as part of the team regardless of how they’re marked or how they look. I also use the pair of otherwise-useless Guardians at Key West to bring up a handful of Sidewinders just to get the F-5s flying. Five Sidewinders stuffed into the passenger cabin each should be fine, surely?

Before dawn though, my first wave sets off. The Key West aircraft aren’t quite ready yet, but I want to make sure the area is clear before I commit my main force of low level bombers. The target is Puerto La Cruz and the adjacent Lieutenant Luis del Valle Garcia Air Base. I haven’t seen anything taking off from Garcia, but I suspect it to be the source of the Mirage strikes and I want to knock out every port I can manage. I have managed to assemble seven tankers for this strike: Three of my KC-135s, two Tristars and two 707s. I’ll need them too, my Buccaneers are the only aircraft who can comfortably complete this mission unrefuelled.

With Buccaneers carrying ARMs and anti-structure missiles loitering high and TA-4s carrying Mavericks loitering low, I begin the attacks. First come a mere pair of Jaguars to check the opposition: If I’m about to storm into a nest of MANPADS, I want to know about it now rather than later. They flash over the city at low altitude and scatter cluster bomblets into a collection of weather shelters at the air base. There is no apparent opposition, and they don’t spot any aircraft on the tarmac. To my astonishment, however, the canvas weather shelters simply absorb the bomblets, presumably too soft and springy for the fuzes to function. The South African arrive next, smashing at the shelters and hangars with high explosives, as do the Skyhawks of VC-10 and VC-3. My remaining HU-25C watches proceedings as I shift bombing to the port facilities, which are knocked about nicely. This was a very strong raid with no opposition, perhaps I didn’t even need the Key West group here! That being said, with no defences at all and only one secondary explosion spotted, it’s hard to feel like this achieved the big results I was hoping for.

As my aircraft slip away, however, I spot that I’ve missed something: There’s a huge hangar on the edge of the airfield that I’ve left undisturbed. Could it contain something worth having? It’s more likely to be maintenance stuff, but I check around my aircraft and find a pair of AJ.168s Martels remaining. I really don’t rate these missiles against ground targets, I brought them in case of hidden SA-3 sites, or in case my bombs totally bounced off the large dock structures. In both cases, the heavy warhead of the Martels could be helpful. Nevertheless, the remainder of my strike is out of weapons and I can finish the job now if I use them. They’re pulled off their RTB order, matched up with a Tristar and sent back in. With most of my fighter screen also now withdrawing, this would be the ideal time for the MiG-25s to show up, but they have no sense of drama. Instead the Buccaneers drop into a high altitude attack profile at 1000ft and release the Martels. One duds, not unexpected since they’re at least twenty years old, and the other blows up the hangar in a spectacular detonation that scatters chunks of Mirage everywhere. The air threat to my naval forces is eliminated, and not before time.

Less than two hours after the Martel hit, the USS Clark is the first ship of the Banckert group to arrive at Guiria. Preceded in by Trepang, the whole force appears to have made it here totally unobserved, although if it had come to a fight I’m prepared to bet on this task force against pretty much anything Venezuela has left. I begin proceedings by scattering 76mm shells over the actual docks in an effort to keep anything that’s currently there in place. Then I call my E-8 back in to get me final locations on those SAM sites so that I can hit them properly. Three of them will be pretty easy to get, for the fourth I will go on a digression:

The Fury campaign series always makes an effort to show off under-used, under-appreciated and misunderstood platforms. I always think this is wonderful, but it’s even more wonderful when I don’t think the designer ever considered this. Let us talk about the French corvette Ventôse. She is a Floreal class corvette that shows up in Caribbean Fury #1 and #3 and in this one, usually doing a whole lot of nothing. At the start of this AAR my comments on her were “MN Ventose (Can’t refuel, no sonar, 1x heli)”, hardly hopeful of some great result. Of the six AARs for the appropriate CF scenarios on the Northern Fury website, three do not mention Ventôse at all and the other three mention her only once, in the initial set up. Fitzpatv rates her as ‘weak’ both times, which I wouldn’t have questioned when I started this scenario. A correspondent tells me that the two Longest Battle AARs also contain no mention of her. She is a joke, a nothing-platform, a waste of perfectly good processor cycles… She is also the only vessel within a thousand miles that has a 100mm gun instead of the weedy little 76mm most of NATO fields on their frigates.

The final SAM site at Guiria can only be hit by Ventôse, thanks to her large gun and shallow draft, the perk of not having a sonar. She steams inshore at her flank speed of twenty knots, swings her gun around and blows the Kub away. The other ships batter away at the docks without much apparent effect, but their job is done regardless. The rest of the job is better finished from the air. The Key West strike turns up, late but welcome nevertheless, and smashes the large pier at Guiria, as well as knocking out the large diesel tanks. Regrettably, this doesn’t seem to score any points, but I’m happier for having it done. With the Venezuelans apparently defeated at sea, the Banckert group and Trepang head back north.