This thread shouldn't exist, but since it does and I was there, allow me to add context.
Firstly Rangoon:
In some scenarios there is a requirement for active control of inflight formations. It's not a case of simply putting lines and times on a map a week before and saying "have at it". Rangoon and Der Grosse Schlag are examples of scenarios where one side's sole responsibility is manouvering large groups of fighters in defensive response to incoming raiders. Since you don't know the opponent's timings and routes you must exercise highly advanced command and control, in game. If you don't do this, then the players do not have a very good time and the designers dreams cannot ever come to fruition. This is the hardest of all scenario types to CIC for.
It reflects real life. Callsigns are issued for a number of reasons, some of them restricted. One of the most obvious is ease of control. It is much easier to say "Bear vector North maintain 210" than "9th Guards Aviation Regiment Military Air Forces Red Army vector North maintain 210". In real life callsigns may be changed frequently to obscure units and taskings. Since intercept of communications is not undertaken in AH it has no role here.
I recommended in the Rangoon scenario that for command and control purposes that the squads be issued with their their genuine historical radio callsigns where available. This was done. It achieved its purpose and added immersion. The extra step of having the squads rename themselves in text was to reinforce to them the role communications would play in game. It worked. It removed hardship, not caused it.
The other matter raised here is a classic case of mountains and molehills. The rules of Coral Sea required in one frame that a new land based squadron appear ashore at Port Moresby. The CIC allocated a group of people to make up this squad some weeks before the first frame. It is important to note that this squad didn't exist at all in the previous frame and it's members would be plucked from all over. For one reason or another, a squad which had flown in the first frame thought that it's role in the second frame would be to simply convert ashore in the second. They did this. At the start of the event there was confusion and two squads were ashore assuming the same name and role. It took time to sort this out. Both COs and the CIC were stressed by the mixup and a lot of briefing and re-briefing was required. The logs were started before the situation was resolved and there was a failure initially to "claim the name" by using the .sqdname command. For that terrible lapse the penalty was wholly and completely a naming error on the logs. Oh the humanity!
To disingenuously raise the issue here and make out that it was a flagrant violation of some high standard and an attempt to undermine the holiest of conventions is the most childish of behaviour. All it does is reignite tensions and piddle on the efforts of a CIC who struggled mightily against inexperience and an overflow of information. CIC's need support, not constant and continuing harassment. This is clearly an attempt at a cheap shot by the OP but one which causes greater collateral damage. "Funny, clever or what?" No it's not.
