AndrewJ
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Joined: 1/5/2014
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Just finished playing Log Bridge, 1989, so here's a quick AAR.
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3830375
The game starts out with the Wisconsin SAG between Iceland and Greenland, a couple of SSNs further on N of Iceland, and a big Soviet SAG (flagship - a modern Kirov) somewhere up beyond Jan Mayen Land. Orders: find it and kill it! Without any CVNs to hold your hand...
I started out by taking the Wisconsin SAG south-east towards the Iceland coast, and then creeping slowly along the coast in the hopes that the rugged shoreline would give me some protection from the fringes of the Soviet radar while my helicopters went searching.
I quickly detected the emissions from the Soviet group, and my submarines started moving to greet them. As they got closer, and I got firm radar contacts with my surveillance helicopters, I found I was off to the left front of the Russian formation, with a Udaloy closest - the worst opponent for my subs. Fortunately it was out on the corner of the formation where it wouldn't get good SAM support, and I hoped a carefully timed double salvo of 4 Harpoons from each sub would sink it. However, the Russian radars were already on so the Udaloy spotted the missiles and engaged with her SA-N-9s - damned effective SAMs those. Only one Harpoon got through, and the Udaloy sailed on.
Moments later, my British sub detected an enemy SSN moving in. It turns out the Harpoon launch had been detected and now the badly outclassed Brits were being hunted. Firing a torp down that bearing gave me time to evade while the Russians were (easily) outrunning the pathetically slow British torpedo. What followed was one of the tensest and most interesting sub actions I've had yet in CMANO, with my two subs working together to pincer the Russian sub, driving him back and forth with manually controlled wire-guided torpedo shots, until (8 torpedos later) he was finally hit and sunk by the LA.
When my next surveillance helicopter arrived there was no sign of the damaged Udaloy, which turned out to have burned out and sunk. With it gone the next ship on the corner of the Russian formation was one of the two Slavas, so my surface group salvoed all their TASMs at it, managing to sink it, and some of the leakers even managed to destroy the Kashin behind it with a lucky hit. That left the left side of the Russian formation open, so my subs moved in again.
The LA got close enough to the Kirov to launch a salvo of 4 Mk 48s at it, and even though the Kirov turned and ran it couldn't escape, and three hits sent it to the bottom. Unfortunately, while it was running it had plenty of time to shoot SS-N-15s at the general location of the LA. I managed to dodge 2, but not 3, so it was a mutual kill.
That only left the noisy old British sub (cavitating anywhere above 12 kts if I wanted to stay in the layer). I tried taking it across the front of the formation to tackle the other Slava, but my odds of success didn't look great, so I turned and did what felt like a suicide run into the center of the formation. The two Sverdlovs there were actually great targets for my old sub, but they were trailed by a creeping Udaloy, so I was sure that would kill me. So flood tubes, fire, and flank speed! Both Sverdlovs went down in turn, and then I somehow found myself in front of the Udaloy which was blind at high speed because it had been running from torpedo contacts, and I sank it too! Celebrating joyfully, my old sub swang around the back of the formation, picked off the blind old Kresta over there, and then came back to the center to take on one of the Sovremenny's with their last torpedo. So far they had killed two gun cruisers, one missile cruiser, one ASW destroyer, and had assists on a second ASW destroyer and an SSN. What could go wrong? Overconfidence kills... The Sovremenny went down, but I was swarmed by ASW helicopters, and that, as they say, was that.
While the submarine rampage was underway I had turned my surface group north, leaving Iceland behind and moving up at full speed to engage the remains of the depleted Russian task group. I was confident I could handle the 16 enormous anti-shipping missiles from the surviving Slava, and then use my range advantage to kill the Sovremennys before they could launch at me with their dangerous OTH targeting. When the Slava launched this turned out to be true: their missiles were high speed, but they were also high altitude, and easy to engage from long distance. The Oscar, however, was an entirely different matter...
Twenty four massive supersonic sea-skimmers came my way at the same time as I was shooting at the high altitude targets, clearing the radar horizon much too close to my ships for comfort, and giving me almost no reaction time. My SAMs were firing in all directions now, and my desperate crews somehow managed to shoot them all down. All but the single one, that is, which tore the nuclear cruiser Virginia in half, sending her to the bottom with almost no survivors.
As if that wasn't enough, two new submarine contacts showed up almost simultaneously to join the Oscar, and my best ASW helicopters were all fitted out for Maritime Surveillance, because they'd been keeping a radar eye on the Russian fleet. The remaining helicopters scurried around, managing to sink the Oscar (multiple torps needed for such a big target), sink an Akula, and severely annoy a suspicious patch of ocean that didn't actually have anything in it.
With that done, the task group continued to advance, and then ruthlessly exploited their range advantage to sink the remaining Russian vessels while they were still out of range to use their own missiles.
Victory! But not a bloodless one, and the loss of a nuclear cruiser and two nuclear submarines will be a sobering memory for the survivors.
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Log Bridge, 1989 - 
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