We tried to do something unique last night for TOD mission #8, and the fog and friction of war were much in evidence. While the idea was cool, execution was fraught with difficulties (most notably, my own ineptitude at manipulating the arena settings). We tried it twice, and in the end I had to through out the results for this TOD mission. We will run it again Saturday (with all lessons learned incorporated). Special thanks to the following people: Frenchy (GCI officer, extraordinare), Camo (LW CO volunteer), Buhdman (over-all RAF raid commander), and the Lanc drivers (volunteer clay pigeons, though in this case the night protected them pretty well).
The planned mission was a Luftwaffe intercept of a RAF Bomber Command night-time raid by Lancasters. The RAF had radar castrated to show only sector-bars, while the Luftwaffe planes were allowed to turn on only friendly icons, and to keep the roster up on the clipboard so as not to have ANY radar OR map data (honor system). We then made it dark (had some problems here, but at last found a time setting that made the sky reasonably dark but still fly-able for non-instrument rated pilots).
How were the intrepid LW pilots to find their quarry? Frenchy volunteered to act as ground-controlled intercept (GCI) officer. The buffs traveled in groups of three, from three different bases, all headed to the same oil-refinery. The interceptors were split into groups of two or three, and stationed at different bases located around the target. The buffs would radio their position and heading to Frenchy (simulating radar tracking) every 5 minutes. Frenchy would then vector the interceptor groups, one for one, to intercept the buff groups by giving the fighters only bearing to target, range to target, and heading of target. He would try to get the fighters close enough to visually acquire the enemy. Since these fighter pilots could not even use the map, they had to ask GCI for directions even to find their way back to base. The hope was to recreate the colossal game of blind-man’s bluff that characterized the night-time air war over Europe. Only the players can tell me if we succeeded, and if they liked the challenge it presented.
What went wrong:
First, I was late getting into the arena (sorry guys, family stuff). Buhdman took on the task of organizing the buffs, while I attempted (with only partial success it turns out) to configure the arena properly. The need to split into small groups and scatter them to different fields turned out to be terribly hard to do on the fly. This caused almost a half-hour delay in mission start (thanks for everyone’s patience, btw). Camo volunteered to lead and organize the LW, which helped. Quite a few pilots were unfamiliar with the scenario rules, which meant we all spent a LOT of time repeating the rules. Again, thanks for everyone’s patience. After take-off, Suave gave me some tips that finally helped get the light levels right, but it was no doubt disconcerting to the pilots in the air to see the light levels jumping from nearly full day-light to pitch-black.
The final straw that broke the scenario-camel’s back was a residual arena setting I was unaware of. Someone had set up some crazy wind settings that alternately tore wings off or sent people to 60,000 feet (weird
)! For some strange reason, I couldn’t change the wind settings individually. The final solution was to reset to the arena defaults, but it was too late to save the situation .
Again, my thanks to all whom endured this one. My goal over this TOD has been to keep things new and interesting from mission to mission. We pushed the envelope on this one, no doubt about it. In the attempt, we also came closer to the real life facts of night combat…except for the Bermuda Triangle winds, of course.
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Sabre, a.k.a. Rojo
(S-2, The Buccaneers)
