Northern Fury 38 - Hammer 14/3/94

[fitzpatv]

To my surprise, this one was not about the amphibious landings in Norway, but an attempt by NATO to prepare for them by severing the E6 highway, which is the key logistical artery for the North and Centre of the country. The task has been given to aircraft based in the Oslo, Bergen and Stavanger areas, with some support from UK bases. You can only play as NATO.

The stretch of the E6 in the area of the proposed landings has twelve road tunnels, a bridge and two ferry piers and you must take-out as many of these as possible. Also on the menu are the railway station near Evenes airbase which serves as HQ for the Soviet Archangel Corps and any Divisional HQs you might locate.

To do this, you essentially have four F-15s with GBU-24s and eight more with GBU-15s, all based at Rygge, S of Oslo. There are also eight F-16s at Bergen and Stavanger and twelve F-4s at Rygge with HARMs, but these are really of limited use here. Enemy SAMs and radars are not the targets and, as Soviet SAMs are habitually kept switched-off, you would need to hit them between their lighting-up and firing at your short-ranged, semi-stand-off (8 or 15nm) strike weapons. This is, of course, impractical.

Fighter escort is available in the form of ten F-15s and twelve F-16s, split between the three Norwegian bases. For support, there are eight KC-135 tankers at Mildenhall in England, a couple of Sentry AEW planes and a Norwegian jamming aircraft.

As with NF37, the events of Shoulder to Shoulder might as well not have happened for all the difference it makes and the enemy still has an abundance of fighters and SAMs with which to protect the targets.

I decided that trying to use the SEAD planes would only complicate matters, so I left them at home. The F-15s were capable of reaching the targets via Sweden without needing to refuel and I planned to have a GBU-15-carrier attack each of eight tunnels (two missiles per target), with two of the GBU-24 planes (which carry four missiles) dealing with the other four and the remaining two F-15s using GBU-24s on the ferry piers. Part of the thinking was that these targets would be less well defended than the HQ at Evenes and were nearer than the bridge, which was the furthest N, near Narvik. As the GBU-24 uses buddy illumination, I had the four planes carrying this weapon work in pairs.

The tankers would all be used to support the escorts, with half the Bergen and Stavanger fighters (nine in all) joining the KC-135s over Central Sweden to provide rapid protection for the withdrawing F-15s, while the others waited in reserve.

14/3/94 18:00Z: All of the tankers lifted-off from Mildenhall and headed for Sweden. The duty Sentry identified a pair of Flankers on CAP over Bodo (at the SW end of the target zone), with a Mainstay and a couple of ELINT Fencers or Badgers in support.

19:00Z: The tankers duly arrived on-station and were then joined by the nine fighter escorts. The shorter-legged F-16s began to refuel.

20:00Z: As the escorts prepared, the dozen strike F-15s moved past them towards a rendezvous point out of enemy radar range near the Gulf of Bothnia.

21:00Z: With no reaction as yet from the Russians, the strike reached the rendezvous and moved NW towards the chosen targets, while the escorts moved N into their mission zone.

The F-15s managed to get into weapon range of the tunnels and piers, as planned. However, a dozen shots each from a Gadfly and Gainful site proved enough to knock down almost all of the 16 GBU-15s, with only one tunnel being caved-in for 20VP. Very disappointing!

As for the GBU-24s, I couldn’t find a way to make them work!. Getting below the cloud layer and having each pair of F-15s switch-on their radars within weapon range of the targets failed to prevent the too-familiar ‘No Directors Able to Illuminate Target’ error. Nor did closing the range. Perhaps the GBU-24 can’t be used at night but, if this is so, the database should make it clear. As it was, I had to abort all four sorties and RTB (not straightforward, as the direct route back to base went through enemy territory and No Nav Zones). I don’t really understand Buddy Illumination, even after years of playing this game and would appreciate some guidance.

We now had to get away. Half-a-dozen Flankers came Afterburnering in and, with the F-15s lacking the fuel to sustain a similar speed, eight were caught and shot down, costing me 5VP apiece. The escort arrived just too late to prevent this, but probably saved themselves casualties by so doing. With the Russians having shot their bolt, four Flankers were downed (2VP each) and the others withdrew, enabling our surviving forces to return safely to base.

So it ended in a Minor Defeat, with a score of -12. We’d closed the road in one place, but at too high a price.

The outcome really boiled down to our missiles not getting past the Russian SAMs, as a few more tunnels at 20VP each would have made quite a difference. Perhaps this is one of those scenarios where you can get the right result if you play it often enough?. As detailed above, I really don’t think that using HARMs would have changed things, as it couldn’t have been done in time.

As always, I would be interested in peoples’ thoughts and possible insights here. I’ve not been doing very well lately and need to find a way to up my game...

[mllange]

Interesting read. I don't have the expertise to provide suggestions or helpful feedback, but dropped in to let you know I enjoyed reading the report. Keep at it!

[fitzpatv]

Good to know that people still enjoy reading these AARs - thanks.

Second Try

Played this again. This time, I left the GBU-24 planes out and sent all eight GBU-15 planes against the tunnels. Simply because I was luckier than last time, I took-out four tunnels for one F-15 lost to a Gadfly.

Part of the problem on the first playthrough was the F-15s being extremely reluctant to disengage after attacking. This time, I was quicker to set Ignore Plotted Course While Attacking to No and have them all get out SE at Afterburner. This enabled the seven F-15s (which only have Sidewinders, so can’t really fight back) to keep ahead of the six Flankers long enough to be rescued by the fighters, at which point they could safely slow down and head back to base.

As I’d surmised, the escorts were only able to intervene at cost and both sides lost five fighters in a fierce duel where my fuel situation didn’t permit fancy tactics and I had to rely on a Mission. The sixth Flanker got away, badly damaged, as our planes went Bingo Fuel and retired.

So, this time, it finished with a score of +60, which is Average. The scale runs up to +300, but getting anywhere near this would require a lot of luck and might well be impossible, given the shortage of munitions and the efficiency of the Soviet SAMs.

[RSMC]

The trick to activating the laser designator is to open each unit individually, go to the sensors button, and toggle the laser designator to active manually. PITA but the only way I have found to do that reliably. The designating aircraft has to be below clouds to laser designate, but the dropping aircraft can be above the cloud layer.

[fitzpatv]

Thanks very much for that. I clearly wasn't looking carefully enough at the Sensors window. Will look forward to trying it out at the next opportunity.

[RSMC]

One additional issue - this one also for Bart - the bridge and the northern ferry pier are placed such that they are under water and therefore cannot be attacked by air. You can go into the editor and move them until they have an altitude rather than a depth if you want to keep the targets available.

In term of tactics, you may want to use the SEAD capability. If you use a bearing only launch of a HARM, that will get the SAMs to light off, then you can focus on the SAM sites nearest the tunnel entrances, piers, and bridge. I think trying for the corps HQ is ridiculous with all the SAMs around it. Eliminating the SAMs nearest the targets allow a reasonable chance of success for a min altitude attack.

[fitzpatv]

Hadn't thought of that one. The downside to that approach is that it would wake-up the enemy fighters before the strike planes went in with the GBU-15s and 24s, which would tend to balance-out any gains. Chances are that they can muster more than the initial group of six Flankers if you hang around. All told, it is a hard scenario to win.