Fortress Malta Campaign

[_AH_Col._Hogan]

Awesome work on the intel, thanks DW.

S!

[_AH_Jack]

Are the flak guns 88's?  Will our guns be able to take them out?

[_AH_DarkWolf]

The flak is smaller calibre, either 20mm or 37mm. Our 20mm should be plenty lethal. There are no 88mm batteries at the airfields themselves but there are some near larger towns and ports in the general vicinity.

DW

[_AH_DarkWolf]

PS - Jack, please rehearse the following song in your Elmer Fudd voice :

A stroffing we will go...

A stroffing we will go...

Hi-ho the deeeeriooo....

DW

[_AH_DarkWolf]

Just to repeat, next mission will be another oddball mission. We're parking our Spitfires for the week and will be flying an anti-shipping strike. Each squadron will be assigned 6 Beaufort Mk.IIs and 4 Beaufighter Mk.Is to man at their discretion. I can tell you that the Beauforts will be required to carry torpedoes. The Beaufighters may or may not be limited in terms of their bomb loads, I'm not sure yet.

So I recommend brushing up on your takeoffs and landings in these kites. Full brief and map to come in the next couple days.

DW

[_AH_Bear]

Im liking it..torpedos..

[_AH_z5o]

Uwww, torpedos. Me like.

[_AH_DarkWolf]

DW can you let me know which model aircraft we will
be using

I did, Beaufort Mk.IIs and Beaufighter Mk.Is

DW

[_AH_DarkWolf]

Here are the briefing materials for Mission 22. As usual, left click the images for full size.





Once again 1st's target area is marked in red, 2nd's in yellow, 3rd's in purple.

No recon photos this time, ships can change formation at any time so you would'nt really learn anything from it.

Note on the takeoff, we will all be flying from Luqa with each squadron spawning on a different runway. Takeoff will be by the numbers, so 1st Squadron followed by 2nd and 3rd last. Squadrons should not roll until the one ahead reports all it's aircraft are up.

Again each Squadron has 6 Beauforts and 4 Beaufighters available to it to man at their discretion.

There is no restriction on Beaufighter loadouts as I previously suggested there might be.

Let me know if you have any questions.


This mission represents the kind of operations that were going on to interdict the axis supply convoys heading to North Africa. I thought it would be interesting to throw one in there since a huge part of why we are doing what we're doing defending Malta in our Spitfires is so that submarines, surface vessels and aircraft can do this kind of work. The consequences of these strikes were fatal to the German and Italian armies in North Africa.

It was in the Med where they pioneered the close cooperation of Beaufighter and Beaufort squadrons. Many of these attacks would be made at the extreme range of the Beaufort, beyond where single engined escorts could comfortably fly thus the necessity for Beaufighters to fly cover. (We're not actually flying that far in the mission but that's a compromise in regards to what's practical for us) The main anti-shipping punch was the torpedo carrying Beauforts. The Beaufighters would go in ahead carrying bombs to use on the escorts and were also proficient at raking the decks with cannon and MG fire to suppress the gunners.

The allies would learn of alot of these convoys from ULTRA decripts. In order to keep that secret, they would direct reconnaissance planes from Malta and elsewhere into the paths of these ships (without telling the pilots) who would then "discover" the ships and report back. So as far as the axis was concerned they were just being found by regular air reconnaissance.

Another interesting facet of this was the allies would often learn of convoys or ships returning to Italy from North Africa that were carrying allied POWs. In many of those cases discreet orders would go out forbidding attacks on these vessels. The problem was if every ship carrying POWs went unmolested and everything else was getting pounced on, it would'nt take the axis long to realise something was up. So in order to protect this source of information, in some cases no warning was given and chances were taken that some of these vessels might be found and attacked. Tragically some of these ships were indeed found and sunk with great loss of allied lives.

DW

[_AH_DarkWolf]

Little more takeoff info, Beaufighters will lead with the Beauforts parked behind them. Same for each squadron.

I seem to have lied in regards to the takeoff order, we'll actually go 3rd -> 2nd -> 1st.

3rd's takeoff run looks like this, mind the camo net on the left at the very end of the runway.



2nd, be careful of the new control tower and ruined control tower left and right respectively.



1st, watch for the wrecked control tower mid field on the right and the hangars and spinter pens either side of the end of the runway.



So everyone do your best to roll down the center as much as possible and you should be ok. Careful of the torque on the fully loaded twins, you may need to build up 20 or 30 mph before you get good rudder response and can go wide open.

DW

[_AH_Bear]

Lippy, Wood.. we need to get together and discuss this abit..

~S~ Bear

[_AH_Hollywood]

Bear, Lippy..... Tonight works. 

I work tomorrow until 530 PDT

[_AH_Bear]

Im on Vent now

[_AH_DarkWolf]

Last minute changeroonie, takeoff time is pushed back 15 minutes to 0745 hours.

This is in game time, I do not mean we will launch from HL later.

DW

[_AH_DarkWolf]

Good job on Mission 22 guys. Really well done getting airborne with those Beauforts and Beaufighters on the first try. I would have wagered we'd need at least one restart. 7 of the 9 merchant vessels sunk is a good result considering we were a little rusty in using our torpenae.

I was surprised we did'nt get hit by flak more. I experimented with alot of stuff in terms of rate of fire and skill level. I ended up going with a low skill level coupled with the highest rate of fire possible. I was aiming for an intense barrage but one that would'nt shoot you in the big fat head 10 miles away. Guess maybe they needed a little more skill, the Ju-88s were not as aggressive as I expected either. They were C-6 models with forward firing cannons and MG, thought they would be a threat if they got in amongst the Beauforts but you guys knocked em off without much difficulty.

I had to run the track several times so I could see all the strikes play out, I'm curious about 2nd's attack. It seemed like you guys overshot to the rear of your convoy and came up behind it. Your Beauforts then swung west before making their runs. Was that something planned or ordered on the fly or just happenstance? I ask because the escorts were arranged in a crescent on the Malta side of each convoy. This is something the axis did assuming air threats would come from the direction of Malta. I read a story of a strike encountering this and they had to make the decision, do we go through the escorts on the way in or the way out? They elected to make the end run and come in from the opposite side so they had less flak to deal with on their torpedo runs. Much like what you guys ended up doing. The nature of 3rd's approach was such that they had to swing left or right since they were gonna be bow on and in 1st we went straight in across the escorts.

Anyways, it was interesting to see how it all worked out as each squadron had an identical target. I chose not to reveal the exact ship types, one of them was indeed a Dry Cargo which was discussed before the mission. The other two merchants were an Armed Tanker and Armed Troop Transport. Escorts were two Italian destroyers and one of each type of Italian corvette.

So thus ends our interlude from the scrambles and we're back at it next week. One little snipet from next week's brief:



So jerry is adding a new toy to his collection.

DW