Northern Fury 9.2: Changing of the Guard - a CMANO AAR

Started by Airborne Rifles, October 01, 2016, 03:13:42 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

mirth

Quote from: Sir Slash on October 24, 2016, 11:08:07 AM
"Hello Moscow. This is the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean calling to let you know we have your submarines and you can pick them up whenever you want".  ;D

The Hunt for Dead October.
"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus

Sir Slash

Ohh. That's a good one. How about, "Run Silent, Run Deep---- Cause You're Dead"? OK. Not that funny. Maybe, "The Enemy Below- 60,000 Feet"?
"Take a look at that". Sgt. Wilkerson-- CMBN. His last words after spotting a German tank on the other side of a hedgerow.

mirth

"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus

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.

Airborne Rifles

As the American fighters flew north and the Russians south, the situation south of Iceland began to crystallize on the screens of the controllers aboard the E-2Cs. Only a few Su-27s remained for the Americans to deal with, but a CAP of dangerous Mig-31s still remained to support them. These turned south to engage as the Soviets' own EW aircraft crews detected the approaching radars emitting from the oncoming Tomcats and Hornets.   The Americans were advancing with the jets from the two carriers abreast, Vinson's birds on the left and Enterprise's on the right.

Behind the Soviet fighters, a regiment of twenty Su-24 Fencers had formed up over Iceland's southeast peninsula and were now coming south, each carrying a pair of either AS-17 Krypton anti-radiation or AS-18 Kazoo anti-ship missiles. Their forty missiles was far more than enough to overwhelm the depleted defenses of the carrier group, and while the smaller missiles may not have the same massive punch as the big AS-4s, they were nonetheless dangerous.

The first of the opposing aircraft to make contact and engage were the fresh flights of Enterprise F-14s and Soviet Mig-31 CAP out of Reykjavik with their big long-ranged Phoenix and AA-6 missiles, respectively. Both sides were supported by jammer aircraft, which decreased the accuracy of the missiles as they arced past each other going north and south. Those aircraft targeted on both sides twisted and turned to avoid the incoming weapons. Most survived, but three Mig-31s and one F-14 were smashed by shrapnel from the exploding warheads, sending planes and crew tumbling toward the dark ocean below. By then the Enterprise's AMRAAM-armed F/A-18s had closed to within range of the Soviet interceptors, neutralizing the bigger Soviet jets' advantage in range. AIM-120s flew off the rails of the nimble American fighters and shot forward towards the five remaining Foxhounds at the same time as a second volley of AA-6s separated from the Soviet aircraft.

While the Enterprise pilots tangled with the Soviet CAP, the regiment of Fencers continued relentlessly south, closing the distance with the maximum range release point for their missiles. Just a few minutes more and they would be able to launch and turn back for the safety of the Iceland defenses.     

But it was not to be for the Russian pilots. While Enterprise's battered air group completed the destruction of the Russian CAP, losing another F/A-18 in the process, the eight F-14s from Vinson swept in from the southwest, the Tomcats' pilots and RIOs launching their full loads of AIM-54s as quickly as they could lock onto the Soviet attack jets. In seconds dozens of American missiles were in the air and the first were just nosing down into the formation of Su-24s. The Soviet pilots screamed to each other over the radio net, trying to determine where this devastating attack was coming from. While the Phoenixes were still dropping into the Soviet formation, the American pilots, who had now closed to Sparrow range, began loosing their medium range weapons at yet more of the Fencers.

By now the Russian formation was in tatters as those jets that had so far survived the American missiles jinked and dove to evade yet more. The AIM-7s now arrived, tearing even more holes in the Soviet ranks, and then the Tomcats were in among the Fencers, contrails from AIM-9 Sidewinders crisscrossing the sky as the line of American jets passed through flock of Soviet jets from west to east. The Soviet pilots, though, were not completely defenseless. One of the Soviet pilots managed to lock a short-ranged air-to-air missile onto the hot tailpipes of a Tomcat and shatter the American jet with a snapshot.

But this was a solitary victory in the unfolding disaster. After the line of Tomcats swept through, the rest of the Enterprise's group of fighters, fresh from dispatching the last of the Mig-31s, swept in from the south, AMRAAMs, Sparrows, and Sidewinders smashing Sukhoi after Sukhoi. A pair of surviving Flankers tried to intervene and managed to down another Hornet, but then fell themselves to missiles from multiple American aircraft in a twisting dogfight. Both groups of American jets pulled sharp turns and swept back into the surviving attack jets, some of the American pilots now down to the ammunition in their Vulcan cannons. One more pass by the Americans and the sky was empty of Soviet jets.

As the last broken Fencer splashed into the icy waters of the north Atlantic below, the American fighters turned back south for the skies of the carrier they had just fought, and sacrificed some of their comrades, to save. 

mirth

"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus


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.

mirth

"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus

Sir Slash

I thought the Soviet Migs and Sukhoi's were from the Russian Army. But the navy will work too. Right now the sharks of the Atlantic are saying Grace for this Bounty from Heaven.
"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

For the sharks, my guess is that the Russian pilots taste like vodka and cigarettes, but that's just a guess  ;)

Airborne Rifles

And the conclusion:


The aerial and submarine threat to Enterprise had been defeated, but the threat to the Vinson group, steaming at full speed west of Labrador to relieve Big E, was just beginning. Throughout the night the Vinson group continued on its northeasterly course as the Enterprise steamed south and then southwest, away from the Soviet threat on Iceland and towards the Monongahela replenishment group. Vinson fighters continued to augment the CAP over Enterprise, which had expended the last of its AIM-54s and AIM-120s in the final defeat of the Fencer strike hours before.

To the north, the Russian air group was licking its wounds. An entire regiment of Su-24s and most of a regiment of Su-27s had been lost trying to overcome the Enterprise's defenses. They had come within a hair's breadth of succeeding, though the surviving Soviets didn't know how close, other than that the intervention of the other American carrier's air group had come at a bad time. Spirits were low among the pilots at the rapidly expanding bases at Reykjavik and Keflavik.

But directly in the path of the oncoming USS Carl Vinson, the crew of the Sierra II-class submarine Mars were buoyant. Their captain had managed to position his boat directly astride the American carrier's course. Now the Mars was lurking to the southwest at a quiet five knots, and the American screen was approaching at twenty.

"Captain," the lead Soviet sonar officer reported, "an American frigate, directly ahead. Reciprocal bearing to us. Range eight thousand meters."

This was the moment the Soviet captain had been waiting for. Reports from other theater were indicating that attempts to penetrate the American ASW screens around their carriers were not successful. He would try a new strategy: attacking the screen itself. He was confident in the ability of his boat to remain hidden in the confusion of sinking and burning enemy surface ships.

"Prepare a firing solution," the captain ordered, "two torpedoes against the contact."

Aboard the American Perry-Class frigate USS Kauffman, the sonar crew was having trouble hearing anything through the cavitation noises of their own screws as the warship plowed through the choppy North Atlantic at high speed. The captain didn't like the situation his command was in, leading with their face, so to speak, but Enterprise needed help and that meant a speed run for the Vinson group. The American officer was just frowning over his vulnerabilities for the hundredth time when his worst fears were confirmed.

"Captain!" called the sonar room. "Torpedoes in the water! High speed screws, one-o'clock, constant bearing. I estimate range as five thousand yards!"

"Hard right rudder!" the captain ordered, then, "stream the Nixie!"

The Nixie torpedo decoy unreeled behind the American warship, emitting sounds designed to entice the seekers aboard the Soviet weapons to attack it, rather than the ship. It worked. The first torpedo lunged at the towed decoy, crossing behind the tail of the American frigate and plowing harmlessly onward. The second torpedo, however, ran true. The big weapon closed with the Kauffman before running under the ship's keel and exploding. The resulting cavity beneath the frigate broke the ship's back. It broke in half and sank in minutes, taking most of the American crew into the dark depths of the oceans.

The reaction of the American screen was swift, far more so than the Kauffman's captain had anticipated. Before the two halves of Kauffman had even slipped beneath the waves, the airborne S-3 from Vinson along with two ASW helos were already combing bearing from which the enemy weapons had come. Before long a thick pattern of sonobuoys both above and below the layer began to return the sounds of a modern nuclear submarine closing with the oncoming carrier. A few minutes more, and the S-3 crew achieved a MAD contact on the Russian boat. Within less than half an hour, two Mk46 air-dropped torpedoes had ended the most serious threat to Carl Vinson's progress, at the cost of one of the carrier's escorts.

The next twenty-four hours were uneventful in the north Atlantic. The Soviets retained an uncommitted regiment of Su-24s postured to strike an American carrier, but the Soviet commander on Iceland decided on the better half of valor rather than flinging them against a fully equipped American carrier group. He would bide his time for a better opportunity.

The Enterprise group, having survived by the skin of its collective teeth, rendezvoused with the Monongahela long enough to take on vital stores, the continued on at high speed to Norfolk where a comprehensive replenishment would take place. With the changing of the guard in the north Atlantic complete, the Americans began to look forward to their own offensive plans: retaking Iceland.

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.

mirth

"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus