Indian Ocean Brawl

[AndrewJ]

Hello,

I just finished playing Yokes' "Indian Ocean Brawl", and I enjoyed it very much, so I thought I'd write up a bit of an AAR on how it went.

Looking around at the start, my main bomber base (Backfires and Badgers and Bears, oh my!) is waaay up north in Baku, my secondary bomber and ASW base (Badgers and Mays) is way down south in Aden, and all my fighters and a few more ASW planes are on the island of Socotra in the mouth of the Gulf of Aden. I've got a tattletale following the Nimitz out in mid-ocean, and a Pearl-Harbor-esque Su-24 strike inbound on Diego Garcia. Half way between them, still a couple of days away, is my inbound convoy of merchants coming home to Aden, and my main surface group (Kiev and friends) is tucked into the Gulf of Aden to the west of Socotra.

What does command say? Kill the Nimitz! Save the convoy! Sink tankers in the Persian Gulf! Deal with Americans near Raysut.

So lets make some initial plans:
* The convoy will jog south to get a bit more clearance from the Nimitz, before continuing west towards safety.
* Kiev and Friends will cut south between Somalia and Socotra, and then head east to meet the convoy.
* My SSNs and SSGNs in mid ocean will start to converge to intercept the Nimitz.
* The Victor up north will turn and head west into the mouth of the Persian Gulf to intercept tankers.
* My Kilos and ASW planes will set up an ASW barrier running north from Socotra to the coast, hopefully preventing any threats from sneaking in that way.
* The Foxtrot will go hunting near Raysut.
* Bears and Elint planes will spread out to hunt, using radars sparingly, but mostly relying on Elint to localise threats.

Hostilities commence, and my tattletale vanishes in a flash of bombs from a passing Harrier. Not even time enough to launch a single SAM!

CAP spreads out from Socotra. I keep it quite close at first, for fear of prowling F-14s, but make sure to send some along direct courses to the Nimitz and Raysut, to guard against possible cruise missile attacks from those directions. It's not long before they spot a pack of missiles coming down from Raysut - someone up there doesn't like us! Fortunately our noble Su-27 pilots swoop in to destroy them, and and manage to get them all. They're coming in in small groups, rather than one concentrated salvo, which really helps. Vigilance is maintained in the direction of the Nimitz group, but nothing ever shows up from that direction. Strange... I expected a salvo or two from them.

Meanwhile, our Su-24 raid is bearing down on Diego Garcia when the elint sensors on board pick up airborne surface search radars nearby. A flock of P-3s! And they're heading for our convoy... Not even a disciplined Soviet attack pilot can resist a target like this, and the Su-24s abandon their attack mission to gun down the helpless targets, before returning to their original course. As we close in on Diego the Americans prove they have a sting too, when their Hawk missiles chop down some of my leading aircraft. Fortunately, the ones with anti-runway bombs are sheltering safely at the rear of the pack, and the Americans are out of missiles as the Fencers come roaring in over their empty launchers. Bomblets sprinkle over the parked B-52s, and four burst into flame, but the majority survive and my anti-runway bombs are only doing minor damage. My last pilot botches his attack completely, and has to make a second go-around while the SAM crews race to reload. This time he comes right down the center of the runway in a perfect attack, and the runway is completely destroyed by a lucky hit! Diego is down, and the celebrating pilots form up to fly home at a nice fuel efficient high altitude cruise.

As things progress my Bears start finding ships - lots of ships - and now I have to figure out which ones are neutrals or targets. Bombers overflying tankers in the Gulf have a number of hair-raising scrapes as the patrolling Perry's take long-range potshots when they get too close. And then there's that convoy passing the Straits of Hormuz - with a Harrier Carrier on the back end! The Bears retreat for fear of Harriers, while the Badgers from Baku form up to engage. Missiles come thundering in and the min-carrier goes down, along with the escort on the front of the convoy. Fortunately I never did spot a Harrier because they certainly could have made a mess of things if they had caught me. Meanwhile, with the escorts down the tanker convoy takes hit after hit from the powerful Soviet missiles - and resolutely refuses to sink. Those massive tankers are tough! Burning and flooding, most of them continue to sail along.

Over in the north-east a pair of cautious Backfires (which have been playing run-away with some F-14s that seem to be operating up into Pakistan) find a cluster of two tankers with a single escort near the Victor. Sneaking back they sink the escort, and the Victor turns around to deal with the tankers, using up most of his torps in the process. Did I mention those tankers are tough? Job done, he resumes course back into the Gulf to try and help there.

Down by Raysut I've managed to get a good fix on the American group there, and it comes complete with a good Tico and a Leahy with very long range missiles. Tackling that with air-power will be very tough, but my Foxtrot is in good position to intercept, and it starts moving in at 10 kts - any slower and it can't catch them. But then elint starts picking up a lot of ASW helicopter radar in the area, and things don't look good for the sub. Su-27s from Socotra come in under the Leahy's long range SAMs in a nail-biting attempt to kill off the helicopters. Missiles smash into the water around them like hail, but they manage to take down most of the helicopters. Unfortunately, for every one they kill another one launches, and the Flankers can't get them all. Our Foxtrot succumbs to a torpedo shortly thereafter.

That means it's going to be airpower only, so the Badgers from Aden and the majority of the in-flight Backfires from Baku start forming up in the Omani hinterland, hiding in the radar shadow of the massive coastal escarpment, while Su-24s from Socotra come north at wavetop level, hoping to take the ships in a close-range pincer attack. The admiral even contemplates bringing the Kiev and friends in to help, but they're too far away to get there in time, and after some indecisive maneuvers the Kiev resumes its course to meet the convoy. Prowling F-14s from the distant Nimitz are closing in, and the Su-27s go out to fend them off, buying time for the bombers to attack.

Missiles fly, and missiles die. And die. And die. All the Fencers' missiles are shot down, and only a handful of the dozens of AS-4s and AS-6s that were launched make it through, but each one is very very big. The Tico takes two hits and vanishes, followed by the destroyers, and it is literally the very last missile that finally claims the Leahy. The bombers fly home to celebrate, but things are a little grimmer for the fighters, who have been jousting with the F-14s and F-18s with only limited success. The exchange rate has been roughly even so far, but so far we've just been grazing the edge of the American's CAP. If they come in strength things will go poorly. (And damn those distant jammers! It's like staring into the sun to try and see the incoming planes. I start diverting to the N and S of my intended targets to try and take them without having the jammer in the background.)

With the American surface group down I start expanding my Su-27 patrols further north from Socotra, when elint starts picking up groups of American fighter radars heading into the region. Coming north to meet them it turns out to be several groups of F-18s, apparently on a course for the SAM emplacements on the Yemeni coast. Are they setting up to take out radars in preparation for other operations in the area? Or are they actually looking for the Kiev and friends, which are now south of Socotra? It's puzzling, and even more puzzling is the lack of escorting F-14s. But my fighters aren't picky, and they take advantage of the situation to overwhelm the F-18s. Elint also gets hints of A-6s operating in the area, but those elude me for the moment.

Out in the ocean my SSNs are starting to close in on the position of the Nimitz group. The Charlie rises up quietly to have a listen at shallower depths, and is destroyed within minutes. The Alfa and the Sierra stay in the depths and continue to close. An hour or two later the Sierra picks up an SSN! Engage? Don't engage? It's far away, so I'd need to use my missiles, and since I'm well within the carrier group's radar cover that would be sending up a big "here I am" sign. The Sierra decides to stay deep and keeps quietly stalking its main target.

Back in Socotra the Su-24s are readying again. Their plan is to head north at high altitude, hugging the Saudi border and stretching their fuel as long as possible in order to engage the tankers in the Persian Gulf. Some will carry ARMs to try and shut down the radar coverage from the Perrys, and the majority will carry iron bombs to tackle the super-tankers directly. My airborne tankers have recycled and will be loitering down at the south end of Saudi airspace to support the returning aircraft. The strike launches, and all goes well initially, but as we near the Gulf the American CAP notices, and it becomes obvious I don't have as many escorts as I should. Fortunately only a few Americans are in position to intercept the attack stream, but they take down a few fighters and attackers before I fend them off. One bold F-18 makes a head-on pass through a pack of 6 Su-24s, killing one with a Sidewinder before dying in a storm of gunfire. The ARM carriers then drop to sea-skimming height and press in to tackle the Perry's, but the result is poor. I manage to nick a couple, but none of them lose their main radars like I had hoped. The bombing goes better. Those super-tankers are such big targets that my pilots hit regularly, and the ships (some still burning from the missile attacks) gradually succumb to the battering.

As the strike heads home they listen to the excited radio calls of my Su-27 pilots picking off some groups of A-6s that were heading down into the Gulf of Aden. Nobody's certain what they were trying to do. They didn't seem to be on a course for Socotra, or any other high value land target, and if they were looking for our surface ships, well, they're in the wrong place. Still, their lack of escorts costs them dearly, and some of our pilots will soon be aces at this rate.

Out in the ocean the Sierra is starting to get hints of the main body of the Nimitz group. As it closes in on the formation, fortunately eluding the ASW aircraft, it detects a nearby destroyer out front - a Spruance, dammit - and decides to divert around to the south. Coming in from the side the Sierra has managed to ID the Nimitz and its Tico escort, but now I'm out of position. They're travelling at 15 kts, and if I want to get any closer I'll have to speed up a lot, which will probably mean detection and death. So the captain launches three massive wake-homers in a bearing only launch at the Nimitz, as well as a few smaller torps up towards the 'phibs just to keep them on their toes, and then turns and heads away hoping to evade the cloud of ASW aircraft that are sure to come calling. It doesn't work. Soon the Sierra is running for its life. Three massive explosions are heard in the direction of the Nimitz, but the Sierra is going too fast to tell what was hit - maybe the Nimitz, maybe the Tico, or maybe another escort? It's little comfort to the crew when the American torpedo hits, and the Sierra joins the Charlie on the ocean floor.

Now it's the Alfa's turn, but Alfas are noisy, and it gets detected before it can reach the core of the enemy formation. But Alfas are also fast, and it manages to outrun the first few torpedos, and even gets a snapshot off at the Spruance - which hits! But that doesn't stop the rain of torpedos from the sky, and the Alfa dies like its comrade the Sierra.

With no subs left in the area there's nothing to do but wait for all my bombers to ready for their second strike. While I'm waiting the elint sensor operators on the orbiting Bears and Fencers start reporting that the Nimitz formation seems to be slowing down, and that there is a marked reduction in airborne radar activity. Soon there are no airborne radars at all. Nervously, the Bears start moving in, until one brave fellow turns on his radar. The Spruance is gone, but the Nimitz is still there, along with all the other ships, and the formation is down to 1 knot. The Sierra's torpedos must have found their mark and done enough damage to prevent aircraft operations.

Now all the Baku Backfires, and the Aden Badgers launch for a combined attack on the carrier group, while the Baku Badgers head for the last of the enemy shipping in the Gulf. The Perrys in the Gulf try and defend themselves, but they are badly overmatched, and the Gulf is swept clean of the last of the NATO forces. Out in the ocean the carrier group is a much tougher target - even the older Ticos are powerful defensive units - but there are still ASMs left by the time the SAM magazines are empty. The listing Nimitz is one of the first to go, and when the last of the straggling bombers arrive the last of the brave American ships sinks beneath the waves.


Looking at things afterwards it turns out that there were three more NATO subs than I had spotted, and two of them slipped easily through my Socotra ASW barrier patrols. Things might have gone ill for my returning convoy if the scenario had gone longer.

Thanks for writing this Yokes!

[Coiler12]

Wow. A furious, hard-fought battle, indeed. Thanks for posting this!

[mikmykWS]

Great AAR!

Mike

[Maromak]

Great write up, thanks! I am still playing the US side. Loosing DG makes life very difficult!

[GBOATZ]

Neat! Your AAR reads like a Tom Clancy or Dale Brown thriller! I found myself riveted and rooting for your successful strategy! I found myself smiling at the end.[:)]

I immediately loaded the scenario and I am now playing it myself (like Maromak I too am playing as Nato) and will try and emulate your style of prose at my conclusion. It may take a while as I have a lot of irons in the fire right now, but I was inspired. Compelling and interpretive writing!

[AndrewJ]

Thanks for the kind words guys, and thanks again to Yokes for making such an entertaining scenario for us.