TacOps AAR Part 7: Sound and Fury

0810 to 0819

This bit opened with another helicopter going down to an airstrike and some artillery fire that either missed or did little damage.

I lost my final Chinook at 0813 and so I had very little idea of where Red, who was spreading out, actually was. I did think that he would drive down the road at the bottom of the map and had an anti-tank unit hidden in the wooded area in grid square 1100, just waiting to get LOS on some BTRs and ruin their day.

Three Blue Airstrikes at 0816 knocked out a few troops and another BTR, but very little happened in three turns after that – certainly no casualties. In summary, one could call this period, to quote Macbeth, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Well, except for the loss of the final helicopter in this battle.

When they arrive, they arrive... TOAW III

A large number of high-skilled US units are starting to carve a deep salient in my flank. While I'm still winning, I might not be for much longer...

After Pearl Harbor - Part Seven: So Near To Defeat

Part One

I've done six previous posts on the subject of the Japanese campaigns in the six months or so after Pearl Harbor and learned quite a bit in the process. So I'm going to list a few thoughts and reflections that have come to mind during all of this.

1. The forces of the Allies were seriously under-prepared and ill-equipped. The British had already been fighting a war for two years thousands of miles away. Not only were their resources and attention focussed there, it would take a couple of months to get reinforcements into theatre in any significant numbers - remember that most Allied convoys to Egypt would have to go the long way round Africa due to the Axis naval threat in the Mediterranean and that's just part of the journey. However, none of this excuses the multi-level disaster that was Singapore.
2. The Japanese got seriously far in their empire acquisition in a relatively period of time. Berlin to the outskirts of Baku is just shy of 2,000 miles as the crow flies. Tokyo to Singapore, not even the furthest the Japanese went, is about 3,300 and it's almost 600 from south Vietnam to the latter. Japan got from Indochina to Singapore in under two months - through pretty thick jungle. This says something about Japanese martial skill.
3. It was only really luck and good intelligence that stopped the Japanese assault in its tracks. If Nimitz hadn't found out that the Japanese were going to target Midway - or Yorktown had gone up earlier than it actually did, it is hard to see the Japanese not taking that island. The United States at worst would have sued for peace.
4. The Japanese were just as barbarous as the Germans in the way that they fought their wars. Some of the things that I read during the course of the research for this shocked me. The Nazis generally did not leave dead British soldiers hanging on the sides of roads or force them to engage in brutal manual labour. Of course, the Japanese did not exterminate ten million people in concentration camps and ghettoes, but some of their other stuff was just as brutal i.e. using prisoners for chemical warfare experiments. The world is well rid of both of those regimes.
5. The environs in the Pacific were worse in many ways than in Europe. I watched The Pacific a while back and the unpleasant environments that war was fought in are clear to see - hot, sweaty and damp. Sanitation was a real problem - especially for Americans and Brits who weren't necessarily used to it.
6. Morale must have been pretty bad for the Allies in the early months of 1942. How many Allied victories were there from 1939 to mid-1942? A couple at best. In the meantime, the Axis powers won victory after victory. With the U-boats wreaking havoc on Allied shipping, I can see why some people were thinking about a negotiated peace.

I hope that you have found this series as interesting and enlightening as I did while I've researched it. I also hope that you've got a deeper appreciation of what the men and women in that conflict went through - because at the end of the day, we're the ones who have to pass the stories and ensure something like this never happens again.

I know I have.

TacOps PBEM AAR Part Six: Big Targets for Rotor-wings

0800 to 0809

The BTR series of armoured personnel carriers are designed to be “battle taxis”, bringing soldiers to the battlefield or transporting them long distance. While they provide good protection against helicopter fire, they are not tanks. As was about to be demonstrated.

At 0800, my choppers unleashed a large salvo of Hellfires and nearly all of them struck home. A Red aircraft did kill one of the helicopters, but the losses were pretty much all Coyote’s. I scored just under 496 attrition points just in that turn and nearly another 650 the following one as three ICM (that’s armour-penetrating) artillery strikes went dead on target, followed by more Hellfires, although I did lose an AH-1 to an SA-16 MANPADS when I got too close.

I was deliberately targeting those BTRs – I knew that if they were destroyed, there were infantry units that were either dead or unable to cross the map as they bailed out (in fact they were coming out to further fire, which cut some of them down – in a way, I feel sorry for the poor guys). In fact, four red units (two BTRs and their AT4 teams inside) actually fled the map at 0803 – I don’t know why Coyote did that.

If the whole battle carried on like this, I would have won easily. I was nailing Red with artillery fire and he wasn’t getting any on me. I even pulled off a successful airstrike. Watching the replay, the devastation I was causing is all too clear. Red’s force was reduced by over half in nine minutes, from a brigade of APCs and Motor Rifle Troops to a few of APCs with some scattered (and probably bewildered) foot-sloggers. I eliminated no less than 46 of the BTR-60s. The situation can be seen below.

But all this came at a price. I lost all but two of my helicopters in the process – losing transport and observation capability I wasn’t going to get back. I’d actually conducted much of the artillery bombardment semi-blind; I was going to have to go the rest of the battle like this.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2012

One would like to think that, sixty-seven years after the liberation of Auschwitz, prejudice and hatred on the basis of religion were a thing of the past.

Sadly, it isn't. Many people still haven't learned.

Nope. Still don't believe it. (Grand Review: 'Above Suspicion: Silent Scream')

My review of the previous Above Suspicion can be found here. Most of it still remains true a year later - although having seen Kelly Reilly in the first Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movie, I don't think bad acting is the cause.

It's quite simply the fact that DI Anna Travis is so bad a character that even a RSC alumni (are there many good female roles in Shakespeare apart from Lady Macbeth?) couldn't lift her from the dregs of woefully bad. In the world of Above Suspicion, she is being considered for accelerated promotion. Quite frankly, I wouldn't trust this woman with a Safer Neighbourhoods Team. This is quite frankly one of the few shows that is better when its lead isn't in the scene. Again, the make-up is awful - way too much mascara [Your only qualification on the subject of good make-up is the possession of a Y chromosome, Silent, although some might say that's enough - Ed.]

Shall we discuss the way in Travis makes an idiot out of herself in this one? How about the one where she goes to the house of a murder suspect alone and so gets beaten up as a result - then waltzes straight back into work while still on painkillers? What part of "go home" does this woman not understand?

Silent Scream's plot isn't that brilliant either. Film star gets murdered and dark secrets come out. Same old, same old. Been done a thousand times and mostly far better. There's a subplot about DCS Langton finding out who told his superiors about the big error last time (where the main suspect got into the incident room by pretending to be an FBI agent), which resulted in him being passed over for promotion. Quite frankly, it's derivative and clichéd - I'd prefer not to discuss this. It's a shame as it was promising to begin with.

So, we've got another poor ITV crime drama with an appalling lead character and a bargain basement plot. No change there then, which is a deep pity.



4/10. Please don't waste any more money on this, ITV.

TacOps PBEM Part Five: Completing Phase One

0740 to 0759

The reason that I’m doing these two posts together is that not a massive amount happened here – in terms of volume of fire at any rate.

At 0742, I found the last Red Unit on Objective E and attacked it with a helicopter, a mortar and airstrike – only the former doing any good. REDFOR dropped a load of artillery on an area with nothing actually in it and an MLRS strike on an area that actually did. Finally, three helicopters and an infantry squad from one of those finished off the final infantry squad.

REDFOR now had “Nothing to do for the next 14 minutes except pre-plot artillery and use harassing fires to slow [my] redeployment”. I spent that time preparing for the reinforcements for Red that would come from the eastern edge of the map, moving my Cobras to cover the main roads that Coyote would likely use to ingress his forces.

The turns moved rapidly, with only my movement – the remaining Red forces on the map stayed put and lowered their engagement ranges down to 110 metres to avoid being detected by me. A Red airstrike at 0755 killed a few helicopters and I lost a mortar unit at 0759.

At the same time, some of Red’s BTR units arrived on the map and got a taste of Hellfire. A taste they would never forget.

Press TV loses UK licence

Good riddance.

After Pearl Harbor Part Six - The Second Battle: Midway

The Japanese aircraft carrier Hiryu maneuvers to avoid bombs dropped by USAAF Boeing B-17E Flying Fortress bombers

Part One

The Battle of Midway from 4 June to 7 June 1942 is arguably the most important naval battle in the Pacific War. With one fell swoop from the forces of two US carriers, Japan lost three of its aircraft carriers - a fourth would follow later. The United States only lost one. Japan's naval supremacy in the Pacific entered a downward path that they would never recover from.

As the story of Midway is well known, I'm going to take a different tack on this post. I'm going to discuss carrier operations c. 1942 with some of my computer game experiences helping in the analysis of this. I find that war games can be very educational in this regard.

Pre-launch

I don't imagine the air conditioning on US Navy warships was all that good back in 1942. I guess key components could be kept cool, but for many you're basically in a large metal can that has the sun shining on it the whole time. In the Pacific in mid-summer it wouldn't be pleasant.

It'd also be cramped. Sailors have long faced a lack of privacy and a tiny living area - sometimes having to "hot-bunk", which I really wouldn't want to do.

Take off

Launching from an aircraft carrier wouldn't be all that hard. Just push the throttle forward to maximum power and use the wind speed generated by a combination of the carrier's own engines and the prevailing wind to get airborne. Of course, if your engine didn't work properly, you could drop into the sea, facing the chance of either being run over by your own carrier or drowning trapped in your aircraft.

I've never had any particular problems with carrier take-off in the Battlefield games at all (it's a bit harder in Il-2) - in fact it's easy in all walks of life to "take off". The question is staying airborne and landing safely.

Transit and return from target

The ocean is a big place and finding a small ship is not easy, especially when you don't have radar. Even then, you might misidentify your target in some form.

In addition, a spotter plane that found an aircraft carrier would need to call the report in. You couldn't do it like today with an encrypted satellite phone and your own voice. I may be wrong, but for distance transmissions you were having to rely on Morse - which takes time to send. It was not unheard of for a spotting aircraft to be destroyed before it get a contact report off.

Navigation was a lot harder back then as well. You were basically relying on a compass, a stopwatch and sometimes the stars - no real landmarks at sea. A small error could quickly mount up and result in you missing your target by miles. Or even worse, failing to find your carrier before you ran out of fuel. This can be demonstrated in particular by the early performance of Bomber Command over Germany where the vast majority of bombs didn't even get within five miles of their target. That's a big miss.

Attacking the target

No fancy stand-off weaponry back then. There were two basic ways to attack a carrier - dive-bombing or torpedoing.

Dive-bombing basically involves swooping down on the carrier and releasing your bombs so that they hit the deck. This is harder than it sounds. I've had enough problems in Battlefield trying to get bombs to drop accurately onto target - I usually just do lay-down and hope, with little success so far.

You've got to come in at a steep angle against a moving ship that is shooting at you. With a lot of guns - US carriers had a large number of AAA guns on board up until the missile age. One hit in the right place and you're either going to explode or not be able to pull out of the dive.

Torpedo attacks involved coming in straight and low, so the torpedo (which ran straight) would not go straight down when it hit the water. Again, you've got flak coming at you from the ship, with some small arms fire for added "effect". A hit here and you have little room for manoeuvre before plunging into the sea.

Landing

"Trapping" on a carrier is regarded as one of the most scary things to do in aviation, especially at night. You have to find the carrier in the first place and then come in at the right angle and approach to catch one of the four arrestor wires on a deck moving in three dimensions, which will bring you to a screeching halt. There were none of the optical landing systems back then - they would be invented after the war. You were reliant on eyesight and the landing officers waving you in. Come in too low and a "ramp strike" was a distinct possibility or having your landing gear collapse on you.

If you miss the wires today, you just slam the engines on afterburner and go around - as the landing area is at an angle to the rest of the ship to prevent a "bolter" from hitting aircraft parked forward and allowing for a safe fly-off. Back during the war, you'd either hit the aircraft, hit a safety net and have your aircraft badly damaged, or go off the side.

I've never made an arrested carrier landing in any game, so I can't comment on this.

Leaving your aircraft

Ditching from an aircraft over the sea is not something that any pilot would ever want to do. If you landed close to an enemy carrier, you were going to end up a POW or dead - considering the Japanese, some might have preferred the latter. If you landed in the open ocean and managed to avoid drowning by being pulled under by your own chute if you failed to release it on landing (a distinct possibility if you were injured), you had to hope someone found you...

Conclusion

It's a simple one really - it takes skill and bravery to be a carrier aviator. I don't think I could do it.

SOPA and PIPA shelved

Good. They were badly written and too vague.

Now I would suggest that media companies, both Internet and mainstream, work together on a better bill. Online piracy is a real problem and needs handling - but not at the expense of freedom of speech.

Sherlock - "The Reichenbach Fall"

I don't think this is a spoiler, so here we go.

How on earth did he do that?

TacOps PBEM Part Four - Hide and Seek

0730 to 0739

If you're not willing to shell your own position, you're not willing to win.

One of my favourite web comics, Schlock Mercenary, revealed another maxim from its “Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective” – number 20, the above mentioned gem (my calendar for this year is the Schlock one featuring the first 12). There was a fair bit of that going on in this battle, even if it wasn’t intentional.

I cleared Objective B at 0732, thanks to the Hummers arriving and dealing with the foot sloggers rather than the helicopter. In that same term, a Red MLRS attack killed three of my soldiers and cost me another unit. Nasty things – have been since the Second World War…

I cleared C two minutes later, leaving Coyote with only three squads on the entire map, only one of which was actually parked in an objective – Objective E. To try and find the remaining holdout, my choppers circled around over E and then two (one not over E) were bagged by a pair of Floggers conducting airstrikes [So they’re good for something – Ed.]

Somehow I managed to miss a unit less than three hundred metres away from me from a helicopter…

SOPA and PIPA

So, Wikipedia are doing this "blackout" tomorrow in protest against PIPA (SOPA being pretty much dead now), a piece of proposed legislation in the US Senate that, they argue, will severely damage the freedom of the internet.

I support efforts to stop online piracy - it does damage the incomes of a lot of decent people who deserve to profit from their creativity. PIPA however seems to be going a bit far - shutting down a site solely based on an accusation isn't justice and the proprietors need to have the right to defend themselves. I trust that these media companies will at least ask for the removal of offending content first - it will ultimately damage them otherwise - and courts will be sensible in this. The United States government, of whatever political hue, is a strong guardian of freedom of speech - there are a lot of things they could have done pretty easily in the last twenty years and haven't, whereas many other states would do them without blinking.

Speaking of "freedom of speech" (which will still exist on the internet), I wonder if people are going to protest against DNS shutdowns in Iran and China? A violation is a violation regardless of jurisdiction.

Plans for 2012

Much later than planned, here is what I intend to blog about for 2012:

• Something for the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War - not a massive series though.
• A Grand Review of Borgen. Also with Doctor Who scheduled for autumn, I'll be doing an odd TV episode - whatever takes my fancy.
• I'll be doing Above Suspicion: Silent Scream, just like I did Deadly Intent last year. No, I still can't take Detective Inspector Anna Travis seriously.
• I'll definitely be reviewing Skyfall. I may also get one or two DVDs out and review some of the older Bond films.
• One big series this year - the North African campaign, focussing on El Alamein.
• The US presidential election naturally.
• Pentecost or another Christian festival.

These may all change, of course.

TOAW III - eventually you run into a problem

So, I'm eight turns in to my invasion of South Korea.

 So, the forces of Kim il-Sung have run a considerable way into South Korea, but have now run into problems.

Firstly, the Americans are starting to arrive in numbers and have managed to halt my advance to a certain extent, throwing me back in others.

Secondly, I lack decent air coverage.

Thirdly, with the main railway line to the west of the country broken and only one lot of rail engineers, I can't bring massive lots of reinforcements down and my supplies are naturally effected.

Finally, that's a dangerous looking weak bit of my line to the east.

So, I guess this - or slightly further back - is going to be my temporary stop line.

D'ni sim now open at Phoenix Roleplaying!

D’ni sim* now open! If you’re as big a fan as I am of the Myst series of games and books, then you’re sure to love this sim!

D’ni: Infinite Ages is not one sim, but a collection of active and prospective sims based in the Myst Multiverse on Phoenix Roleplaying.

Currently D’ni: Infinite Ages – Prison Break is open and accepting new character applications (for a list of all proposed D’ni: Infinite Ages sims to date, please visit this thread)

Prison Break

Criminals, undesirables, and other evil sorts were often imprisoned by the D'ni in Prison Books - books designed to hold an individual indefinitely, giving them no ability to leave. Suddenly and inexplicably the D'ni vault containing all of its prison books was found open, books scattered across the floor, and their occupants no longer visible in the Linking Panel. Where did they go? How did they escape? What will they do now that they're free?

Phoenix Roleplaying is a multi-genre, international simming community. We welcome new players and invite you to play a part of our growing community. Want to see a genre or sim we don’t yet have? We welcome your ideas! Sign up now!

*Sim/Simming: See Simming League

Disclaimer: Content on Phoenix Roleplaying may include adult themes. View our rules here

TacOps PBEM Part 3: The Lull

0720-0729

Things got a little quitter – we had two minutes of non-lethal artillery fire from Red as I held off my own artillery until I got better target data (i.e. actually found someone). When I did start, I dropped 155mm shells on a part of Objective E that I now realise was completely empty.

Much of REDFOR’s initial force was gone – all he had were a few squads of straight-leg infantry. To quote Gary’s own notes at 0728, when ¾ of his force had gone:

I've been getting good artillery resupply but I'm unable to see large sections of the map now to spot the most lucrative targets.  Have to target some likely locations now so the ammo does not go to waste, especially the multiple rocket launchers.

Lack of ability to see key parts of the map was a key feature in this game for both of us. Of course, it is a key feature for much of warfare – remember pre-Overlord that the Germans were completely unable to get reconnaissance photos of the area where the real invasion force was forming up because their aircraft kept not making it back – so were duped by the fake force.

At 0728, I lost two Hummers to RPG fire as I found the remaining two man unit in Objective D. It barely lasted 90 seconds as an AH-1 finished it off. Two down, three to go.

TacOps 4 AAR - Part 2

Part One

0710 to 0719

This was a time filled with artillery, cannon and machine gun fire. It is surprising how much the accuracy of small arms fire falls off at distance – I remember the reason why the Russians developed the Dragunov support rifle as opposed to a full-blown sniper rifle is that most of their Second World War engagements were at distances of under 400 metres.

An airstrike at 071145 finished off a couple of the infantry units in square 1004 – it was one of the few successful airstrikes I would have in this battle. ZSU-23-4s: nightmares on six legs. I also lost some of my Hummers to RPG fire – it’s clear why the Americans are moving away from them as they were never meant to operate in an urban environment. While the artillery was a nuisance as it kept suppressing some of my units, it didn’t do a lot of damage.

The cannon fire and machine gun fire from my helicopters slowly began to take its toll on the OPFOR infantry – perhaps I should have gotten a bit closer. The rocket pods made a lot of noise but did little to the foot soldier. These and the artillery focussed on Objective E, getting the enemy presence down there to a mere six soldiers by close of 0719. Objective D actually only had two soldiers, but I had difficulty even finding them.

The casualty level was still a bit lopsided – 27% to 3% - but it was getting better.

TOAW III - Korean advance

Bought TOAW III this week and am currently playing the Communist forces in the tutorial scenario. That's me in Red. While most of the UN forces aren't visible, I can see why at this point (16 July 1950), the UN got thrown back so far. It's not often remembered that the DPRK controlled 90% of South Korea at one point in the war.

Borgen initial thoughts

Have watched the first two episodes of this and am rather impressed - it reminds me of The West Wing only with more jokes. Got to extend a warm thank you to the BBC for buying this - it's another reason for the licence fee.