Northern Fury 10.2: Anteater's Revenge - a CMANO AAR

Started by Airborne Rifles, August 01, 2017, 07:55:21 PM

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Sir Slash

Gonna need a shit-load of new screen doors in that place.  :bd:
"Take a look at that". Sgt. Wilkerson-- CMBN. His last words after spotting a German tank on the other side of a hedgerow.

Airborne Rifles

The survivor of the two F-117s that had made the failed run at Keflavik earlier in the night was now refueled from a KC-135 over the Denmark Strait and ready to be re-tasked before continuing on to England. Both the leadership aboard the Commando Solo and the pilot were shaken by the failure of the black jets to evade detection against the advanced Soviet radar systems, and so all decided to repurpose the Nighthawk's ordnance load of two AGM-65 Mavericks to the naval strike role. The two Soviet warships cruising about twenty miles off the western tip of Keflavik's Reykjanes peninsula were acting as a SAM trap, complicating the geometry of the already complex strikes going into Iceland. They needed to be dealt with, the 27th TFW commander knew, but one of the vessels was a Sovremenny-class destroyer with very potent anti-air armament. Two P-3Cs from Gander, Newfoundland were inbound with Harpoon missiles to strike the Soviet ships, but they would need all the help they could get to overcome the potent SA-N-7 missiles in the destroyer's magazines.

The pilot of the F-117 brought his aircraft in from the west, shrouded in a haze of electronic noise from several electronic warfare aircraft, including an EF-111 that was escorting the first F-111 strike towards Reykjavik. Using his IR targeting pod, the pilot located the two vessels and locked the seekers for his two missiles onto the smaller one. The attack jet's bomb bay doors snapped open and two missiles dropped out in quick successions. The Mavericks' rocket motors ignited as the pilot banked his jet back to the west for another refueling and streaked downwards.

The Soviet ships had been operating under EMCON, trying to remain hidden until a large American strike was within range of their missiles. Their crews had been relying upon the radars at Keflavik to keep them appraised of approaching threats. In the chaos of the CALCM strike at the airbase, no one had informed the navy that they might not be the foremost thought in the minds of Keflavik's defenders any more. So the American missiles streaked towards the Sovremenny, unnoticed until almost too late.

An alert lookout on the Sovremenny heard the scream of the igniting rocket engines and shouted a warning. The ship's sensors energized just in time to detect the two missiles nosing into their terminal dives. One of the AK630 CIWS, operating under automatic control, rotated and spewed a stream of 30mm shells towards the first Maverick. One shell connected, exploding the American missile just a hundred meters from the destroyer. The second bored in behind the first, threading between two streams of 30mm fires to impact the part of the superstructure that formed both the single smokestack and the ships hangar. Flaming aviation fuel exploded across the water, and the Sovremenny suddenly sat in the middle of a halo of yellow reflected light on the black sea of the Denmark Strait.

Flowing south of the besieged Soviet ships, the next American SEAD package, two F-16s and a quartet of F-4Gs armed with HARMs, along with another section of F-16s armed with AGM-65s, descended to wave top level for their final approach towards Keflavik. The pilots of this group, like the previous two SEAD packages that had tested Keflavik's defenses, was using the ridge along the southern to mask their approach. This time, though, the wild weasel pilots felt confident that they could overwhelm the weakened Soviet defenses.

The American jets reached the southern shore and launched their HARMs up and over the ridge. Most of the AGM-88s were programmed to seek out the last remaining SA-10 that had survived the CALCM onslaught, but the Americans felt confident enough now that four of the HARMs' seeker heads were tuned to seek out the radar emissions of the short-ranged SA-22 Tunguska systems arrayed around the airbase. The twelve HARMs streaked off their launch rails and lofted up and over the ridgeline.

Following close behind the anti-radiation missiles, the two Maverick-armed Falcons also crested the ridge. The pilots immediately began using their FLIR's to locate targets near the runway to the northwest. Missiles exploded out of the surviving Soviet launchers to stem the assault, targeting both the American HARMs and the F-16s, but this time there just simply weren't enough. Three HARMs exploded over the last SA-10 battery, silencing the only remaining long-range defense of the island, while three more wrecked SA-22 gun-missile systems on the south side of the runway. However, this did not happen before one of the Maverick-armed F-16 fell to one of the last SA-10s to impact before its battery's guidance radar went dark.

The surviving F-16 pilot quickly pickled his two AGM-65s against the first target he could find, in this case a ZSU-23 gun system, and then banked his jet back south to get out of danger. He would need to push his jet hard. Just then the controlling AWACS over the Denmark Strait sent out a call to all strikers that two Su-27 Flankers were taking off from Keflavik, and two of the dangerous, long-armed MiG-31s were just then taking off from Reykjavik further north.

Sir Slash

"Take a look at that". Sgt. Wilkerson-- CMBN. His last words after spotting a German tank on the other side of a hedgerow.