Meteors over Korea 22/5/52

[fitzpatv]

This small scenario has a certain relevance for me. My late father served in the RAF in the Korean War, flying the NF-11 night-fighter version of the Gloster Meteor and (albeit by night) he took part in a number of missions like the one simulated. He told me it was Hell and had painful flashbacks about it decades later. He said that he shot down two enemy aircraft but was later downed himself. Though he managed to ditch behind friendly lines, his best friend and navigator was killed and Dad broke both his legs. Dragging himself homeward across paddy fields, he was attacked by a local peasant who tried to murder him for his possessions. Dad strangled the guy but was left with a permanent scar where the assailant’s knife nicked his throat. By such slender margins do I exist!. Dad got back to safety but his flying days were over. He died in 2008.

The scenario features an Australian squadron flying the standard version of the Meteor. You have eight planes armed with cannon only, eight with 1,000lb bombs and eight on Reserve loadouts, based at Kimpo airport, near Seoul. With these, you have to strike a number of targets around the North Korean port of Haeju, namely a railway bridge, industrial plant, dam, port facilities and a couple of P-4 patrol boats in the harbour. You are told that the bridge and industrial site take priority and to avoid airfields, as the flak defences there are too strong. Hmmm...

The North has a squadron of La-9 piston-engined fighters at Haeju and some MiG-15s further NW near the Chinese border at Sunan/Dandong. Both of these can out-turn the Meteor but the Lavochkins cannot match it for speed. Regardless, engaging in air-to-air combat seemed unwise, so I loaded my eight spare planes with bombs. The enemy otherwise have batteries of 100mm AA around the targets.

22/5/52 04:00L: At dawn, eight Meteors with bombs launched in four pairs, split between the railway bridge and the industrial site. Four fighter escorts were told to try to distract enemy CAP and lead it away from the strike planes but not to risk actual combat. Initially, the North Koreans put-up four La-9s. Their changing positions meant that I had to change targeting several times (it helped that I was flying the planes manually and individually instead of using missions). In summary, the bridge was destroyed with some effort for (just) 25VP but we lost two strike planes. This happened because I tried to attack manually instead of using Auto Attack and had forgotten to tell them to ignore plotted course when attacking, so they swerved away just before getting into bombing range. This invited lots of flak and, even at a 4% hit chance, the rapid rate-of-fire made hits a virtual certainty and the absence of aircraft damage settings in this scenario made each hit fatal, costing me 40VP. As the strike pulled-out, four MiG-15s arrived but were too late to intervene. North Korea was handicapped throughout by a lack of radar, whereas we had a decent piece of kit at Kimpo. I probably tried to do too much at once and it wasn’t too surprising that I dropped one of the plates I was trying to spin.

08:00L: The enemy replaced their MiG-15 patrol a couple of times while my aircraft readied for another go but, fortuitously, there was a gap in their coverage at the right moment. This time, I sent-in a pair at a time and didn’t bother with escorts. The first pair busted the dam for a surprising 40VP (more than the bridge, which was supposed to be a priority target) but one was lost to the AA. This made the score +10 and Average.

Two more strikes went-in but the industrial plant proved resilient to damage and the AA got its fourth kill.

09:00L: The next pair of Meteors finished the industrial plant for 45VP. MiG-15s chased the retreating planes and one was lost to the fighters because, incredibly, I’d forgotten to turn Auto Evade off for the eight planes starting on Reserve loadouts. As a result, the Meteor tried to out-turn the MiG instead of just running for it and died before I could correct the error. I did save his wingman.

10:00L: Another duo managed to sink both the patrol boats for 20VP each, dodging MiG-15s on the way out. One failed to dodge the lethal AA and, with no aircraft damage setting (the guns do 1.05DP) was lost.

I could have taken the score of +35 (Average) and shut-down operations here but, just to see what would happen, I risked another two planes against the port. This wasn’t worth it, as I scored just 5VP for a large building (you can’t know the VP schedule in advance unless you peek in the Editor) and the deadly AA disposed of both planes, which left the score at zero and a Minor Defeat (a point short of a draw). I didn’t fancy my chances of improving on this and left it there.

Dad told me that enemy flak was pretty scary but, thankfully, it wasn’t quite as deadly in reality as it was here (or I wouldn’t be writing this). The problem here is that the AA’s rate of fire gives it too many effective shots and the ‘no aircraft damage’ setting makes hits un-survivable. The AI scored seven kills with flak in 124 shots at a standard 4%, which was fairly lucky, as five would have been more like it. The North Korean fighters were less of a problem, as they lacked radar and we could usually outrun them.

Still, it was some useful practice with 1950s aircraft before playing the 1958 Chains of War scenario...

[fitzpatv]

Gave it another go, taking lessons from the first playthrough on-board and bombing from 9,000’ to immunise myself from the flak (the obvious downside being that hits were hard to come by). After a lot of effort, I destroyed all of the main targets except the industrial site (no hits on the port, which I ignored). One plane was lost the only time the enemy fighters got close enough to shoot at me. This yielded a score of +90, which was still stubbornly Average.

I noted that the AI kept maintaining CAP over the last few hours, which are after dark, despite the MiG-15 and La-9 being listed as day-only in the database. I kept to the spirit of the law and suspended all operations after nightfall. Other issues included Meteors pulling out of attack runs just before getting in range despite Doctrine being set correctly and movement being plotted to continue past the target (no idea why) and the AI trying to have them drop to a suicidal 200' after dropping their bombs, both of which had to be constantly watched. A large proportion of the problems and annoyances with this game stem from the AI wilfully overriding what the player is trying to do.

[Gunner98]

Thanks for the interesting AAR Vince, I think I played this scenario a long time ago.

Wild story about your Father, impressive set of kahuna's on him to make it out!

B

[T Rav]

Great AAR.

Made it real by posting about your father.

Thank you
T Rav

[Mgellis]

Glad your father made it back.

Looking over the scenario, I may have been a bit stingy on the scoring...if you got two of the main objectives and didn't have serious losses, that should probably be a minor victory, at least. Hope you enjoyed it anyway.

[fitzpatv]

Thanks, Mark. Overall, I did. What I particularly like about your scenarios is the variety, taking players to a lot of obscure places that most designers don't visit. Not that Korea is particularly obscure, but it tends to get missed-out in favour of more recent conflicts with modern hardware. Keep 'em coming!