Mediterranean Fury 4 - Secure the Flank 16/2/94

[fitzpatv]

Initial Situation
With the Bosphorus, Algerian, Libyan, Adriatic and Aegean sectors quiet for now, NATO attempts a counter-attack against Syria. You can only play the NATO side.

Jordan has now sided with NATO and there are additional air groups available due to Operation Reforger. On the other hand, HMS Illustrious has been lost and the Eisenhower Task Group are due to head to the Atlantic on 18/2/94, with Nimitz arriving via the Red Sea the following day and Ark Royal following a day or two later.

It is estimated that about 200 Syrian aircraft have been destroyed and most of their PCFG fleet sunk. However, Hafez al Assad still has a crazy 300-400 combat planes, including some 50 Fulcrums, 20 Foxbats, 60 Flogger Gs, 15 Fencers, 70 Fitters and 150 Fishbeds, backed by most of their initial array of SAMs.

At Latakia and Tartus, the Soviets have replenished their ammo via flights from the USSR and added yet more middle-to-high-end SAMs. Their naval squadron has lost a Kara CG and a destroyer (at the expense of the Turkish SSK Dolunay), but still comprises the CVH Moskva, the Slava Sevastopol, plus a Sovremenny, Neustrashimy, Krivak IV, Kashin and a repair ship. While NATO still has the SSNs Torbay, Superb and Memphis, the Russians have kept their Victor III in the Eastern Med operational and there is an ever-present threat from Soviet, Syrian, Libyan and Algerian diesel subs across the map.

To an extent, the Libyan and Algerian air threat has been abstracted by giving the NATO F-16s at Sigonella in Sicily long ready times. Note that Libyan and Algerian forces are classified as ‘Syrian’ in this scenario.

NATO Forces
Various task groups are strung across the map from West to East. Eisenhower is SE of Sicily with two cruisers, two destroyers and a frigate and her air group is at full strength, with ample ammo. She is, however, far from Syria and must move further away still. Any offensive operations will need heavy tanker support.

A hundred nautical miles to the E, the command vessel La Salle makes her vulnerable way, with two Spanish frigates for company.

Some 140nm WSW of Crete, the French carrier Foch is accompanied by three destroyers, a weak frigate and an oiler. As tends to be the way in the Fury series, her air group is painfully outdated and the Super Etendard attack planes don’t even have Exocets.

The Italian carrier Garibaldi, with two destroyers, a frigate and an oiler is 113nm WNW of Crete, with some decent ASW capability but very little striking power or CAP.

South of the W end of Crete, the cruiser Bainbridge is heading E with the French destroyer Duguay-Trouin while, 70nm SSW of the E end of the island are the survivors of the British Illustrious task group, comprising a destroyer, three frigates and an oiler.

Up ahead of the Brits and 150-200nm SW of Cyprus, there is a screen of four British, Italian, Spanish and Greek frigates and destroyers.

Sheltering uncertainly to the immediate W of Cyprus are the Kearsarge and Iowa groups. The battleship has miraculously survived Scenario 2 unscathed (how?) and has the cruiser Halsey and four frigates, including the newly-arrived German FFG Emden (where she sprang from is a mystery). Kearsarge has three destroyers, two frigates, an oiler and four amphibs with her and ships a rather feeble air group. HMS Monmouth certainly gets around in this series and has somehow teleported back from the Western Mediterranean to rejoin the helicopter carrier (she should really be removed from Scenario 3, where she plays little part, anyway).

In this instance, NATO did not sacrifice the three SSNs to get rid of the Moskva group and they are in readiness about 75nm SW of Latakia.

In the air, there is a force of 20 F-16s readying at Sigonella, with 10 valuable tankers. Eisenhower has 28 attack planes and 4 Prowlers for use against Syria, as well as her fighters and ASW/AEW complement. Note that the move of two Hornet squadrons to Rota in Spain (to re-equip with AMRAAMs) did not happen as it did in Scenario 3 and they are available.

At Souda Bay, there are 20 Marine Hornets, two Prowlers and five Orions, as well as a force of Greek Corsairs of limited worth.

The British, Americans and Greeks share two bases on Cyprus. RAF Akrotiri’s air group has somehow survived Scenario 2 intact and boasts six Tornado and Phantom fighters, two Nimrods, a pair of U-2s and five tankers, plus SAR choppers and some less useful stuff. Nearby, at Larnaca, ten Harriers and some Sea Kings from Illustrious have found a refuge, which they share with a dozen Greek F-5s and some transport and utility choppers.

Three squadrons of American F-15s and F-16s are now operational at Cairo and have 13 tankers for support.
In Turkey, Incirlik hosts 15 F-16s with fighter loadouts, 4 with SEAD and 14 with attack configurations, plus a couple of Sentries and Turkish tankers. However, it will take a couple of hours before most of the US aircraft are ready.

The Turks have three bases in the E of their country, at Malatya, Diyarbakir and Batman. Malatya houses a Phantom group, most of which are set-up as attack planes, while there are 14 F-16s with all-aspect Sidewinders at Diyarbakir. Otherwise, it’s mostly junk. No Crusaders, though, caped or otherwise...

The dreaded Downed Pilot script applies and some bases have the necessary SAR choppers on-hand.

Planning
Your main objective is to reduce enemy naval, air and SAM capability as much as possible. Eisenhower needs to stay in a patrol zone SE of Sicily for the first half of the two-day scenario, then move to the vicinity of the Balearics (where she finished Scenario 3) by the end of the game.

In the opening five minutes, you must decide whether to retain the Garibaldi task group or take 250VP for detaching them to the Adriatic for participation in Scenario 5.

There is also the matter of three supply ships, one with the Kearsarge task group W of Cyprus and the other two readying for the first 12 hours at Souda Bay in W Crete, all of which need to reach Port Said, Egypt by the end of the game to refurbish Nimitz when she arrives.

As far as this is possible, you must do what you can to prevent Israel’s involvement in the war escalating.

With the Kearsarge and Iowa groups bang in their sights, it seemed inevitable that the Moskva group would attack them straightaway with 16 Sandboxes from the Sevastopol. I could only hope to be luckier than last time. The naval surface threat was otherwise slight, as the Russians were unlikely to leave their protective SAM umbrella and the Syrian Navy had little real offensive capability.

Submarines were clearly going to be a background threat, as usual and the vulnerable La Salle, Foch and Bainbridge groups, as well as the destroyer screen and (once they left Souda) the supply ships would all need help from the Orions and Nimrods. It seemed advisable to search the areas off Souda and Port Said in advance of anything transiting them.

Heavy air strikes could be expected, as could aggressive fighter sweeps across the Med and into Turkey.

The Syrians had five Gammon sites, which could impose area control over a wide portion of the Eastern Mediterranean and directly interdict Incirlik, Akrotiri, Larnaca and the Israelis and Jordanians. Aircraft on those bases would be inhibited until we could silence these SAMs. The Iowa and Kearsarge groups had stocks of TLAMs which would be suitable in this aim.

Our SSNs would do well to remain in reserve for now, given the efficiency with which the Soviets sank them in Scenario 2.

Kearsarge and maybe Iowa could head for Port Said if they managed to survive the Sandbox strike, though the transit would be vulnerable to air attacks.

The screen would be safer if they linked-up, so I issued orders to this effect. They could then be joined at an assembly point by Foch, Bainbridge and the Brits, with La Salle following some way behind with Orions overhead. Concentration promised safety in numbers against air and submarine attack.

I decided that the Garibaldi group added relatively little and that they were best sent to the Adriatic, though this might be presenting the enemy with a free lunch in Scenario 5.

Day 1
16/2/94 13:00Z: To my surprise, I received 500VP, not 250, for detaching the Garibaldi. Only Bart knows whether this is legitimate or a bug.

Two Syrian Foxbats went after the Sentry NW of Incirlik at their usual mindless, breakneck 1,350 knots. The AWACS tried to descend below the 467’ floor of the enemy Acrid missiles, but found that, over mountainous land, it could only stoop to 500’. To my great relief, the bandits ran out of tether just before they caught the Sentry and two F-16s then cut them off and ensured that they didn’t try it again. Syrian planes actually score a whole VP each in this one. The AWACS and a Turkish tanker were re-based to Heraklion (after I checked the runway/taxiway lengths first!).

Iowa and the destroyer Deyo made a TLAM strike on the nearest pair of Gammon sites to Tartus. One SAM site was obliterated for 6VP, but the enemy completely stopped the attack on the other at the expense of 81 Grumbles.

Amazingly, there was no Sandbox attack!. Nevertheless, too much then happened at once. The Syrians made heavy Scud attacks on Israel, Jordan and Incirlik (the only places in range) but the 150-odd missiles were inaccurate and appeared to do little damage.

Two swarms of fighters headed for Incirlik and Cyprus, the latter followed by Soviet Fencers. CAP engaged at both locations and we lost two Tornadoes (5VP each, though both pilots were rescued for a total of six back) for 9 Foxbats, 28 Fishbeds, two Flogger Ks, 8 Fencer Ds, a Fencer E and a Fencer F, all Russian aircraft scoring 3VP. The Fencers loosed a couple of Kryptons at Iowa but these were stopped by SAMs.

Meanwhile, four F-16s from Cairo were trying to hit the Gammon sites at Al Qusayr, near Damascus, with HARMs. We estimated that one site had been disabled and the other one damaged, judging from the numbers of Square Pair fire control radars destroyed. On the way back, one Falcon was downed by a Fulcrum and cost us 7VP, as the pilot could not be rescued. The other three intercepted some Soviet Floggers returning from Cyprus and downed three without loss. Under 1527, AMRAAMs are effective weapons once more when fired at 13.5 nm, given their ‘shoot and scoot’ capability.

A patrolling Orion identified a stationary freighter as some kind of Soviet spy or special ops ship and it was sunk by the destroyer Ardito and the frigate Cazadora. It scored nothing and I have no idea what its purpose was.

While all this was going on, there were multiple false alarms with underwater contacts. I sometimes wonder if these are hard-coded to happen whenever there’s a air battle going on…

14:00Z: More Scuds were fired at Jordan, destroying a Tiger on the ground. The loss of 5VP alerted me belatedly to the fact that the Jordanians were under my control and not that of the AI!. They have two airbases, Prince Hassan housing two squadrons of F-5E Tigers with all-aspect Sidewinders and bombs and Shaheed Mwaffaq, further SSW, another dozen Tigers and a more capable squadron of 14 Mirages with French A2A missiles. To be honest, they weren’t good for much more than defending their bases.

Yet more Scuds hit the Incirlik area, wrecking an empty hangar and a Skyguard AA gun. Patriots had been trying to intercept the ballistic missiles but recent rules changes mean that even a hit has only a 15% chance of an outright kill and a possibility of a ‘minor deflection’ that increases CEP by 1.5. Ballistic weapons were hard enough to stop before this and I was grateful that the Scud has a relatively short range and low accuracy, especially given the huge numbers of the things being launched at me.

Just as I was consoling myself with this, another wave hit Incirlik and demolished six F-16s on the ground, triggering the Downed Pilot bug and giving me airmen to rescue from the Gulf of Guinea. This was offset somewhat by a number of enemy ‘operational losses’ from their recent strikes.

The Syrians then sent a suicidal swarm of unescorted Albatros attack planes against Prince Hassan air base. It gave the Jordanian Tigers a chance to shine and, helped by the Patriots, they slaughtered 31 of the counter-insurgency aircraft without loss. I had to manually stop the Tigers engaging at Loiter speed, despite the mission parameters expressly specifying Military.

Strike over, the Scuds kept falling and we lost another Tiger on the ground, inevitably depositing a pilot off West Africa.
At this point, we were notified that the US Secretary of State was going to be visiting Israel on Air Force 2 that evening and that his plane could be expected to arrive fairly soon to the W of Sicily. He was relying on diplomatic immunity, but would the enemy respect this?

15:00Z: Did the enemy have infinite numbers of Scuds?!. Three more F-16s were lost on the ground at Incirlik and still they came.

While they were still able, four readied F-16s from Incirlik made a HARM strike on the Soviet naval squadron. They scored no hits, but used-up more SAMs.

In the end, the Scud barrage stopped at 288 fired, which equated to 24 shots each from a dozen batteries.

I tried to get a long-ranged SEAD strike underway from Eisenhower, not helped by four Hornets being lumbered with cluster bombs as well as the HARMs. Unfortunately, re-equipping them would have wasted the precious anti-radar missiles, so I had to persevere and accept that they would need two doses of refuelling.

While I was wrestling with this micro-management, the Syrians mounted a massive attack on Larnaca, with a horde of Fitters escorted by Flogger Gs. This was enough to swamp the available CAP and we lost two Phantoms in the air and 5 Harriers, 14 Greek F-5s, 4 Sea Kings, a Chinook and 5 Bell utility choppers on the ground for 155VP, plus another spate of pilots drowning in the Gulf of Guinea. Syrian losses came to 4 Floggers and 29 Fitters for 33VP. To rub it in, this happened close to the hour, at which point the Downed Pilot timer ran-out for one of the Phantom jockeys, costing another couple of VP. A bad business all-round.

16:00Z: Given the refuelling problems, the SEAD strike was necessarily ragged, with planes attacking as and when they were able. I had two Hornets try to run to a tanker in-between firing their two HARMs (overrode this, as there was no real problem once the weight of the missiles was removed, especially after the plane returned from 300’ to high altitude once out of Gammon range). We scored one hit on the Krivak IV – but the damned missile malfunctioned!. Otherwise, the enemy picked-off the HARMs at great expenditure of Grumbles (135 fired to-date, including all 32 on the Slava).

While I was struggling with this, suddenly, BANG!, the French destroyer Georges Leygues was torpedoed and sunk by a Victor III, costing 50VP including choppers. Even though French ASW planes lack enough buoys and torpedoes to do a properly efficient job, a Super Frelon still took revenge for 50VP back. As so often, the scoring system does the player no favours.

17:00Z: It needed care getting the SEAD strike back to Eisenhower, with planes reversing course to refuel when they didn’t need to and two re-basing to Heraklion when I prevented this by removing their refuelling rights. They later returned to the carrier on Ferry loadouts. The trailing Hornets with the cluster bomb handicap made their attacks to no avail (119 land-based Grumbles exhausted out of an estimated 288 from four two-battalion sites covering Tartus-Latakia).

Meanwhile, three obnoxious Fishbeds Afterburnered after the AWACS W of Cyprus. Two flew over the Kearsarge group and fell to SAMs and the other ran out of fuel and turned-back. A Foxbat then followed and was destroyed in turn.

18:00Z: Six Hornets from Souda Bay made a SEAD attack, scoring no hits but increasing the Grumble count to 149. We were now out of SEAD planes for a few hours.

I noted to my satisfaction that the bug whereby units reverted to default doctrine whenever they were Unassigned has been fixed in 1527.1. This saved me a lot of work once I was sure I could trust it.

The enemy continued to send high-speed fighter sweeps in the direction of Cyprus. It cost them 3 Foxbats and 4 Fishbeds.

At 18:28Z, the Secretary of State’s VC-25 arrived W of Sicily under AI control, so I assigned it two Sparrow Tomcats from Eisenhower in case the Algerians tried anything. They didn’t.

I decided to reduce the number of unnecessary aircraft at Akrotiri, flying them off to Crete when there were no enemy planes about. I certainly didn’t want to lose U-2s and tankers on the ground in a repeat of the Larnaca raid.

19:00Z: I sent a Nimrod from Akrotiri to Port Said to search the area for lurking subs, re-basing it to Cairo. Doing so, I hit the Mission Editor scroll-bar bug. The bar will not display missions for selection beyond a dozen or so, so you have to click on the mission on the unit display and edit it from there.

The SoS reached the E end of Crete unmolested, with the Tomcats handing-over to a pair of TALD-encumbered Hornets from Souda, where there is a shortage of fighter loadouts. The Libyans made no move.

20:00Z: Restarting the game after a break, I found that a mission had been switched to Inactive. Another bug, albeit easy to fix.

Every available fighter at Cairo was scrambled to protect the SoS, forming a screen NE of his flight-path to Ben Gurion at Tel Aviv. I expected a swarm of Fulcrums but, in the event, just two Foxbats appeared and these were probably off to sweep W of Cyprus, as before. The screen made short work of them and the politician landed safely in Israel. Hopefully, he won’t want to come back before the end of the scenario but it is a possibility I have to consider. We had his thanks and, more usefully, 100VP.

21:00Z: Two F-15s from the screen had used some missiles so, to make use of the remainder, they flew over Lebanon, where the enemy couldn’t base SAMs and downed a Badger L, 2 Flogger Gs and 3 Fishbeds. Another trio of MiG-21s attempted an incursion towards Cyprus, two falling to the Eagles and the third to a Harrier from Kearsarge.

The Incirlik F-16s attacked the Moskva task group again, as did three more from Cairo. No hits, but the Grumble count went up to 193 – ‘just’ 95 left…

22:00Z: A lone Foxbat bored-out over the Mediterranean at 1,350 knots and, showing unbelievable endurance, almost caught the AWACS between Cyprus and Crete. Perhaps it had been told not to bother coming back?!. After it finally gave-up, one of the Cairo Eagles picked it off.

The Sentry was getting low on fuel after running away and diving, so I tried to call-up the replacement from Incirlik, only to realise that the Scuds had damaged the runway and both taxiways over 50%, limiting operations to F-16s and rescue choppers. Fortunately, the two British AEW Sea Kings at Larnaca had survived the raid and were able to fill-in, one being re-based to Akrotiri.

The last three Eagles still on-station used their AMRAAMs and bagged two Flogger Gs and three Fishbeds. I was glad that I hadn’t engaged with more than a few F-15s, as supplies of AMRAAMs at Cairo were not plentiful.

23:00Z: Lacking other options for now, I tried a two-plane TALD strike from Souda Bay. The Hornets got in and out OK, but the enemy weren’t buying the ruse and only wasted a couple of Gadflies from the Krivak.

There wasn’t much else to do for once, so I had the Turkish Phantoms at Malatya attack some Fishbeds over Deir-ez-Zor in the Syrian Desert. The first pair downed four MiGs without loss, with their Sparrow Es working better at 50% range under 1527, compared to what happened in Scenario 3.

17/2/94 00:00Z: The Turks picked-off another eight Fishbeds, which prompted a surge from the enemy airbase at Tabqah, to the W. Outnumbered and low on ammo, our two F-4s RTB’d and the twelve MiG-21s followed. At Malatya, they were met by more Turkish aircraft, most laden with bombs as well as Sparrows and all the Syrians were downed for one Turk damaged.

01:00Z: The supply ships Butte and Concord sailed from Souda, an Orion having checked for any subs lurking offshore before providing overhead cover as they sailed E along the N Cretan coast.

The Turks continued to attrite the Deir-ez-Zor Fishbeds, the F-4s combining with Sidewinder F-16s from Diyarbakir to claim six more. This was enough to terminate activity from the enemy airbase, at least for now.

As if 288 Scuds weren’t enough, another 48 were then fired at Prince Hassan airbase, though they did no significant harm.

Eisenhower and Souda each launched six SEAD planes. Silver Eagles 2 from Souda refused to move until Unassigned and given the order again.

02:00Z: The combined SEAD strike went in, the only hit malfunctioning. The Grumble count was now 239.

03:00Z: Two Fishbeds tried to probe along the Turkish coast, so Kearsarge sent her two Harriers after them for a pair of easy kills. Meanwhile, the Syrians, clearly upset by recent activity from the Turkish base, launched a big raid on Malatya. The Albatros squadron came-in low and was only just detected in time to get some CAP airborne, the Turks again having recourse to bomb-laden Phantoms. Diyarbakir sent some F-16s across as soon as the scale of the attack became apparent. Things got serious when the attack planes were followed by 8-12 Flogger Gs. These took down 5 Turkish F-4s, all of which generated downed pilots. In return, the Syrians lost 21 aircraft, which actually left them ahead on the scoring system and made the raid worth their while, even though they didn’t manage to drop a single bomb. Malatya had no SAR choppers, so three had to be sent from Incirlik and Diyarbakir. The losses came close to the hour and four out of five downed pilots were timed-out at that point. They were in their own country, just 20nm from their base and a car could probably have fetched them in less time than it took the choppers to arrive. Please don’t use this script ever again, Bart!.

04:00Z: Two choppers went back to Incirlik and the other rescued the remaining downed pilot, before re-basing to Malatya.

A 36-TLAM strike from Eisenhower at the surviving Gammon site near Tartus failed to penetrate the super-efficient enemy SAMs but took the Grumble count to 280/288. Four F-16s from Incirlik then had no joy with HARMs, their last three shots being stopped by Gauntlets on 45% chances. This finally exhausted the Grumbles. USS Memphis then threw-in her four TLAMs to no effect.

05:00Z: A 14-plane Harpoon strike from Eisenhower, supported by three HARM F-16s from Cairo, managed to sink the Krivak IV, partly because it was patrolling a little further-out than the rest of the Russian squadron. No VP were awarded. Otherwise, Floggers and fistfuls of Grizzlies and Gauntlets thwarted all progress. It was getting seriously frustrating…

06:00Z: With Eisenhower now needing to turn W from the E edge of her patrol zone, two eight-plane strikes got underway from Souda and herself.

A returning Hornet was observed cycling through RTB-plotted course-refuel-RTB despite having been told to RTB with refuelling forbidden. Thankfully, the net result was for it to RTB safely.

The second Eisenhower strike then reversed course to refuel from three backup tankers en route from Sicily with their refuelling set to Not Allowed (until they reached their station). Much cursing and manual correction was required to sort this out.

07:00Z: The eight Souda F-16s attacked and hit the same brick wall of SAMs, fighters and ill-fortune. One shot that would have otherwise hit the Slava was spoofed on an 8% chance at the death. There were no hits, but the three Grizzly batteries (which were about 70% accurate) were down by 116 of 128 shots.

08:00Z: Eisenhower’s second wave of eight Hornets went-in. Six used AGM-84 SLAMs which, with their 55nm range, needed all sorts of painful micro-management, with aircraft about-turning to refuel just before attacking, then RTB-ing and trying to rise into Gammon territory when their refuelling rights were suspended. Forced to attack, kicking and screaming, they scored a couple of hits on the carrier Moskva to uncertain effect. A number of missiles were taken-out by Floggers on what I was led to believe were 70-90% chances.

It didn’t look good as the strike headed home, but reports began to come through, suggesting that we’d done much better than I’d perceived. The Neustrashimy FFG sank though, again, I got no points for it, leaving the way open for USS Memphis to close and attack with her long-ranged ADCAP torpedoes. Message Log scrutiny showed that the Slava had been hit as well.

It then got better!!. Damage control on the Moskva was clearly not up to scratch and those two hits had fatally wounded her, scoring 250VP, plus 27 more for nine choppers.

As the planes headed back to Eisenhower, a Hornet started refuelling from a tanker, stopped, then flew back E to fuel from another one 90nm away. Much still needs to be done to fix this troublesome area of the game. There might perhaps have been a design intention to give planes on RTB enough fuel and no more but, if so, it isn’t working properly and that decision might be better left to the player. At least tankers have stopped going to their customers instead of vice versa.

09:00Z: Launched four SEAD strikers from Souda. Three refused to move until I Unassigned them from Unassigned, then re-issued the movement order.

Two bug-handicapped Hornets got back to Eisenhower on fumes.

10:00Z: Kearsarge and Iowa headed SW to support the move of Butte and Concord (now accompanied by the Foch group) to Port Said and take the supply ship Savannah there for good measure. The idea was to steer an indirect course to lengthen the range for enemy Fitter strikes.

11:00Z: Memphis attacked and wiped-out the Moskva task group. The Slava scored nothing, as in Scenario 2, but the Sovremenny and Kashin netted 50VP each and the repair ship 75. One of two Syrian ASW corvettes was sunk for good measure for 5 more. Keeping a torpedo back for any Kilo encounters, Memphis dove and headed away, with Torbay creeping in to take-on the Syrian fleet.

A six-plane HARM strike from Souda disabled the Gammon site near Tartus and also demolished a whole Goa site for 6VP, damaged another and took-out two radars, one of which scored 5VP. Other SAM sites were not radiating and couldn’t be struck, nor could we fire at jamming vehicles.

The Soviets had some ASW choppers ashore and a Helix was getting too close to Memphis and Torbay. Four F-16s from Incirlik were on a mission to disable the two remaining serviceable Gammon sites further S, flying by way of Cyprus, so one detached and dealt with the chopper. With two other Falcons coming-in from another angle, it then knocked-out the more central and, hence, more dangerous Gammon site at Al Qusayr near Damascus. However, four Flogger Ks decided to go after it. Diving low, the F-16 headed N towards Incirlik, drawing the Russians away from the other two, which were re-based to Akrotiri. This seemed to work and the Floggers turned away, so I switched attention to the fourth F-16 as it silenced the last Gammon site in the S. Unfortunately, while I wasn’t looking, another Flogger got on the first Falcon’s tail and downed it, which was pretty annoying – I have no idea where it sprang from.

So just into Day 2, the score is around +1,030 and in Minor Victory territory. It is hard, though, to take the scoring seriously. I may well have been given 250VP too many for the Garibaldi, got nothing for a Slava and two FFGs and have lost something like 60 points to the Downed Pilot, Gulf of Guinea bug. I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that the best thing to do with the Fury series is just to play it, see what happens and disregard the score.

Anyway, with the Moskva group demolished and the Gammons all neutralised, I’ll need to focus on getting Eisenhower to her second patrol zone (subs permitting), the supply ships to Port Said (subs and Fitters permitting) while getting rid of the Floggers over Tartus and Latakia, then trying to dismantle the rest of the Soviet-Syrian complex there, sinking the Syrian Navy for good measure.

Still not sure why the Slava didn’t use its Sandboxes – did it actually have any left?

[Gunner98]

Great AAR Vince

Not sure what is going on with the scoring, but I think - and my memory is very foggy on this - the Slava should be worth 100, and each of the FF/FFGs 25. I cannot remember how I set the Garibaldi, 250VP and having her for Scen 5 in the Adriatic sounds about right. You will be given a similar choice in Scen 5, and adopt whatever decision you made in this scenario.

Message received on the downed pilot script.

Looking forward to reading the next bit.

B

[fitzpatv]

Day 2
12:00Z: Four F-16s left Incirlik and soon eliminated 7 Flogger Ks and a Helix, with the AMRAAM again proving its worth. A second Helix was then destroyed and proved to be the last. Four more Floggers engaged and proved difficult to hit. Under cover of all this, a Huey rescued the downed SEAD pilot.

Memphis turned and attacked with Harpoons, sinking three Osa boats, while a Petya corvette was saved by a malfunction.

Another pair of Falcons then bagged three more Flogger Ks.

13:00Z: The last ready F-16 shot down a Flogger K that pursued our other CAP almost all the way to Incirlik.

HMS Torbay Harpooned the remaining Syrian Osa and corvette, leaving four Zhuk patrol boats afloat. She crept towards these, keeping a wary eye out for any lurking Kilos.

As the duty F-16 disposed of another Flogger K, more Scuds started raining on Incirlik, but did little damage.

Turkish Phantoms made a sweep to Manbij in Northern Syria and nailed four Fishbeds that were patrolling there.

Four F-16s with GBU-24s went after the Scuds near Latakia, but hit problems with target illumination and did no damage. Another four Soviet Floggers intervened and were dealt-with by our fighters.

More Scuds flew and, this time, wrecked an F-16 and a Turkish tanker on the ground, the latter costing us 15VP.

Aerial clashes continued, with another two Flogger Ks and a Fencer E destroyed.

The three Cairo-based HARM F-16s arrived SW of Latakia but found no radiating targets, so they searched for prey further S and claimed hits on a Goa, two Guidelines and two Gainfuls in the Al Qusayr area.

14:00Z: Growing tired of the Scuds, I sent four F-16s after them with cluster bombs. One plane was lost to AA, but two Scud units were destroyed and another badly damaged. Frustratingly, they were worth just 1VP per unit. Syrian Flogger Gs were now filling-in for the endangered Flogger Ks.

Eight Albatroses attacked Malatya in two waves and one survived long enough to drop a few bombs without visible effect. None made it home in the face of our bomb-carrying F-4 CAP.

Some Turkish Phantoms flew-on to Manbij and bagged another five Fishbeds.

An F-16 from Incirlik used a Maverick to take-out a radar near the Turkish border, while another engaged two Flogger Ks, missing with all four shots on chances of around 80%.

15:00Z: An F-16 took-on a Flogger K, but missed on 82% and was obliged to flee the reply as two more of the Soviet fighters reinforced the first. Turning at bay, I missed the lead plane yet again and was hit in return, going out of comms. Instead of RTB’ing, the AI-controlled plane kept fighting and actually destroyed the Flogger but then stooged around and presented itself to the other two.

A couple of Incirlik’s SEAD Falcons neutralised two Guidelines and a Goa at Latakia.

A Turkish F-4 shot down another four Fishbeds at Manbij.

16:00Z: Not helped by a simultaneous, hard-to-resolve biological contact worryingly close to Eisenhower, the three SEAD F-16s that had diverted to Akrotiri returned to the fray, now fitted with AMRAAMs and shot-down three more Soviet Floggers – there were clearly more than the briefing had suggested.

17:00Z: Two SEAD F-16s hit the remaining detectable SAMs at Latakia and clobbered a Fencer E. An F-16 then attacked a Scud and jammer with Mavericks, but suffered a double-malfunction, also finding that at least one Goa wasn’t silenced after all – at least it missed. Two Fishbeds intervened and were downed. A supporting HARM Falcon from Souda hit the Goa but appeared to do no damage.

Torbay finally got close enough to sink one of the patrol boats, using her less-capable Tigerfish to reserve the Spearfish for any Kilos.

18:00Z: Two F-16s engaged two Flogger Gs and two Fishbeds over Latakia. The enemy showed little willingness to fight and evaded all seven AMRAAMs fired at them by diving – I guess I’d been doing this to them all game and it gave an idea of what a player v player duel might be like. Two Flogger Ks pursued and the Falcon with ammo left turned and downed one, The next pair of F-16s then got the other, then a SEAD F-16 took-out the Goa and swatted an annoying Fencer F that had been (apparently) jumping all over the map all game on account of its jamming.

Torbay sank a second Zhuk.

An F-16 with CBU-71 cluster bombs somehow missed a Scud completely and, covered by a wingman, moved smartly to escape four incoming fighters. The incident made me doubt the cost-benefit value of attacking Latakia.

A Turkish F-16 destroyed a Syrian Foxbat B recon plane near Deir-ez-Zor.

An F-16 again had trouble with diving enemy aircraft, failing to hit a pair of Fishbeds – and we weren’t made of AMRAAMs.

Torbay finished-off the last pair of patrol boats and withdrew.

20:00Z: An Incirlik F-16 persevered and shot-down a second Fencer F and a Fishbed over the sea near Latakia. Another got a Fishbed and Foxbat recon near Antakya. It was best to engage the latter at 5nm, as this prevented them from accelerating away once they awoke to being attacked. Turkish F-16s with Sidewinders used this approach to kill two more near Tabqah and Raqqa.

21:00Z: The enemy attacked some Jordanian HAWKs with Kyle ARMs.

Two Fishbeds attacked a Turkish F-4 patrolling near Manbij, which shot them down, ending operations from that base.

The SEAD planes from Souda began degrading the SAM sites defending Aleppo. Trouble is, you don’t score for neutralising them, just for killing them, which is a lot of work.

The Cairo SEAD planes did some more damage to SAMs near Damascus and the Jordanian border.

22:00Z: This encouraged me to make some use of the Jordanian Mirage squadron, sending two over the border AA wall to attack what appeared to be four Fishbeds. Unfortunately, two were Foxbats, the Jordanians missed them three times on 60%+ odds and lost a Mirage, with Downed Pilot, as soon as the Syrians managed a shot back. The second Mirage got away.

An Incirlik F-16 risked an attack on Latakia with Mavericks, finishing-off a Scud and downing a Fishbed but the second missile ‘missed’ a jamming vehicle by 0m and did no damage.

Four more Mirages engaged and bagged a Foxbat and two Fishbeds for one loss (with Downed Pilot, of course). Subsequent sorties accounted for four MiG-21s but, when more Foxbats appeared, the Jordanians concluded that this didn’t pay and called it quits.

The Souda planes hit another three SAM sites at Aleppo, leaving three untouched.

18/2/94 00:00Z: Another pair of Marine F-16s hit Aleppo. Apart from one Guideline that refused to light-up, the air defence system around the city was left in poor shape.

01:00Z: A Turkish F-16 claimed another recon Foxbat near Tabqah.

02:00Z: Another unanswerable rain of Scuds fell on Prince Hassan air base. The runway was left operational but the taxiway wasn’t and several hangars containing aircraft under maintenance were on fire.

03:00Z: Kearsarge reached Port Said, but the supply ship Savannah had somehow stopped about 30nm back, despite being part of the task group. Thankfully, with NATO naval forces concentrating there to await the arrival of Nimitz, she had plenty of other company.

04:00Z: More Scuds fell on Prince Hassan and four Tigers were eventually lost in the burning hangars (with a couple of pilots finding themselves in the Gulf of Guinea).

05:00Z: Savannah reached Port Said and scored 100VP. The official score was now +1,250 and a Major Victory. The supply ship Butte then arrived for 100 more.

Cairo’s SEAD Falcons did more damage to the IADS around Damascus, scoring for a couple of radars and hitting a Gainful, Goa and Guideline.

06:00Z: I decided to throw everything Incirlik had at Latakia. As soon as the first Maverick was fired, the Algerian Kilo appeared 7nm ahead of the Eisenhower group at the other end of the map. I had to assign ASW planes and leave them to it so I could micro-manage the air strike but a Viking soon got the job done. The SSK scored nothing, though there was a message – another broken trigger.

To cut a lot of detail short, the Incirlik strike planes did 29VP of damage to various SAMs, Scuds, Styxes, radars and jammers at Latakia. Two Flogger Gs and eight Fishbeds were destroyed by the escorts and strike planes that converted to AMRAAM-armed escorts after making their attacks and being persuaded not to RTB. One F-16 was lost to AA fire as part of an ultimately futile attempt to destroy the Gammon site SE of the port with cluster bombs. The latter have become much less useful under 1527 – the first set of four bombs destroyed seven of 16 surviving components and the second quartet missed completely from 1,500’. Similarly, four cluster bombs dropped on a Guideline at the port hit just two of seven surviving components. Under these settings, it would be almost impossible for the Warsaw Pact to stop the Turkish armoured counter-attack in Scenario 1.

07:00Z: The supply ship Concord reached Port Said for 100 more VP.

09:00Z: The Eisenhower CVBG reached Patrol Zone 2 and scored a generous 250VP. As this made it a Triumph by exceeding +1,500, I ran-down the clock. The final score was +1,730 and wouldn’t have been that different less the 250 I shouldn’t have got for detaching Garibaldi, plus 175 for a Slava, two FFGs and an SSK and an estimated 64 for the effects of the Gulf of Guinea bug.

NATO losses came to a destroyer, 50 fighters and attack planes, 12 choppers and a tanker, plus 12 ground elements. The great majority of aircraft losses were on the ground, the Fitter strike on Larnaca and Scuds being the chief culprits.

The Pact lost a CVH, Slava, two DDGs, two FFGs, an SSN, a repair ship, a freighter, 31 fighters, 8 attack planes, 15 choppers and 11 ground elements.

Syria lost an Algerian SSK, 4 PCFGs, two corvettes, 4 patrol boats, 146 fighters, 86 attack planes, 6 support aircraft and 205 ground elements. They fired 425 Scuds.

Overall, the Moskva task group and the entire Syrian surface navy had been eradicated, the enemy air force and IADS had taken severe damage and NATO had made its desired logistical re-deployments, but maybe lost a few more aircraft than they would have liked.

It doesn’t seem to get any easier in Mediterranean Fury and the briefing for the next one in the Adriatic did not make for reassuring reading.