BATTLEPLAN FIF XVI FINALE Part 1

Pruned 8-29-13 - SS

Pilots signed up = 22

Red flight
Rooster - SE5a
Hawg - SE5a
Bandy - SE5a
Skeeter - SE5a
Semiauto - SE5a

Blue flight
NavyJake - SE5a
Shnoze Shmon - SE5a
Duff4r - SE5a
DooRight - SE5a
Bunny287 - SE5a
Flatspin - SE5a
(maybe) Space - SE5a


Wing Walkers Gold Flight
WWDubya - SE5a
WWsittingduck - SE5a
WWBayonet -SE5a
WWGeezer - SE5a
WWFlybert - SE5a
WWNavyGunner - SE5a
 
Green flight
Bomber group 1
Yoke – bomber
Zed – bomber
Bomber group 2
Stubby14 - bomber
Lexx – bomber
 




PLAN Finali Part 1
 
Standard orders – Maintain 1500’ minimum unless conducting an attack.  Scattered machineguns will be present.  They cannot be killed so don’t try.
 
The enemies 4 bombers are their only path to avoiding a Stunning defeat.  They are quintessentially the Huns family jewels.  Destroying them is the highest priority.  Still listen to the orders of your flight leaders though.  Report all damage to, and destruction of, bombers to mission commander.
 
 
Red Flight will base at Vel-u-r-1-2.  They will proceed to the area indicated in red and conduct search and destroy.  Obviously they will be in the vicinity to assist Green flight.  If large numbers of enemy show up in Blue flights they will respond to any calls for assistance.
 
Gold Flight will base at Gunna-get-lice.  They will escort Bomber group 1 to attack the artillery guns.  The arty guns should be in 6 pairs.  Each bomber will attack one gun in a pair and proceed to the next pair until all guns have been attacked.  Then turn around and return for any missed guns.  Having an SE5 low and just ahead of the bombers flying a weaving pattern should help keep the bombers safe from AAA.  These guns will have the same defense as balloons have had so this assistance is highly recommended.  A heavily weaving SE5a should be safe from ground fire.  Also recommended is a scout ahead spotting the exact locations of each pair of guns to aid the bombers.
 
Bomber group 2 will head away from the combat zone and alt up to stay safe while waiting for group 1 to finish it’s attack.  When group 1 has either expended all bombs or been lost Green Flight will rendezvous with group 2 to conduct further attacks.
 
Blue Flight will be split between the bases.  They will rendezvous, find our tanks, and CAP them.
 
2 Conditions will change our deployment.
 
Condition 1 – all the guns are destroyed.  Bombers and green flight will move to CAP the German 2seater base.  If Red flight does not need to assist Blue flight than they can move to CAP the other base.
 
 
Condition 2 – all the bombers are confirmed destroyed.  Defensive patrols will be abandoned as they are no longer necessary.
 
 
Given the small area of this engagement, it is possible the whole thing could be over in 15 minutes.

Blue Flight, supplemental orders

20 Tanks to protect in 4 groups of 5

We should see starting locations of tanks on the game map at the start of mission.

Fuel load will be 75% (guessing we have enough planes to re-plane, plus based on last Finale, it was over pretty quick, mission didn’t last 2 hours.) Edited to increase fuel load.

Elements: (based on current sign-ups)

                1: NavyJake – Duff4r (reports he is out for tonight) I will fly single unless we end up having an extra scout pilot, as Bunny posted he was out also, or join Element 3.

                2: SS – Space

                3: Flatspin – DooRight

Airfields:

                Velu: Elements 1 and 2

                Gonnelieu Cambrai: Element 3


Cap Altitudes and Patrol routes: (This might change based on where tanks start from)

               Element 1: 3500 ft, right hand orbit

               Element 2: 1500 ft, right hand orbit

               Element 3: 2500 ft, left hand orbit


·         Rendezvous sector 26 – B – 5, or as adjusted based on where tanks start

·         Keep comms as clear as possible

·         Call out unknown contacts, direction (N – S – W etc), and approximate altitude.

·         Element lead (first name above), will call his flight is in and engaging whatever.

·         All elements not to jump on same contact unless element is over whelmed.

I want to ensure we don’t start chasing shiny objects, and avoid collisions.


 

Questions or comments?

No.42_NavyJake wrote:

Fuel load will be 60% (guessing we have enough planes to re-plane, plus based on last Finale, it was over pretty quick, mission didn’t last 2 hours.)

Afraid this is not the case. If everyone shows up we will be launching 18 of the available 30 SE5s. We can expect a number of us will have to re-plane due to damage, maybe more than once. If the bomber pilots are forced to land they will only have SE5s to switch into. We will likely run out of aircraft on this one.

Everyone please take note

With the current assignments we will leave 12 SE5s on the ground. Don't anticipate the availability of a second aircraft. If you take a short fuel supply and survive intact to the end of your fuel you may simply be out of the game from lack of fuel. Also, the aircraft we are flying do not experience a notable performance hit with a little bit more fuel.

Also very important to understand

Each side has 4 2seaters and that is it. The trench mappers, recons, arty planes will NOT be available.

Here's an overlay extended map of the combat zone.

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Fly... 42 tested; MG can't be taken out with strafing. As lead I (and I was thinking about this last night, so don't think you've pulled a fast-one), will indeed take the bait position. Ace will take the rest of the group and protect the assault team. If Ace is not in, Gummy, you're it. Fly, you'll be tail-end charlie (that should wipe the smile off your face!). Geez, you've got gun-location duty... vector them in with white flares and get back to the group (repeat as necessary). Otherwise follow group lead's instructions.

We've got our orders, let's execute!

No.42_NavyJake wrote:

Flat, I'll let SS gve you the complete run down. Yes we only got 4 tanks across..

Thanks for passing the buck Navy.

Yeah it was bad. Basically all the conditions on the map favored them including the weather. Their strategy was to launch only fighters, draw us into fights with inferior numbers, then jump us with superior numbers, and wear us down with attrition. Then after clearing the map launch their bombers.

Still can't believe I didn't see that coming. I figured they would pick some area to try and overwhelm us and expected it would probably be the tanks. But I didn't see, that unlike us, they had no pressure of time about when to launch their bombers. They let the battle on the ground take it's toll while they pushed us out of the skies. Then they brought in the bombers which our few remaining pilots fought heroically to blast out of the sky.

The odds in the last 30 minutes went like this.
12 vs 5 (Bandy, Skeeter, NavyJake, Glider, Dubya)
8 vs 4 (NavyJake killed by flack)
7 vs 3 (collision between Bobo and Bandy)
2 vs 2 (I think Dubya was head shot - Final count as server closed)

It just occurred to me while typing this that those immortal machineguns were engaging our tanks. That may account for several losses. I've finished off a tank online with strafing so I know machineguns do cause damage. Add this to the PM I sent you Flat.

Felt that on the receiving end. Got low, smashed them up pretty good...then five Pfalz's swooped in. I was dead within a minute after that.

What about our bombers? I've heard nothing of their results.

Our bombers destroyed a bunch of guns but it doesn't looked like it did any good.

It's unclear how many guns they wiped out. There was a subtitle of a gun being destroyed long after we thought they were all down.


For myself, I started to get upset when I saw one of our bombers attacking a ground object and thought he had wasted a bomb on a machinegun. Then I quickly realized our engagement had moved north away from our tanks.

My own demise.
We had already sent down several Pfalzes and a lone one was being worked over when at least two more come in low. I made a pass or two and retreated west with 2 chasing. When they broke off I started a left climbing turn back to the fight. Navy asked for a flair to locate me. Just as I launched a yellow flair I spotted a Pfalz at my 7 o clock right on top of me! He must not have seen me until I fired that flair in his face. For some reason that got his attention. Because I was at the top of a 180 deg climbing turn that had gained me around 1000' I was in a low energy state. As I broke hard right and dove to the south I saw his wingman. As requested I fired off 2 red flairs while I dropped to the treetops. Taking too long to draw away due to previously mentioned low energy state and their now total awareness of my proximity. My situation rapidly deteriorated to a shredded flaming wreck as my pilotless plane made a beautiful arc into the ground.

Only 4 of our tanks made it across?   The bombers had taken out 10 guns. And we got two messages that the gas artillery took out two which means all guns were taken out

Lexx and Stubby were shot down, AA took me out and Yoke hung in there forever.  That means there bombers took out around 13-15 tanks?  Or were the tanks vulnerable to machine gun fire, in which case they had effectively 34 bombers.

We had 21 enter the game
14 were killed
3 shot down - 2 joined killed list



They had 18 in game
9 were killed
4 shot down - 1 joined killed list



*joined killed list means they died on subsequent flight.

Looking at stats. 5 of their planes contributed to taking out the tanks. 

They are either susceptible to machine gun fire or scouts carried bombs.


Also their artillery which ceased to exist in the first 45 minutes took out 5 tanks. Losing four bombers to save two tanks isn't worth it. Using the bombers to cap their bases for thei bomber push may be a more efficient use

No.42_NavyJake wrote:

My questions or comments
1. They seemed to re-fly a lot and a number of disconnects and then reconnects, not saying anything here, just stating what I saw. How many pilots did they have?
2.  Flak was a bitch
3. Destroying their guns seemed to have no bearing on the mission out come. I think they destroyed our tanks with bombers.

Umm........disconnect/reconnect? Oldest trick in the book! That should not be allowed. Dead is dead, lose your connect...tough! You'd be surprised how few disco's there would be if that rule were in effect.

Never trust another man's game...somehow the house always wins. I played Warbirds for years before I saw my first 'Trainer'. An opponent suddenly increased in Alt 5000 feet and traveled at Mach II with never ending machine guns...just sayin'.

Interesting observations NJ!

Unfortunately, there's not many "facts" that can be applied the above accusations. There's a whole lot of people assuming the worst and disregarding all other possible (even probable) explanations for what was going on last night.

Stick to the facts ma'am. You want me to go to Butzzell with some questions/concerns — great! Let's do it. But I want a list of observations followed by: "what was going on here" not accusations based on emotional responses to getting our asses handed to us in one of six missions played. As it has been admitted by MC, we made a tactical error — and we compounded that by not identifying it and adapting mid-battle. If I'm going to accuse our new friends of foul play and put my rep and that of this squad on the line there had better be no other conceivable possibility. 

So what it looks like to me is we have valid concerns regarding: 

captured pilots when ditched — which I think is related to the front being artificially moved, and what can be done about it.
machine guns destroying tanks (so their guns killed X of our tanks, their planes killed Y tanks...we got four across the mud...how many guns' destruction are in question)? 
Reminder regarding time-out for re-fly.

What else?

These are not accusations just trying to understand game mechanics that rendered a complete kill by the bombers totally useless.

5 pilots on central hit tanks Hawkeye Dudley Butzell Oster Firecage
They had 4 bombers
They killed 11 tanks. Start was 20. 4 finished therefore 5 were taken out by arty

If 16 guns fire they should take out 7-9 tanks or 1 tank every 213 gun minutes based on the two hours
Their guns lasted 40 minutes bombers took out 10 and two gas shells took out the remaining two per screen messages. (remember they only got 12 because we got an advantage of 4 from our wins)

12 guns firing firing a mean average of thirty minutes taking 5 guns out is 1tank every 72 gun minutes
16 guns over two hours would decimate 26.7 tanks at 72 gun minutes
Interestingly at that fire rate 12 guns firing for 2 hours would have taken out exactly 20 tanks

AA may have been a factor as well but we were doing more ground pounding and 1 of theirs was taken out in their ground strafing later on so it was probably the same probability for both sides when low

Next Finali they have 15 guns so unchecked they will decimate our tank force in 96 minutes and with our same rate of success as the first Finali their arty will decimate 8 of our tanks before they are stopped. Thus they only need a couple of tank kills to win

I think that's a pretty fair analysis. 5 guns killed fits your math whether they were by artillery or machine guns. 

I will take the questions to Butzzell, if this is all of them; and in the meantime MC needs to come up with the plan that will stop them in part II.