Op Blaggard - 4th Jan 2022

[Richard Rodgers]

Looks fine to me Alan.

I will be suited & booted ready

[309 Geoff]

Alan, Richard,
I enjoyed watching the action last night. 97Sqn can hold their heads high, as you both quickly dispatched the 5 * ZSUs, and went to work on the other vehicles. Don't know the final tally, and I trust the recovery went to plan.
I saw that trees were a problem for the laser rockets flying at low level. Did you manage to use the cannon?

[Flyco]

Thanks Geoff. It was a bit too easy (in most respects). No opposition and too many passive targets. Richard had good success with his guns, but I mainly used rockets. Towards the end I switched to guns and (predictably) hit a tree on my pull out. I left Richard to clean up after me.

I still get the impression that the A-10s are often a late-thought add-on.

[Richard Rodgers]

Afternoon guys,

Thank you for last night Alan. Really enjoyed it after the Christmas break.

Shame that Alan hit the deck as we were almost finished with the trucks. I think I left four trucks before RTB due to fuel.

Taking out the five ZSUs was really quite a simple task, however, we both suffered with the old random Mav not going where sent issue. Once the ZSUs were dead we had free reign to go as low as we wanted, which should not really be the case.

The trucks were the tricky bit as some were hidden very close to the trees. There were so close together that is was near impossible time wise to fire several rockets then keep switching to a different truck after each hit. May actually have been easier with unguided rockets as they are a fire & forget option so could have just kept firing those off along the line of trucks. Other option is Paul's favourite. The good old CBU97, but Alan did say he thought they were banned. Shame we couldn't load up with more gun ammo as we would have been home before the bar closed. I think that with the brief that 97 were given for the mission, the old gun was probably our biggest asset, and one which some folks who don't fly our bird underestimate.

Catch you next time.