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AndrewJ -> RE: Red Storm: Fill the Gap (2/4/2014 3:34:17 AM)
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I tried this out tonight, so here's a quick report.
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***SPOILERS***
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At the start of the scenario the Nimitz turns north and storms up towards the Greenland / Iceland gap at 25 knots, leaving its poor oiler behind, and throws out a wide screen of ELINT planes (S-3s, the EA-3, and an E-3, all silent) to have a safe sniff at the air activity around Iceland. A modest forward CAP heads halfway to Iceland.
American subs come off their northward zig-zag courses and start box patrols in the G-I and I-UK gaps at creep, S of the SOSUS line (where present). Brit and Norwegians do likewise, but further north in the Faroes-Shetland gap and the Shetland-Norway gap.
Heavy cap gets thrown up from the UK, but only out as far as the Faroes, and stays radar silent to avoid attention. P-3s start patrolling this far out, but not any closer to Iceland yet for fear of prowling Russians.
Then the shooting starts. As soon as its in range the TLAM-Spruance empties its magazines, half against each runway. A few get potted by the Russian CAP, but the majority get through and both runways are immediately out of service. A handful of Russians try to engage the F-14s south of Iceland, but those withdraw at speed without fighting, and the few Russians that follow them either run out of fuel or are shot down by reinforcements, as is the Bear that's out looking for the carrier. After that it's just a matter of waiting for the fighters to run out of fuel and fall out of the skies. An hour or two later the carrier makes a quick raid to kill the Mainstay, and shut down the SAM radar with some HARMs, and then a pair of TLAMs blow the navigation radar off the control tower, but that's about it for the air war.
With the sky clear of Russians, the P-3s come out to play, all the way up to Iceland, with a massive sonobuoy barrage, and the carrier starts sending S-3s up to the G-I gap, to lay sonobuouys north of the patrolling sub.
The Akula and the Alfa get tagged by the SOSUS line, and the P-3s descend on them. Before long they're gone, although that Alfa is a bitch to catch when my torps only have a 3 knot advantage. Three P-3s tag team the golden fish, and eventually a torp in front and a torp behind leave little room for choices, and now the ocean floor glows at night.
The first Yankee gets spotted by a passive sonobuoy between Iceland and the Faroes, and a lucky S-3 manages to tag the second Yankee with his second-last sonobuoy as it comes down between Greenland and Iceland. These are slower targets than the Alfa, and they don't last as long. The Yankee notch tries coming under another passive buoy between the Shetlands and the Faroes, and the P-3 on station turns in to attack - reaching Bingo fuel just as the bomb bay doors are about to open. Cursing their luck the crew heads for home, while another P-3 roars in to steal their kill.
So that's it for now, with 2days 19 hours left on the clock. There's probably another few attack subs out there, and I suppose I could start plinking airport facilities, but I think I've accomplished the bulk of my objectives.
Like some of the other posters, I think this one has too many TLAMs to make it truly challenging. With the Iceland airbase so quickly out of the picture (without having to commit to a major raid to do it) it's just a matter of hoping you get lucky with your anti-sub patrols. If Iceland were still operational I would probably not have been able to catch either of the Yankees, without some major air-to-air combat operations, or good fortune with my subs. Perhaps a few less TLAMs, or some more effective air defence at Keflavik would be helpful? (I don't think any SAMs were fired at all, despite the 45 incoming TLAMs.)
Thanks for writing this - I'm looking forward to trying the next one.
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