CSV Ian is NLF and larry is Allied

[larryfulkerson]

Last turn we disbanded the unit that allows the introduction of the 2nd air force units and in that group is a lot of F-100's and this particular aircraft unit is parked at Phan Rang and I've trimmed the range to fit the map and this is what 130 hexes range does for the F-100's in this case. The range is ordinarily 289 hexes but 130 is all I need from them.

[larryfulkerson]

I turned the brown-water navy loose and they trolled all the rivers and streams and flooded marshy areas and cleared out a lot of terrain in the delta. There's more to do yet but a lot of clearing got done this turn. I discovered that the individual Divisional HQ units have some organic engineers and they can repair bridges so I've got the separate divisions going to the broken bridges to see if there's any traces of the bad guys and or convert the unfriendly hexes and repair the bridge. Progress is being made.

[larryfulkerson]

After I moved what I think is everybody I called in an airstrike on the NVA rocket unit near Hue and almost killed it with one strike. One more strike might just do the trick.

[larryfulkerson]

I called in another airstrike, this one on the VC unit near Saigon and the results were mixed. I got some hits but it was really expensive. I'm thinking I'll try to pound him with the arty for a while and use the airplanes later after the unit is weaker.

[larryfulkerson]

Just after the two above mentioned airstrikes I have 80% of the turn remaining and I've just now discovered that I haven't moved the 1st Cav Division in-country yet. Where to put them? I'd like to keep those two VC units I've found from getting away before I can kill them so that's the task they have.

[devoncop]

January 1965

Larry efficiently took out the VC battalion in Bien Hoa province he tracked down as well as the artillery unit near Hue that got caught due to a turn burn before I could disband it.

This turn I gain a few VC guerrillas but apart from a couple of bridge drops they are not strong enough to do any toe to toe fighting. I tried to take on an isolated ARVN HQ up near the DMZ in the North and got handed 55% casualties....lesson learned.[:(]

The NVA managed some effective shelling of the ARVN the other side of the DMZ so the regular NVA are considerably more punchy as you would expect...


My longer term plan is to harass and preserve strength in the VC building up for a bigger and bigger presence by hitting and running and disbanding and then coordinating with the NVA periodically to try and keep Larry guessing. Numbers are very low for the VC at present so I need to be patient...

[larryfulkerson]

I may or may not have a bone to pick with the scenario designer ( Curt Chambers, good guy ) depending on whether or not the F-105's can reach Hanoi. There have been legends built upon the F-105's and their aerial war in the Red River Valley. Over 500 of them were shot down during the war and for it not to be included in this scenario would have been a real loss but it looks like the Thailand bases got moved closer to Hanoi than I remember them being so maybe they CAN reach Hanoi from there. We'll know for sure around T8 or so when the F-105's start appearing in the game.

I was going to say something about the air refueling multiplier being set to 1 which is just the fuel the aircraft has onboard. The F-105's had to tank up several times during their missions to Hanoi. They would take off with perhaps 15 minutes of fuel aboard to save the weight of the fuel and then once airborne and on their way they would top off their tanks; and then returning from a mission they would have been flying with full afterburner for so long they would be low on fuel again and would again tank up with enough to get them home and a 45 minute reserve. They flew out of Takhli, Korat, and some other base I can't remember now...wait, Udorn I think. It's a thing that I want to do at least once in the game.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's some information I found in Wikipedia about the USAF use of bases in Thailand during the Vietnam war. The 16th SOS was the squadron I flew with out of Ubon and I don't see it listed there and it wasn't a secret or anything, I don't think. It didn't get to Thailand until about '66 or so I think.

[larryfulkerson]

I found an F-100 unit that was on rest and flew it into Thailand and put it on the closest airfield to Hanoi gave it a range of 67 and found out that yes indeed, it CAN reach Hanoi but there's nothing in that complex of hexes except for the middle one that has two aircraft units and some AA guns in it. I'm wondering if I should do an airfield strike or not. Probably a bad idea.

[larryfulkerson]

The North Vietnamese have intercepted some of our wire traffic and have decifered an email.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's three members of the Force Recon team being moved into the jungle northwast of Hue. They are to scour the countryside looking for clues that the enemy is there or has passed through there recently. They are to avoid combat if possible, call in airstrikes if not, and if they get in trouble call for a pickup and soon they will be out of there. They will be in the bush for about three or four days.

[larryfulkerson]

I thought I'd view the playback one event at a time to see if I couldn't get a handle on where the bad guys are moving to now-a-days. Here's one that moved east of Saigon in the mountains and the terrain is so poor in that area that I'll need to use the 1st Cav for this search and destroy mission.

[devoncop]

Jan 1965

The war hots up as the US Air Force gets serious with interdiction and two VC guerrilla battalions are destroyed on their way to missions, principally in the Delta.

Four more bridges were dropped however and in the first significant ARVN losses the entire 1st Regiment of the ARVN 1st Division near Con Thien up by the DMZ is obliterated by concentrated NVA artillery fire.

I see the VP's have ticked up to 2 from 1 in the Allies favour though VP from losses continue to be zero each side. It seems the continuing patrolling by the ARVN/US re-pacifying territory may be the reason. At present I cannot risk leaving the VC to hang around for the most part so am frequently disbanding them after a turn of activity (with a few exceptions) but if the VP's continue to climb for the colonialists then this may need to be revisited.

The monsoon started this turn which I am sure Larry remembers with affection ([;)]) so hopefully US airpower may slacken off a bit....

[larryfulkerson]

And then in event 39 another VC unit pops up near Saigon. I need to sanitize the area around the MACV complex because Saigon is going to be nude of combat units for the next 10 turns or so and I realize that's risky but I need Ian to feel like "he has a chance" so he'll get used to doing risky things and not be so darned predictable. Not that he's all that predictable...more like: "conventional". I'd like to see him time the attacks so that the VC are busy in the south while at the same time the NVA are threatening an attack, or better yet actually attacking something up north. Ideally there would be NLF attacks all over the map but I don't think Ian has enough units for that yet. Later in the war he's going to field a regular conventional Russian-style army with tanks, mechanized units, etc.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: devoncop
Jan 1965

The war hots up as the US Air Force gets serious with interdiction and two VC guerrilla battalions are destroyed on their way to missions, principally in the Delta.

That's the kind of news I like to hear.

ORIGINAL: devoncop
Four more bridges were dropped however and in the first significant ARVN losses the entire 1st Regiment of the ARVN 1st Division near Con Thien up by the DMZ is obliterated by concentrated NVA artillery fire.

That's not the kind of news I like to hear. Although I'm not surprised. I'm going to have to concentrate on the NVA arty tubes and the HQ unit for that division so that their sting might not have so much fury.

ORIGINAL: devoncop
I see the VP's have ticked up to 2 from 1 in the Allies favour though VP from losses continue to be zero each side. It seems the continuing patrolling by the ARVN/US re-pacifying territory may be the reason. At present I cannot risk leaving the VC to hang around for the most part so am frequently disbanding them after a turn of activity (with a few exceptions) but if the VP's continue to climb for the colonialists then this may need to be revisited.

The monsoon started this turn which I am sure Larry remembers with affection ([;)]) so hopefully US airpower may slacken off a bit....

When I first arrived at Ubon, Thailand on 12August1972 the war was winding down and the Americans were leaving vietnam and putting the effort on the shoulders of the South Vietnamese Army ( ARVN ) and we were flying in support of the special forces in Laos and Cambodia and of course interdiction of the Ho Chi Minh trail. But the weather was so horrible that shooting was out of the question and almost all the crew in the back would just lay down on the deck and go to sleep, leaving one guy on watch just in case. And of course everybody left their Comms on. It's just that nobody ever had anything to say. Radar-guided guns would still shoot at us but a couple of hand-fulls of those llttle cardboard boxes of chaff would fix that. Just toss about a half a dozen of them out the window or off the end of the ramp. We always flew with the ramp down because the flare launcher wouldn't let us close it. Ever. So the red-line for airspeed was 152 knots. Max.

Missions into Cambodia and southern Laos were known as "Commando Basket" missions and those in the northernmost reaches of Laos, close to Burma and China, were known as "Steel Tiger" missions. We always had F-4 escorts for Steel Tiger missions, I think one of them from Udorn would replace the old one about every hour or so and they would just loiter up there at about 30K feet because of the Mig-21's based probably at Lao Cai, west of Hanoi, near the Red River Valley.

It was all very exciting for someone twenty two years old.

[devoncop]

Having read the briefing document again carefully (this time [:)]) it seems the US/ARVN gain between 1 to 3 VP's each turn as a default representing continuing economic aid/pacification etc and to offset that the VC need to be converting at least 3 hexes which then manage to trigger VC pacification (the chances of this depend on how populous the province is).

In light of this the VC will need to be more proactive once a sufficient reserve of manpower has built up.

The scenario designer advises that for the first 2 years the VC can do little more than try and avoid too many casualties though as I have found out already the NVA is potent enough early on but relatively few in number. Offensives are indeed planned for when the time is right and tempting as an immediate attack during the monsoon may be the rains also reduce VC supply to zero so nothing is happening on the offensive front right now...On the other hand the monsoon does reduce the effectiveness of the US airpower so maybe the VC need to try and hang around a little more to trigger some VP's....

Its a fascinating scenario...

[larryfulkerson]

Its a fascinating scenario...

+1

[larryfulkerson]

And yet another VC unit breaks one of my bridges and hasn't disappeared yet.

[larryfulkerson]

There will be a short pause while I take my 88 year old mom to lunch.

[larryfulkerson]

And at event 75 there's the 271st VC regiment moving in my AO.