Falklands 10 - Death Valley 23/5/82

[fitzpatv]

Following their costly strikes on the landing force in San Carlos Water on 21st May, the Argentines reviewed their results on a murky 22nd before returning to the fray on the 23rd. They concluded that the distance to the targets had allowed little time for detection, evaluation, manoeuvre and evasion. Some planes had chosen to abort or else to attack and then ditch. The British SAM and Harrier fighter defences had been formidable and, by now, they had been given time to get more Rapier batteries ashore.

You can only play the Argentine side. To do the job, you have two bases on the Falklands/Malvinas and five on the mainland. The former house eight Pucaras and four MB339s, all of which are armed with rockets.

At Comodoro Rivadavia, you have a dozen Mirage fighters, each with a single R.530 SARH missile and drop-tanks to give it the range to reach the islands. These planes CANNOT refuel in-flight. Also there are two Hercules tankers and a couple of Boeing 707s, which are intended to be used as MPAs but have no radar and are best left at home.

Further S, there are 12 Skyhawks and 12 Daggers at San Julian. The A-4s have bombs, half of which are retarded munitions which have to be released below 2,000’ AGL. The Daggers are mostly fitted-out as fighters with next-to-useless Shafrir missiles but four are bomb-armed and have rather better endurance than the Skyhawks.

Just S of San Julian is Santa Cruz, which is home to another eight bomb-armed Skyhawks.

Some distance further S is Rio Gallegos, which has a similar Dagger squadron to San Julian’s, albeit with heavier bombs on the four attack planes. Also there are eight Skyhawks with bombs and two Learjets which could be used for recon if you were truly desperate (they have no radar).

Finally, on Tierra del Fuego lies Rio Grande, where there are another six Skyhawks with bombs and two more with buddy stores, which enable them to function as very limited tankers. Usefully, the base has two Neptune MPAs with good long-distance radar.

Half of the Argentine aircraft are readying at the start and won’t be available until about noon, local time. In Operation Sutton, the AI sends its planes in piecemeal as they become ready and this greatly helps the player. This time, I decided that there had to be a single, overwhelming afternoon strike to swamp the defences.

Setting the right Doctrine for your attack planes is key. You MUST set Auto Evasion to No and Ignore Plotted Course When Attacking to Yes to ensure that pilots stick to the task and plough-in regardless. Not doing this really cost the AI in Operation Sutton.

I also decided that there was no point in trying to refuel planes on the outward leg. The two Hercules are inadequate to support such a large strike and any aircraft that refuel will be delayed, reducing the impact of the raid.
Note that the default score of zero for the scenario is rated Average, so you can draw by doing nothing – but why would you want to do that?

23/5/82 09:00L: I launched my ready Neptune to search for targets and turned-on an air search radar near Stanley to monitor British fighter activity. The latter revealed that TF 317 had a standing CAP of two Harriers NNW of the islands, much as in Operation Sutton.

10:00L: The Neptune was able to observe San Carlos Water from a safe distance, but needed to position itself with a clear line-of-virtual-sight up the Slot from the SW before it could see anything. It then located three warships and an auxiliary, giving us a focus for the raid. I launched both Hercules and aimed them astride the approach routes for the two planned streams of attack planes (one from San Julian and Santa Cruz and the other converging from Rio Gallegos and Rio Grande).

11:00L: Both tankers got into position, initially set NOT to allow refuelling.

12:00L: The strikes took to the air. Some players will prefer to use the Mission software for this, but I like to do things manually and needed no more than a calculator and piece of paper to plan it out so everything arrived at much the same time. As is my habit, I launched all planes individually, as this improves visibility and control and gets rid of the Group level of Doctrinal detail.

All 12 Mirages were sent to an AAW mission zone (the only Mission I used), corresponding to the Harriers’ patrol zone. All fighters were set to Shotgun, as they only had a single missile each and needed to get clear after firing it. BVR Doctrine was set to Follow Missile Straight In to give them some chance of hitting something instead of ruinously Cranking.

I intended to give my attack pilots discretion to re-base to the islands should fuel circumstances so warrant. In practice, the game wouldn’t let me select these bases, so I had to abandon the idea. Probably realistic, as Stanley and Goose Green may not have been able to support such aircraft.

The Mirages engaged the two patrolling Harriers and downed them for one loss, giving me a handy 60-20 VP gain. The AI does not scramble all available Harriers to meet the strike and merely feeds in two at a time. Harriers ceased to be a significant problem.

13:00L: As the strike planes converged on West Falkland and the targets, I hit predictable problems with Skyhawks going Bingo and turning around. However, they all have enough fuel to get home AFTER dropping their bombs, so I Unassigned them, one-by-one, from RTB and had them dive to either 2k or 1k’ AGL (the latter for those with the retarded munitions). In fact, the tankers are completely unnecessary and could be left at home.

There’s no sugar-coating it. This is tantamount to a kamikaze strike and the SAMs are brutal. Nevertheless, it is possible to overload them by weight of numbers and the VP schedule allows you to win thereby. It really pays to slow the game down to 1x speed and, combined with flying your planes individually and manually, you can adjust target assignation as you go along and focus on each bombing run in turn as the aircraft stream in. The game gets very picky about ‘horizontal range to target’ and this can get frustrating when you go a second or so too early – but persist.

To summarise, the strike sank the DDG Glamorgan for 120VP, the frigates Antelope, Argonaut, Plymouth and Yarmouth for 60 each and the landing ship Sir Galahad for 180. In addition, the amphib Intrepid, auxiliary Fort Austin and another landing ship were damaged for another 200VP.

The Argentines lost 27 Skyhawks, 5 Daggers and two Pucaras for a total of 680VP and a second Mirage was lost to Harriers for a further 20. This left me 80VP ahead overall.

On balance, using the four Pucaras at Goose Green was a mistake, as I lost two for nothing gained and RTB’d the others without attacking (I didn’t bother using the ones at Stanley). I also exposed more planes than I should have to the DDG Coventry and FFG Broadsword, patrolling N of Pebble Island and all those who tried to attack the pair were lost.

14:00L: All surviving strike planes made it back to base with no need for tanker support. Tankers and the Neptune followed them home.

17:00L: None of the damaged ships subsequently sank, so it finished as a Minor Victory, with a score of +80.
This is quite a hard scenario and, even given the approach detailed above, success is uncertain. Nevertheless, it is a good challenge – much more so than the earlier episodes of the series.