Pacific Fury 3 - Caught Flat Footed 13/2/94

[fitzpatv]

This scenario covers the outbreak of war in the Philippines. The USS Constellation CVBG is off NE Luzon and in badly-disjointed shape when it is confronted by a powerful Soviet battlegroup approaching from the NE. An insurgency then breaks-out in the Philippines and you somehow have to deal with both issues.

Constellation is escorted by the cruisers Lake Erie and Gridley and the destroyer Ingersoll. Half of her air group is ashore at Cubi Point, NW of Manila, undergoing a re-fit which has been hampered by enemy agents sabotaging aviation fuel at that base. The cruiser Vincennes is 175nm to the ESE and the frigate Tisdale is 172nm to the SSW, engaged in rescuing survivors from a wrecked trawler with her two RHIBs.

Leaving Manila Bay are the destroyer Kinkaid and the auxiliaries Williamette and San Jose, intending to rendezvous with and replenish the CVBG off NW Luzon.

The SSN San Francisco is 218nm NW of the CVBG and the City of Corpus Christi 487nm ENE.

You have a selection of Filipino aircraft at three bases around Manila, including Broncos and S.211 and SF.260W light ground attack planes and some recon types (a pair of Super Kings can actually spot ground targets). Very few of these planes are ready and hardly any can operate by night, which is when the game starts. The Filipinos also have F-5 squadrons at Tacloban on Leyte and Laoag in NW Luzon.

Otherwise, you have an Orion near Iwo Jima, which has no ASW loadout and has been sent to replace one that was shot down by the Soviets (unconfirmed, but) somewhere E of the islands. At Guam, there are some tankers, Orions and B-52s with Harpoons.

The Soviets have the guided missile helicopter carrier Minsk, accompanied by the battlecruiser Admiral Lazarev (aka Frunze), a Slava, two Sovremennys and two Udaloys. Between them, they carry over 50 long-ranged Sandbox anti-shipping missiles, plus Sunburns should they get close enough to use them. Minsk’s air group includes Freestyles, which can potentially employ Kayak ASCMs and Forgers with close-range weapons such as Karens and Kerrys.

There is a major Soviet submarine presence, with at least one Oscar, Charlie, Akula, Victor III, Sierra and Kilo, plus an older missile-carrying Juliett diesel sub and a new Yankee Notch, which can fire Sampson cruise missiles against ground targets. The Juliett is reportedly near the San Francisco, while the Victor and either the Akula or Sierra are nearer the CVBG.

A Kanin destroyer and a couple of AGIs are shadowing the CVBG, helped by a Bear and a Hormone.

13/2/94 12:00Z: I tried to use the Formation Editor to arrange the CVBG into a wedge, with a spacing of 7nm (effective Sea Sparrow range) and Lake Erie in the lead. Unfortunately, the AI doesn’t seem to know how to execute such instructions (or I don’t understand how to specify them properly) and the result was much chaotic milling about.

The Replenishment Zone is some 450nm from the CVBG and 630nm from Vincennes. While the former can get there at Cruise, the detached cruiser would need to make about 30 knots (with associated submarine risk) and it isn’t practical to wait for her. I had Vincennes alter course SW for a while to throw-off any planned ambush, then proceed at Flank.

Luzon prevents the CVBG from outrunning the Soviets, who can reach its shores within the game time-limit, so there’s no real way to avoid an engagement. Still, Constellation has some CAP left and the force has plenty of SAMs, so I calculated that we stood a chance of toughing it out.

Tisdale needed to recover her RHIBs, leave the rescue mission (as authorised in the briefing) to the elderly Filipino corvette Miguel Malvar and then move closer to Luzon in a bid to link-up with the carrier.

The Replenishment Group can reach the target zone doing 20 knots, but there is a high risk of a Charlie ambush or similar en route, so I decided that they would be better heading back into Manila Bay, so that Constellation and escorts could subsequently meet them there, help the Filipinos deal with the insurgency and await reinforcements from the States.

A couple of F-14s were ready at Cubi Point, so I sent them to re-join the carrier.

The Kanin and his chopper were soon detected 29nm astern of the CVBG, with the AGI Mirnyy ahead. There was a Bear en route from the Vincennes to the Constellation and a group of Freestyles flying CAP in the estimated vicinity of the Soviet task force.

It proved impossible for Tisdale to recover both RHIBs, as the first one took-up 73% of her storage space. I had to abandon the other one and hope Miguel Malvar could recover it.

A Hawkeye detected what was probably the Juliett surfacing, 208nm to the NW, so that he could fire his four Shaddocks (the database says that this requires half-an-hour on the surface.

Although war wasn’t due to break-out for another thirty minutes or so, I decided that the Soviet destruction of our Orion (pre-game) was a clear statement of intent, as was the behaviour of the enemy units roundabout, so I decided to fire first for once in a legitimate attempt to protect my force.

Gridley fired two Harpoons at the Kanin and I rolled my eyes as they both malfunctioned. Three more did the job for 50VP. Ingersoll sorted-out the Mirnyy with another Harpoon for 10VP. CAP then disposed of the Hormone (Sidewinder) for 1VP and the Bear (Sidewinder after two Sparrows managed to miss) for 4.

Both the Juliett and an Oscar reacted straightaway and loosed missiles, followed shortly by the main Soviet force. The Juliett could not have waited half-an-hour as specified, but it did him no good, as San Francisco blew him apart with a Harpoon before he dived, netting 100VP.

The Oscar only fired a handful of Shipwrecks and, like the Juliett’s Shaddocks, these were easily dealt with by CAP and SAMs. The Sandboxes from the enemy battlegroup arrived in batches of 2-4 and were picked-off accordingly. More were coming and I calculated that it would take a while before the enemy ran out of such ammo.

There were reports of a truck bomb attack on Basa air base, N of Manila, but this occasioned no actual losses.

13:00Z: An insurgent dhow, the Chung Dho, manifested itself off Cubi Point and began firing a mortar at the base. Soon afterwards, another mortar opened-up from inland. Before long, a number of aircraft on the base were hit, including a KC-135. Reports arrived of similar trouble near Tacloban, with requests for Philippine air support.

Unfortunately, the Filipinos have NO aircraft capable of attacking by night, so there is nothing you can do (unless you attack anyway and the game lets you do so but, even then, you have a dire lack of ready loadouts). Kinkaid loosed a Harpoon at the Chung Dho but, when it decided to lock onto a civilian vessel instead of its designated target, I decided I’d had enough.

What about the Filipino Army and the US land forces at Cubi Point?!. Surely this was a job for them, especially at night. As it stood, it was a totally contrived and unfair situation and recalled the way the Panama Canal had no land defences in Caribbean Fury 2. In general, the Fury series is at its weakest when it gets carried away with land operations that the game struggles to portray realistically.

Very disappointing. Shame, as I was perfectly up for taking-on the Soviet Navy, but the insurgency element ruined the scenario for me and I’ll be moving on to the next one in due course.

[Knightpawn]

Oh! I liked that scenario very much exactly because it is a bit chaotic. You cannot avoid the taking hits from the insurgents but if you focus in getting your forces to the RV area and you do it deliberately to counter for submarine threat and keep you distance from the Soviet Group you get enough points. Why would you like to engage the Soviet Group? It does not seem that you have overwhelming superiority. Why risk?

[fitzpatv]

The idea was to move the CVBG to the RP zone at Cruise, keeping my distance from the Soviet task group so that they couldn't use their Sunburns, while maintaining ASW cover. I was reasonably confident that I could stop the Sandboxes, especially as they were coming-in in small batches, though you never know when you're going to get a string of bad virtual dice rolls that let a missile through. The Oscar seems to have lost contact, as it only fired a few Shipwrecks. I know roughly where it is, but can't spare a Viking to look for it at the moment due to the general squeeze on ready loadouts.

When I said I was up for taking-on the Soviet Navy, I didn't mean heading for their task group, but it is impossible to avoid fighting it due to the range of the Sandboxes. What can be taken-on is the subs and the initial shadows. If we get to the stage where we actually have any ready strike planes, it might be possible to mount some attacks on the task group, though their SAM defences are formidable.

Perhaps I should just ignore the insurgents, beyond launching as many planes as possible to get them out of the way. Nevertheless, it would have been a much better scenario without them. After all, the US CVBG commander would not in reality have to micro-manage the situation at Cubi Point to the detriment of repelling the Soviet naval attacks.

Arguably, Bart could have split this into two scenarios, one covering the fleet engagement and the other the insurgency, though he should have given Cubi Point, Tacloban, etc, some realistic ground defences.

[Gunner98]

Hay Vince

Sorry you feel that way, the insurgency is meant to be both a story backdrop and a potential distraction. Nothing more. Impact on the core of the scenario itself should not be overly much.

[tylerblakebrandon]

I personally liked the insurgent subplot and personally in my head canon assumed the attacks completed in scenario were those that ground forces failed to stop and that other ground actions are taking place around the country we don't know about. We only see what impact us as the player.

[fitzpatv]

That's certainly one way to rationalise it.

OK, you guys have talked me into re-starting and (despite a series of unsolicited Microsoft updates paralysing my computer - couldn't even use the mouse at one point), I've managed to stabilise the situation, ending the problems at Cubi Point and running the Soviets out of Sandboxes.

I'll let you know how it finishes in due course.

[fitzpatv]

13:00Z: Responding to the insurgent attacks, Cubi Point released a patrol craft, the Spectre, armed with 20mm and 12.7mm guns and this exchanged fire with the Chung Dho and a second rebel craft, taking some damage but sinking the former. As for airpower, I did have some Tiger IIs with night-time capability and 20mm cannon, so I had one of these take-on the 120mm mortar inland with strafing runs. Miraculously, there was just the one mortar unit and no MANPADs and the fighter got the job done. With a few Harpoons whizzing over from Kinkaid in Manila Bay, the insurgent vessels (three in all) were finally sunk. None of this scored any points, we lost seven planes on the ground in all (two at Tacloban, where the enemy mortar ran out of ammo and ceased fire) and mines in the harbour entrance to Cubi Point sank one civilian vessel and damaged another to cost us another 13VP. By keeping everything still thereafter, I avoided further trouble with the mines, helped by the AI desisting from moving the neutral ships around. A second Filipino patrol boat was released, but was too late to play any part in proceedings.

Meanwhile, there was another truck bomb incident at Laoag in NW Luzon, but this didn’t cost any VP. As at Basa, I was probably lucky here.

With all this going-on, the Soviet task force increased the intensity of their Sandbox attacks, with up to six coming-in at a time. With extra fighters arriving at intervals from Cubi Point and manual SAM allocation as needed when a missile threatened to get through, we eventually downed all 32 of the Sandboxes, though Gridley’s crew were thankful when one flew over the cruiser in an attempt to hit Constellation instead. For some reason, the Lazarev/Frunze did not use her 20 Shipwrecks and the Oscar only loosed six of hers. It’s possible that the Lazarev had something else, like SAMs, loaded on her mounts and the Oscar lacked a precise-enough contact.

The enemy still weren’t finished at Cubi Point and a Yankee Notch, somewhere far offshore, sent 16 Sampson cruise missiles at the air base. There wasn’t much warning due to Cubi’s lousy radar, but the missiles were stopped by Chaparral and Stinger SAMs and a few patrolling Tigers with Sidewinders.

14:00Z: Another eight Sampsons came over and were dealt with by the defences.

15:00Z: The Yankee Notch used his remaining eight Sampsons and managed to hit an ammo shelter and 20mm AA gun, but this cost no points. There was no clue as to the point of origin of the missiles and, considering that they have a range of 700nm, the chances of finding the sub by searching at random were remote, so I didn’t try.

16:00Z: An update confirmed that Vietnam was allied to the USSR. To our relief, Indonesia was leaning towards the West.

17:00Z: A Victor III appeared NW of the CVBG. Every time an ASW aircraft went Engaged Offensive, it altered its Doctrine to folow its plotted course instead of attacking directly, which was infuriating and occasioned some hasty manual adjustments. This bug needs fixing. Despite this handicap, we had a good margin for this encounter and the SSN was sunk for 100VP before it could mount an attack. At +226, the score was now Average.

19:00Z: We were told that the insurgents had a base near Burauen on Leyte (near the Ormoc Valley, where the Japanese caused the Americans some serious trouble in 1944-45). The Filipinos requested recon assistance so that they could mount strikes at first light. An initial attempt using an Orion’s cameras was fruitless, so I sent a Hornet (there were several at Cubi Point with TALDs or bombs and I decided to have these help the Filipinos instead of returning to the carrier like the rest of the air wing were doing at intervals).

Vincennes was ambushed by an Akula. Her choppers, supported by one of a series of Orions sent from Guam and re-basing to Laoag, sank the SSN but there was no outrunning his torpedoes and one hit sufficed to sink the cruiser. Both sides scored 100VP. Given Vincennes’s exposed initial location and need to race along at 30 knots to reach the Replen Zone, this was always likely to happen. The cruiser’s choppers made it to Gridley, which had space available.
Performance issues meant that this encounter took place in slow-motion, with a big real-time interval and several total game stoppages between sinking the sub and losing the cruiser.

The Hornet duly found nine rebel armed trucks and a tented HQ. She carried TALDs and, as the database says that these have a cruise altitude of 4k’, I loosed them to provoke some MANPAD fire. Annoyingly, they flew at 36k’ instead. So much for creative thinking…

22:00Z: Though Constellation now had sufficient HARM Hornets available to mount a strike on the Soviet task force, I decided that it wasn’t worth it, as they were no longer in pursuit and the chances of doing any damage, even if their radars were on, were slight. I could have sent the B-52s and a Harpoon Orion from Guam, but it would have been difficult to provide fighter cover and they would have been vulnerable to enemy CAP if the latter had a decent radius of action. So I left it alone and steamed on towards the Replenishment Zone.

Miguel Malvar reached the vicinity of the wrecked trawler and we were told that she needed to stay within 4nm for four hours to score VP. A nearby, motionless ‘neutral’ trawler looked suspicious, but made no move to interfere.

23:00Z: I sent a couple of S.211 attack planes and a stream of Broncos to attack the rebel base, while a recon Super King circled overhead at a safe height, allowing the short-legged Hornet to RTB. The S.211s lacked the endurance to attack without being re-based to Tacloban. This pair did some damage, scoring no points and one was lost to a Grail.

At this point, chronic performance issues manifested themselves and the game crashed, whereupon the operating system automatically re-started my laptop. Command has become a seriously memory-hungry beast, with a noticeable worsening of the problem introduced by v.1567.6 (to my perception) and it seems to leave insufficient resources for the various background tasks that Windows insists on running at regular intervals (we’re not talking about a full-scale Windows Update here). For some reason, the problem seems to be worst in the afternoon, perhaps because this is when these processes are scheduled to run. I’ve not experienced these difficulties with other games.

Incidentally, I was playing with Microsoft Edge turned-off and had also switched-off the range circles in the game to optimise performance. It would be nice to be able to turn the terrain off as well to stop the game re-defining everything whenever I zoom in or out, because this is a major performance issue. Pop-up windows are taking ages to appear, usually with ‘Not Responding’ messages attached.

Anyway, once I’d stabilised my machine, I decided to abort the attempt on the rebel base, RTB everything I didn’t strictly need and just try to get the game finished as quickly as possible.

14/2/94 01:00Z: Tisdale caught-up with the CVBG.

02:00Z: Miguel Malvar completed her rescue mission and scored 25VP.

07:00Z: A submarine ambush was always likely in the vicinity of the Batangas Islands, N of Luzon, given the presence of shallow waters that could hide a Kilo from towed arrays. Sure enough, one was detected NW of the CVBG. Once found, it never had a prayer and one of the several escorting Orions from Laoag disposed of it. A score of +352 (a Russian chopper had managed to crash for 1VP if you’re counting) was still Average.

10:00Z: Increasing speed on the final straight, Constellation entered the Replenishment Zone for 200VP, taking the score to +552 and a Minor Victory. It seems that only the carrier scores, so I could have sent Vincennes and Tisdale away to the S and out of danger but, then, I wouldn’t have sunk the Akula, either. The two auxiliaries probably score another 200VP each, but it seemed much wiser to have the CVBG circle round to Manila Bay to replenish rather than risk those vessels with just Kinkaid for escort. True, it would delay Constellation’s arrival in Japanese waters a little, but it would also keep her clear of the sort of trouble that claimed Independence until reinforcements could arrive from Hawaii and the West Coast. After all, there was little risk of Japan being invaded anytime soon.

12:00Z: It ended in a Minor Victory.

The US side lost a cruiser, 4 fighters, 2 attack planes, a tanker plane and 3 ground elements.

The USSR lost 4 subs, a destroyer, an AGI, a Bear and 2 choppers.

The insurgents lost 3 small craft and 3 120mm mortars.

A neutral tanker and go-fast were destroyed.

In the end, I was glad and relieved to get this scenario finished. Maybe I was a little harsh about it earlier on, when the impact of the insurgents seemed to be worse than it actually was. The main problem in the end was not the Russians or even the rebels, but the performance issues. Possibly, I now need a more powerful machine to run Command as it currently stands, but this isn’t an acceptable option for me at the moment. Things did run more smoothly in the evenings, so perhaps I should play then to avoid the processes that were interacting so badly with the game. It is possible that Microsoft have recently stepped-up the incidence of background tasks and I’d be interested to know if anyone else has been having similar problems. For now, I’ll have to see what happens next time I play (and this looks like being a large scenario) and consider confining myself to smaller scenarios should there be no alternative. Any advice welcomed.