Figured I do it now while mostly fresh in memory: My thoughts for staging as I did were to have our forces in the middle or so of the front so as to be able to react with at least some forces early on, regardless of where they hit. They put all their marbles in the West which kept half our forces out of the fight for 15-20 minutes. They did use varying altitude attacks, as well as noe. Those that flew over 20K or so seemed to outnumbered by higher enemy until later in the frame and they started doing low level and very low level fighter attacks and low b25's. 352nd was not afraid to be engaging on the deck/low and cruising around picking off loners or SA deprived individuals. I saw them a number of times as I blew through spewing lead as best I could.
Radar had first enemy rolling at 24, grabn Northish. Some minutes later more rolled from 19. Radar now shows the ai planes as a T or similar which makes it nice for id'ing em. Early on some of the ai bombers must have spawned wrong as they were out over the ocean, was weird. Both groups joined and headed for 23/26. The AEs stepped up to the plate and handled the situation with determination. They/we drew first blood this season, thanks! From initial contact until the 190's arrived the AE's did what they had to, which appeared to disrupt the allies, well done! Once the 190's arrived it basically turned into a swirling mass for 1 hour. Enemy formations came and went during that time. Lots of bomber formations were reported by me and MANY were taken down. Very nice effort by all involved. We did lose 23/26, which the coming frontal move for frame 2 would most likely have swallowed up anyhow. The points will hurt though. Squads rtb'd and re-upped then headed back into the fray. A problem with WB's evidently caused the closure of 23 and 26 to NOT be announced on channel, which sucks. They got a 10 minute head start on hitting 48, as I knew they might go there once 26 closed as a lone striker had hit 48 once earlier. IF the 26 closed message was in the buffer I missed it, but didn't see it scrolling back either. Anyhow, if I knew in a timely fashion it was closed I would have vectored all towards 48 earlier. Regardless they did get a lot of targets down, but didn't close it, unless that damn text buffer excuse comes into play again. I'll be thinking about throwing the red flag on that. Low spits once again were noe to 3k prowling for easy kills, which some of us obliged. Killing fighters doesn't count for lots of points though, kinda like a give and take thing unless very lopsided. Killing buffs is where the points are at unless one were to hit certain ground targets. Overall, great job everyone! Especially for a new type of S3, which i do think is an improvement at this point. <S>
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