[RELEASED] Scenario for Testing: Operation Vulture-1954

[Randomizer]

Please post any suggestions/problems/observations, Thanks in advance.

The USAF at Dien Bien Phu, 29 April 1954.

1954 found the Cold War quite hot. Stalin has only recently died and it is a mid-term election year for the Eisenhower administration with it’s tough on communism doctrines. In French Indochina, the catastrophe that is the siege of Dien Bien Phu is approaching its end game and the French government is desperately trying to get America involved to save the garrison.

President Eisenhower is not keen on the idea but Admiral Arthur Radford, the Chairman of the Joint Chief’s of Staff (JCS) has publicly discussed intervention employing strategic bombers and perhaps up to three nuclear weapons. In this reality, Congress has demanded that the USA demonstrate solidarity with France against the Communist Menace controlled as it is from Moscow. The Soviets will not intervene because there must be a power struggle to fill the leadership void created by Stalin’s passing and the communist Chinese are still licking their wounds from the Korean War. The time is right and massive attacks on the Viet Minh forces in the hills and approaches to Dien Bien Phu will wreck Ho Chi Minh’s army and allow France to negotiate their way out of Indochina. This will prevent the Vietnamese domino from falling to communism.

Initially, one plan called for some sixty B-29 bombers from Guam and Japan to concentrate at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines but Air Force Chief of Staff, General Nathan Twining has a new plan. The B-29 force is getting old and is outdated in virtually all respects. Using the Strategic Air Command (SAC) and the B-36 Peacemaker will allow far more bombs to be dropped and also demonstrate the combat effectiveness of SAC for real. CINCSAC, General Curtis LeMay is against taking any of the B-36 force off nuclear alert but Twining gets support of the rest of the Chiefs and Congress. A reluctant President authorizes the action and gives LeMay a free hand to use one SAC combat wing plus whatever other support he needs from the other services.

You are Commander, 6th Bombardment Wing based at Walker Air Force Base, Roswell NM and have been ordered to conduct OPERATION VULTURE. Your command has redeployed to Clark Field, P.I. and you have conventional munitions required to destroy the communist forces besieging the French at some place called Dien Bien Phu. You have had your briefing from CINCSAC and he has decided that SAC will do the job alone. The navy had offered an aircraft carrier battle group to provide fighter escort to and from the target area but the B-36 has to be able to operate unescorted. So the only role that the USN will play is in-route SAR in case of mechanical casualties. The Viet Minh have no air force and both the JCS and the State Department have confirmed that chance of Chinese or Russian intervention is very low. You are entirely responsible for target selection and ordnance loadouts for your sorties.

The French have advised that they will be conducting regular, low-altitude air operations with forces from Hanoi and the aircraft carrier Arromanches in the Gulf of Tonkin throughout the hours of daylight on the 30th.

Updated version posted below 03/10/14:

[Coiler12]

Ok, played some of it. Observations, from most serious to least serious.

-The French planes got absolutely crushed. 18 aircraft lost from scenario start to the time the main group landed after the first huge bombing run, 25 when the last straggler returned.
-Some of those were from losing fuel. There was a huge pileup near Hanoi as countless strike flights tried to land and even the carrier wasn't spared.
-The B-36s themselves worked pretty well. I lost two because automatic strikes led to them diving, but that was on me.

-Issues with the PLAAF that I'll mention in a PM.
-Small B-36 pileup itself near Clark on the way back, but fortunately their huge fuel supply came in handy.

[Lawdog1700]

Some observations from me as well:

- If the goal was to show how awful the B-36 was, you proved that to me. I lost 25 B-36s on the initial strike. (I used the strike planner, Colier12 you mentioned that you lost several from them diving...when using the strike planner, how do you keep the aircraft from diving prior to dropping bombs?)

- After my few remaining B-36s started straggling home, they got shot to pieces by Chinese MiGs. Crazy!

- Did you intend for the Americans to be able to launch a second strike, or was this a character building exercise?

[Randomizer]

Thanks for trying the scenario, gentlemen,

@Lawdog1700: High altitude is your friend! I never used the attack planner during testing and conducted all sorties at 40k feet, in the manner that the B-36 was intended to operate. With its huge size and relatively low speed the the B-36 is a death trap even to visually controlled AAA at low altitude. And yes subsequent raids are in the cards so if the assets survive you should have enough time and ordnance.

Too be honest I never even visualized using a low-level approach with the B-36's, which demonstrates that a scenario designer can ever really anticipate the actions of the Players with any degree of assurance.

I am testing some changes now to tone down the Viet Minh flak a bit and changing the conditions (and probability) for PRC intervention while decreasing the number of PRC MiG's.

@Coiler12: The destruction of French Union air support was very real in the event. By the time the entrenched camp surrendered, the Saintonge and Languidoc fighter-bomber groups had been merged into a single small Group while the A-26 force was reduced to a shadow of its former self. On 1 May, the carrier Arromanches left station with only a fraction of her original air group and her replacement, the light carrier Belleau Wood lost a big chunk of her airgroup in only a week of high-intensity operations. I will tone down the Viet Minh AAA a bit but French losses and kills should have no impact on the American operation.

I will spread the French sorties out a bit more to try and end the stacking at Hanoi but submit that any B-36 pileup at Clark AFB is for the Player to solve. Also will tinker with the French targets and missions as some Naval fliers appear to have specialized in AAA suppression, or maybe it was the Saintonge Group.

Thanks again for the feedback, it is appreciated.

-C

[Randomizer]

Updated OPERATION VULTURE v2 posted above:

- Spread French Air Support missions over more time to mitigate the stacking over Hanoi airspace;

- Toned down the Viet Minh AAA a bit;

- Corrected anomalies in PRC intervention events (hopefully!);

- Clawed back on the PRC assets considerably;

- Corrected a few errors in the text and messages.

- Corrected errors in the Points events (hopefully!)

-C

[Propatriamori]

Played this a couple of times... How do you get the B-36's to bomb from high altitude and get anything within the targeting parameters for iron bombs?

[Randomizer]

ORIGINAL: Propatriamori

Played this a couple of times... How do you get the B-36's to bomb from high altitude and get anything within the targeting parameters for iron bombs?

Apologies for the delay in responding, it took some time to figure out what you meant. Iron bombs drop in salvoes and the best way to do this is using Land Strike missions for individual or grouped targets. Once the bombers are on course for the target area use F2 with Manual Override to maintain maximum altitude otherwise the attack logic may bring your bombers down to the deck where no B-36 really belongs.

One way to do this is to create strike missions in advance but allocate no assets. Launch the strike in whatever sized groups you want (generally 2-4 A/C work well) and in flight allocate the A/C groups to their missions. You may also create the strike missions while the bomber stream is inbound. The attacks themselves will then be conducted automatically.

Zoom into the target area during the attack and you can see the bombs falling and the effects area footprint whether direct hits are achieved or not. Soft units like infantry and artillery will take damage from near-hits.

-C

[Propatriamori]

OK thanks for the reply. I didn't know you could manually override the altitude for the attack. As the others have posted, I used the default attack mode and it resulted in my big slow lumbering Peacemakers diving down to 1000 ft. AGL for bombing runs, and then getting shot to pieces.

One other item in the scenario, I loaded up my B-36's and took off once the load out was complete. I gave them dog leg courses to avoid Hainan and it resulted in TOT's after the French had begun attacking. Basically the French managed to cause enough damage to win the scenario before my B-36's arrived.

Thanks for the scenario!

[Randomizer]

Thanks to player feedback; find below Operation Vulture Version 2, hopefully fully tweaked at last. Unfortunately I was unable to figure out how to prevent kills by the computer controlled French Air from adding to the Player VP totals.

- USAF victory now requires at least 35 Viet Minh units destroyed (net +350 VP). This should prevent a premature scenario conclusion or French Union killing enough enemy units to trigger the scenario end.

- Drop the new files into the ...\Scenarios\Community folder and overwrite the existing version.

Am very grateful for the suggestions and reports from the community.

-C

[Propatriamori]

Thanks for the updates, works great.

Enjoyed your other scenario's as well!