S3 Series

<S> all!
In many S3 frames I've seen the same tendencies that buffers heavily lack in communicating with fighters, and vice versa, and I hope this post will be recieved as constructive criticism.

CONCLUSIONS - Communication is a must.
* The escorts would like to recieve location reports and vector changes consistently from our strikers when they are in enemy territory and at a separated altitude from the escorts. Otherwise it's hard to escort efficiently.

* The escorts and the frame CO must (!!!) be told when the strikers are about to ingress to target and the strikers should always ask if the escorts are ready. (unless it's a higher alt "Route to Berlin" type of bomb run with fighters closely embedded with the buffs).
# Example: "Strikers at the 7.4x and about to start our attack, do we have a green light?" (circle if the escorts do not respond or are not ready!)

* We as escorts must be informed the very second you strikers spot a bandit. This is super important!!! At least if we are even remotely to stand a chance of helping you in time.
# The report should be detailed: "Bandits above strikers, 7.4.2 grid, 15k ft". As such please report: "what is the issue? where? What altitude?"
# Don't write just a simple: "help!". This kind of message only gives us more questions than answers.
# Or even worse like last frame where the chatbuffer, with no prior warning, was suddenly filled with: "pilot xxxxxx has been killed by juice=". "pilot yyyyyy has been killed by vulche", "pilot zzzzzz has been killed by jlordj".


SOME OBSERVATIONS FROM LAST FRAME
1) Do not (!!!) rush into the target if the escorts have been rearming and are half the way to the RV point. I see this behaviour time and time again and always ends up with the whole buff squads being wrecked. The last S3 was no exception. After the first mission all Spitfire squads were rearming. The 4th FG was en route to RV when suddenly we get to know that our strikers are dying at the French coast. Our strikers had just flewn their route and rushed in to target without waiting for any escort and got decimated by the Luftwaffe.
* Please practice circling. If the escorts are lagging behind then circle at the spot until the escorts are at the RV point. This obviously means you must first have checked if the escorts are ready before starting the attack.
* There were also no orders from the frame CO for buffers to wait for the escorts on the second mission. If this is because of miscommunication I don't know, but I think the frame CO needs to play a more active role in coordinating the attack. (This is from experience of many S3's and not directly pointed at the CO last frame who otherwise did a very good job).
* During the whole night, the strikers never ever reported in time that they sighted bandits from what I saw. No location of any fight was given. They didn't even report they were under attack. The only way we knew was when the chatbox was filled with kills, and we as escorts had to desperately ask "Where are our strikers getting killed?".
* In many S3's there are also separated buffs in an egress death-chase who not even once ask for help or give any location of where they are being chased. Please understand there are often many fighters around who would happily protect you guys, but we cannot do that if we do not know the exact location, at what alt or that you are even in need of help.


A FIGHTER PUKE'S PERSPECTIVE ON THE MISSION TYPE WE FACE THIS S3
* Altitude. Especially in such an even fighter match-up as in this S3, the side at the highest altitude will most likely win the day. As such we fighters need to approach enemy territory at 30 000+ alt or we will not be able to defend you or even ourselves from the bandits. If we as escorts approach the French coast at less than 10 000 ft just to have any idea of where the NOE strikers are, then the luftwaffe will either just ignore us as they dive from high alt and make passes on our strikers, without us having a chance to intervene, or more likely they will swarm upon us fighters like a boot stamping at helpless ants. This means the escorts will soon be dead and then there will be noone to protect you on the current or subsequent missions. This is why we have to be at a high altitude, with the side effect that we cannot see our NOE strikers. Impeccable communication is therefore extra important in this series.


Please feel free to post any ideas of how we fighters can better help you strikers with our communication, as there are always two sides of a coin.
<S>
/Robert

Good Thread!

From Striker's perspective... it can be very taxing on the strike group leader to constantly update fighters as well as coordinate the strike group. It has always been VERY helpful to assign position report duties to one or two other strike pilots. Their responsibilities would also include typing contact reports. This isn't easy and is nearly impossible if NOE over terrain.

Fighters: It was very helpful last frame to be reminded... don't hold back from asking for situation/position reports.

Questions:

IF we decide to use the small groups of one or two strikers, should we have strike/fighter groups all on the same TeamSpeak channel?
Strike group A....B....C...etc I realize the big drawback is thinning out communication of the fighter group as a whole...

A good thing would be to utilize the whisper part of teamspeak... but I personally have not gotten it to work as expected. Perhaps someone could chime in on what the best way to set this up would be?



Setup thoughts....
Perhaps if we had designated areas on the map.... STRIKE GROUP HOLDING AREA..... perhaps 2 or 3 forward areas with designations as CHARLIE....DELTA... example: Nightstalkers holding in ECHO....... N/S approaching DELTA..... etc etc.. something like Normandy beach area. With assigning individual targets to strikers it shouldn't be too hard to isolate areas. For this to be effective we (strikers) really need to get things planned ahead of time so the fighters know what to expect.. yet it leaves it loose enough to change the timing on the fly.

Key issues will be for us strikers to have things planned out well ahead of time and not just throw it together at T-13 waiting to launch.


I very much appreciate posts like this as it can help us work together.

Great thread Robert!

Would it just be easier to have the escort sweep ahead and CAP our targets? Maybe we should hold the strikes for a while. Wait till the fighters have a good CAP and then go in.

Maybe we need to have the strikes fly over at 30K with the escort and then dive down?

I know when I get engaged it is already too late for help. The bad guys are usually D10 and closing (or tracers are going by the canopy). I know I should be more aware of the surroundings but I just have poor spotting ability. Also, I am 90% of the time at 100' or less so no possible way to type, even hard to hit the push to talk button.

Thoughts on what I can do better? I was looking at the TrackIR thingies to see if that might help.

Salute!

I am not going to be a gentle as the Stalkers.

To develop an effective communication and coordination protocol, I have one suggestion we can try for a frame and then go from there.

A lite or two should follow we strikers down in the weeds and provide posreps and other stuff using only the text buffer. If we choose to fly at historical medium buff altitudes versus sneaky SoF profiles, ditto. The sacrificial lites can use our TS and only communicate with the rest of the frogs using the buffer.

more later, but Robert has a point that should be addressed. It is not having the friendly lites at 30,000 feet whether we buff "targets" are at 200 feet or even 10,000 feet.

Gums sends....

Darryl, once you left the arena, no one from DR would talk even when I asked directly. As a consequence they were all killed while had all the fighters at one location awaiting orders. Please stay or have the others communicate.

As a person who knows how hard it can be in the weeds, they could talk to their group on TS and one of them can post without hitting a hillside.

AS to having the lites establish CAP before Buffs penetrate low...with the Spit we have a VERY short clip and we will be far from home, so once engaged we probably will not be able to stay on station very long. Also wehn I was the low guy, I never wanted someone high directly over my position to give me away. Last frame once all our Buffs had been expended I volunteered us to starfe and close the remaining targets at 133. That worked out fine except I screwed up and should have only taken 3 others low with me and left the rest of the squad high CAP for our cover over target and egress. We go in NOE and had just enough time for two passes before the LW showed up and started kill us low. Also, part of our problem was dicipline in that when we got jumped I made the call to start withdrawl but several of us thought to help when the saw others getting jumped and so we lost two instead of one. Best to run when told to. Just some stuff to think about. Bombr-
PS see my notes about the proposed bridge targets for strafing.

Heh! Beaver!

Great point if we have two lites.

We have lately been running in with 2 to 4 strikers and DR doing their own attack.

We are reluctant to get on the TS with our Little Friends as there are time critical comms they need. So best bet is a coordinating lite joins us on our TS and is free to hassle if we are bounced.

Last frame the two of us killed 4 LW first tgt with our Ma Deuce ottos, and mine was a manual shot on a dweeb that stayed too long trying for Gundoc. We were climbing and on AP greening up. Face it, at that point in our profile we are ducks. So may as well grab a gun a shoot.

Gums sends...