Unknown to the Western powers, a Soviet transport ship carrying nuclear warheads has suffered major technical issues and is adrift in international waters.
While the situation cannot be viewed clearly by satellite due to bad weather, this has also hampered recovery efforts.
The politbureau is adamant that no US or US-aligned eyes can be allowed to fall on the vessel for classified reasons. Air superiority over the area must be established. In this effort, pilots have received orders to open fire at any craft crossing the set exclusion line.
US intelligence has figured out that there is obviously something special going on in the general area, although initial recon efforts have been threatened away by Soviet air and naval power. Even observation attempts by a pair of state-of-the-art nuclear submarines were driven off by agressive ASW units.
The weather does not look like it will improve any time soon, so a different approach will be tried; several small groups of aircraft will attempt to infiltrate the area in such a way that the Soviet air cover will not be able to intercept all of them.
One of these groups is a pair of F/A-18C Hornets from VFA-195, the Dambusters, which is stationed in Japan. Callsigns are "Hogger" and "Stilts".
They are part of the first wave, most likely to be intercepted. Their Rules of Engagement allow them to open fire BVR if enemy weapon launches are detected.
As luck would have it, they are indeed intercepted by a pair of Su-27 Flankers, well within the exclusion area.
Hogger and Stilts were about to have a very bad day.
This game of Airwar C21 is going to be a bit of a test case. It'll only be a small 2v2 battle without the spotting rules, which should make things go pretty quickly.
I'm also trying out some new aircraft stat and weapon tracking sheets which are fillable and printable at trading card size. By putting these in card sleeves, damage, spent ammo/chaff/flares and fired missiles can be tracked using dry-erase markers. This should make things a lot more handy than the default A4-sized tracking sheets.
You can see them in action next to the aircraft models in the pictures that follow.
In addition, I'm trying out the use of distances in cm instead of inches. This should allow me to have much more room to maneuver outside missile range on a default-sized table.
US Navy force:
2 F/A-18C Hornets, each armed with 2 AIM-9M Sidewinders and 4 AIM-7P Sparrows.
Soviet Air Forces force:
2 Su-27 Flanker-Bs, each armed with 4 AA-11 Archers and 6 AA-10C Alamos
This is the initial situation:
The Hornets are rushing along at top speed in the bottom right corner, with the Flankers, also supersonic, on an intercept course from the top right corner.
Turn 1, phase 1:
The Flankers speed on towards the Hornets, which turn slightly away from the Soviet fighters, maintaining top speed. No missiles are fired, but the targeting radars are lighting up Hogger and Stilts.
Turn 1, phase 2:
As the chase continued, Hogger and Stilts suddenly had some of their worst nightmares become reality; the Flankers got missile lock, followed closely by an actual missile launch.
Four AA-10 Alamo air-to-air missiles were now making their way towards the shocked pilots.
Turn 2, phase 1:
While the Flankers just kept their radars pointing to their targets, guiding the Alamo missiles in, the Hornets tried to turn sharply towards the Flankers. If done well, this would also help them defeat the missiles.
While Hogger's break turn was textbook, Stilts panicked and messed up, turning a lot less than he wanted and losing a lot more speed.
Dumping chaff, Hogger easily defeated both missiles.
Stilts was not so lucky; the first missile detonated nearby, dealing only minimal damage. However, the second missile's blast shredded the airframe. Stilts tried ejecting, but was torn apart by the fragments of his disintegrating fighter moving at supersonic speeds before his seat cleared the aircraft.
Screaming his wingman's name, Hogger managed to get locks on the Sukhoi that had just shot down his partner and launched both of his Sidewinders.
He'd have something else to contend with in the meantime, though, as both Flankers had launched a pair of their own heat-seeking missiles, AA-11 Archers, at him.
Turn 2, phase 2:
The Flanker numbered 87 broke to his right, hoping to catch the Hornet it he decided to turn that way. Unfortunately for him, he messed up his turn and lost a lot more speed than he had planned for.
To increase his shame, Hogger had actually turned the other way. However, the stress seemed to be getting to him, as the maneuver was rather sloppy, the turn not quite as sharp as planned.
That would be troublesome, as the other Flanker had chosen to turn with him, entering a scissors maneuver.
Hogger managed to defeat three of the four incoming Archers. The fourth missile hit and dealt significant structural damage to the Hornet, severely limiting its performance.
His adversary easily evaded both Sidewinders chasing him and lined up to fire more missiles at Hogger.
However, he was too close to fire his last two Archers effectively, so he decided not to waste them and continue the scissors.
Turn 3, phase 1:
Still stressed out, Hogger tried to break right, out of the scissors. Unfortunately, his turn was sloppy again.
Meanwhile, the Flanker with whom he was in a scissors decided to maneuver into an immelmann turn, opening the distance and keeping track of his target.
The other Flanker made a well-executed sharp turn of his own a bit further away, ending with its nose pointing towards Hogger's Hornet.
The nearby Flanker got tone for and launched both of his remaining Archers, which were shortly thereafter joined by another two Alamos from the other Flanker.
Turn 3, phase 2:
The far Flanker slowed down to maintain his distance and keep the nose of his craft pointed at the Hornet to guide his missiles home.
The near Flanker broke into Hogger's turn, hoping to see the American fighter-bomber appear in his aiming reticle.
He read Hogger's move correctly, as he planned to turn behind the Flanker.
Unfortunately for him, Hogger misjudged another turn and put himself straight in the path of the Flanker's cannon.
To make matters worse, there were still four missiles flying towards him as well.
The first Alamo missed, misdirected by one of the chaff bundles Hogger launched. The second did not and blasted the already-crippled Hornet to bits before the pair of Archers could even get there. Hogger had had no chance to escape from his doomed fighter. Bits of him would fall into the sea of Japan along with what remained of his fighter.
The nearby Flanker pilot had ended up with a front-row seat for this spectacular fireball, with no need to fire his cannon.
The Soviet fighters resumed their patrol after this textbook engagement, scaring off one more group of American fighters before heading home.
Aftermath
Similar scenes occured at several other points near the edge of the exclusion zone. Overall, not a single US aircraft managed to get close enough to sneak a peek with the observation pods that had been mounted on them. Total losses were five aircraft destroyed and one damaged, with two pilots taken prisoner by the Soviets. Unconfirmed reports stated that overall Soviet losses consisted of 2 aircraft destroyed and 1 more damaged.
In the end, Soviet naval assets were able to secure the transport ship and its cargo before the storms ended, leaving the Western intelligence agencies suspicious but without any clear data about what had really happened there and what made this transport so special.
This result was pretty much the best-case scenario within the Politbureau crisis plan and the entire affair was swept under the rug.
The families of the pilots were told that their loved ones had died when their aircraft flew into an unexpected thunderstorm.
The incident remains classified to this day.
Analysis
All in all, this was an interesting but very one-sided game.
Of particular note was the bad luck the US side had; they couldn't pass a maneuver test to (literally) save their lives. Soviet to-hit rolls for their missiles were pretty good as well.
When combined with their somewhat disadvantageous starting positions, this left the US pilots at the mercy of the Flankers, who didn't even need to expend their entire missile loadouts.
In most games of Airwar C21, you'd expect both sides to have 1, 2 or 3 additional aircraft, making this much less of an issue.
Both of the things I wanted to try in this game worked out pretty well.
The aircraft and weapon tracking cards worked perfectly with the dry-erase marker. Having a tissue at hand to wipe off any markings no longer needed (like a previous airspeed) made keeping track of the status for each aircraft very easy.
These cards are also small enough to just place alongside the model they refer to, unlike the standard A4-sized tracking sheets. This means that it's a lot less likely that you accidentally fill in info for the wrong plane, which I have seen happen with the A4 sheets.
Measuring distances in cm instead of inches worked pretty well as well.
It means models need to be even closer on the table to get within gun range (3/6/9 for close/medium/extreme ranges).
However, it allows you to maneuver somewhat without immediately getting within range for radar-guided missiles on a standard 120cm/120cm (48"x48") board.
Not much of that was seen in this game, but in bigger battles, strategic movement should become a lot more viable.
Fillable Aircraft and Weapons cards
I mentioned form-fillable tracking cards in this report.
Here's a download link.
You can fill in most relevant stats on this, although pilot skill isn't on there.
For the damage/chaff/flares/ammo boxes, you can fill in the spare ones for the aircraft you're using with a pen or pencil before putting the card into the sleeve.
The blank second page is there so you can print multiple copies of page 1 on a single sheet in Acrobat Reader; it won't allow you to do that for 1-page documents.
If you have comments or suggestions about these cards, I'll gladly take them into account.
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