Fortress Malta Campaign

[_AH_Gator]

I sure hope so DW and Hollywood lol

[_AH_DarkWolf]

And if all else fails we can send in Gator as bait!

DW

[_AH_DarkWolf]

Thought this might be useful. This is a map of the flak positions on Malta.



The stars are the 3 airfields which of course have flak. The diamonds are the various AA batteries which have a mix of 40mm and 3.7 inchish guns. The triangles on the harbours are where you might find some additional AA support, depending on what ships are in harbour at that time.

So if you find yourself in a bad spot and need AA help, the southeastern 1/3 of the island is where you're most likely to get it.

DW

[_AH_Col._Hogan]

Nice DW.

Anything on Goza?

[_AH_DarkWolf]

No, nothing on Comino or Gozo.

DW

[_AH_taldrg]

~S~
   Just a thought. What do we have....15/20 planes? Why don't we just take off...cap the island with flights at 8000..10000...12000 and 15000. We know the enemy is coming to Malta so lets just wait for them to get here...let AAA chew 'um up...we kill the left overs. We could even carry less fuel...not haveing to fly way out to sea...and we would be faster. Every little bit helps.

[_AH_DarkWolf]

The AAA is not reliable enough to count on them being able to chew the enemy up to that degree. At one point during my testing I had the flak shredding em and no mistake but I dialed it back from there. If the AAA does all the work for us it won't be as fun, so there is a bit of a balancing act there. Though I did bolster the airfield flak a little after the last mission.

Stacking aircraft at different alts would help to detect enemies down low but that's the only advantage I can see to it. It would mean putting some of our aircraft at an almost certain disadvantage which would concern me. I would always prefer to have as much altitude as possible, you can always drop down if needed.

Ideally you would want to whack the enemy before they reach Malta so they do not bomb our stuff. Having said that during this early period alot of the interceptions were happening over Malta itself. Part of that was a lack of understanding of how to use the fighters by the AoC, part of it was the fighters tended to climb to the south of Malta before turning back north to engage. They did this to ensure they had enough altitude when they did engage. This will change in the future once they implement the Forward Interception Plan, at which point we'll find ourselves vectored into interceptions north of Malta.

DW

[_AH_taldrg]

~S~
   I figured it would'nt work but it did at Guadalcanal in WW2. The Betty bombers always came in just above the water with aussy coast watchers giving 15 min warning. It was just a thought DW.

[_AH_DarkWolf]

I was thinking about Guadalcanal in regards to this campaign as well. I don't know if you remember the 2007 iteration of Moggy's VMF-223 campaign but the japanese often came in very high, we struggled to counter them at first. Something we started doing was instead of immediately climbing west towards the enemy, we climbed east for a couple of grids then turned back which gave us more time to get higher. Kind of like what they were doing climbing south of Malta.

I still had this image dated August 29th, 2007,



It still rings true today!

DW

[_AH_DarkWolf]

Oh also, somebody start giving me a verbal nudge to start a track at mission start. I've forgotten the last two missions, I still managed to start it during the takeoff but one of these days it's gonna escape me completely.

DW

[_AH_Bear]

Perhaps Lippy, Hollywood and myself can meet beforehand with a member of HQ squad to discuss a plan.... maybe eh???

:happy-112:

[_AH_Col._Hogan]

Can't see the pic.

[_AH_DarkWolf]

Hmm, the picture is displaying fine here.

DW

[_AH_taldrg]

Last night's mission.  Here thay come...thay have alt. advantage...closeing speed 500+ MPH...2 enemy go over my head and I see them roll over on their back as they go over...I know exactly what is going to happen...thay split-S...drop on my tail and kill me... exactly...turn out the lights...the party is over.

[_AH_DarkWolf]

Looking at the track we had a little less altitude than we could have had, we could have climbed a little harder. Flying out to sea to meet them also decreased the amount of time we had before contact but it was'nt too bad. Our cohesion was better too, 1st Squadron was the first in and 3rd was right behind us. So we had a good 14 aircraft right from the start. 2nd arrived in short order with another 8 kites and we pretty much had em covered from then on.

Dunno what happened with that lag spike and then the wierdness with the enemy external padlock. The effect is present on the track too. At the 14 minute mark everyone starts flying sideways like we are gonna loose the room but after 2 minutes everyone warps back. After that point there is an enemy view that is a black screen with a loud merlin engine sound. Something clearly bugged out, dunno if the lag was the cause or a result of some other error. Hopefully it was a one time freak thing.

DW