S3 Series

OK, 1st off I want to thank everyone for letting me take the big chair this week!

The plan for the 1st attack seemed to go to plan pretty well. We had a couple of issues that I didn't coordinate well. Being as I don't fly fighters EVER, I didn't understand some things.
#1 - the buffs where at about 12K but all the fighters (including me) where over 20K. The NS were flying CAP right over the group but I didn't know the zekes were on the buffs until I saw a few flaming aircraft. At this point we dove in to help but no IJ were there anymore. I didn't realize how hard it is to tell black dots apart.
#2 - we need a plan to kill the low flying IJ. I thought F20 was clear because we had a bunch of fighter cover overhead so I dove in to kill ships. I got to about 5K and was swarmed by the 352nd! I should never have dove down, we lost 2 NS on that trip.

The 2nd run I thought was going great but the buff's got delayed waiting for a reset from Jabo. This caused them to be about 15min. behind schedule. As such the IJ must have had some of the 23rd circling up north and had them swing south after the fighters passed by. They brought in 6~8 fighters into the buffs and ended up forcing them to RTB. I should have been watching for that. We will need to keep more fighters embedded with the buffs I think. This didn't stop Hawk from coming in and closing 23 thought, great job guys!

Again the 352nd were parked low on F20. The killed another 2 NS when they came in to kill ships. I don't know how many ships were sunk but I think there were a bunch.

I do not CO fighter scenarios very often so I am not sure I gave enough direction. Sorry if I missed something through the night. I don't know what to do when we have no DAR coverage so just hoped the fighters were covering each other. Seems like we had a lot more kills than the IJ but I know Juice had a couple kills and lived and the IJ had a few kills late in the frame.

Thanks again for the effort put out there!!!!!

First sortie 475FG swept in along northern route and tied up a substantial number of bandits dragging them north west clear of the bomber ingress.

We then went straight to the bombers when they call for help 20 miles from the targets and we provided close escort to the limits of our fuel capacity at which point we egressed.

Second sortie we were more aggressive, going straight for the bandits, diving them all down low and pinning them in the AAA until we were fuel critical.

Our preliminary tally is 8 kills for 3 losses, 2 operational. We lost only one to enemy action. The enemy fighters would not leave the protection of AAA late in the frame.

****************

Bombers need to report position, altitude and heading every 5 minutes on country channel. This is absolutely the biggest factor in getting help where it is needed. We have no way of knowing where the bombers are if we can't see them and they won't broadcast on country.

Bombers need to sortie at T + 0with the close escort if they want fighters to have fuel to cover them at the target and on egress. Remote escort/Sweep can delay slightly and improve the fuel situation for egress while still getting there ahead of the bombers to sweep.

Proper close escort doctrine is fighters forward, aft and abeam 4-8 K above bombers to pick up enemy fighters.

Remote escort should be 5-10 minutes ahead to break up enemy formations. We successfully took 15 enemy fighters out of the fight for 30 minutes, which should have been enough, just sweeping through and dragging them northwest in a fruitless chase but the bombers were very late and we had to RTB for fuel.

I thought bomber position reports were clear enough. Could have asked in flight to get em more frequent and we would have done so. Noted going forward will make it part of the check list.

On the rest Hindsight is 20-20. MuskieZZ had orders out a long time ago and there was enough time to participate and comment.

Finally we (bombers) were about 4 minutes late (on the outside) would hardly call that "very" late myself but each one to their opinion.

If someone assigned to make 5 minute posreps for a bomber formation isn't already SOP after 15 years of S3 I don't know why I should expect a change now.

4 minutes is an eternity in an airplane so yes it is "very" late. The difference in living and dying in this particular case.

And your response is exactly why I didn't bother to comment before and hopefully will know better next time to just shut up and let you make the same mistakes over and over.

I am a slow learner.

Not everyone has been around 15 years and those who have been can always call out the lack of reports and it would have been dealt with.
As I remember it did you not break DAR 5 minutes earlier than requested? I guess you were "very" early

I completely fail to comprehend your last comment. You wanted us to fail and then tell us how wrong we were, as opposed to commenting on the discussions which started a week ago? Boy that surely shows a lot of team spirit!! I guess I have a lot to learn but I'm going to ignore this lesson for sure.

Come on guys. We are all on the same side here.

If there is any finger pointing, it should be pointed at me. I choose to fly this week so I did a poor job of getting position requests out to the fighters. I should have flown a buff so I didn't have to ask but choose to fly a fighter, my mistake. With the DAR set to 50 miles, I could see the buffs most of the way to target so I should have called them out better.

On the second run, I had no idea how much troubles we were going to have with the CV's. Why they decided to start turning under the buffs needs to be fixed. I definitely told the fighters to go too early. When I saw the buffs having so much troubles with the CV's and not getting replies from Jabo for resets I should have called off the second buff run. I didn't want to make them all have to land after getting up so I let them proceed late knowing we were going to be hard pressed to cover them. again my mistake.

There were just a lot of things that didn't go as planned. Yes, the 475 was 5~7 min. ahead of schedule on the 1st run, yes the buffs were 4 min. behind on the 1st run and more on the second run, yes we had uncontrollable issues on the second run with the CV's. I should not have made a plan that was so time critical to succeed. I should have embedded more fighters with the buffs.......

all in all I think we had a successful night at least I hope everyone had fun. That's all that matters to me. If folks didn't have fun, I apologize. Hopefully I will learn something from this and do better next series when we have almost the exact same setup.

Musky you did good, it is always very difficult to get timing right, and now we know that is the biggest challenge we have to protect the buffs.
One thing I would like to add, I am not sure how other groups do it but Haze has always rolled from CV one at a time. Therefore it takes a bit of time just for a squad to get up in the air. We need to accommodate for that next weekend. Also I think if guys have "malfunctions" and what not getting off the deck we cant hold up the whole plan to accommodate them, they will just have to roll late and cut corners or do what they can to catch up.

Muskie, great job, 127 Wing was with you on the first sortie as close as we could be till we discovered cons not only following us but they had the audacity to actually engage us, we then split up and tried to get them to follow us, we got low and split up and lost 3 or 4 to them killed just two, tried to reposition with yu but we were over 20 and heavily engaged. Your plan was good, but with all plans once the shooting starts they tend to get convoluted.
you did a great job, and we will follow you again any time

<S>

Swede- SL 416 RCAF 127 Wing

Salute!

TNX, Timos, like your view. Ditto Musky.

One thing I have noticed since first S3 back when Earth was still cooling and Beaver was just a pup..........

All folks need to know the approximate route for buffs and lites. It is not too hard to estimate posiitions if we have 4 or 5 minute posreps on country channel. The use of TS has compromised much of the old ways of using the buffer. And we still have folks show up at T - 2 and ask where's the action, what's the loadout, and so forth. I do not have a lotta patience with those folks, but if I just checked into a motel when on the road and need an update, then most folks would understand my confusion and such.

Timing for a mission is important, but 3 or 4 minutes early or late is not a good criteria. One way to have great timing is to use 5 minutes from frame start as T "0" for our "H hour". Pet peeve for years has been the mass gaggle takeoff and not a circle orbit to get all formed up and then head into battle at the plan time "T + 0", not the frame "T + 0". It ain't the MA, folks.

++++++

One thing about this series is we don't have big buffs. So it's hard for the interceptors to tell who is who until very close. Saw this last night and if I had some .50 cals I could have had a kill or two. The zekes trying to get a good shot stayed too long in our form, and our deer rifles didn't hack it. A Hellcat would have been deadly. So a few lites need to be deeply embedded in our form, and they they can always go down and strafe if we do not meet opposiiton.

The forward sweep really helps, but the lites have to first find the bad guys. Sounds like at least one grope did so and dragged off a slew of IJN. Attaboy!!!

We will do better last frame, as it takes a frame or so to get in synch, huh?

Gums sends....

~S~ MuskiZZ,

You did a great job sir. No complaints from our side. It was a fun and exciting frame for us.