Poll: What was your opinion of the "Flexible Front" concept in Norway?

[Ripsnort]

???

[Wotan]

What were the rules for advancing the front?

[Ripsnort]

They were determined by the CM.  First frame, the fields had to be destroyed except for the fuel and ammo (this was to similate a successful beach head with plenty of supplies for advancing troops)

The 2nd and 3rd I believe were just to have the field completely destroyed.

Its (the concept) still in its infancy so I'm sure Skernsk is open to suggestions.

The idea was to not have to repeat the same old missions for 3 frames, over the same territory..thus actually seeing "Advancement" or "Retreat", thus forcing the frame CO's more challenge. In other words, the fog of war is suppose to be induced even more when your front flexes (as in real war)

[skernsk]

What I attempted to do was create a moving front to some degree.  I did not want the Allies to have to stage from the UK every frame because I thought that would make for a boring TOD with only a few targets (far away) for the Axis to attack.

FRAME 1

Allies needed to capture fields.  I made up a "story" that is 100% fictional in based on some info I found on a plan to invade Norway.  I used this as a backup pland to the Allies not achieving their objectives in Frame 1.  What I was going to do was give the Allies a couple of fields in Southern Norway due to my "simulated" landing.

PART OF FRAME 1 ORDERS

The following are your orders for the liberation of Norway.  You will be in command of both the RAF and the USAAF for the initial phase of the operation.

The landings of Operation Overlord have been successfully carried out, and we have a firm foothold on French soil.  Men and equipment is pouring into France at a staggering rate and we feel the war will be over by Christmas.

Soon we will be advancing out of the Falaise area and begin the march to Berlin.  The British and Canadian soldiers will liberate Belgium and Holland, and if we can attain some sort of foothold in Norway we can cut off the German’s in Scandinavia shortening the war.

In 1942, a plan for the occupation of Norway, code named Operation Jupiter was drawn up.  It was thought that we could capture some vital airfields and quickly liberate the country.  The plan never got past the drawing board and since then has been purposely leaked to the enemy so that Vermacht and Luftwaffe personnel had to remain on alert in Norway.


I pretty much included some info on where the ground war (that was totally fictitious) was taking place.  I was going to constantly advance the Front North regardless of the way the frame went.  The reason was I wanted that fleet (parked in port 29) to be an objective at the end of the TOD.

I made a few mistakes in that I overestimated flight times.  And I think I might have placed the Allied fleet too far out in Frame 3, that fleet may have just steamed itself out of range also:confused:

The objectives had to be bland and boring.  I had to have each side attack the same objectives.  The reason is SCORE.

And as Rip said I'm open to suggestions.

[Ripsnort]

Skernks, MAG-33 adjusted their manifold pressure to make up the distance vs. fuel shortage.  We did have to disengage in one particular moment due to fuel shortages and one guy ended up being short of the runway...luckily we were able to adjust our fuel comsumption.

[Sikboy]

Yeah, Shills did the same, we were down to 35 lbs for a while there. But we also avoided any pre-target furballs. It "looked" like we might not have fuel to RTB, but we'll never know. All the Shills that droped on target were either picked off by groundfire, or smoked by the LW as we ran home on the deck. The One shill who had to dump his ord about 10 minutes before the drop, however, managed to RTP without incident.

-Sikboy

[K West]

I never had a chance to make one of the frames   With the good weather RL projects are playing catch up with my spare time. I would have liked to have seen this concept in action though!   Email on the way later Ripsnort.  I may be out of the loop for a while and unable to make future TOD frames for quite some time..

 Westy

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by K West
I never had a chance to make one of the frames   With the good weather RL projects are playing catch up with my spare time. I would have liked to have seen this concept in action though!   Email on the way later Ripsnort.  I may be out of the loop for a while and unable to make future TOD frames for quite some time..

 Westy

Rgr Westy, I'll keep you on the distribution list in case you want to join up future ones.

[Bannock]

Originally posted by Ripsnort
???

I actually enjoyed it... Kept the battles fresh and invigorating imho.

[Sandman]

I dunno... if the "flexible front" is the reason the SBM did a flying tour of Norway on frame 3, I didn't like it.

[skernsk]

What happend Sandman?  

Were you tasked to it an objective or were you CAP for one of your own fields?

Did you not like all frames or just frame 3?

[Bannock]

Only things I did not like about the tours last two frames, were the overwhelming number of allies vs axis, and those lazy spotters of incoming enemy ac.

Would have been nice to hear; "Large flight of unknowns near such-n-such sector" to at least be able to vector to the enemy in time to thin the numbers.  Only real problem I had was the enemy was already AT the target by the time we found them.  The rest was just a clean up operation for the allies.

But that is only IMHO.  

[Sandman]

Orders were to roll from A1 in Fw-190A8 and head for A5 as a fighter sweep ahead of the JABO groupe. We were organized as two divisions, Echo and Fox.

Got to A5 and met no resistance.

Reports of enemy activity around A4 and A3 so we were directed to continue our sweep in that direction. Met no resistance.

Reports of on enemy activity at P17 so we continued back to the east. Found 2 F6F heading south (approximately 45 minutes into frame).

Somehow we got separated from Fox division. They were north of us so Echo headed north to regroup.

Fox landed at A1. Activity reported at A3 so Fox rolled and we decided that Echo would catch up.

Echo landed at A1, refueled and headed for A3.

No enemies at A3.

Headed south back towards A5.

Reports of enemy activity at P17 so we headed east to cut off their escape to A21.

Further reports of enemies heading for A5 so we went back to the west.

Found 2 F6F on egress, approximately 1.5 hours into the frame.

----
So... we met no resistance nor did we stop any aircraft during ingress to Axis targets. It was like flying around for 90 minutes looking for something, anything, to kill. We had eight aircraft in the squad. Think we got a total of five kills. Only deaths were due to disco and there was never any concentration of enemies to engage. All of Echo engagements were against fleeing aircraft.

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by Sandman_SBM
Orders were to roll from A1 in Fw-190A8 and head for A5 as a fighter sweep ahead of the JABO groupe. We were organized as two divisions, Echo and Fox.

Got to A5 and met no resistance.

Reports of enemy activity around A4 and A3 so we were directed to continue our sweep in that direction. Met no resistance.

Reports of on enemy activity at P17 so we continued back to the east. Found 2 F6F heading south (approximately 45 minutes into frame).

Somehow we got separated from Fox division. They were north of us so Echo headed north to regroup.

Fox landed at A1. Activity reported at A3 so Fox rolled and we decided that Echo would catch up.

Echo landed at A1, refueled and headed for A3.

No enemies at A3.

Headed south back towards A5.

Reports of enemy activity at P17 so we headed east to cut off their escape to A21.

Further reports of enemies heading for A5 so we went back to the west.

Found 2 F6F on egress, approximately 1.5 hours into the frame.

----
So... we met no resistance nor did we stop any aircraft during ingress to Axis targets. It was like flying around for 90 minutes looking for something, anything, to kill. We had eight aircraft in the squad. Think we got a total of five kills. Only deaths were due to disco and there was never any concentration of enemies to engage. All of Echo engagements were against fleeing aircraft.

Sounds like we did a damn good job avoiding confrontation, loaded for bear, little fuel, we tried to avoid enemy contact as much as possible (our particular orders anyway)  You're gonna have to learn to hunt alittle better.  "Be the enemy"

[sling322]

Originally posted by Bannock
overwhelming number of allies vs axis,  

Sorry Odee....gotta call BS on that one.  The attendance for all three frames of this one were really really close.  In fact, Skernsk remarked to me that at roll time for frame 3 the sides were dead even at 77 to 77.

We have looked over several ways to try to ensure that small squads dont get overrun by extremely large numbers, but its really hard to do without telling the COs how to do their jobs.  We will be experimenting in this next TOD with a way to try to keep the small squads from running into overwhelming numbers.  I am not too sure exactly what Skernsk and Nifty have planned, but maybe they will chime in here and shed some light on what they will be trying to do.