AAR: Bay of Pigs

Herman Hum

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AAR: Bay of Pigs
A Harpoon3 scenario
By Freek Schepers

On April 14th, 1961, six ships departed a Nicaraguan training camp where they had spent months training with CIA instructors.

Brigade 2506 was to land at the Bay of Pigs in southern Cuba, to overthrow Castro's regime. 16 B-26C Invader medium-range bombers were ready in Central America to support their invasion.

Cuba's army and militia, while numerically strong, were thought to be poorly motivated and likely to switch sides when the invasion took place. Cuba's air force was poorly equipped, had low servicability, and would be destroyed on the ground by the rebel B-26s and by US strikes on the main airbases. After all, it was the CIA who had organised the invasion.

In reality, President Kennedy had inherited the operation from his predecessors and, while unwilling to pull the plug, he severely limited the support that could be given and personally ordered a veto against air strikes on Cuban airbases.​


My orders were to gather my scatter ships, conduct reconnaissance on the landing site, destroy army units defending the site, and bring the amphibious ships safely to the Bay of Pigs so that they can unload over four hours.


I ordered my ships to rendezvous at RefPoint Zulu and launched a C-47 Dakota and an A-26K Invader to conduct the beach reconnaissance. The ships employed varied speeds in hopes of arriving at the same time. Even though I only used the Happy Valley base, the multiple rebel bases would (hopefully) prevent the enemy from knowing which axis of approach I would choose. The American CVBG Essex was in communication with me, but not under my command.


The Invader arrived over the beachhead and started a low-level search. It was soon shot down by an undetected enemy unit. I did not even know if it was an aircraft or a ground unit. The Dakota suffered the same fate. This was already proving to be a tough scenario.


A group of Invaders flew in and attacked a torpedo boat detected by the destroyed Dakota. Since I had no other mobile assets to protect the landing ships, I ordered them to attack the boat. She was such a small craft that I had a difficult time pin-pointing her location. When I finally did, the Invaders saved their heavier bomb ordnance and strafed the little boat into oblivion with their massed machine guns; performing not unlike their role in World War II.


The invaders moved on towards Cuba. Meanwhile, the an enemy A-26 Invader was detected flying over the CVBG Essex! I classified it Hostile to help the AI prosecute it. Evidently, it the AA gunners were taken by surprise as not a shot was fired. However, a flight of four Skyhawks did launch and shot down the snooper.


The flight of Invaders conducted reconnaissance, detected elements of the Cuban 3rd Brigade, and attacked with only minimal success. CVBG Essex launched a flight of four Skyhawks for Close Air Support to attack the 1st company. They scored hits, but lost two in the effort. The infantry company was capable of sustaining 500 damage points. In ANW, an attacker has to deliver a significant amount of damage in a short interval in order to overwhelm a ground unit. Otherwise, the unit miraculously regenerates totally! Therefore, I had to gather every surviving A-26K Invader and load them with the most potent ordnance: Mk82 bombs and Mk77 napalm (a.k.a. Snake and Nape)


A flight of 14 Invaders was launched. This had the potential to deliver 700 points of damage. Hopefully, it would be sufficient to overwhelm the infantry company. On their approach, they flew over a gunboat Jose Moran! Compared to the virtually unarmed landing ships, this was like a dreadnought. Therefore, it had to be taken out!

The flight leader immediately led an attack on the gunboat. As before, they reserved the heavy ordnance for the ground units and dove for a strafing run. The amount of firepower delivered was tremendous with the massed .50 cal machine guns, but the gunboat fought back bravely under the assault. The gunboat exploded, but not before killing one of her attackers.


The surviving Invaders pummeled the hapless infantry and then took out two defending AAA sites and a Watchtower on their egress.


The landing ships made their approach to the beach only to come under fire from hidden shore batteries. Marope took serious damage as they all turned to flee. Marope did not get out of range quickly enough and fires aboard consumed her. The flotilla thought it had escaped the coastal defences when another ship started taking fire. They ran, again. Another ship died by fire while a third sustained significant damage.

The Invaders re-armed and returned to sweep the beaches, again. This time, they located a heavy flak unit, an artillery group, and two platoons of T-55 main battle tanks. The deadliest units were the flak and artillery batteries. They died first under a flurry of bombs and napalm. The enemy armour was hammered into submission through strafing attacks.


Once clear of apparent opposition, the landing ships re-entered the bay and completed their landing operations. Victory was granted. It was a close-run operation as the loss of one more vessel would have doomed the invasion.

Many thanks to The AlaskanBiker for a fine match and to Freek Schepers for writing such a fine scenario.

For those fans who enjoy a visual AAR format, a new video for "Bay Of Pigs" has been added the YouTube Harpoon for Dummies channel to help Harpoon players navigate the complexities of the game and to deliver the best possible playing experience.

You can watch Bay Of Pigs [MP] scenario:

[video=youtube;dnSh3tv-oBs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnSh3tv-oBs[/video]
 

FreekS

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Nice AAR of one of my older scens! Im not sure i had MP in mind when designing it but good to see its played well! Be interesting to hear Alaskanbikers view on this MP session! thanks for playing!

Freek
 
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