Fighting Irish Forums

I hope you boys don’t mine my intrusion.

We definitely have come a long way in a relatively short time. Certainly there was a time when organized gameplay was frowned upon as it was seen as a first step to a regimental Squadron that no one wants around here. To see folks enjoying this form of gameplay (campaigns), while still having lots of fun and sharing some laughter along the way, is just awesome!

In Historic Encounters we have evolved our game with harder settings over the last year. We have also adjusted a number of times with the introduction of new lads. Some sorties approach a good deal of teamwork, but even now we don’t always fly to our full potential every time.

Without a doubt having a flight leader (and a lead for the ground attack pilots) has worked reasonable well. Guys seem fine with instruction without getting into it devolving from the :FI: spirit. Wingmen flying can and does work at times, but again as you said target fixation is always a factor to overcome. And certainly some guys still prefer a bit more freedom that lone-wolf flying affords. However, I would say everyone is really supportive of the team-based approach we try to foster.

There are things we still need to work on. For example, we need to more fully discuss the mission objectives better and have alternative planning such as rendezvous coordinates if things go badly. Some nights I believe we cover our bomber dudes reasonably well, other times we definitely allow ourselves to get too distracted.

Overall as host I’m very pleased with the teamplay in these sessions. Still lots more to explore and improve upon of course. Nevertheless, those sorties where things are executed as planned, and everyone feels a real part of the success, well those are golden moments. You guys sound like you’re very much on the exact same journey. Great stuff!

Regards,
TS!

Thanks Tact, for me its the teamwork that gives me great satisfaction, dont care who leads or who wings, as long as the jobs done and we survived.

Stu, your right about the lead giving out the overall tactics then devolving to flights then elements.

We need to keep people together before during and after the fight, if you find yourself alone then its time to either bug out or have a pre-arranged RV (somewhere on the map thats easy spotted, not very likely over the ocean I know, but perhaps nth, sth, east or west of island at x altitude). If your navigations not that good you could have problems.
Maybe we could do with some basic navigation school?

Now in an escort role who would take overall command, the lead bomber or lead fighter? I say the lead fighter(then again I would ), or do we need an overall command in that situation, Any opinions?



Vin

The lead fighter pilot is the overall Flight Leader. He is generally organizing the fighters to cover and often sweep ahead of the bombers. If the target area is still hot he should instruct the ground attack pilots to loiter.

$0.02

Maybe we could do with some basic navigation school?

Brilliant idea! What about a "staying with/leading your wingman/flight" school as well? Because I'm guessing there's some communication that should happen between flight/wing leads and their "in wing/flight" counterparts...

Or, a "Snaphoo, stay with your wingman because you can't navigate fer spit" school? I really do enjoy the sessions, but I always seem to be right behind someone (usually my wing"lead") and then I have some technical, or other, difficulty and then I'm flying all alone. No visual on anybody.


Sna"scared and lost again"phoo.

I'm sure the group could have done better but I don't think we need to kick ourselves over this mission. There were a heck of a lot of enemy fighters, many more than we have come across before in this campaign.

Nine zero's at first contact and plenty Ki 61's thereafter was always going to be hard for the FIS in co-alt Corsairs. And the group getting split up in this scenario is pretty much a cert.
Staying in pairs is about as much as can be hoped for unless the tactic is not to go aggresively for the enemy fighters but mill about together shooting them off each others tails. This is pretty hard to do even if your shooting is up to it. And breaking off an AI to form up is very dangerous as they see you as their target and will be back. They dont get discouraged from attacking unless they're badly damaged or dead. Human pilots can be chased away but AI need killed.

Getting split in a big furball like this happened all the time in real life and perhaps identifying a reprouping point when first contact is made would be a good idea.
Where we could have done better is communicating more about what we each were doing, apart from a few calls of help it got very silent on comms at times.

The bombers got shafted as much by our expectations of 9 zero's being the only enemy, wrong to do this I know but understandable when you look at previous missions. Unless the Bombers stayed put we had no chance of catching up before the Ki's hit them.

When Vin called for help I was already heading South after the A20-'s. Then Frank called for help in the opposite direction. It was not possible to cover both groups, unless we had decided to split the corsairs. Possible against a few bandits but against 9 tough call.

Was always going to be a hard mission this one.

p.s I would be happy leading out once in a while Vin, give you a break from the AI's full on love for a change.

Stats are up for Sunday 10/12/06, as usual give e'm a looksee and let me know.
Alas poor Falcon we knew him well, you had a good run Stu, but we're all confident that like a burnt bird thing you will rise from the cinders.

Gadje still continues to shoot everything Japanese at the moment, I've taken to checking the flight rota to see if hes on it, if he is then I go back to bed .

As the missions progress we(me) decided to go with fighter bombers instead of bombers, this can be changed if you bombie chaps would prefer?



Vin

...ok by me.

I need the fighter practice.

Fighter bombers?

Are we talking F4u's?

I am OK to fly these but will need to get some practice in first

Nellip, it will be Hellcat fighter bomber first then onto F4U-D1s.




Vin

Hmmm

Don't think I have ever flown the Hellcat?

I guess my vote would be to carry on with the SBD's for now - I always seem to finish up with some bad guy on my 6 so at least with that I have a rear gunner

:FI:Nellip wrote:Hmmm
I always seem to finish up with some bad guy on my 6 so at least with that I have a rear gunner

You never know - if I manage to stay in touch with Gadje next time, you might actually have some additional (but fairly inept) fighter support.

If you guys can let me know then, or perhaps split the two bomber flights to one of SBDs and the other Hellcats, that way you could have one flight(F6F) deal with the AAA and other(SBD) carry on with the main task.




Vin

Hellcats fer me? Why not ... as long as I must bomb only ...

Ok, then its one flight of SBDs and one of Hellcats, both in the bombing role, they will still have an escort of fighters as per "task force :FI:" standing orders.




Vin

Do we get to use roskets?