Big Fight Around Rabaul
I was more than a little troubled when I learned that my adversary on the ALLIED side was Dantoo. Usually I’m fighting on the ALLIED side and I know Dantoo to be a highly successful CiC. For Rabaul, 1943 my squad was put over on the AXIS side and I was the AXIS CiC for last night’s Frame 2. I, therefore knew he would be a tough opponent.
We planned for a complex ALLIED attack which would put the Main Effort on airfield A69 and the Secondary Effort on the Task Forces to the North. We divided the AXIS forces to apply maximum combat power to the airfield defense and structured the TF defense to take advantage of mutual supporting AAA fires.
We also figured that every trick in the book would be used against us; deception radar flashing, aggressive scouting, fighter sweeps, fast and accurate bomb runs. The fighter sweep with ALLIED F4U’s at A71 turned out to be a major engagement. We were generally successful against the A71 hoard, but the ALLIES broke our recon lines, allowing their bomber stream to get into A69, the main target. The fight at A69 was epic and all reports that I received confirmed that the AXIS guys were having lots of fun.
The “ace-up-our-sleeve” was our hand-picked Ace Pilot, 2cmex. He and his squad were place in the thick of the fighting and given our best aircraft, the N1K2-J. He wracked-up 5 kills for a contribution of 120 AXIS points.
Big <S> to the defense leaders; Waystin2 at A69 and the whole central corridor, tunes and Viper61 in the northern bay.
Also big <S> to Dantoo and the whole of the ALLIED pilots. This frame was a hoot to plan and great fun to fight.
