Operation Centurion

[Duke]

Pretty sure the forums quiet because people are using discord more

[Roon]

41Sqn After Action Report.

Uneventful takeoff and departure - apologies to the A10 for making them wait, but the first aircraft rolled on time exactly and then the others at 30sec intervals....takes a while to get five pairs up, sorry!

The value of a well practised weather abort became clear when we hit the first big hills and lost two aircraft that reacted too slowly. Thirty degrees nose up and full burner for a reason...

Continued on to TGT, several reports of ASL's being very far to the right of the TGT diamond (mine included) giving a rather wild offset for the amount of sidewind that we were feeling. Is this a new glitch or has anyone else had this problem? I can't believe that the aircraft computer thinks that a bomb can drift a quarter of a mile in 350 ft!!

Anyway, all good for recovery, albeit minus SRS for the final approach (tripped out for several of us at once) and the remaining eight got down safely.

Thanks to Andrew once again for going to the effort of putting the show on for everybody, and thanks to Geoff amd Al for doing our flight planning for the trip. Thanks to all.

[Duke]

Aar from Awacs / GCI.
Thanks for the mission Andrew, good fun to GCI for Hornets and Vipers, Hornet Cap, took care of first and second wave with vectoring from myself. At that point Ford Vipers were free to join Cap and were vectored to Uzi's East flank, set up east and west to support if required. With Ford 1 four ship maintaining cap West of Uzi incase any fighters appeared west of the AO but none did so called them after 15 minutes to RTB if they wanted.

Third wave of enemy got airborne and Uzi were split too far apart to support each other so called Ford in to support Uzi 1-2, turned out not to be required as Uzi 1-2 dealt with first fighter and Uzi 1-1 got furballed with the second but killed it on the second turn in. Vectored Uzi on to Ford to fly home together to Sochi. Thanks again Andrew!

[Flyco]

No 97 Sqn Mission Report

All 3 of 97s A-10s got airborne within 45 sec of planned T/O time. Transit to target area also went as planned, with the weather significantly better than forecast.

TOT was set for 05:04. The first targets were the 4 ZSU emplacements, and the first missile was launched at 05:03:40, with first impact at 05:04:20. Surrounding trees and soft skins gave problems with locking on the Mavericks, and only 3 out of the 4 were destroyed on the first pass. A Second pass was made, and again one missile was "hijacked" by the surroundings, but the remaining ZSU was also destroyed.

The 3 aircraft then set about the primary target, consisting of a mix of 28 Trucks and semi-armoured transport vehicles. One ac was restricted to Radar Guided Rockets, while the other 2 relied primarily on Mk-82 Retarded Bombs.

After the initial pass it became almost impossible to identify individual targets in the staging area. Boar 1 elected to make 6 individual runs with the retarded bombs, Boar 2 was restricted to RG Rockets, and Boar 3 made a single pass with retarded bombs and then switched to guns and Rockets.

Post-sortie analysis showed that, of the 28 initial targets, 23 were destroyed, while the remainder, were almost certainly damaged to some degree. Two passes were made over the adjoining Red airfield with slight damage inflicted.

It was not possible to evaluate the relative successes of the different attack methods, but all aircraft were assessed as scoring between 10 and 15 kills each. For example: The single pass with 6 retarded bombs scored around 6 kills, while the 4 individual passes scored around 10-12. The latter obviously took longer and exposed the aircraft to greater hazard.

Overall an enjoyable and successful mission. - Shame about the re-join break - 'nuff said!

[0405 Andrew]

Thank you Alan for your report. I'm glad you had a pleasant evening.
We had 26 flying last night and a GCI. The good news is RAF Air is not dead yet, they just don't say much because they're busy flying.