Northern Fury 36 - Wrestling an Octopus 13/3/94

[fitzpatv]

Situation

The Soviets begin their climactic advance down the Gudbrandsdal through Lillehammer to Oslo and the 2nd Brigade of the US 82nd Airborne tries to stop them. You can only play the NATO side.

The 82nd and their Norwegian allies are represented by a variety of fixed and mobile units, the former being modified installations with short-ranged weapons, simulating entrenched infantry. The latter include eight platoons of Patton and Leopard tanks with four or five vehicles each. Most of these units have only very short-ranged weapons, though there are two batteries of M270 MLRS (range 20nm), two of 155mm towed guns (16nm) and three of 105mm howitzers (just 6nm).

Supporting these are three Patriot batteries, seven MANPAD squads and some AA guns, plus four radars/height-finders.

Air support consists of helicopters near the front line and fixed-wing aircraft further back. The former consist of seven Kiowa recon choppers, seven Apache and Cobra attack types and a single Quick Fix OECM whirlybird.

At Oslo Gardermoen, you have 12 Dutch and Norwegian F-16s with a mixture of Sidewinders and bombs and four bomb-armed Freedom Fighters. There are 14 A-10s at Oslo Fornebu with bombs, Mavericks and Sidewinders and eight Hornets at Torp with Sparrows, Sidewinders and a mix of bombs and rockets. At Stavanger (Sola), there are four F-16s with AMRAAMs, two with HARMs and six with AMRAAMs and cluster bombs, as well as four F-5s with bombs.

The Soviets have a large force of over 200 tanks, mechanised infantry in APCs and a formidable artillery contingent which heavily outnumbers and outranges the defenders. This is protected by lots of medium SAMs (Geckoes, Gauntlets, Gainfuls and Gadflies), AA guns and MANPADs.

Fulcrums and Floggers provide air cover for the Warsaw Pact, who also deploy numerous MiG-27 and Frogfoot attack planes and a variety of attack and EW choppers.

Assessment

It looked hopeless. Only four of our ground units had a range of over 6nm and even the MLRS batteries could only just clear our own forward positions, while the Russians had systems with a range of 22 to 38nm and enough ammo to scour us off the map. They also had three times as many tanks and freedom of manouevre against what was basically a fixed defence.

We might conceivably have some joy with HARMs in the unlikely event of the enemy having their radars on by default, but we only had the two SEAD Falcons with four missiles. Our other aerial weapons were bombs, rockets, Hellfires and Mavericks, which were all outranged by Gadflies, while the missiles could only take-out a tank each.

Then there were the enemy attack planes and choppers, against which we had mainly Sidewinder-armed fighters (and not many of those) and SAMs which were likely to be neutralised quickly by enemy artillery.

I turned-off AutoEvade for SAMs and artillery in case it stopped them firing back.

The MLRS were put on Weapons Hold, as advised in the Briefing, so that they didn’t fire and give away their positions prematurely. It was a moot point whether to use them primarily against artillery or to reserve their anti-tank mine dispenser munitions for the Soviet armour. Aircraft aside, there was no other way of destroying the enemy guns and rocket launchers.

The Sidewinder-armed fighters were ill-equipped to fight Fulcrums or Floggers, so I gave them a low-altitude CAP mission with which to tackle the attack planes and choppers. I also set-up a high-altitude CAP mission for the handful of AMRAAM fighters at Sola, who could at least attempt to gain air superiority.

The helicopters and attack planes could try to exploit a couple of valleys along the Soviet advance route to terrain-mask themselves and get close enough to hit the artillery, but this really required us to deal with the MiGs and intervening SAM units first. I found that the map was insufficiently detailed to support such tactics unless I switched-on the Relief/Bathymetry Layer which is, at least, colourful.

Events

13/3/94 08:00Z (09:00L): The four AMRAAM F-16s sortied from Sola and one Patriot battery was turned-on to give some visibility of enemy air activity before the Falcons arrived. A quartet each of Fulcrums and Floggers engaged the F-16s who, despite the 2:1 odds, shot down seven of these, plus a MiG-27, without loss before having to withdraw for lack of ammo. This scored 5VP each, but the scenario has no pre-set Victory Thresholds.

The Falcons detected a couple of Gauntlets covering the approach valleys a short way down, so the MLRS were used to eliminate the one to the East for 1VP, opening the way for our choppers to attack the numerous artillery units we’d spotted further back

Unfortunately, the surviving Fulcrum just happened to fly close to an Apache that I was trying to sneak up the valley and shot it down for a loss of 5VP. The MiG-29 then chased a retiring F-16, which drew it into range of a Patriot, which downed it at the second attempt, to general astonishment.

Meanwhile, Soviet rocket artillery and MiG-27s began bombarding the NATO positions, destroying one of the MLRS batteries, a radar and one set of ‘cratering charge’ mines, costing us 3VP in all.

Four Dutch Sidewinder F-16s arrived from Gardermoen, but the enemy had more Fulcrums on the way. We were never going to get air superiority and pave the way for our attack planes and choppers, while the ground units had no real way of fighting back. Basically, it was hopeless, so I left it there.

[fitzpatv]

Resumption

I disengaged and RTB’d all aircraft, as I could do nothing until the AMRAAM F-16s were ready again (and one was at Gardermoen and needed to Ferry back to Sola to re-arm).

09:00Z: Two MiG-27s took-out the Giraffe radar, but were then downed by MANPADs. Another attacked with stand-off weapons, but fell to a Patriot. Lots more artillery was incoming.

10:00Z: Three F-16s from Sola re-engaged and downed two Fulcrums for one loss.

I sent an Apache up the valley, only for it to be ambushed and destroyed by an undetected MANPAD (the patrolling F-16s had found no trace of it). Terrain masking simply wasn’t an option, so we couldn’t get close to the Soviet artillery, which continued to rain Hell upon our positions.

At this point, I again quit in despair…

Resumption 2

After playing Queen Elizabeth Class and been given time to reflect, I resumed once more. The only remaining hope was to wait for the Soviets to leave the cover of their SAMs and MANPADs and attack, then go after them with strike aircraft and choppers. This did assume that they wouldn’t bring their air defence with them.

Two more Fulcrums appeared but were dealt-with by having our F-16s lure them into Patriot range, the SAMs shooting straight for a change. Encouragingly, that left the Reds out of Fulcrums. The F-16s then knocked-down three more MiG-27s.

11:00Z: Numerous Frogfeet attacked, with two pairs of Floggers alternating as escorts. Dutch F-16s downed six Su-25s and managed to avoid the MiG-23s, but damage to ground units accumulated.

12:00Z: The Russians had more Floggers than we’d realised and some attacked Gardermoen with attack loadouts, losing two airframes to Patriots on the way but otherwise catching me not looking and wrecking two F-16s and an F-5 on the ground.

By now, enemy artillery fire had diminished somewhat and some tanks and mechanised infantry were probing our NW flank, suffering losses at 1VP per unit to our surviving guns. Patrolling F-16s disposed of two Frogfeet and a Hind.

13:00Z: There were more heavy attacks on the front line and Gardermoen, but I was ready this time and CAP inflicted losses without taking any.

Word then arrived that the USN had located and battered the Soviet 17th Tank Brigade, lessening the intensity of the coming ground assault. This explained why there were no T-80 tanks in Scenario Platforms.

Meanwhile, our gunners had destroyed the initial Soviet ground attack.

14:00Z: We were running low on fighters, even with aircraft losses of four and two choppers to 41 and a chopper in our favour. We did, at least, have two of the Sola F-16s available again.

A heavy ground assault then developed on our NW flank (again), with lots of mobile artillery providing close support to a mass of mechanised infantry and more Frogfeet swarming-in. Unsure whether this was the main thrust, I nonetheless committed my remaining two Apaches and four A-10s. With the Floggers absent, these did great execution to the Russians with Mavericks, cluster bombs, Ballute retarded munitions and even 30mm cannon. As hoped, the enemy had largely moved outside their SAM cover. Our fighters disposed of a number of attack planes and Hinds without loss.

15:00Z: The Soviets followed-up with some 24 T-72s. Two Kiowas made little impression on these and one was lost to a SAM, but a combination of Norwegian artillery and another pair of A-10s demolished them. Enemy attack planes and choppers continued to be chewed-up by CAP.

16:00Z: There was then something of a lull, with the Soviets resuming shelling, sending over a few choppers and restoring a two-Flogger CAP. Aircraft losses were now 70-7 in our favour and eleven batteries of enemy artillery had been accounted-for.

17:00Z: Russian air incursions continued. An F-16 from Sola downed two of their remaining Flogger fighters and then teamed-up with some Gardermoen F-16s to converge upon and destroy two more, which proved to be the last of them.

18:00Z: A column of motorised infantry came-in from the NE and were slaughtered by artillery and two Cobra attack choppers. Fighters shot-down a pair of Soviet choppers on the NW flank, but a Dutch F-16 was lost to a SAM.

19:00Z: Cobras wiped-out a cluster of artillery units (probably out of ammo) which were following-up the truck-borne infantry and several more enemy attack planes were downed. However, a Cobra engaged two mobile units making what proved to be a token attack from the NW and fell to a SAM.

20:00Z: Believing the mobile units to be MANPADs, I sent one of my observation squads out to locate them precisely for my artillery. As it turned-out, they were mechanised infantry, but our spotters out-stealthed them and the gunners did the rest.

14/3/94 02:00Z: After a lengthy lull, the Soviets suddenly sent three attack Floggers to Gardermoen and a Frogfoot against the front line. All four were downed, but the Floggers surprised me and took-out three F-16s and an F-5 on the air base before this happened. We had seven fighters left, whereas the enemy had an unknown number of Frogfeet and choppers.

08:00Z: We downed a couple of OECM choppers, but there was no further ground assault and nothing else happened.

It ended with a score of +471, there being no official Victory Thresholds. Beyond doubt, it was a NATO victory, as the Soviet push on Oslo had been halted with disproportionate losses to them.

NATO lost 7 fighters, 2 attack planes, 4 choppers and 68 ground elements.

The Pact lost 83 fighters and attack planes, 12 choppers and 264 ground elements.

So it wasn’t hopeless after all and I owe Bart an apology. I do have a tendency to overestimate the opposition (and not just at Command) and had believed that, unless I could destroy their artillery quickly, it would simply scour my ground forces off the map. As it proved, their prodigious firepower wasn’t enough to do so, partly because Bart had given our troops lots of damage points in his modding exercise.

Although their fighters heavily outnumbered our AMRAAM users, it was possible to defeat them with a little thought and agility. Changing Missions (engagement altitude and area) as I went along and taking planes off them in order to flee helped and I found that pulling the border back from the front line (sometimes) was a good idea, as it meant that we weren’t caught too far forward and could use a Patriot battery in support. Otherwise, the ploy of waiting for the enemy ground forces to break SAM cover proved decisive.

[Gunner98]

Glad you stuck with it, Vince. Thanks.

Nobody said fighting a defensive battle against a Sov MR assault would be easy, and I was hoping to depict that. CMO doesn't do a good job with land fights, but I fiddled with this one enough that I thought it would work, but who knows how updates impact play.

Bart