With SAM's, AAM's and ALGM's this is a whole different game then my previous Kola scenarios that were primarily guns and bombs. The Soviet defenses (SAMs/AAM armed Migs) are much tougher to crack and require a layered approach. Some lessons learned for the next run:
1. Launch all the ALGM's at the same time in an attempt to saturate the Soviet defenses. A few PVO airbases and some SAM site concentrations destroyed before the B-52's entered Soviet airspace would have changed things greatly.
2. The current attack profile of the Hound Dog is not ideal. 55k and 600kts means it is easily detected by radar and closed/intercepted by the faster Migs. No info yet on how the SAM sites would have handled them. In my limited research (wikipedia) the Hound Dog apparently had multiple attack profiles selectable by the crew. The middle 2 profiles below would have delayed detection - but made them immediately vulnerable to the cannon armed fighters. Anyway to update the DB to reflect these?:
"The Hound Dog could be launched from the B-52 Stratofortress at high altitudes or low altitudes, but not below 1,500 metres (5,000 ft) in altitude. Initially, three different flight profiles for the Hound Dog were available for selection by the commander and the bombardier of the bomber (though other options were added later):
○ High Altitude Attack: The Hound Dog would have flown at a high altitude (up to 17,000 metres (56,000 ft) depending on the amount of jet fuel on board the missile) all the way to the immediate area of its target, then diving to its nuclear warhead's preset detonation altitude.
○ Low Altitude Attack: The Hound Dog would have flown at a low altitude - below 1,500 metres (5,000 ft) (air-pressure altitude) to its target where its nuclear warhead would have detonated. In this mode of operation, the Hound Dog had a shortened range of about 640 kilometres (400 mi) when this flight profile was used. The missile would not carry out terrain following in this flight profile. No major terrain obstructions could exist at the preset altitude along the missile's flight path.
○ Low Altitude Attack: The GAM-77B (later AGM-28B) could fly a low RADAR altitude, from 910 to 30 metres (3,000 to 100 ft) above the ground. As mentioned above in the GAM-77A model description, this shortened range. However, the improvement of "flying in the weeds", was such that the missile could be flown down in ground clutter thus nearly invisible to radar detection. Eventually, all A model GAM-77s were given this modification as well.
○ A Dogleg Attack: The Hound Dog would have flown along a designated heading (at either high or low altitudes) to a preset location. At that location the missile would have turned left or right and then proceeded to its target. The intention of this maneuver was to attempt to draw defensive fighter planes away from the missile's target.
From <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-28> "
3. The B-52's need to stay in the weeds to evade detection as long as possible. Also, a smaller yield bomb is a better choice so the bomber can stay as low as possible during the attack run and egress. Will investigate that in the DB.
4. No idea how to launch the ADM-20 Quail decoy. They probably would have come in handy, especially in the 62 era. Later more advanced radars made them obsolete per my research. Anyone know how to launch the decoys?
Once again, many thanks to the Devs for creating a simulation that allows recreation of these hypothetical battles. Just can't stop fiddling with this product…
