One of my Cangames traditions is to try to sit in on at least one of David Redpath's excellent modern air combat games...the scenarios are always dynamic and one of the highlights comes from their historical context and David's research into the history of the scenario.
This year, the scenario was a recreation of an air raid during the Iran-Iraq war that had taken place almost 30 years to the date of our game. The Iranians were tasked with hitting an Iraqi airfield that was a base for attack helicopters. The base was set in a valley with mountains to the north, hills to the south and a fairly clear east-west axis.
Pictured below is the enemy airfield. Targets included 3 x helicopter flightlines (large, easy targets), 2 x fuel depot (medium target), and 1 x ammo depot (small, difficult target).
Clouds roll in...weather deck a little south of the field, and just to the north-west...SA-2 SAM batteries deployed to the north and south of the airfield.
Strike package elects to ingress via the south...unaware that the southern route has extra radar coverage...they are quickly picked up by air defence operators...
Who waste no time at all locking on and firing the first of many telephone poles...inbound strike aircraft are broken up in 3 packages...the Iranians rolled poorly and could only bring on minimal aircraft. In this case, a 2 ship of F4 Phantoms coming from the south, a 2 ship of Phantoms that come in from the east to south-east, and a 2 ship of F5 Freedom Fighters from the west.
I had actually taken a bunch of pics by this time, but they turned out like total crap and were hangover blurry...so I trashed them...sorry folk. After the first SA-2 launch, the southern 2 ship were targeted at least 4 more times by the SAM battery...the 2 ship that I was part of came in from the east and were loaded out to strike the field with ASM's and defensive AA missiles.
Fairly quickly we were bounced upon by a 4 ship of Mig-23 coming from the northern ridgeline...my flight lead kept focused on the field to get the ASM's off and I broke right to engage and block the Iraqi aircraft...this was fairly successful as Serge was able to loose off all 4 ASM's...
...and raise some hell on the airfield...one flightline of attack helo's taken out...and 1 fuel farm reduced to smoking ruble...well done.
At this point I really didn't get any discernable shots...the game ended in partial victory for Iranians as we had destroyed 2 fuel bunkers and 2 1/2 flightlines...the ammo bunker survived...as well, we were able to splash about 4-5 aircraft, however the cost was fairly high as most of the strike aircraft and a couple of late comers were downed or damaged.
As you can see by the furball below, the resistance was heavy with little 23's buzzy about the much larger Phantoms...
Take care.
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