S3 Series

Frame 2 CO AAR
The first mission last night felt like riding a barrel towards Niagara falls, as in I had no control, everything seemed ok but..... there was a feeling of bad things coming.

Doolittle’s raiders rolled and headed north to target. American Eagles did the same but had to climb. I was able to have the DR do a 180 to come back closer to the AE.. This set the timing back a bit but had to be done. Meanwhile the 4th took off from the cv and grabbed altitude away from everyone else. In hindsight I should have put in the orders for you to head towards our friendly forces right off the bat.
The 23rd delayed their roll out and then made for the rendezvous spot where the AI was supposed to spawn (2.2.5 grid).
Nightstalkers & Nomads rolled north west on their long track behind enemy lines.
Enemy started showing on the radar up at F186 (our primary target) It was an obvious target and a predictable response.. Our forces ended up getting divided right away as their forces went east and south to attack. Jabo then spawned in the AI bombers to grid (2.3.5) which was 40 miles north of their escort… right smack into enemy radar…. right in a radar gap of ours (so I couldn’t see them)…. Right on top of enemy fighters…
23rd headed north as best they could to try and catch the AI bombers, the DR continued on track to hit F186 with the AE over top of them. The 4th headed west to meet up with our forces headed north. It was a huge convergence point at F186 all enemy and all friendly aircraft were on a collision course.
Somehow the 4th was able to make it there, I thought they would be intercepted prior but altitude probably made all the difference. The enemy were busy riding our naked bombers north shooting down plane after plane. 23rd was able to catch up and made a difference with our remaining bombers as they dropped on target (airfields of F182 & F183) The DR hit F186 and swarmed all over it eventually closing it. unfortunately many of the ai wingmen decided to camp out on the mountains to be mercilessly executed by juice. DR hit and closed the port at 187 on the way home.

4th headed back to the carrier to rearm, 23rd escorted the AI bombers back then headed back to base. AE headed back to base. Nomads/NS decided to run into target at altitude so they were on dar for a long time enabling the enemy executioner Juice to get into positon to kill them at target. I’m not sure if any ships were killed or not as there seemed to be some question of bomb hits that didn’t kill. Probably they were near misses…. The force was hunted down and removed from existence.

Second strike, here is where we were to get a lot of points back… hitting the 24 ships in harbor at 179 & 181 while the second AI raid hit the same airfields as before. Unfortunately things didn’t quite work out that way. Both the 23rd and the DR decided to stand down. Strike was now made up of Nomad/Nightstalkers who used their 2nd life. I decided to join them to raise our numbers to 3 .
4th grabbed north and east again and were shadowed and attacked away from everything else and had to rtb. The low altitude/speed handling of the new flight model F6F caused many landing mishaps and rendered the 4th to an ineffective number so they stood down.

AE made it to the bomber rdv so Jabo brought in the AI bombers. I don’t know what happened for the AI & AE as I was in flight. The port strike made the long NOE exhausting flight to 179. We encountered low AE finishing off some enemy aircraft so they joined us as we popped up and got into the bombsite. Time did not allow us to loiter and kill as many ships as we would have liked but we were able to kill 14 ships by visual confirmation before time ran out and we took the long flight home.

Hindsight
The large size of this map forced Jabo to move his AI starting point closer to the enemy than was planned this gave the enemy a huge advantage and pretty much screwed the 23rd out of any chance of completing their objectives. Credit the 23rd for following thru and getting done what they could.
NOE bombers are totally ineffective utilizing wingmen individually. Several bombers went down when pilots rotated to them as they were too low and crashed into the sea.
Future use of level bombers should be against industrial targets & cities where everything at target is massed together.

Miscommunication with the 4th was my fault. My understanding was not on the same page as you, my orders should have been clearer and updates should have been acted upon by me.

I don’t know how the points will all shake out as the high point value of our assets is a difficult mountain to overcome. Thank you all for doing your best in a very difficult situation.

Sorry about that Coolon. I tried and tried to get the B25Js to work but they always went haywire after drop. Rushed in the B24Js to replace them and didnt have time to work out the entire AI flight so moved them up incase they didnt make the second sortie in time. First sortie of the B24s was a fest for the IJ without escort. AI bombers are made of paper regardless of what you do to them. Second sortie of the B24Js was priceless with great cover but of course they didnt drop. Will work it out, so its fair.

I noticed that the 4th flew the Hellcat, feedback on the F6F5 would be appreciated as it has been redone the most of any aircraft with the new system for 2017.

the F6 remodel sucks. It is much to unstable at low speed and even at speed and altitude it is too sensitive to stall. Makes it very difficult to get back on deck. Lost most to crashes during landing. We will not be flying it again until it's fixed.

bombr-