Northern Fury 33 - Into the Night 10/3/94

[fitzpatv]

Just a brief report on this one.

Norwegian guerrillas have been giving the Soviets problems with their lines of communication. NATO plans to back them up by inserting special forces into Arctic Norway. It is playable as NATO only.

You have two SSNs, James K Polk and Archerfish, outfitted to carry RHIBs and special forces. These are escorted by an SSK each, with two more SSNs further out to sea to cover egress once the mission is done.

There are five Insert Points, at which you need to drop-off the multi-national special ops guys on remote beaches, plus a sixth location at the wreck of the Nordkapp (of mini-novel fame), where a team must search for survivors and take them to a rendezvous with the resistance. Polk covers the latter mission and three of the others, while Archerfish is responsible for the other two.

A house rule specifies that an SSN needs to be at periscope depth for the whole cycle of launching a RHIB, making the insertion, then recovering the small watercraft.

The starting positions of Soviet units are randomised. Initially, they have at least one Tango sub and some Pauk and Stenka patrol boats, plus some essentially non-combatant minelayers, minesweepers and cargo vessels. Should you be detected, they are likely to scramble helicopters from various outlying airfields and heavier ASW planes from Andoya, off to the SW near Tromso. Stealth is vital.

10/3/94 13:00Z (15:00L): I amended Polk and Archerfish NOT to dive if a threat was detected, so as to conform to the above house rule. I noted that all subs were on Weapons Hold to prevent involuntary hostilities.

I couldn’t see any point in using the two diesel subs as close escorts, as they would just be two more objects that could be detected by the enemy, so I sent them back to join the two offshore SSNs, Polk and Archerfish continuing unaccompanied. Both came-in patiently at Creep speed to maximise stealth.

19:00Z: The SSN Jacksonville detected a Pauk or Stenka four or five nm to her SE, so dove deep and headed away at Cruise. Soon afterwards, the Norwegian SSK Utvaer located a Tango some 7nm SSE of her position. Again, the only sane thing to do was to head away at depth and Cruise speed. Both boats got clear without being detected, but it illustrated how one piece of bad luck could blow the whole mission by putting the Soviets on full alert. It made sense to get all four covering subs well out to sea, so that they would no longer constitute a liability. At least it showed that (this time), the two delivery SSNs were inside the Soviet defensive screen.

21:00Z: Archerfish stopped near Insert Point D, went to periscope depth, then launched her RHIB (she carried no Cargo, so there was no question of loading the craft first). The RHIB got as close to the Insert Point as was possible, given that it was on land. There was no event triggered, nor were any VP scored. I tried Unload Cargo, to no avail, waited over an hour, then resorted to going a little further up the fjord, beyond the latitude of the Insert Point, but nothing worked. Considering the insertion done, I RTB’d the RHIB and headed for Insert Point E.

22:00Z: Polk reached the vicinity of the Nordkapp wreck and launched one of her two RHIBs. There were difficulties getting close to the marker owing to confusion as to what was land and what was water, but I eventually got the RHIB directly on top of it. Again, nothing worked. I waited for over an hour, to no avail.

With my luck, the waiting time was probably longer than an hour, but I can’t think of anything else I could have done.
There was no point in continuing, so I ended it there. The scenario is all too reminiscent of the problems I had playing Pole Positions. As with that DLC, the player should have been given clearer instructions about the mechanics required though this time, I suspect, it was more a case of the event triggers being broken.

As I have no wish to play Northern Fury 34 (The Longest Battle) which has, in any case, been well covered elsewhere, I’ll be moving on to Scenario 35 next time.

[Gunner98]

Thanks for giving it a try, Vince. My list of things to fix gets longer and longer.

The final scenes in the novella were spawned by this setup. It was fun and hair-raising to play, but I'll have to admit a little embellishment in the book.