Danger Zones and Dogfights: A Hornet Leader AAR (Mission 1 Complete!)

[Windigo]

LOL, my vid for my role is too too easy.

[mirth]

^nice

[BanzaiCat]

002 Home Base
The VFX-01 Squadron ("GrogHogs") was formed as a preliminary test bed for a new naval aviation concept: DROWN (Dedicated Response, Optimal War: Naval). The idea was to create a single entity squadron with mission-capable airframes in one group that could take on any role of offensive or defensive missions, primarily to be used off of aircraft carriers, and primarily used to eliminate sea and ground targets (or, TARGET - Threat Area Rapid Ground Elimination of Targets).

The Navy chose the test bed of this squadron to be the USS Saratoga (CV-60).



At 81,101 long tons full and with a compliment of 552 officers and 4988 men, the Saratoga was a mainstay of the US Navy's Atlantic defense strategy versus any Soviet attack. If the balloon went up and the Warsaw Pact invaded western Europe, Saratoga and her squadrons would be on the front line of the sea war. A very choice location from which to launch counterstrikes versus the Warsaw Pact, but also very much in harm's way. Saratoga's other squadrons had their own tasks, of course, but VFX-01 was the first to be intrinsically capable of multi-role efforts along a paradigm ISO9000 delineation axis of threat elimination parallel within a sphere of conflict.

[BanzaiCat]

003 VFX-01
Despite the grandiose concept of DROWN and TARGET, VFX-01 did not attract the best pilots in the Navy. In fact, several commands saw this as an opportunity to sluff off some of their poorest-performing crews and send them to what several derided as the "Navy's old age home."

Indeed, many of the pilots and crews that arrived on Saratoga on November 30, 1985, were pushing maximum age limits, based on the Navy's OLDFOGEY plan (Old Lateral Defense Forthwith Offensive Ground Elimination of Youth). While the concept of VFX-01 was indeed a solid and possibly highly flexible idea, it rapidly became a joke. Many pilots were almost too old to fly, but several were far too young, or too inexperienced, making the GrogHogs squadron a motley collection of old farts, young heathens, and global warming pundits.

However, something interesting happened. The VFX-01 squadron, fully aware of their low-level turd-surf status among their peers, took to their tasks with GUSTO (Great Underboobage Staring and Targeting Often). They gelled quickly as a unit, outperforming older and well-established squadrons, rarely receiving landing grades lower than OK and having the highest instances of OK Underline performances in the entire Atlantic Fleet. The old joke might have made them out to be long in the tooth, but those long teeth were proving to be as much a fan of cavities as mirth on a Saturday night. Or something.

The VFX-01 concept was, despite all reasoning, becoming something of a success, but its lifespan was short; within four months of becoming operational, the Navy concluded that the VFX-01 plan was pretty much TURTLE (Turd Underoos, Raw Tampons, Little Else) and began plans to break up the squadron by mid-summer 1986, returning many of the pilots and crews to obscure stations and, very likely, non-flight statuses.

That is, until history took a turn for the worse...on June 10, 1986.

On that day, VFX-01 was looking at ending its mission at the end of that month. The training schedule was already winding down, and the pilots and crews listed in VFX-01 already were shaved down to a bare-bones core group that could still technically take to the air for missions, but everyone more or less knew their time was over.

On June 10, 1986, VFX-01 was comprised of the following:

Air Superiority Flight
Airborne Rifles ("WEDGE"), flying an F/A-18C Hornet.
PanzersEast ("KERMIT"), flying an F-14 Tomcat.
JudgeDredd ("OGRE"), flying an F-14 Tomcat.
Barthheart ("WOLF"), flying an F/A-18C Hornet.

Strike Flight
SilentDisapprovalRobot ("MULLET"), flying an A-6 Intruder.
DammitCarl! ("SHIFTY"), flying an A-6 Intruder.
Besilarius ("WASH"), flying an A-7 Corsair.
Staggerwing ("PSYCHO"), flying an A-7 Corsair.

Support Flight
mirth ("MOON"), flying an EA-6B Prowler.
Windigo ("EYES"), commanding and piloting an E-2C Hawkeye.

These ten pilots were all that remained of VFX-01, previously of 24 aircraft and now down to a mere 10.

Those 10 were going to be tested quickly, because on June 10, 1986, that balloon did go up in Europe.

[BanzaiCat]

As you can all tell, I'm not even going to try to be legitimate when it comes to US Navy conventions or lingo. Any Naval personnel reading this (coughTooncescough) will laugh at me anyway, so I might as well make everyone laugh at me.

More to come in the next day or so. Thanks for reading, folks.

[mirth]

As you can all tell, I'm not even going to try to be legitimate when it comes to US Navy conventions or lingo. Any Naval personnel reading this (coughTooncescough) will laugh at me anyway, so I might as well make everyone laugh at me.

Write him into the narrative as "Watch Commander Toonces" and he won't care :P

[besilarius]

There is always a wing wiper on a carrier.
Watching for any system that is loitering with intent.

[Dammit Carl!]

Noice.

Strike flight in a Intruder; mirrors my time as a A&O equp. operator in Army CE platoons = we make holes where needed.

Short lifespan = widow with a new Lexus and a young, hot, boyfriend   O0

[BanzaiCat]

004 Pre-Game Stuff

I've been vacillating as to whether or not I should give a lot of in-game explanations, as a full review for this game is due from me for GrogHeads' front page. Do I just go for the straight narrative, or mix it up?

I've chosen to mix it up. Some of you might not even read the review. So, if I repeat anything in the review that you read here, please have patience for both as you slog your way through either.

Hornet Leader gives you something called SO (Special Option) Points. Anyone familiar with Phantom Leader or Thunderbolt/Apache Leader will immediately recognize what this is. These SOs are used to purchase aircraft, special weapons (usually more advanced/effective ones), and other things. In this WWIII scenario, for the Medium campaign I've chosen, I get 36 SOs to spend.

Since I've selected two A-7 Corsairs to join the squadron, that's an additional 16 SOs (+8 for each one for a Medium campaign), giving me 52 to spend. The aircraft I have selected otherwise do not cost SOs nor do they grant me any further bonuses. (Some campaigns, notably ones that take place post-1986, like the year this one is based in, will allow more advanced aircraft and will therefore cost SOs to employ. Not so here.)

I could choose to promote a Pilot one skill level at the cost of 12 SOs immediately, before the campaign begins. I'm choosing not to. For one, I'm still getting the hang of this game and don't want to screw up - I'd rather have a plethora of pinatas, as the quote goes. Also, the only one that probably should be promoted - Windy's "EYES" E-2C Hawkeye - isn't really necessary. I may be very wrong about that later, but the E-2C is not designed to go into harm's way. At least, not in this game. I intend to do my best to protect that aircraft so putting it at 'Newbie' seems to make more sense than granting that status to a strike or air-to-air pilot.

The sequence of play overall is pretty simple, though there's a lot to each step. I will probably go into greater detail in the first few Missions, then will skip most of the detail later once you get the idea of how the game works. I'll just have to play it by ear.

Now, there is a rule I'm not a fan of. It tells of how normally, any unused ordinance is returned to your counter pool. That's all fine and good, except when it comes to Special Weapons, which cost SOs. (Standard weapons do not cost SOs.) It seems to me if you spend SOs to buy a Harpoon or a Phoenix, if you fly back to your carrier, that weapon is still going to be available and not be taken away. There IS a rule on DVG's site (images.dvg.com/www.dvg.com/hlsoc.pdf - click that link and you'll automatically download a PDF of this optional rule) where you can spend 15, 30, or 45 SOs to be allowed to keep any Special Weapons (15 for Short, 30 for Medium, and 45 for Long campaigns). If you invoke this rule, you get the SOs back for any unused ordinance after any mission. I understand this is for play balance, and while my instinct is to completely ignore it and use this optional rule - and NOT pay the SO cost it is asking for, as that seems rather steep - I'm going to go ahead and play by the 'normal' rules, so if I don't use Special Weapons, I'm going to lose the weapons when I get back.

Again, it doesn't make realistic sense, but from a play balance perspective, it would be wise not to mess with that for my AAR. And it does make sense from that latter perspective.

I'm going to try to run a mission sometime today.  O0

[Airborne Rifles]

Wait...you mean there's a place on this site, some sort of "front page"-like location, where longer thingies get posted?

[BanzaiCat]

Brant-rage in 3...2...1...

[mirth]

Wait...you mean there's a place on this site, some sort of "front page"-like location, where longer thingies get posted?

It's just a myth.

[Windigo]

Brant-rage in 3...2...1...

Coffee spew....   and so unexpected too. LOL

[bob48]

Damn - missed this thread somehow. B_C, I'd like to be a reserve if any places come free.

[BanzaiCat]

Oh...I'm sure they will, Bob.  >:D