destruya
Posts: 30
Joined: 6/19/2006
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Ever since reading about this scenario on the HHQ boards, I desperately wanted to play it. However, I kept reading on AGSI's page that ANW, with Multiplayer capability, was mere months away. I didn't want to buy H3 only to have to buy another version down the road.
So I waited patiently. It was always so frustrating back in my Harpoon 2 Multimedia Deluxe Edition days to be able to insert Ohios, Deltas, Yankees, and Typhoons into scenarios and fire their SLBMs in an impressive but wholly useless and harmless gesture, to say nothing of Nuclear Shipwrecks and TLAM-Ns. 
A little about myself...I'm probably (one of) the youngest Harpoon players in the world. I began playing H2MDE in 1995, at the age of 14. I remember having to make a boot disk for the thing to make it run reliably on my Frankensystem at the time (a 486SX-33 with a Pentium "Overdrive" 83Mhz upgrade and 28MB of RAM), and even then it was "iffy." I've never played the miniatures game, though - something tells me the typical mini-player wouldn't have taken a pimple-faced 14 year old seriously, and I wasn't about to tell my parents I needed untold hundreds of dollars for the miniatures themselves. I'd have been told to use the battleship from Monopoly as a proxy.
I mean, I had trouble convincing my parents to buy me Torpedo Run because it was too expensive at an earlier stage, and that was like Harpoon for Kids. I finally lucked out at a GARAGE SALE of all places. The only reason I mention something so inane is because it wasn't much fun playing it with myself (yes, I had to retype that to make it not sound questionable), and I found myself looking for harder alternatives. I mean, I was an...abnormal kid. In Kindergarten, where "Goodnight Moon" topped the charts of "My Favorite Book," I was the only little schmuck who brought in his father's prized copy of the 1983 version of "Jane's All the World's Aircraft." Not many five year olds knew the top speed of the F-14, and what made an A+ version deserving of the "+." The book weighed (figuratively) about as much as I did. I could've killed a classmate with it had I chosen to use it as a blunt object. 
Anyways, I'm digressing.
I started this scenario with a LITTLE knowledge of what was coming, thanks to reading the aforementioned spoilers at HHQ.
As I started the scenario, I noticed the default time acceleration was set at 15 seconds. Nice one, Mike. Here I thought I was going to have a minute or two (at least) to queue up my scrambles before the ICBMs came on scope. Not so. The Scalpels (appropriate name) appeared almost immediately on the scopes, and thanks to my surprise, and the accelerated time, I immediately lost about two minutes. And two minutes is a long time when you've got warheads coming in at slightly sub-orbital speeds.
I used the "Power of Q" (again, my Star Trekkish term for "pause") to correct my stupidity to concentrate my scrambling operations toward Elmendorf, which SEEMED at the moment to be the Soviets' main focii of attention...and with good reason, my B-52s were there. Six loaded for bear (pun somewhat intended) and six that must've slipped the Alert crews' minds, as they were unloaded and unready to fly. Well, they were **** out of luck. Not even God could load a rotary launcher in the little time that base had left.
To those unfortunate enough to live around Elmendorf AFB, I'm sure the sound of six Stratofortress on crash startup along with the combined noise and turbines of at least 12 707s in the form of Stratotankers and Sentries would've garnered a few phone calls. It was nothing compared to the noise they were *about* to hear, though.
Through the Power of Q, I was able to get every single *available* asset launched (or so I thought), to cruising altitude (at max power, of course), and vectored away from Elmendorf before the area went up under three 350Kt fireballs (most were apparently airbursts [correction, all were groundbursts, I just got lucky] - my ammo dumps and a few revetments survived). Unbeknownst to me at the time, mostly because of my zeal to get the B-52s and support assets aloft (since the mission is really kinda screwed if you lose them that early on), I had left at least twelve available Phantoms (armed with Sparrows) on the ground at Elmendorf. Sorry guys, occasionally you get the **** end of the stick.
I had initially vectored the B-52s to make for the closest southernmost EW station (thinking the Soviets couldn't possibly have any assets down there for interception...and it made a nice Positive Control Point as well), and decided they were good...for now.
I focused my attention toward the interceptors next, getting the Falcons and Eagles aloft first (hey, I might've lost my Phantoms, but I'm not a COMPLETE idiot), and then launched the Delta Darts in my tried-and-tested groups of four. I don't know, for some reason, you stand a better chance when you set your AAW pickets in four-ship teams instead of three or less. I made sure to make the F-106 pilots the "front-line" fighters. I was down twelve F-4s already, and I was convinced I had Backfires incoming, and even they'd be no match for the Delta Darts.
Also, to speak a little morbidly, I didn't really give a damn if they survived. In the view of my remaining Eagles and Falcons, they were tactically useless (I was forgetting about the bombers at this point) It was February 1984 (I wasn't even three yet at this point) for God's sake. F-106s? Even the PILOTS had to know they were sacrificial lambs. I know they were the "linchpin" of the bomber defense until the late 80s, but JESUS. At least the Guard has Falcons (and probably more Eagles soon thanks to the Raptor's introduction) now.
As I gradually got my remaining assets aloft and vectored towards probable bomber flight paths, I took the time to refine the 52's flight paths. I decided skipping through the EW station's scanning arcs was a *rather* useful tool as it enabled me to run the 52s dark at low altitude without having to worry *too* much about some hapless **** in a Mig-25 or Tu-128 getting the find of his career whilst dicking around near the Aleutians. Let's not forget, these WERE probably the same idiots who mistook a Korean Air Lines 747 for an EC-135 less than a year earlier. I'm sure they were "persuaded" to become better at their jobs after that little "oopsie."
The Delta Darts were first on scene, and encountered a veritable WALL of Mig-23s and Su-15s. To the Guard's credit, they more than held their own against the Floggers in their second-generation Convair crates (with AIM-4s that have ranges less than that of some pro-grade model rockets), but all-in-all, it was NOT a good day to be a AANG F-106 pilot. Out of the available Darts I launched at the beginning of the scenario, only TWO made it back to base.
They didn't die in vain, though - as the Eagles came on station and began to thin the HELL out of the Floggers. Evidently the Russians were a little surprised to see interceptors so close to Anadyr, and I wasn't greeted by Gammon fire until WELL after the fourth group of Floggers were downed. Methinks the Russkies relied too much on the apparent "superiority" of their defenders. Also, around this time I got a flash that the Elmendorf repair teams (composed, I'd fathom, of rather brave and/or stupid men) had made quite a bit of headway on making the runways serviceable again. Nice, but I was sure the 52s (if they survived) were going to have to divert to Eielson.
Nonetheless, the Gammons DID start flying, and I was able to keep the Eagles from suffering losses (which surprised me considering this scenario I *thought* was supposed to incorporate nuclear AAMs and SAMs). Note to Mike: a few Genies would be nice if they were pre-loaded on the Darts were you to ever revamp this scenario.
The guys who never quite got stick time during the whole scenario were the Falcon pilots, whose loadouts of all Sidewinders and anemic operational ranges prevented them from getting all but one kill. Oh, my kingdom to somehow bring back those goddamned Phantoms. The only real kill a Falcon pilot got the whole scenario was taking out a Fiddler trying to get in range of an F-15 on a Bingo fuel return. He got a Sidewinder up those nice big turbines for his troubles, and a swim in some of the coldest waters in the world as an added bonus.
As it became clearer that the Soviet Far East Command was running out of interceptors, I turned my attention towards my 2x3 groups of bombers, nearing their final PCP before making an egress toward the Kamchatkan coastline. At a possible detriment to anti-bomber operations, I turned a fresh group of four Eagles (the lazy ****s who weren't ready at the beginning) away from their interception duties just east of Anadyr to sniff out possible threats in the approach corridor.
I had chosen a feet dry spot of about 75 miles south of the Russian C3I station. I figured if it was going to have SAM coverage I was going to do my best to avoid it whilst keeping the LEAST amount of time over Russian territory as humanly possible. I didn't need some Yak farmer getting access to a telephone to complain to the near Air Command about low-flying aircraft waking him up/scaring his flock. Sufficed to say, it wasn't a good day to be a B-52 pilot. Four of their squadmates had been vaporized a few hours before, and I'd had them flying at 40-110m ever since they'd hit feet wet. I was not f*cking around.
The Eagle's sweep was two-fold. In my anti-air ops, I hadn't IDed a SINGLE Backfire kill. This was beginning to worry me. Basically all my interception assets were Bingo, aloft, or ice cubes at the bottom of the northern Pacific. Had Mike told these things to take a Polar trajectory instead of the boring A-to-B routes the AI normally takes? My EW stations hadn't heard a peep from the south, and, what came as a surprise to me, one of my northernmost Sentries had been intercepted.
The Eagle's sweep of the ingress point turned up nothing - no SAMs, no spikes. Nada. The 52s were cleared in hot as I corrected their original track to take them straight in vice the roundabout I'd chosen before. No need to waste fuel, and no need to really test the air/radar defenses of one of the most secure airspaces on Earth.
As the 52s went feet dry, all my attention turned to them. News that the Elmendorf crew had repaired the runways to handle small aircraft was a nice little pick-me-up, but I knew I was one screwup from getting these 52s killed, and I knew DAMN well I probably wouldn't see it coming since the captains of each had most likely threatened to toss out their EW officers if they even THOUGHT of going hot with radar or ECM. For all the Russians knew, they'd vaporized the 52s on the ground at Elmendorf. I wasn't about to let them know six of them packed to the gills with SRAMs and B28s had gotten aloft.
I vectored them north and slightly away from the Anadyr defenses at first, since it seemed a Southern or, God forbid, an Eastern approach was suicide. I decided my best point was to vector towards the river flowing downstream towards Anadyr. As the group armed with only SRAMs got closer, I decided to see just how many targets were in range. Another note to Mike: the SRAM range didn't show up on range circles, and on the "reports" of each aircraft (at least at first), none reported having ANY weapons loaded.
I found out roughly three quarters of my target package was in range, and with a little trepidation, fired my first nukes in H3. The first targets, obviously, were the Scalpel train, the Stilleto silo complex, and Anadyr itself. I didn't launch ALL SRAMs at first because they ARE capable of being intercepted, even though the SAM crews around the base hadn't exactly inspired an immense amount of respect tonight on my part.
The waiting for the detonations was harrowing. The missiles went dead to sensors as they passed out of visual range (and again, I wasn't ABOUT to start radiating, especially since I'd managed to get in range of - and behind - EVERY complex without so much of even an interceptor SCARE), and all I had to tell me their ETAs were the projected times when I launched them and the "Inc Missiles" of each selected target reading "1" - with the sole exception of two for the Stilleto complex. The SS-19 was comparatively a BRAND NEW missile with a warhead of nearly 5Mt, and I wasn't going to take any chances that a single 150kT explosion was going to do the job, especially since "immediate retaliation" had been promised/hinted at in the orders.
If they weren't curious before, the Russians sure as Hell were aware something was up now. Excepting the possibility that the US had used some space-based warhead system or some Magic Missile, they were pretty sure they had bombers SOMEWHERE in their interior (but probably not up their asses as most of their radar coverage was probably still trained on the East) as fireballs consumed the Scalpel train, Stiletto complex, and most of the soft Anadyr facilities...at least enough to render the base completely unusable to all the soon-to-be-VERY-pissed pilots still aloft.
I'm sure the C3I center wanted to know what the Hell was going on, but they didn't have much time to investigate as one of the B-52s took it upon himself to allocate a single SRAM towards it to disrupt Command and Control communications to the remaining strategic and tactical assets on the Kamchatkan peninsula. I bet in the few short seconds the guards outside had to wonder "what's that 'whooshing' sound," that those inside wished they'd spent some more Rubles shoring up the radar coverage southeast of their bunker.
The 52 crews weren't done yet, though. Between the two flights, I still had PLENTY of SRAMs left. As one of the [surviving] crews was later recorded as saying, they decided to pull a "Bernie Goetz" on Anadyr, right down to the the trademark "I don't think you've had enough yet" quote. The rotary launchers came to life, paying special attention to Anadyr's hardened ammo dumps and revetments, with a further SRAM targetting each of the runways apiece *yet again*.
Needless to say, by the time the six Stratofortress' were done with Anadyr...and any military installation around it unfortunate enough to have been recorded and plotted, I'm sure you could see through to the Earth's molten core through the hole. The game recorded absolutely no aircraft servicing ability from the facility anymore - the "Helo and VTOL" rating from earlier was now replaced with an ominous "On Fire" understatement.
Every single SAM facility was toast. Anadyr was ridiculously overburnt and GLOWING toast. The Russian ICBM assets were very expensive vapor clouds. But that wasn't enough for the 52 pilots. The three with only SRAM loadouts were useless to me at this point, so I split the group into individual planes and vectored them out at different but rather close egress points near my initial ingress point. I figured after what they'd accomplished, they deserved a chance at seeing a loved one again - plus I wasn't about to chance a Fiddler carrying a nuclear AAM taking out the entire flight of three. My gamble paid off, and two of them got out of Russian airspace. The third, if they survived, hopefully made use of their cyanide pills - they weren't exactly going to be taken in gracefully by the civilians of the peninsula, and it was doubtful the Fiddler pilot's radio was working well enough (if at all) to report to the ether that he'd shot down a bomber on an apparent exit course.
I knew I'd accomplished the mission - ahead of time, I noted - but I still had nukes - the six B28s.
Snapping myself back into reality, and not thinking tactically, I decided to have some fun with freefalls. The only two [surviving and non-irradiated] enemy assets still on the map (with the possible exception of the heretofore invisible Backfires) were the two Russian EW posts...and possibly quite a few more pissed off and DESPERATE Fiddler pilots. I was smart on the southernmost site. I went with a manual release from max altitude (hey, I know I've won at this point), and reversed the course of the 52s so damned fast I'm sure a few rivets got popped. The EW site went up in a 1.2Mt fireball and the Air Force got another wide-open corridor to vector bombers through. Hey, one less site they had to waste an ICBM on! :)
I wasn't as smart on the second one. I had noticed the bombs were OBVIOUSLY retarded in some way, so I decided on an automatic release on the northernmost site. However, I got distracted on my run by one of those orphan Fiddlers taking out one of the flight of three just as the "eggs" pickled and both remaining ships went up with their own damned bombs. STUPID, Patrick. At least the Fiddler pilot bought it, too.
Not soon thereafter, I got the victory message. I'd scored a total victory - all facilities, even Elmendorf, were still operational (albeit Elm was still probably hot enough to boil an egg on the tarmac and/or radioactively cook a man's genitalia in an amount of time that'd make a microwave blush). To my surprise, not a SINGLE nuclear SAM or AAM had been expended by the Soviets. To my FURTHER surprise, all (?) 24 Backfire Cs had been eliminated. To take a quote from Jon Stewart..."Whaaaa?" Did the AI have a brain fart?
The only thing I can figure, is the AI never launched the bombers and they went to Hell with the revetments, or in the relative confusion, I "accidentally" took them out dealing with the copious amounts of Fiddlers they sent up against the second wave of Eagles. Most of the targets I engaged were unconfirmed but presumed 100% hostile, and the silhouttes and sizes are comparable between a Fiddler and a Backfire (at least from BVR/radar's perspective)...but somehow I'd eliminated all of them. I wasn't complaining either way, but it would've been more challenging to have to had dealt with them on short notice.
The Russians had lost EVERYTHING, I lost Elmendorf's facilities (excepting the runways and superhardened facilities, chock full of "presents" the Russians were no doubt going to get later when it was "safe" enough to extract them), 24 Phantoms (I'm still kicking myself for that stupid ass omission - those extra Sparrows would've come in handy), 2 Eagles, more Delta Darts than I'd really care to admit, a single Sentry, and 10 B-52s out of my original force of 12. Keeping in mind - six were vaped at Elm because they weren't loaded, one was victim of a lucky yet extraordinarily screwed Fiddler pilot on egress, and the remaining three due to my stupidity and relative inexperience in dealing with freefall thermonuclear weapons in this game.
Not bad, if I do say so myself. Except, as I said before, by the time I was done with this scenario, I'm sure I was dead in real life, which was a bit sobering. I spent the majority of my life next to three quite valuable targets - Pensacola NAS, in Virginia Beach, a few minutes' driving distance from NOB Norfolk, NAB Little Creek and Dam Neck, NAS Oceana, and let's not forget the NN Shipyards and Yorktown Weapons Depot. The last of the three is pretty apparent for its value - Washington DC itself. Part of my interest in history (my major) and the military itself comes from having lived for most of my under the naivete of being "safe" whilst living mere minutes away from some of the juiciest strategic targets-of-opportunity in the Continental US.
Come to think of it, I was two and a half. I wouldn't have given a damn.  
Anyways, nice scenario, Mike. I see now what the other AARs were extolling. Thanks for letting me get my nuclear rocks off.
< Message edited by destruya -- 6/23/2006 2:12:38 PM >
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