Aces High Bulletin Board
Special Events Forums => Friday Squad Operations => Topic started by: Saxman on November 08, 2008, 08:55:50 AM
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Out of sheer morbid curiosity I decided I'd get an estimate of just how many D3As my ten F4Fs of VMF-251 tangled with over Midway. After noting down each pilot we shot down or were shot down by, I used my list to identify which squadrons were involved and to form an estimate from that. I kinda wish I hadn't because I'm going to need a new pair of shorts.
We were attacked by a strike force of seven different squadrons, combined for a total of 53 D3As.
:O
Ten F4Fs against over FIFTY bombers. That was nearly HALF the Axis' minimum requirement of D3As. We shot down 21, and my wingman and I accounted for 13 of them. I counted about 49 individual holes in my plane.
I've been outnumbered in FSO before, but good fricken' GOD!
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Out of sheer morbid curiosity I decided I'd get an estimate of just how many D3As my ten F4Fs of VMF-251 tangled with over Midway. After noting down each pilot we shot down or were shot down by, I used my list to identify which squadrons were involved and to form an estimate from that. I kinda wish I hadn't because I'm going to need a new pair of shorts.
We were attacked by a strike force of seven different squadrons, combined for a total of 53 D3As.
:O
Ten F4Fs against over FIFTY bombers. That was nearly HALF the Axis' minimum requirement of D3As. We shot down 21, and my wingman and I accounted for 13 of them. I counted about 49 individual holes in my plane.
I've been outnumbered in FSO before, but good fricken' GOD!
well good thing I can pee harder than they can shoot! sounds like you had an easy fun time---> wtg.
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Target
Rich
Environment
And your complaining? :lol
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Yeah, that's a fighter pilot's dream, right there.
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To be honest, I'd have preferred to face about 20 Zeros and 20 D3As. Our intent was to sit at high altitude making fast diving passes to blow through the escorts and pick away at the bombers. As it was we took down about a third of them and they STILL had enough firepower to level the field.
There were some magic bullets in those bb's, because I think everyone in my squadron except my wingman and I (and one who went down in a collision) took pilot wounds.
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WTG! Sounds awesome. Thats a carrier's worth of D3s ya killed :)
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Wow Sax. Sweet!
Target rich is right.
My squad a few years back engaged some Zekes, Val's and finally Kates one frame. An early war Pacific FSO much like this one. Like your squad we had a LOT of kills.
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I was one of the Vals that hit Midway Island. There was so many aircraft over Midway it looked like a swarm of bees.
I dropped two gun enplacements, and took some AAA and possibly some Wildcat fire which busted one of my fuel tanks. I turned for 17, but it was sunk halfway there. I then turned for 24 and by the time I landed I head 6 gallons of fuel.
:aok Fun times.
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To quote saxman himself why complain?
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I haven't got a count but I think there was quite a few more than 50 :)
I know I put about a zillion rounds into an F4F before he went boom. I was shooting at the cockpits of every F4F I could find and was encouraging others to do likewise. :lol
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Dantoo,
Based on the D3As we shot down and the ones that shot my guys down I came up with this count:
9 GIAP - 7
613th Pariah - 3
412th Braunco Mustangs - 7
Righteous Vengeance - 7
VF-6 - 8
The Damned - 4
347th - 17
Added together gives 53.
Now I'll admit this is ONLY counting squads I could confirm via kill/death recording in the logs. I didn't check for damage inflicted to Midway see if there was anyone else, but to be honest counting up to 53 was enough. :O
Personally, I'd have gladly traded ten or so kills to accomplishing our assignment. The strike package suffered heavy losses but Midway was still flattened and that's a failure in my book.
I'm glad those D3As only had BBs. I had at LEAST 40 holes in my plane (25 in the left wing, 4-5 in the canopy, maybe 10-15 in the right wing) and lost one of my guns, and my wingman had about 20-30 hits.
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Dantoo,
Based on the D3As we shot down and the ones that shot my guys down I came up with this count:
9 GIAP - 7
613th Pariah - 3
412th Braunco Mustangs - 7
Righteous Vengeance - 7
VF-6 - 8
The Damned - 4
347th - 17
Added together gives 53.
Now I'll admit this is ONLY counting squads I could confirm via kill/death recording in the logs. I didn't check for damage inflicted to Midway see if there was anyone else, but to be honest counting up to 53 was enough. :O
Personally, I'd have gladly traded ten or so kills to accomplishing our assignment. The strike package suffered heavy losses but Midway was still flattened and that's a failure in my book.
I'm glad those D3As only had BBs. I had at LEAST 40 holes in my plane (25 in the left wing, 4-5 in the canopy, maybe 10-15 in the right wing) and lost one of my guns, and my wingman had about 20-30 hits.
Yea we were a bit short....
347th FG (16-21)
357th Death Dragons (4-6)
412th Braunco Mustangs (4-6)
613th SOS Pariah (4-6)
9GIAP VVS RKKA (4-6)
Damned SE (4-6)
LCA (16-21)
Righteous Vengeance (4-6)
The Haze (7-10)
VF-6 FS (7-10)
VFA-169 Excaliburs (11-15)
81-113
:lol
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...
Are you telling me the Axis sent their ENTIRE mandatory complement of D3As after Midway? :confused:
At that point there it just stops being fun. I'm calling Shenanigans. :mad:
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uhoh... Saxman called shenanigans!
*gets broom*
:noid
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enjoy, they changed the rule in the allies favour. Now to sink a cv we need 27 D3A1's to hit right on target....not to mention the new 6x50cals, and the wind adjustment.
I don't mind that but a rule change after frame 1 ? After the Axis already lost their cvs ? :noid
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Nope you didn't get the entire complement of D3A1s. You should have had more hit you but it's always hard to get people to roll up and fly these rides. Thus it proved to be so once again.
There was a requirement to field 120 Vals; yes 120!! Now when you add to that the requirement to field 50 Kates you might pause and scratch your head a moment.
OK now let's make you the planner. You have a minimum requirement of fairly defenceless dive bombers to send out. They can't be used for anything else other than attacking. Kates make for lousy CV defence. Kates make for lousy Kate defence. Start to see where this going yet? If you don't, let me help, they are going to be sent out to attack a target.
Now your CIC only had 80 F4Fs and he had to defend 4 targets and attack 4 targets. That's an average of 10 fighters at each place he needed cover. He knew that he was going to get something above maybe 45 attackers at each target. That's the essential math.
Please direct your whine to your CIC for not being a miracle worker, after all I hear a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish can be spread across a multitude. Should be easy to cover everything with a few F4Fs. Even success would be problematical for him because if he was able to pull off a miracle like that there'd still be a mob trying to nail him up to a cross today.
rgds
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You're also forgetting that allotment of 100 Zeros, which YOUR CiC could have dispatched 12 to each strike package along with 12 over each of your four carriers so there was no NEED to Zerg Rush those fairly defenseless bombers. If a dozen Zeros can't defend 30-odd D3As from a handful of F4Fs--which have to rely of durability, firepower, and tactics in this setup--then who gets the blame now? "Start to see where this is going yet? If you don't let me help."
I FULLY expected to be outnumbered by about 3-4 to 1, but at least downing 21 D3As out of 30 gives the defenders the opportunity of keeping the objective at least SOMEWHAT intact and it would have been FUN to put my plan of attack to the test. It is NOT a good @$%&ing time to be stampeded to this ludicrous extreme and have no chance WHATSOEVER in an event that, while objective-based, is STILL supposed to be fun and enjoyable.
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always has to be something
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This is the last response I'll make.
If a dozen Zeros can't defend 30-odd D3As
Stop. Read the scenario again as a whole and try to work out what the writer of it intended.
Where do you propose that the remaining (minimum) 140 bombers should go? You complain that 50 odd is a problem for you now, making a dozen of them into fighters won't bring you more fun will it? Your squad didn't survive the unescorted Vals as it was.
Sending a dozen fighters and an additional 45-50 strikers on top, to each of the other targets instead, is a better idea just so you are less busy? Don't care much about the other guys? Why are you so special that you have to miss out?
Midway had 7 hangars and whole host of other targets spread over two Islands. Please calculate how many Val loads it takes to down just 7 hangars without all the other stuff? I'll help. It takes 5 per Hangar if they all hit precisely. The other objects take about 10 -15 more. There is bound to be some attrition and a few more than one or two will miss their targets. Say just for the math, that the defenders kill about 2 each, how many do you need to do the job?
The fact of the matter is a lot of guys had a great time. That's not always easy to do in early war Japanese carrier planes. We probably lost more to crashes while recovering to the carrier than at the targets. Some guys didn't accept the challenge of the long flight back to the recovery cv. Those that did enjoyed the spectacle at least provided by the landings.
Sorry you didn't have a good time despite your massive kill count. You should feel no worse than the Zeke squads that had to try to fend off the SBDs diving past them to the carriers. Weak guns, little ammo, and the toughness of the planes means they had way less chance than you to defend their base. At the end of it they had nowhere to rearm, just suck it up and fly all the way back to the reserve landing field. There are plenty squads out there that would have been happy to have F4Fs and a sky full of Vals. As there are so few fighter slots in this FSO, I'm sure you won't be faced with the same problem next week.
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(http://www.clipartof.com/images/emoticons/xsmall2/1974_eating_popcorn.gif)
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Its easy to justify breaking out a steamroller when you're one of the ones at the wheel. It looks a lot different when you're the pavement.
I'd like a CM opinion on this situation.
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sax be happy there were no escorts so i could have been worst
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Please direct your whine to your CIC for not being a miracle worker, after all I hear a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish can be spread across a multitude. Should be easy to cover everything with a few F4Fs. Even success would be problematical for him because if he was able to pull off a miracle like that there'd still be a mob trying to nail him up to a cross today.
rgds
LMAO :rofl
As the saying goes "You can please some of the prople some of the time, but you cant please all of the people all of the time"
I was 1 of those Val's, never thought I would have so much fun in a Val!
I would have gladly changed places with you though Sax.
You know as well as I that FSO is not totally real life, just meant to be an escape from real life. :salute
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Its easy to justify breaking out a steamroller when you're one of the ones at the wheel. It looks a lot different when you're the pavement.
I'd like a CM opinion on this situation.
You make me want to cry :cry Poor experten had to kill a lot of sitting ducks :cry
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We only had 8 F4F's to defend our CV with. I had 5 kills and 4 assists and was about to have a sixth kill before I was discoed. Ugh, all my good FSO nights seem to end in disco's. :(
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all my good FSO nights seem to end in disco's.
(http://www.musical-world.de/Theater/T-SNF/Saturday_Night_Fever_Tony_Pose.jpg)
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Didn't know you had it in ya, Shifty. :D
Have you been giving lessons to Stampf? He is getting pretty good at that disco thing. :noid
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The Order of Battle in the following is correct for Midway, except I reduced the number of PBYs and subbed F4Fs for the Brewster Buffalos.
(http://www.51hangar.net/MIDWAY/Midwayv3_files/image001.jpg)
http://www.51hangar.net/MIDWAY/Midwayv3.html
Stoney was very close in his fighter assignments. The US had 101 available, but some of those were Buffalo's on Midway. The Japanese had 105 including 12 on the Zuiho.
A very enjoyable FSO. :aok
Can anyone imagine a Marine pilot complaining that he was outnumbered by Vals? :rofl
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Didn't know you had it in ya, Shifty. :D
Have you been giving lessons to Stampf? He is getting pretty good at that disco thing. :noid
Yeah for better or for worse, I was 18 when disco fever hit. Somebody had to do it. :D
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February 2009?
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I had a great time and think that our result was historically accurate. From what I've read only two fighters survived the attack on midway just like us in FSO. Midway was almost destroyed. AAA claimed the most victories and the defenders were overwhelmed with vals.
I had a blast lighting up zippo vals who were unable to catch me or damage me. I remained high for the second wave of bombers and was engulfed by myself in the red sea.
Mad cool and salute to all you valiant val pilots tryin to shoot me with 7.7.
-HAMMERR
VMF-251
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February 2009?
Not as far as I know. It has been setting on the shelf and has been since the terrain difficulties postponed the 02/08 date ROC wanted to run it.
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Hell saxman I would switch places with you any day. :lol
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Saxman just craves an exact reinactment of midway :aok. He seems to be an expert on the subject.
Take the fso as it comes bros, and enjoy the experience.
We are all puzzle pieces of an up-to-date system. From F4's to Zeke's, tmb's to vals, you will all like your frame, or hate it. Enjoy the ride.................Tuk151 :salute
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Hey, Saxman,
Do you have film from the frame? I am trying to make a documentary, but I dont have film from Midway Island. Could you please put the film of your squad valiently defending Midway here please.
Thanks, :salute
Ponyace
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I'll check with my squadron.
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Hey, a few FSO event my squad, and the only squad, where assign CAP on V-Base. we had over 30 La and Yaks that jump us and not including 12 Il's too. and there was only 12 of us. consider your self lucky.
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Pony,
I have the film. Where do you want me to send it?
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Could you upload it here, or if you perfer, you can PM me the film.