Good night last night. I hopped on early evening to find @BeachAV8R laying waste to Anapa, and working over SAM Golf. There was a bunker on Anapa that needed to be destroyed, and from previous missions we had a pretty good guess it would take a 2000lb bomb to do it. Grabbed a warthog with a MK84, and headed that way to help. Rather than do the smart thing and bomb down the long axis of the bunker, I did the convenient thing (I can hear my Dad in my ear about that) and dropped on the short axis. Of course, the MK84 landed shorted, and nothing else I had on board would do anything to the bunker. I decided to at least fly up to SAM Golf and use the rest of my ordinance.
I was unclear on exactly where the SAM site was located and proceeded to fly right over multiple SAM’s and AAA at 250 knots at 3000’ AGL. I am assuming we can all figure out what happened after that. Good news I could now grab a Strike Eagle, and some GBU-10’s.
Quick hop up the coast, and an LGB later Anapa was neutral. Dropped the rest of my bombs on targets up at SAM Golf, being at 350 knots indicated and 15,000’ certainly changed the threat level. Beach snagged Anapa while I was doing that, and had cleared out Golf before I had a chance to get turned around. Beach had to run, and I stayed on for a bit.
Tried to chase down a pair of H-6’s in the M2000, but they had too big of a head start.
Bounced a pair of Mig-23’s as I headed back to base and dropped them both, one with a S530 and one with a Magic 2. Feeling a little more confident in the M2000. That seemed like a good stopping point, and took a break.
Last night hopped on to find @PaulRix working Kymsk in the Harrier. There were a ton of units there, so I grabbed an Apache to have more target engagements per trip and headed N. Paul ran afoul of some Fulcrums, but proceed to load up a Harrier for A2A, and dropped both of them!
There wasn’t actually much air defense at Krymsk, a few AAA units and some MANPAD’s. Paul may have gotten the SAM’s prior to my arrival. This gave me the perfect opportunity to do what the Apache was designed to do, hover at range and work targets over. 23 ground units killed for 12 hellfires and 730 rounds of 30mm. Honestly would have been a fun target to work over with F-5’s or other older generation aircraft with the SAM threat gone. Maybe next one.
Paul ran the capture, I threw up a HAWK site. There were a few groups of loose red infantry and vehicles in the area to be cleaned up. Paul took up a dual rocket pod Kiowa, I grabbed a Harrier with rockets and bombs. Problem solved.
The Red Naval menace remained, and Paul and I took up Hornets to see what we could accomplish. Very little, is the answer. I fired 4 harpoons on a target bearing 250, and ended up with 1 missile headed 356. So that should answer how that went. On the way back, I bounced 2 Su-25’s attacking Gudauta. Had one locked up from a ways out for a sparrow shot, and could not get the missile off the rail. Spent a good 2 minutes on the way in, and another 2 minutes turning with the Su-25 trying to get a shot off. Full disclosure I haven’t flown the Hornet in A2A since before Covid, so I was trying all kinds of button pushing, and switch flipping to solve my problem. Then I found the magic switch. If you had already been thinking “the idiot forgot the master arm” you are correct.
Fox 2 one down. Tangled with the second, and managed to score a guns kill. We were extremely low to the ground, so the radar was flipping in and out of lock, jittering around, etc. If I knew how get the guns selected without the radar, totally would have gone that route. Definitely need to do some practice offline in the hornet before I try A2A again.
Finished off with another red cargo intercept in the M2000. I had figured out how to use the gun by this point. I am NOt a fan of the gun symbology in the M2000, but maybe I’ll grow to like it with practice?
It was getting late, so called it a night at that point.
