Two ASW Exercises

[fitzpatv]

I played a couple of scenarios from the Community Pack a few weeks ago and thought I might as well review them. The first was ASW Exercise 1971 (Spanish Coast). Franco's Navy has recently taken delivery of the former US WW2 light carrier Cabot, re-named Dedalo. As an exercise, she sails from W of the Balearic Islands to Barcelona with four destroyers for escort and three diesel subs have to try to 'sink' her en route. You can play either side. The briefing says that the escorts win if Dedalo reaches port without damage and the subs win by damaging her.

None of the escorts have sonar with a range of more than 3nm and their ASW torpedoes are outranged by the subs' weapons. The carrier has some choppers, but they have no buoys and only two have dipping sonar and a magnetic anomaly detector. Under the circumstances and knowing that the subs would be randomly placed, I figured that the best strategy was just to make for Barcelona at Flank. Chances were that no sub would be encountered and, if one was, it would have a very small window for an attack.

This approach worked, though it won't always due to the random factor. Unfortunately, 'getting to Barcelona' is imprecisely defined (there are some area markers) and, no matter what I tried, nothing yielded any VP. So I 'won' in real terms, but the score remained at zero.

Played it again as the subs. The random placement left two boats about halfway, with the third in a decent position to sail on the surface to the entrance to Barcelona Harbour and wait there. As it happened, the first pair of subs managed an intercept, but were handicapped by poor sensors, even at periscope depth. They sank the destroyer Marques de Ensenada, but this scored no points. Both subs were then lost, probably to choppers, for a punishing 100 VP each.

The third sub, the Isaac Peral, had better sonar, made her intercept outside Barcelona and sank the carrier with five torpedoes, taking two choppers down for good measure. She then dove and escaped. Appallingly, this scored no points whatever, so it was officially a Major Defeat, with a score of -200. This strongly suggests that there is no way the player can score points for either side.

Overall, a half-decent scenario, but the scoring needs to be sorted-out.

[fitzpatv]

The second scenario was ASW Exercise 2006. In this one, the USN runs an exercise to test its ability to deal with modern diesel subs. The carrier Enterprise, with a cruiser, destroyer and frigate for escort, has to protect a large number of merchant ships off the E Coast of the US, between New York and Norfolk, Virginia. You are told that there are three Kilos, armed with Sizzler missiles as well as torpedoes.

Enterprise is somewhat low on ASW planes, with no Vikings and just four Oceanhawks, plus three Seahawks on her escorts. Worse, all the choppers have massive turnround times (about 20 hours). There to help are three Orions, but these are based at Jacksonville, Florida, take hours to reach the area of operations, have limited time once there and, again, have long turnround times.

Warned in the briefing that the Kilos would most likely be lurking outside New York and Norfolk, I created Missions to cover both, but the distances were a stretch for the choppers and the Orions took time to arrive. This gave the Kilos a window, but they didn't make the best of it, with two volleys of Sizzlers sailing harmlessly wide of targets and flying inland. An attempted torpedo attack on a freighter also failed, probably because the ship was moving too fast for the sub.

Eventually, a sub managed to damage another freighter. After a frustrating search (and with ASW assets running-out), it was then found and sunk by our third Orion. Rather surprisingly, the game abruptly ended as a Major Victory, with a score of +50. It seems that there was just one sub (which wasn't outside a harbour), although Browse Scenario Platforms suggested that there was still another one out there. Perhaps numbers and placement are random?.

A bit anti-climactic and disappointing, really. You can play as the subs, but I wasn't tempted.