Orders for tonight were to hit static shipping where found.
at the last minute a forward field was available for us to base from so I jumped at the chance.
Nomads rolled from 53 while Stalkers came up from 54
Our numbers were low and we had people coming in at later times due to real life issues etc.
Farout & I joined up with the nomads and headed north to ingress to the shipping in the slot (6.5.4 area)
we went up along the coastline to mask our dots with the island (hopefully) At 32 we turned west for target.
Bfrog came in late and upped at 54 trying to fly direct to target, when he was about 20 miles from base he was jumped by 4 low zeros and was shot down. Meanwhile, the first group of us went into target. I gave orders to sink the DDs first as they were the most points. With the targets spread over a large area we each went in alone really. TORPS AWAY... Unfortunately, there were some AI dds mixed in with the static ships that messed up some of the torpedo shots, but we did sink two ships. Egressed the same way we went in.
Nomads beat us to home but there were cons over our base. Farout & I ran back north waiting for things to clear. Cons were called very high (30000ft) so we went in and landed below them.
Stragglers joined us and Nomads took off first, unfortunately they also were jumped about 20 miles from base and lost two. Stalkers took the same approach as before and went up the coastline. Met up with remaining nomads ... lost Mtdew to a disco. and continued to target.
More stragglers upped at 54 (mtdew & houndg) about a grid and a half behind us.
Again, first group went into target and shot at 4 more ships... getting out of dodge Jabo called out that NS were deep behind enemy lines and might require some escort. (HINT HINT HINT bad guys on the way) We ran north then east. Dew and Houndg ran smack into the zeros (we should trust that gut feeling
) and were shot down. Farout had determined that he had plenty of time to finish war & peace while he Returned and was preoccupied when the zeros found him too. Air cover was called in for us, but it was too late to get there in time and the rest of us were well ahead and clear so I called off the need for cover and freed them to go elsewhere.
3 of us made it home just as the RTB was called by Jabo.
potential results as follows:
4 static DDs sunk
2 static Freighters sunk
2 nomads shot down
4 Nightstalkers shot down
In hindsight We should have just gone north to the exposed shipping that probably was not covered. I'm sure we would have been safer up there and could have gotten the same number of missions in the time given. (my fault for not seeing it as I was free to choose)
Thanks Weiss for getting things all sorted out and leading us this frame, saw a lot of kills in the buffer for the good guys WAY TO GO fighter squads!