Cold War, Reggae Style

Tags

CMANO, Cold War, Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Tropico 3, Trujillo

I continue to toy with the Tropico 3 scenarios, and I’ve yet to crack open Tropico 4.

The latest scenario is based, very loosely, on Jamaica and its independence moves in the late 1950s and final decolonization in 1962. The key, says the scenario description, is to move away from the agricultural and raw materials markets that were controlled by Great Britain and develop a self-sufficient industrial economy. All the while, as is the key to the game, I try to stay in the right place in the middle of the Cold War politics going on around me.

Of course, as the victory conditions point out, my real goal is to stay in office through the duration of the game until 1980.

Trade has picked up and I have plenty of money. Now, if I can just get those construction workers to actually build something.

As the years advance into the 1960s, more of the game’s “color” becomes evident. Through radio broadcasts, I witness the Cuban missile crisis taking place nearby, as well as the crisis in the Dominican Republic. Perhaps because I’m getting a little better with the game, the Superpower interplay was also more evident this time around. Having secured an independence of sorts from the United Kingdom, I began courting the Soviets through my local Communist party. Although at one point I became a little too closely aligned with the Russians, I managed to shift the balance by allowing development by some U.S. -connected corporations.

I didn’t manage to anger either superpower sufficiently that they sent warships to my seas, nor did I need to align with either one for protection. I triggered (for the first time) a military conflict with a neighbor, but quickly dispatched them with some U.S. military support.

One might speculate about how many smaller countries have attempted to play such a political game, feigning alignment with communism or capitalism with absolutely know fundamental belief in the system, other than the aid and support that it will bring. Is it a reflection of the real world, or just a clever gameplay element.

Moving on to that Dominican Republic crisis, and a scenario that imagines the assassination of Trujillo took place some years earlier, triggering the installation of a communist-aligned government. As Soviet military aid begins building up on the island, the U.S. government decides it must rely on military force. The result far more detail of what it might look like when that U.S. fleet shows up in the harbor.

Time to send that Soviet equipment to the bottom of the Caribbean, where it belongs. Orange is Dominican ships and air, with the orange square in the lower left being the target of my operation.

This scenario has the player in the drivers seat. We are working with a carrier (plus escorts), a destroyer and a sub. Our task is to use a carrier strike to eliminate the Soviet equipment from our backyard. The primary goal is the airfield where Russian Migs and bombers are stationed. In addition to whatever advantages we have in force, we also have the element of surprise. We can initiate our attack at our leisure with little-to-no expectation that our presence will provoke a first response from the enemy. In the screen shot above, I’ve located what appears to be all of the enemy forces and am positioning my initial strike. I’ve also noticed that the Dominicans are out buzzing my ships and aircraft in waves, so I’d like to hit them when they’re at the end of their fuel.

This scenario has a lot going for it, and satisfies many of my earlier complaints. First of all, the what to do is pretty obvious. No need to spend days hunting for enemies that may or may not be there. Second is the operation from the position of strength. I have the numbers and decent assets, so I don’t feel that I need to solve a complex puzzle to avoid slaughter. Of course, even with all my advantages, I got creamed in the first play-through.

The scenario, at this point, also solved another complaint I’d had about CMANO scenarios. When I lost and lost big, it was glaringly obvious what I’d done wrong. And at the risk of ruining the scenario for my readers, I’ll tell you what I did. I ignored the third dimension, altitude. I left the altitude settings for all my aircraft at the default assuming, I guess, that the game could deal with it. Thus, all my bombing attacks were from high-altitude while the enemy delivered their bombs rocketing in a sea level, both evading radar and being impossible to intercept by that 36,000 ft patrol. Being so obvious what I did wrong, it became pretty easy to tweak my gameplay and vastly improve my performance in a restart.

That’s the way I like it. Uh huh.

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Command Failures

Tags

CMANO, Cold War, Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations, global thermonuclear war, Suez Crisis, World War III

This wraps up a series of posts on the Suez Crisis. See here for the first regular post in the series, here for the previous post, and here to go back to the master index.

My final exercise in the exploration of the Suez Crisis was to be a scenario in CMANO imagining an escalation of the Egypt situation into a global conflict between the superpowers, not an entirely implausible scenario given the events.

The actual scenario, titled Caribbean Clinch, is a user-made scenario that is one of the archetypes of CMANO situations. The player is given a mixed bag of assets with which he is expected to locate and dispatch a mix of enemy surface and subsurface vessels. I’m pretty sure I’ve played a similar setup before. Moving the same basic scenario to different frames allows exploration of the technology available at that time.

No wheat evident amongst the chaff.

My complaint here is a variation of one I’ve made before. I lost the scenario, having failed to find any of the enemy units. The situation is that the Carribean Basin has a number of commercial vessels which I ended up chasing (often having to re-identify the same ones), and I never located any hostile vessels. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps I was supposed to use more active radar searches than I did? Perhaps my search patterns were poorly conceived?

The point is – I don’t know. For the advanced CMANO gamer, the answer is probably obvious.

In working on my previous article, I was reading about why the disparity between the historical results and the playing experience in the Steel Panthers scenario. Someone suggested that the last thing a scenario builder wants to hear, having put a lot of time into creating a masterpiece of a scenario, is that it is too easy and not worth playing.

By contrast, I play for insight into the historical conditions of the situation represented. If, historically, my side had an overwhelming win, I want to see that happen (or at least have that potential, assuming I do the historically right thing). It is frustrating for me, a casual gamer, to completely fail in the mission and, in doing so, also completely fail to have learned anything about the situation, equipment, or tactics.

Fail_Safe

Having not found satisfaction with my Suez Canal -related scenario, I return to the unfinished business of my Strategic Air Command scenarios of the same timeframe.

To compare and contrast; this scenario also, for me at least, is fiendishly difficult. In that earlier article, I discussed the problems of trying to operate B-47s against the evolved Soviet threat, and those problems are evident here as well. It was a failure of doctrine to keep pace with technology. Unlike that other scenario, at the scale here I don’t think it is appropriate to “pilot” planes using the CMANO interface, so I have to assume there is another, more operational, solution.

But by contrast, the situation portrayed in the user-made scenario Peeling the Onion is both fascinating and unique. So much that even a complete failure is a learning experience. As the player, you are the commander of the “Reflex” operations in Morocco, as well as the supporting air wings in the States. With mid-air refueling, the bases in Morocco allow the bombing of Soviet targets with the B-47s. Furthermore, these jet bombers were expected to fly higher and faster than the Soviet defenses were capable of achieving, and thus can strike their targets without the necessity of escort fighters or other support. Thus, the game even in complete loss is instructional allowing the player to imagine how a commander at that time might have been taken completely by surprise by the latest in Russian technology.

In this scenario, you are commanding American nuclear bomber bases in Morocco, for striking the Soviet Union from the South. The red area is someone else’s business. For now, there is still peace, but I send a few planes on forward alert just to be cautious.

What makes the difference is that the impossible situation here is one, potentially, faced by a commander in this place and time. The doctrine and forces assumed that the U.S. nuclear strike was invulnerable to defense. By the late 50s, this was no longer the case. So if the commander got the go to launch, what was he to do? He had no counter to the Soviet air defenses, which (perhaps unbeknownst to him) had become effective.

War! With the outbreak of hostilities, I launch my first strike with everything I’ve got. It will prove to be insufficient.

As with the previous scenarios in the era, I have to wonder if the capabilities of the Soviet forces aren’t a bit on the optimistic side. <Spoiler Alert – from here I talk scenario details> In my initial strike, using all the bombers that I had stationed in Morocco, the Russians had no problem shooting down every one of my bombers. The Yak 25 fighter moves faster and flies higher than my B-47s, so all I can hope for is a lucky tail gunner shot. Since I’m also outnumbered, I probably need half-a-dozen lucky tail gunner shots in a row to get the bomb through.

I also ran into some frustrating interface issues. At the point I realized none of my guys were getting out alive, it seemed pointless to worry about refueling issues. Yes I had insufficient refueling planes in the theater but, after all my bombers were shot down, I had unused refueling planes. Point being, once a bombing run began, I wanted it completed, whether or not the pilots thinks he could get his plane home again. At one point, I even had a bomber get pretty close to the target, at which point he turned around and began heading for a refueling station. Try as I might, I couldn’t seem to override that behavior (although I know I’ve crashed planes in previous scenarios by accidentally running them out of fuel). It was really upsetting to, several times, finally get the bomber headed in the right direction to then, once again, have it turn around and head for a tanker rendezvous. Finally, I had to give up at let him egress, at which point he was promptly shot down by the planes he had just avoided on the inbound leg. My sole consolation was that I didn’t really believe he was going to make to the target anyway.

One more learning experience. The frustration of being unable to get through the Soviet defenses does provoke emotional reactions. Eventually, I did manage to light off 10 megatons near a Ukrainian city, and boy did that feel good. All of this without context; the scenario deliberately gives no background for the war or the green light to bomb. The Russians goal is only to prevent me from wiping out all their cities, whereas mine is to maximize innocent body count – and yet I feel personally offended when they prevent me from doing so. It makes you think about what happens, psychologically, in a real war.

Fail-Safe

Tags

CMANO, Cold War, Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations, global thermonuclear war, Russian, wargames, World War III

Throughout the 50s and early 60s, World War III meant unleashing the strategic bombers. The nuclear strike would be delivered by dedicated bomber crews, waiting at the ready for exactly this mission. If the enemy were to launch their bombers, we might know of their coming hours in advance and may even have a chance with our defensive fighters to stop, or at least mitigate, the attack. Our imagination was driven, both in the public at large and in the strategic planning, by the massive bombing raids at the end of the second world war. Just bigger bombs.

Until the development of the hydrogen bomb, the combination of yield and accuracy for a rocket-launched atomic bomb far under-performed the delivery of atomic weapons via bomber. For this reason, as well as the political machinations within the armed forces, the post-war focus was on perfection of the strategic bomber capability. Strategic Air Command was founded in 1947 and, in late 1948, was given the mission of delivering a massive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. For the next decade, the service acquired more and better strike planes plus a refueling fleet, leading to an ability by 1957 to have a 24 hour bomber/tanker alert force.

Leading up to that point, the US had developed a decisive technological edge. US bombers, using refueling, could travel across the globe to their targets. The speed and altitude capabilities of the B-47 and B-52 were such that they were largely unreachable by the MiG-15 interceptors used by the Soviets.

As the 50s drew to a close this began to change. Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union were developing hydrogen bombs and the Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles to carry them, providing an alternative nuclear strike capability to the massed bombers. The Soviet Union, with its MiG-17 and more capable air-to-air missiles, became capable of countering the unescorted bomber attack. While this was hardly the end of American’s Strategic Bomber forces, the mid-50s represented a high-tide of sorts for Strategic Air Command.

Flying High Again

CMANO has two community-made scenarios looking at this particular period. The first explores the missions of aerial reconnaissance variants of the B-47, which were the closest this aircraft ever came to actual combat. On October 15th, 1952 a B-47B flew out of Alaska. Using special photographic and radar equipment, they captured intelligence on Soviet airfields in Siberia. The missions carried no offensive weapons, although they were armed with tail guns. Interceptions by the Soviets were generally evaded through superior speed and altitude. According to Wikipedia, at least five B-47s were fired upon and at least three aircraft were lost while overflying Soviet airspace.

The CMANO mission appears to be based on a May 8th, 1954 top-secret reconnaissance mission, detailed here (it is story #2 from this website). It describes an unexpected encounter with the new Russian MiG-17s. The pilots expected that they were flying outside of the reach of the Russian defenses, and instead found themselves being fired upon by the new Soviet fighters.

The scenario itself is another boundary-pushing use of the CMANO engine. As the player, we have only six aircraft under our command and four of those are the refueling aircraft. That means we are actually commanding two aircraft in the assigned mission. This is pushing us out of the operational space and almost into the flight simulator territory.

In several attempts at the scenario, I’ve lost the first of my planes almost immediately several seconds after the appearance of a threat. Practically speaking, it means I’m left flying a single plane using the “manual” controls of the game engine.

Oh no. Here we go now. I’ve detected a SAM launch, which I manage to avoid. Not so easy is when those MiGs suddenly appear on my tail.

As I’ve written before, I’m not a fan of the puzzle-style scenario in strategy games. It’s one thing to make a scenario winnable only through planning, preparation, and judicious use of the available factors. It’s another to require that you get everything just right, or lose.

In this case, reading the story of the similar mission, we can see that the reality was considerably less deadly than the game version for a number of reasons. I wrote about this in the Korean War, how the computer pilots are much more aggressive than their communist counterparts. In this case, part of his success he credits to the fact the MiG-17 pilots didn’t push their advantage.

At the debriefing in Omaha, General LeMay asked, “Why were you not shot down?” My answer was that there was no doubt in my mind the Mig-17 pilots could have shot us down, if they had been willing to come right up our tailpipes! He made the statement that he was “. . . convinced that most fighter pilots are basically cowards anyway.”

Another problem with the scenario was found by a player and posted online. As distributed, the MiG-17s are armed with Kaliningrad K-5 (NATO designation AA-1 Alkali) air-to-air missiles. The scenario hints that one way around the Russian air defenses is to fly a night mission, but these missiles are in the CMANO database as day/night capable, as they use the aircraft radar for guidance. The missiles weren’t actually deployed on any MiGs until 1957. The scenario designer said he added them in after the original scenario development when play-testers complained that the scenario was too “easy.”

Makes me feel even more incompetent than I already did.

With the missiles in the scenario, I would tend to notice them headed for me seconds before my planes were destroyed. So I edited them out of the scenario.

Even without the missiles, and even at night, I’m continuously taken by surprise when one of the MiGs is suddenly upon me. While this part does seem to match the narrative, most interceptions become a fight to the death. As the saying goes, I have to get it right every time and the Russians only have to get it right once. So far, I’ve not been able to get it right every time.

I don’t know what the “secret” to this mission is. Taking hints from Colonel Austin’s story, it may be necessary to manage energy defensively. He was able, in some cases, to outrun his attackers by diving. It may be that the mission requires multiple sorties to gradually expose the defenses (although historically these were one-off, surprise incursions). I also wonder if I’m misusing the B-47s defensive capabilities. I don’t see any defensive measures on board, but maybe I’m missing something. I also assume that I should be flying “dark,” using my own radar only for ground surveillance. Perhaps I should also be looking for approaching enemies. I will say, though, that they’ve seemed even to sneak up on me when I have my radars on.

As interesting as it is to have a unique mission in a unique time period, I don’t think I want to keep rerunning the same scenario with no clear idea of what I’m doing wrong. For now, I’ll take a break from Strategic Air Command to look at the intervening Suez Crisis, and I’ll come back to the 1957 scenario a little later.

NATO versus Warsaw Pact, Vol. II, Part 2

Tags

CMANO, Cold War, Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations, IL-2, Steel Panthers, wargames, WinSPMBT, World War III

This is a Part 2 of a two part post. Start with Part 1 here, if interested. In the previous installment, I focused on a 1955 World War III scenario in Germany. This second part moves elsewhere in the world.

As a rule, I don’t like to play a strategy game as I would a First Person Shooter. Running into a “gotcha,” then reloading and trying again and again may work for some types of games, it ruins the mood for me in a historical strategy game.

Part of the historical flavor is that, while we may study the situation in detail, the commanders at the time had none of that hindsight. So any surprise that they faced at the time, to the extent that the game can model it, will be a surprise for we players only the first time through. Add to that the unpleasantness of playing the same thing over-and-over again, trying to get it right… it would seem more satisfying were we to expect a scenario to be a once-through affair.

One could make the counter argument that, as a virtual military person, your real life counterpart has undergone training well beyond even the most dedicated gamer. He knows his own people and platforms inside and out and has also studied the enemy. He may well have spent more time in preparation for an operation than you’re going to spend on the entire game (both in real and simulated time). In that way, playing and replaying a given scenario can be seen as an equivalent to the years of training and experience that precedes any battle.

Wherein I Completely Spoil The Surprise

At this point, I’m going to completely spoil the scenario Waller Takes Charge, from CMANO.

If not obvious from the intro, this one took me a few times to come close to getting right. And right from the get-go, I ran into a gotcha from the scenario maker (it’s a community-made scenario).

Briefly, the scenario places us in command of the Destroyer USS Waller, near Crete at the outbreak of World War III. Quite a bit of nastiness has preceded, leaving us in command of the air wings of the USS Intrepid. We are given the base at Souda Bay, on the northern coast of Crete, and tasked with finding the remaining Soviet ships in the Mediterranean, which are estimated to include a cruiser and at least two submarines.

Nuked! That can’t be good for morale.

The opening gotcha is that, while I am concentrating on figuring out what assets I’ve got and what I’m going to be able to do with them, unbeknownst to us all (well, if you haven’t been reading this, that is), the Soviets have a flight of four Tu-4 Bulls armed with nukes headed towards the airbase.

My first time through, I sent all my planes back to base, except for a mix of fighters and surveillance, which I sent to provide cover over the Waller and her sister ship DDE Cony. It wasn’t at all clear to me how much fuel I had, and I didn’t want to risk any losses through stupidly stranding my planes too far from my new base. It didn’t help that the planes were constantly complaining that I didn’t seem to know what I was doing, given that they’d already been given the “Return To Base” order at game start.

Is there a commander alive that, at the outset of hostilities, not only fail to provide a defensive fighter patrol over his own base, but ensure that all his available aircraft are unavailable, due to refueling and rearming? That’s essentially what I was doing, and the scenario is designed to punish the player for focusing on the goal but ignoring defense. With no defense, those Tu-4s are going to mean is an instant loss, even before the player gets started hunting for the ships.

Doing It Right

Having failed so obviously, it didn’t feel wrong at all to load up the game from the beginning and take the appropriate precautions.

Having done so (and having stopped the threat at the cost of a few fighters), it struck me that this was another easy scenario to throw together in IL-2.

As always, it surprises me when I achieve essentially the same result in IL-2 as I’ve just seen in CMANO. In this case, I was generally able to take out the incoming bombers, although generally losing 1 or 2 fighters in the process. It took me a couple play-throughs, but ultimately I managed to take out the incoming bombers and land my plane back on Crete.

Taking down one of the bombers with my FJ-3 Fury.

The maps for the vicinity of Crete, complete with airbases, are all available in the IL-2 content available on line. A little searching can spruce up the basic models for the aircraft with nice paint jobs. However, the one piece of the CMANO scenario I could not bring over to IL-2: in the larger battle, I was using a mix of FJ-3 Furies and F2H-2 Banshees to defend the base. The latter, unfortunately, is not available in the jets package that I’m using. So my defense was all three defenders being FJ-3s.

That wasn’t very sporting. As a last flip of the finger, the dying bomber unloads its nuke. They didn’t do that in CMANO

As far as I can tell, my fighter losses in CMANO to the Tu-4 attack were all from the Bulls’ defensive gunnery. That was also true in IL-2; Approach the bombers to slowly, especially from the lower rear, and I’d find myself riddled with bullet. However, in every attempt I also lost either my plane or my wingman’s to the nuclear blast of the bomber discharging its ordnance before crashing. It makes me wonder if that was actually doctrine, either from the Soviets or the U.S.? Particularly during the 1950s when the fallout fear was less than later decades. In this particular scenario, I guess it is smart. A bomb detonated over open sea has little effect except to take out one or two enemy planes.

But I Digress

Having successfully defended my base, I tried again to focus on the mission and find the Russian subs. Once again, I was caught in another stupid mistake due to lack of attention. While I was focused on directing my air units, the Waller and the Russian counterpart drifted into range of each other and began firing. While initially panicked, I realized that I was, by far, getting the better of the situation. Unfortunately, what I didn’t watch for is that the enemy cruiser, while farther away, had a longer range on her guns, which were also considerably more deadly than the destroyer gunnery.

Found you! I’ve managed to pick up the location of the Soviet Cruiser Kuybyshev and it’s Destroyer escort. Those are my two destroyers, in blue. The green is neutral merchant shipping. It wouldn’t do to nuke them.

That prompted another reload. This time through, I concentrated on making sure I could bring everything to bear simultaneously against the Kuybyshev. I held my ships out of range until I had all my aircraft rearmed, and then moved in closer to hopefully support the results of my air attack. That’s when I found out several other pieces of information, (which a responsible commander would have known up front) the hard way.

Regular bombs (unless they are coming from enemy planes against your own ships, apparently) are fairly ineffective against moving ships. The only damage I seemed to do was with my final attack run where I used rockets. Also, the Soviet ships have a speed advantage. Keeping just out of range when the Russians want to close is not an option. Finally, the Egyptians, neutral at the start of the scenario, have an unexpected way of negating our air superiority.

Time for another reload.

At this point, I’m going to give this scenario a break. This reminded me how difficult many of the CMANO scenarios could be – in some cases puzzle-like in their solution. From the orders, one would assume a superiority in forces would be required to accomplish them. However, without some clever planning, the superiority may actually be with the enemy. It may be that only careful application of your available weapons, in just the right time and place, will allow you to overcome the otherwise impossible mission. Yes, this is an interesting problem for the commander. But it is less interesting if the nature of the threats, and the thus the combination of tactics to defeat them, is only know through multiple playthroughs.

As I started out, I find that frustrating in a strategy game.

Other Armies, Other Fronts

Just so I’m not left with no accomplishments, I also took on a another Steel Panthers scenario. This one, titled “Assault Gun Support,” imagines that World War III has spread in the opposite direction, to the north. The scenario is a counter attack with Swedish infantry support by assault guns against the Soviet aggressors (also supported by assault guns).

As always, fairly enjoyable gameplay. Also, as usually happens, I make my share of dumb mistakes. This time, I lost nearly all of my assault guns in the opening minutes. But the difference is I don’t feel the need to reload and restart just to make it through the scenario. I can live and learn, and maybe accept that I coulda/shoulda/woulda done better than that draw, without having to whittle away at the scenario until I “beat” it.

 

Adieu, Indochine

Tags

CMANO, Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations, Dien Bien Phu, French Indochina, The Operational Art of War, Vietnam, wargames

In 1954, the French military made a fatal error in the conduct of their war in Vietnam. On November 20th, 1953, the latest in a string of French commanders, General Navarre, proposed a “hedgehog” operation centered on a small World War II Japanese landing strip at Điện Biên Phủ. The intention was to force a showdown with the forces of the Viet Minh in such a way where the French had the advantage. In this case, Điện Biên Phủ was to be a fortified outpost supported by the superiority the French boasted in air and artillery.

General Giáp, seeing his own opportunity, assembled 4 infantry divisions totaling nearly 50,000 troops. He also assembled a massive army of laborers and did what General Navarre had considered impossible. He disassembled and transported across nearly-impassible terrain over 250 artillery and anti-aircraft guns. He not only nullified the French advantage in artillery and air-support, but outnumbered them almost 5 to 1.

The French fought for nearly two months, re-enforcing their positions with additional para-drops. Ultimately their isolation was complete and the entire French force surrendered. The next day, the Geneva Conference peace talks opened discussions on French Indochina and, in the face of this defeat, a ceasefire was arranged that split Vietnam in two, a communist North and a republican South. The instability of this arrangement ultimately lead to the huge commitment of U.S. troops to Vietnam.

Operations

The battle is modeled in the TOAW:3 scenario, Dien Bien Phu. It is one of the scenarios from the first version of the game.

Mais oui, we are surrounded. The situation as the Viet Mihn human wave attacks begin in earnest.

Like my previous foray into French Indochina, the scenario leans towards the smaller end of the game’s scale. Like before counters represent companies, but the time scale is half-week turns, which is an improvement.

Given the situation, one has to wonder whether any realistic play-through of the scenario could result in anything but a French surrender. One might argue that the French lost the battle the moment they decided to make a stand in that particular valley.

My situation the morning of April 30. Rather ahistorically, I’ve decided to take the bull by the horns and send my paratroops into the hills to knock out some of that artillery.

Fire from the Sky

In a second scenario, I look at the CMANO scenario Operation Vulture. This is a hypothetical based on plans discussed among the Americans to save the French at Điện Biên Phủ using massive air power.

In CMANO, dawn breaks also on the morning of April 30th. The first flight of French Bearcats is heading in for air support. My fleet of B-26s is still an hour or two out.

One version of the plan would have authorized the use of up to three nuclear weapons. Other versions proposed conventional weapons, but still delivered by Strategic bombers. Ultimately, Eisenhower nixed backing the French in Vietnam both out of a lack of support from strategic allies and from a fear of entering into a quagmire so soon after the end of the Korean War.

However, with CMANO we can image what American support might have looked like. The parameters of the game are a single, 24 hour operation. The U.S. is limited to conventional bombing only – no nukes. The French air support is present in the game, but controlled by a friendly AI and not the player.

This scenario, perhaps, has another purpose. The scenario designer (it is a user-made scenario) has chosen to use the B-36 “Peacemaker” to deliver the attack. This was definitely within the U.S. arsenal at the time, and one choice for delivering the attack. More likely, the B-29 Superfortress would have been chosen, perhaps with support from naval ground attack aircraft.

The B-36, in the words of the scenario designer, “was already obsolete when the first one rolled off the production line.” It became the focus of a political battle over its cost (it was sometimes called a “billion dollar blunder”) between the Air Force and the Navy, who wanted to see the money spent on supercarriers. This fight over military focus represents an extension of the argument over Strategic Bombing in the Second World War. That experience should have discredited the concept, and yet it continued to drive U.S. Air Force thinking into the Cold war.

Play-wise, it isn’t a bad scenario. The feeling of the “game playing itself” is alleviated in that the player has to plan everything from scratch. The load-outs, the launch times, the routes, the targets. The B36s fly high enough that it isn’t a game of rolling dice against the anti-aircraft fire until they’re all shot down.

Bridges for Sale

Tags

Bridges at Toko-Ri, CMANO, Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations, F86 Sabre, IL-2, James Michener, Korean War, MiG-15, wargames

No not that bridge. Not this time. We’re going back to the wargames now.

We’ll put an end to our Korean War gaming similarly to the end of the Korean War fighting. Rather than a great battle to determine victory and settle the peace, we’ll simply peter out and move on to something else.

The theme for this article is the Bridges at Toko-Ri, and several games which address the subject.

Chronologically speaking, the first to deal with it is the series of scenarios created for IL-2 which I started in my earlier article. One of the battles created for the 1950s F9F Panther scenarios features said bridges, but is set in 1950.

The real life events that James Michener used in his novel are amalgamated to make a single story. The heroic helicopter pilot, plated in the movie by Mickey Rooney, is based on partly on posthumous Medal of Honor recipient John Kelvin Koelsch, who was shot down and captured by the North Koreans in July of 1951. He died while a prisoner of war in October of that same year. Details of the missions where taken from attacks taking place on February 8th, 1952 and missions flown against railroad bridges at Majon-ni and Samdong-ni in North Korea. The CMANO scenario models this historical battle.

Finally, the movie takes place sometime in the late November or December of 1952.

Best Special Effects

I’ll start, as I did myself, with the movie.

The movie can be evaluated in several contexts. First from a purely technical standpoint, as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did in giving it the 1955 award for Best Special Effects. It can also be looked at purely as a story told on film. Finally, it is also worth looking at it as a contemporary Korean War commentary.

The parts of this movie that use actual footage of U.S. navy operations is superb. The editing of actual aircraft with models is occasionally obvious to the modern eye, but is still excellent, even after nearly 65 years. It’s this that makes the movie worth watching – a picture of what was then state-of-the art naval warfare portrayed on film. A Top Gun for the 1950s.

While the movie came out after the armistice was in place, the story was published in the book shortly before the cease fire.

I have not read the book, so I can’t speak to what parts of the story are from the book and what was added by Hollywood. I can guess, and I’ll probably be wrong at least some of the time.

As just a movie, devoid of context, the story would be somewhat weak. The basics are pretty glum – and I’m going to give away the entire movie here. We meet two characters, one enlisted – an irreverent helicopter pilot who is loved by the pilots because he pulls them out of the water – and one an officer, a World War II pilot who was called away from his Law practice to serve in Korea. After some standard Hollywood characterizations, and some nice flight footage, we see some scenes between the father-figure Admiral (who sees in our pilot his own son, killed in combat in the earlier war). He warns the pilots wife about facing the reality that is the dangers of combat because if she is confronted, unprepared, with the death of her husband, it could destroy her. Then everyone dies.

Within the context of when it was made, however, it takes on more meaning. The key mission, the bridges in the title, is known to be potentially deadly but necessary because it may bring about the end of the war. In 1952, when the action supposedly takes place, this probably wasn’t a reality (although one supposes it is always a hope). In 1953, when the book was released, the situation may have been very true. In any case, it addresses that horrible feeling that any warrior has, as war nears its end; “Why should I risk my life now when the war is all but over anyway?” The movie’s answer is, basically, because that is what good men do.

It also addresses an oddity of the Korean War, when compared to the Second World War that preceded it, where life in the United States (and most of the world) continued on oblivious to the fighting, killing, and dying going on in Korea. In one scene, the men on the (fictional) aircraft carrier take a break and listen to a football game in Los Angeles over the speakers. Clearly those fans have little sense of being in a country at war. It’s this that makes sense of the rather depressing story. The movie is looking at this phenomenon where a few men (and families) were ripped away from their normal lives to fight in Korea while, in fact, most of the country continued on as if nothing was happening.

In this way, the movies questions, and answers such as they are, are very topical to today. To the families whose members are in Iraq or Afghanistan, or Syria (oh, don’t kid yourself) these “wars” are an all-consuming fact of life. To the rest of us, it is an occasional mention in the newspaper. The country is not “at war” in the sense that we were in the 1940s, or even in Vietnam. We just have a segment of our population off fighting and dying while the rest of us go on with our lives.

The Big Picture

To get a nice look at the operation that events of the film might be, we can start with the user-made scenario in Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations (CMANO).

This scenario gives a better overview of what is going on, certainly compared to a movie but also compared to the flight simulator missions, below. In the scenario, a carrier group is provided for preparing the area surrounding a pair of railroad bridges for bomber attack by suppressing the air defense guns. Unlike the film, the naval ground-attack aircraft did not carry the kind of heavy ordinance for destroying the bridges, and thus were relegated to the suppression mission.

Again, not having read the book, I can only compare to the movie. If I misrepresent what was included in the novel – apologies.

The CMANO scenario takes place on the date of the actual attacks upon which the book was based. If I understand, it is a mix of real, fictional, and simplified for game purposes data. This scenario corrects one glaring misrepresentation of the movie. In the film, the attack (on the bridges themselves) is carried out by 3 squadrons of F9F Panthers. In reality, the fighter/bomber jets used were McDonnell F2H Banshees. The Panthers were used for fighter cover, not ground attack. In fact, the range of aircraft on the carriers also includes a number of F4U-4 Corsairs and AD-2B Skyraiders armed for ground attack.

My first strike is headed for the Bridges just after dawn. This is going to get ugly, fast.

In stark contrast to the previous scenario I looked at, this scenario does not showcase scenario design. In my first play through, I’m losing a lot of aircraft during ground attack, which at this level seems like just watching a random number generator. I haven’t figured out any strategy to it; I send in my planes loaded with bombs and maybe they hit their target and maybe they get shot down. I did make a huge mistake when two planes I had on Combat Air Patrol ran out of fuel unexpectedly. While I was waiting for refueling, an IL-28 snuck in a sunk a destroyer.

Slightly more engaging, I often have radar lock on a few communist airplanes in the distance. When one starts to get close in (and they seem to come one or maybe two at a time), I divert my fighter escort (4 Panthers) and see how the dogfight works out. As a rule, it seems like the MiG-15s can usually knock one or two Panthers down in a four on one engagement before eventually going down themselves. Even the IL-28 managed to drop a Panther before I was able to bring it down.

As before, the losses are much higher than in the historic operations. Obviously, the book was written and the movie made because our guys were shot down, but I’m losing not only ground attack aircraft to enemy guns, but also losing my fighter cover fending off the technically-superior aircraft of the Russians. I’d think in planning an operation like this one, the first order of business would be to secure air superiority. Or at least attempt to do so. I also am left wondering if the combat is more deadly due to the modelling. Reading accounts of various battles, it seems that the norm was for aircraft to make it home after sustaining battle damage. Even this story in particular is about pilots who tried to make it, and had to ditch and be rescued. The fights in CMANO seem to almost always result in a kill. Could it be that the guns are modeled to be overly deadly, or maybe just the engagement algorithms keep fighting unto the death, rather than retreat to fight another day.

The Small Picture

I also opened up the IL-2 scenario included as part of the Jet Age mod.

The year aside (probably altered simply to fit in the timeline with the campaign), the setup is very much like the CMANO scenario – except for the Panthers. Like the movie, but for a different reason, the player is flying an F9F Panther loaded for the attack on the bridges themselves, with the prop-planes targeting anti-air suppression. In part, the problem is the the Jet Age mod does not include the F2H Banshee. The other obvious problem is that, if the player is to be part of a carrier strike, history dictates that he miss out on the money shot – the actual demolition of the bridges.

The 3D, full-color version is pretty much the same what’s set up in CMANO. There go the last of my bombs. I missed.

As I’ve indicated before, I’m just not that great of a simulated pilot. And like the CMANO scenario, there seems to be certain luck of the dice when it comes to this scenario. Initially, the player’s flight of Panthers come in high over the targets. Each of several times I played through, at least one of the squadron was lost to ground fire, and including several times my own plane. Not much to do about that.

It is also interesting that, although the scenario is slated for 1950, the model of Panther is designated as a 1951 availability. It appears the scenario designer was attempting to add as much flavor from the scenario as possible, without be completely anachronistic. For example, when the enemy planes do appear, they are the propeller aircraft of 1950, not the MiG-15s of 1952.

Migs…

Given that the fun part of the CMANO scenario was the 4-on-1 fights between the Panthers and the MiGs, that was an easy scenario to set up with a quick mission.

Once again, I am handicapped by my inability to play the game. But once again, the results from the IL-2 simulation come in on par with what I saw playing CMANO. I ended up losing one of my compatriots before getting an awesome tail shot on the enemy as he attempted a second kill. Alas, I missed. However, I’m pretty sure that the actual U.S. pilots of the Korean war would have made the kill.

Blew it! Looks like I’m yankin’ the stick the wrong way.

… and Sabres

Of course, one wonders whether pilots would have been forced maintain air superiority with technologically inferior aircraft. Could the Air Force have put up some Sabres to counter those MiGs?

While exploring the issue, I found a great download package called The Korean Files. It is a set of missions, packaged as a campaign, going throughout the Korean War and covering a wide range of different aircraft. This includes Sabre versus MiG battles, other jet combat fights, and propeller-plane showdowns as well.

Each battle in the package is based on actual historical encounters. Included documentation details the background of each scenario. There are also several scanned documents covering aerial combat in the Korean War. Wonderful stuff that really fills in the details about the “Forgotten War.”

I Wanna Fly Jets!

Tags

CMANO, Cold War, Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations, IL-2, IL-2 Sturmovik, Korean War, Ostkrieg, wargames

Korea is an interesting wargaming subject.

It is the first confrontation between the Cold War superpowers. In the scheme of things, it may seem an unlikely corner of the globe for that to take place, but there are a few factors that funneled us to the Korean war.

I was recently reading the book Ostkrieg: Hitler’s War of Extermination in the East that is worthy of its own review. It is particularly noteworthy in contrast to a handful of other recent histories on the same subject. A number of books have been written based on the opening of the Soviet archives, and so are written from the Russian perspective. This one is German-centric.

The book explained how Hitler assumed, with each major battle fought and victory not won, that he had weakened the enemy to the breaking point. The Soviet Union in the second World War (in a pattern soon to be repeated with  practically all communist armies) wasted huge amounts of Manpower and equipment in the winning of their battles. Hitler assumed that the Russians must exhaust themselves of their man and material resources  and thus succumb to Germany. Of course, that never happened. However, the book speculates that perhaps by the end of the war the Soviets had truly depleted their ability to fight and reached that breaking point, if only the German forces hadn’t been even more spent. If so, the perception that the West had about this massive Soviet Army, having just defeated the Germans, may have been overblown.  The Russians, at some level of government, may well have had the only realistic picture of their strength relative to the West.

In addition, whatever their beliefs about their conventional forces, clearly for the first few years after the second World War the Russians lacked the atomic capability possessed by the United States. This clearly prevented the Russians from pushing the West too hard.

Back to Korea.

The conflict in Korea start as did so many of the conflicts of the Cold War. The defeat of the Japanese left a vacuum of power and authority on the Korean peninsula, and the barely-on-the-same-side powers of the United States and the Soviet Union vying for post-war influence. The solution was to arbitrarily divide the administration of the country between them, until such time as a reunification under self-government could be implemented. Of course, the influence of the Soviets versus that of the West produced very different governments that offered little hope of a smooth reunification.

In Korea, as the respective governments became self-sufficient, both the North and the South wanted to invade the other so that unification would take place under their respective terms.  It is particularly interesting that both the US and the Soviets did not want that to happen for fear of provoking a larger war with their opposite number.

In Russia’s case, however, once the Chinese communists had won Civil War they became open to allowing Kim to invade the South with Chinese backing. China could then shield the Russians from any unplanned escalation.

On the US side they actually withheld arms from South Korean president, Syngman Rhee, in an effort to prevent the south from initiating a war.

In terms of wargaming, this opens up all kinds of what ifs.

What if either the North or the South had started a war before the Chinese Civil War was complete? This would essentially create a sprawling war between communists and the West covering China and Korea. With such a mix of some combatants, it would be likely likely the Soviet forces would be drawn in, just as Chinese were in the real war, and it could have quickly spread from there.

There were not only plans, but active orders to use atomic weapons against the Chinese as they entered the war as well as plans to nuke the Soviets if they joined in. Seeing how close the U.S. came to actually using their atomic arsenal, one can easily imagine how even a small escalation might have quickly ramped up into World War III.

This is all ripe for wargaming on all levels. The tactical scale can focus on both the real operations and the what-ifs that might bring in more Chinese or Soviet troops. The operational scale has a unique conflict which consisted of large-scale conventional warfare that was nonetheless confined both politically and geographically to the Korean peninsula. A strategic treatment, involving the nuclear options, could be fascinating as well.

Given all of that, the conflict seems terribly under served. Games, of course, do exist and I’ll future posts to look at some others not covered today.

My Flying Machine

One exception to this perception of slight is the air war. The serious flight simulation market doesn’t have the raw numbers that the game market in general has, but the Korean War era gets proportional attention.

In addition to being strategically interesting, the Korean War era was technologically fascinating. In some ways, the forces look like World War II. New weapons, such as those atomic bombs, the helicopters, called airstrikes, and medical evacuation all made the Korean battlefield look a bit different than Germany just a few years early. But the most dramatic, especially to most of us today, was the introduction of the jet fighter.

The War started out using essentially the technology which ended the Second World War. The North Koreans were flying Soviet equipment from the end of the War. The U.S. had a mix of end-of-war and post-war aircraft, but the technology was still essentially what was coming on line as the war was ending.

While some aircraft were very much the same as their WWII versions, others looked like WWII via a Science Fiction movie.

In particular, the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star was a 1943 design. Lockheed had a contract to produce the aircraft for use in the Second World War, but the platform was never brought on-line. Unfortunately, it’s straight-wing design (as was used on propeller-driven aircraft) made it unable to take full advantage of the upgrade to a turbojet power plant. It was, in fact, inferior in performance to its almost-contemporary, the Me 262. Even more unfortunately, the Soviets had captured German plans and personnel and had based their own jet program on Germany’s foundation. That program produced the MiG 15, which was superior to both the Shooting Star and the other propeller-driven aircraft that were being used in Korea.

But fortune did smile on all of us wargamers yet-to-be.

At North American (the developer of the still-in-use-in-Korea P-51 Mustang) they had found themselves unable to distinguish their jet designs in government procurement competitions. At the end of the war, like the Russians, they gained access to the German design and testing data.Their subsequent redesign led to a production fighter, the F-86 Sabre, rolling out just before the start of the war. When MiG 15s began to appear in the skies over Korea, the F-86s were moved in to counter the new threat.

And thus was born a match-up that has captured imaginations ever since. MiG Alley. Jet age dog-fighting. The near-even contest between the best of Soviet pilots and technology against the best of the West.

But first, let’s start from the beginning.

Day 1

The first game is a user-made (Community, in their own lingo) scenario for Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations. Affectionately dubbed C:MANO by its fans (to differentiated from the 237 other wargames out their called Command), an acronym I will use from here on out. And for those of you playing at home, I like to pronounce it si mano, as a Spanish-speaking George Costanza might.

The scenario is called Fall of Seoul, written by George Ross. It covers the first three days after the North Korean invasion of the South on June 25th, 1950 from a U.S. perspective.

The United States had virtually no forces on the ground and was forced to sit mostly helpless and watch, against all expectations, as the communist forces overran their ally. America did have air and sea assets which, in the scenario, are put to use evacuating key personnel ahead of the invading armies. You have a multitude of air resources in Japan, some airfields in Korea, and a few warships.

The scenario is a wonderful example of what can be done with the game system. The battlefield is huge, particularly for a “real time” scenario, covering the entirety of South Korea, the surrounding seas, and portions of Japan. Despite the large area and high unit count, the gameplay is quite manageable as the scenario design guides your actions. Various tasks are pre-constructed, allowing you to simply add the units their assignments rather than figure it all out on your own. Tasks include things like the various Combat Air Patrol (CAP) locations (high and low altitude for jets versus props), air-lift missions, and sea patrols.

Decisions still have to be made, however, but the pace of the decisions are rather slow. With the bulk of your air force based in Japan, you cannot respond to events around Seoul as they happen. Instead, you must plan well ahead so that the CAP in place, when the enemy shows up, is sufficient to the task. Do you base part of your force forward in Korea? How much? It all balances out very well so as to be enjoyable and engaging without the micro-management that could easily consume the player when the scale is real-time/ one unit per aircraft.

The time period pushes the game and the interface to its lower limit. The database of aircraft and weapons is limited to the Cold War era and beyond, so the ability to create scenarios from an earlier time is limited. In addition, the graphical interface is very appropriate for the level of command when talking about modern combat. Certainly in today’s environment, when a new contact is identified, the location would be expected to be almost immediately available to the command center, and reaction could be nearly instantaneous. It surely feels realistic if a modern commander were to immediately reroute a pair of fighters based on an unknown contact, and to have those fighters respond almost instantaneously. The interface itself, look and feel, is in this way “realistic” when applied to modern operations.

In 1950, however, nobody had big, animated screens showing the current location of aircraft. In fact, even the state of the art probably wasn’t available given the surprise nature of the attack. Whatever manual support would normally be available for a complex air/sea operation was probably not set up for a war nobody expected to happen. Yes, radar technology existed, but was generally lacking in this time and place, again for the same reason. One is tempted to jump on any new piece of information almost immediately when, in fact, responses certainly were in minutes (if not hours) rather than seconds.

The game model does account for this. It is very difficult to spot, identify, or track enemy units. This is probably meant to model the communication issues more than a situation where my pilots keep losing track of enemies that are right in front of them. Nose-mounted cannons and 250-lb bombs are all, of course, fully modeled by the C:MANO system and database, but the game is clearly designed for the age of missiles.

The scenario was challenging, and in a good way. I scored “average,” probably at the low end, which leaves me feeling satisfied I put up a good fight. There were a number of things I should have done differently, had I understood what was going on. Initially, I was instructed by the scenario designer to establish air-superiority over Seoul and then use my transports to accomplish the evacuation mission. I know from reading about the Korean War that air and, especially sea, superiority was a given for the U.S. forces, particularly in in the initial days. So I figured my goal was just to keep 2-4 jets in the air to make sure my reconnaissance and transport aircraft weren’t caught without escort.

Once my patrols first starting contacting groups of enemy fighters; Yak-9s, La-9s and IL-10s, I realized that without numerical superiority, I was just going to be swapping kills. Even coming across some Po-2s, an early-WWII biplane that was, in fact, successfully employed by the North Koreans during the war, I found it very difficult to down them with my Shooting Stars. I also encountered some early shock when I first tried using my A-26 Invaders. The scenario briefing warned me that these were not to be used for combat support for the South Koreans, at least initially, so I held them back. At some point, however, I got reports of a South Korean commercial vessel being shot up by the North. I figured a couple of A-26s could, if not provide direct support, at least spot and identify the culprit. For some reason, however, I had several bombers (it recurred later in the game as well) take off without fuel. When they immediately tried to turn back to base, I figured they had got confused and again ordered them towards the sound of the guns. They ended up ditching in the ocean.

A dogfight just north of Seoul. A mix of Mustangs and Shooting Stars catch an unknown number and make of enemy aircraft inbound. Thankfully, it seems like I’ve got them outnumbered this time.

In about the final third of the scenario, I finally got into the swing of things. I had enough of a CAP to prevent getting my jets wiped out by unexpected enemies, plus I had some “alert” Shooting Stars on the runway just south of Seoul to deal with any surprises. I figured out what targets the scenario had in mind for the Invaders, and was starting to take out some key bridges and other assets as the Korean People’s Army swept south. I also managed to keep my airlift going, not losing any of the transport planes.

Then I hit a bump. A group of half-a-dozen-to-a-dozen IL-10s appear minutes away from my airfield, headed towards my train of transports headed, fully loaded, back for Japan. I vectored all my air assets to an intercept point just south of the airfield (at Suwon). I kept my alert jets on the ground, figuring (given how much trouble I’d had against IL-10s), the last thing I’d want to do is give up my speed and altitude advantage by trying to engage the enemy on take-off. Turns out, the “Beasts” target was the airfield itself. I ended up suffering severe damage to all my grounded planes, and point-wise lost a good chunk of my hard-earned score.

In the end, as I said, my score was satisfactory and the game was fun. However, my losses were hugely unrealistic. As far as I can tell, the U.S. did not lose any fighter aircraft in the initial days of the war. The specific operation covered by this scenario was notable in the vast air-superiority of the U.S. planes and pilots. It makes me wonder why the discrepancy. It could be in the scenario design. If the North Koreans are modeled to be much more aggressive than they actually were, it could result in higher air casualties all around. It may also be due to the models in the underlying game. Possibly in the jets versus propellers, the guns-only attack mode, or the experience gap between the U.S. pilots and their North Korean counterparts.

Clearly, there is something in the way of the game’s ability to simulate the actual battle. But as far as a compelling scenario goes, I’d say this one works.

No, I Want to Fly Jets!

Of course, when one speaks of simulating air combat, one is often talking about flight simulators; That sub-genre of wargames where the player actually experiences the game as a pilot in a single aircraft. The world of simulators is an entirely different one that those inhabited by most games. The premium put on realism exceeds almost any other genre and, indeed, sometimes the belief of non-flight-simmers. To those outside the flight-sim world, this focus puts the flight simulation into a category apart for games. It seems more of an actual, dedicated hobby.

For myself, I’ve yet to take it that far. I generally struggle with take-offs and landings and usually rely on my simulated squadron-mates to get the bulk of the mission accomplished. Still, it is one of the most immersive ways to go back in time; To actually experience a battle as one of its participants.

As I started taking a look at the state of some of the older games, I was really surprised at the level of dedication for some of the older flight sims. Perhaps I’ll come back to others later, but for this battle I’m using the IL-2 simulator, and in particular the package IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946, the final release of the original IL-2 series. The 1946 refers to the inclusion, in this release, of various end-of-war aircraft that didn’t quite make it into combat in the second world war.

IL-2 was released more than 15 years ago, and the even the 1946 release is 10 years old. However, as I said, the fans of the game have been busy adding to, enhancing, improving, etc. I’ve installed the Community Universal Patch, an amalgamation of various mods built and support by users over the years. This package is broken into different modules by time frame, including one called The Jet Age 1946-2016, aiming at the cold war period.

Simulating jet combat is very different than simulating WW II combat, and I’ve read criticisms about the later Korean War and Vietnam simulations. This can wait, however. In the initial days of the Korean War, as I said, the combatants were using essentially second world war technology, albeit technology that was not quite fully deployed by the end of the war. I expect that this is one that, whatever its capabilities once you get away from WWII, the IL-2 engine fully on the mark.

Up until this point, I’d only played with IL-2 in WWII, either the Russian front scenarios or the Pacific War (the Pacific Fighters expansion). It was pleasantly surprised to find what the CUP mods did for me “right out of the box.” A map of the Korean’s theatre is already put together, with the right airbases all in place. The “Quick Mission” generator has Korean War missions already, to be thrown together with a few mouse-clicks. Add to that, the current version of the full mission editor makes it fairly straightforward to map exactly the tactical situation that I’m looking at on the CMANO screen into a flyable IL-2 skirmish.

And I did exactly that.

An F-82G Twin Mustang has spotted an IL-10 Beast going after some South Korean Commercial shipping. I ordered a pair of Mustangs and a pair of Shooting Stars to intercept. The identical parameters can be quickly set up in the IL-2 simulator.

On top of all that, the Jet Age package has, as one of the default campaigns, the opening weeks of the Korean War. It’s a little different than the Fall of Seoul. It takes place a few days later after the arrival of Task Force 77 for support. You play as a Grumman F9F pilot flying from the USS Valley Forge.

One of the “Quick Mission” setups is nearly identical to the raid that did me in during my CMANO game. With a couple of clicks, I have the same aircraft attacking the same airfield, me with the same dozen or so planes on the ground. Except this time, I’m actually scrambling my fighters, not waiting until they’re blown up in their hangers.

After scrambling, I’ve got behind the attacking IL-10s just after their first run at my airfield. They still got away.

My first impression with the P-80 was how I encountered the same, unexpected difficulties in the pilot’s seat as I was seeing as the commander. When I encountered equal numbers, I was trading losses pretty evenly. It was only with significant numeric superiority that I’d see clean victories. I also tried shooting down the Po-2, and the result looked just like in my CMANO game; In pass after pass I was missing my target, unable to get a good shot on the slow moving biplane.

Of course, as I’ve said, I’m not much of a flight simmer.

I Ain’t Got No Where Else to Go

Even with that caveat, I had a problem.

I’m using a flight stick and throttle combination that I’ve had for, also, somewhere between 10 and 15 years. I’d not used it for a while, but broke it out again about a year ago. As the year progressed, I’d noticed a number of problems. First off, the whole setup had gotten sticky. Both, literally, sticky on the grip surfaces but, more annoyingly, the controls would have a tendency to lock in place. The shove needed to move them would of course throw off whatever I was actually trying to accomplish in-game. I also noticed that several of the controls, but especially my throttle, was out of tune. One game I’d be unable to throttle all the way down to zero. The next game, I couldn’t throttle up past the 80% mark.

I finally got the hang of re-calibrating before a session. But with my Korean flights, even that didn’t seem to do it. The calibration wouldn’t necessarily survive past a flight or two.

Then it got even worse. In flying the Shooting Star I was getting constant engine trouble. Any time I’d try to increase throttle, I’d get a couple of compressor failures and the finally an engine flame-out. The first time I tried the base defense mission, I spent the entire battle coasting over the airfield, trying to get my engine restarted while the commies destroyed the place.

Again, not all that different than the C:MANO outcome.

While I applaud the modelling of the engine characteristics, which were genuinely a problem with that plane’s operation, I couldn’t believe the real aircraft was as bad as this. I would think that, in the heat of a battle, pushing the throttle forward in an attempt to save one’s hide wouldn’t be uncommon. If the engine were really this sensitive, surely they’d have been dropping out of the sky like summer rain.

By contrast, the Grumman Panther did not have the same tendency to flame out. Again, whether the design was less sensitive or the model for that plane less realistic, I wouldn’t know enough to say.

Finally in my last game, back in the Shooting Star, I was starting to get compressor failures without even touching the throttle. It seems that my flight controls were throwing all kinds of crazy numbers into the program.

Time to buy some new equipment.

I ended up buying a Thrustmaster Hotas X, incidentally at considerably less than I originally paid for my old Saitek.

As I write this, I only have a couple of flights with the new setup. So far, much improved. My only compressor failure was because the new throttle sticks at midpoint, and I gave it too hard a shove to get it out. Control is a lot smoother, and I get the performance I’d expect from a jet. So far, I haven’t got all my controls remapped quite right, so I’m still performing miserably. (I usually dump all my ammo without any kills).

But at least now, I have only myself to blame.

Way to go, Paula. Way to Go.

So my conclusion from this episode?

While I’d played C:MANO before, this scenario really impressed upon me the capabilities of a well-designed scenario. I look forward to playing more.

I think I’m going to be a lot happier with my new flight stick, and I look forward to more of that, too.

I suspect that the USAF and USN pilots during the Korean war were a lot better, and the North Koreans considerable worse, than the computer simulations of their skills predict. In particular, the it may have been that if the North could have exploited their initial air superiority in this battle, they would have had the confidence to use their skills to the full potential. I’ll be interested in other simulations of asymmetric warfare to see how such one-sidedness gets handled.

Referenced:

Ostkrieg: Hitler’s War of Extermination in the East

Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations

IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946