09-11-21 Operation Gauntlet

[Father Cool]

Yes tbh I considered it may have triggered incorrectly. Turns out it knew what it was doing, who'd have thought!

[hades]

I have to admit I fear the estimations of how well 1(F) did may be a little lost in translation.

Our TOT of 0830 meant we were unfortunately taking off ASAP on server start, without cover, and we got obliterated.

We were engaged before hitting the coastline, our second flight shot down before getting to the sea, and our first flight scraping it to OBJ 1 fully defensive, missing the runway. From here, one of the two members of flight one was shot down, and the sole survivor of 1(F) managed to heroically get our single and only bomb on target at OBJ 2, bagging a MIG 31 (although some dodgy AI may have helped!), then succumbing himself.

All in all, we were done within 20 minutes of take off. We had a good spirit and a fun time, but can't really dress it up as anything other than a massacre.

We were hoping for a re-run, cos we LOVED the concept, and don't mind impossible odds, but felt this was a little TOO impossible

[Mad dog]

I watched the guy who got the Mig31. The flying was actually very good and even though the mig was stuck to him like shit on a blanket, he viffed it and sent a heater after it. Whilst the heater narrowly missed, the low level jinking sent the 31 into the drink and I cheered only to say "oh no" 5 seconds later when the valiant harrier pilot took an early bath as well.

If the friendly aaa had bothered to get involved, you guys would have had a much lower portion of death served to you.

Cav will make some changes and I'm sure we'll run it again.

[Father Cool]

Yes 1F never really had a chance but it was a late entry and we didn't really have chance to decide on the best tasking for 1F.

I think the idea was that you would get up there and stop the red air getting up but they were off the starting blocks like greyhounds those guys. In the next iteration I have removed Sukhumi as an airbase in favour of a forward red force radar and sam station and made gudata and sochi a little less agressive.

I also think that delaying the start of the cap/gci script would help at the beginning as well.

[hades]

I watched the guy who got the Mig31. The flying was actually very good and even though the mig was stuck to him like shit on a blanket, he viffed it and sent a heater after it. Whilst the heater narrowly missed, the low level jinking sent the 31 into the drink and I cheered only to say "oh no" 5 seconds later when the valiant harrier pilot took an early bath as well.

If the friendly aaa had bothered to get involved, you guys would have had a much lower portion of death served to you.

Cav will make some changes and I'm sure we'll run it again.

Wooo! Out of interest, did you happen to see what happened to the MIG 21 on the two of us at the start? We merged, I saw him on my 6, then he was gone after some very dodgy flat scissors by me, dunno if we maneuver killed him or something else popped him

[Mad dog]

I think, one of the F16s slapped his bottom and sent him home with a flea in his ear.

[309 Geoff]

Father Cool,
These are my observations from last night’s sortie.

I climbed into Boar2-1. Called for start up on 263.0. ATC responded Boar1-1 ok to start.

SRS created all sorts of problems for me. Cockpit SRS indications were all good. With 263.0, 134.1, and 32.0 set, all I could here were the F16s on 263.0. Switching to 251.0, after T/O, I heard numerous messages from Overlord and the F16s. 97Sqn could not hear me on SRS. I could not hear them. I used TS for inter-flight comms. As I destroyed the bridge, and two shilkas, I advised Overlord.

In response to some of the comments made, my views are:-

1. I agree with moving the 97Sqn base away from the action. Last night, from T/O to pickle was just over 5mins. As a singleton, I had to allow enough time for two attacks on the bridge.
2. I did hear the announcement that the SA-10 was unloading at the Station. I was briefed that if Chihu Bridge was not destroyed, I was to loiter close to the station, and attack the Sa-10 convoy. As the bridge was destroyed I continued with my attack on the shilkas. When the message came in, I had no suitable weapons left to engage an unknown convoy.

I understand why mission designers want to keep the number and location of enemy units a secret. In my view, poor intel leads to poor planning, and performance. That’s what happened to me. I wrongly thought I’d be safe at 8000ft. In future, can I request that intel make known the number of AAA/SAMs/vehicles that we have to deal with, including the highest threat, regarding range and height. That will give us more accurate information to plan our loadout, routes, and attack profiles. I’m not requesting accurate locations of each unit, or formation layout.

Great to have a mission involving trains. I know from personal experience that, at the moment, trains, do not perform as well as expected. In preparation for this mission, I created on flight for 97Sqn, destroying two bridges and trapping a train. All worked well. Bridges destroyed, but the train was invisible.

Thanks for your efforts in creating the mission. I look forward to the sequel.

[Father Cool]

No problem Geoff, all good fun. I did brief what the convoys consisted of as we had the discussion and you guys said you were ok with shilkas and SA13s.

As for the trains, yes you can stop them, however you cannot get them to trip triggers, so where it would be easy to have the train trigger the unloading when it arrives and thus, stopping it prevents the spawn, it doesn't work because you have to make a different event to trigger the unloading. The way I did it was to work out when the train would arrive and then set a timer to spawn the convoy to coinside with that time. It was also flag dependent so that if the flag was on it would spawn, if not it wouldn't. Destroying the bridge would then flip the flag off so the convoy wouldn't appear. Of course though a train bridge is scenery so it cannot be use to trigger anything, so the idea was place a man on each bridge so that when the bridge went down it would kill him and flip the flag. All good except that the man didn't die. Sods law.

[309 Geoff]

Father Cool,
Have you seen this youtube. Have a look from 10mins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d60LTVPzeXI

I wonder, could you use a gazelle as a trigger? Maybe put "Civilian Traffic" to zero, to remove all other trains. I know, not very realistic.

[Flyco]

Surely a “Bomb in zone” would be better. You can set the zone up as a rectangle, the same size as the bridge. I think you can also specify the bomb(s), e.g. 1xGBU-10 OR 3xGBU-12.

I will try and check it out this evening.