The Outer Air Battle 1963

Last Sunday Me and Christian managed to play a game of Shipwreck. The scenario was a bit different this time. A Soviet air attack on a US carrier in 1963. I liked this game as I rarely able to use one of my big carriers. I ended up playing the Soviets, while Christian got the Americans. Here's a picture of Christians fleet as first deployed.

In the center is the Big E. Christian also had 2 CG, 2 DDG, and 2 DD. The aircraft at the front is an E-1 tracer, precursor to the E-2 Hawkeye.

 The first turn began with the arrival of my Target Acquisition Group. This consisted of 2 Tu-95 Bears, and two Tu-16 Badger D.

For some reason the Christian mistook the Badger's as EW birds, when they were in fact the recon version.

 At the same time I was lucky enough to get two Juliet SSG. Unfortunately the Juliets had to surface to fire there missiles.

A number of my recon birds were shot down. Then in turn 2 the US fleet turn to get better ADA shots at the oncoming Russian attacks.

Also during turn 2 part of the EW group arrive. The Tu-16 Badger E Chaff Bombers arrived and started to make their chaff corridors. One was shot down after barely starting, but the other made a fine wall of chaff.

Finally turn 3 and the bomber groups arrive. One from the North and one from the east. Here's the Northern group as it entered.

Each group represented 10 aircraft. The stands representing 3 Badger Gs each and a Badger J EW bird in the rear.

 Meanwhile the Eastern group entered with the advantage of having the chaff wall in between them and most of the ships and aircraft.

Unfortunately there were still several fighters about and they started to shot down my bombers.

The most effective weapon in these attacks were the F-8s 20mm cannons. 

 At the beginning of turn 4 my bombers were finally in range and every one fired. Starting with the Juliet subs and not a minute too soon as the USN helicopters were almost on top of them.

The Northern group fired just as a group of fighters were about to jump them. Most of the fighters turned to engage the missiles.

Meanwhile the Eastern group passed through the chaff wall just long enough to fire their missiles. This group had be heavily engaged with fighters and had lost several bombers. Thus they couldn't send out as many missiles as the Northern group.

In the end, as is my bad habit, I didn't get any pictures. Needless to say the game ended in a depressing defeat for the Soviets. Of the 29 missiles fired, only 3 reached their targets, all of which missed. Christian committed the plane and missile movement was too slow, and allowed too many shots. After looking into it, I found that he was right. The aircraft and missiles should have been going twice their movement, which would have given Christian less chances to hit.

Anyway now I think I'm going to concentrated on my Modern ground forces for FFT. I'm also going to start making more units for Megablitz.