Phantoms Over Phuc Yen - Epilogue......
With the death of their flight leader, the Phantom crews were all disordered and in near-total chaos. With difficulty, Gunslinger 02 manages to get a semblance of the remaining Fours into a line astern staggered formation, now heading South. He'd made up his mind, two dead and two more planes damaged was just too much risk in the Red River Valley.....
"Red Crown, Iron Guard, Gunslinger up on button 4.. We are RTB at this time, speed of heat. Expect egress over Steel Tiger OpArea within 10 mikes, over."
"Roger, Gunslinger, Red Crown confirms you are RTB, will notify Sandy and Udorn."
"Roger Gunslinger 02, Iron Guard copies. Texaco will be onsta at race-track 3 for you, Angels 15."
Jim Hartmann in Whiskey 01 was shaking from head to toe as the Phantoms egressed out southeast of Thud Ridge, keeping low to mask them from any SAM sites to the North. He had survived his first flight into North Vietnam, and this one into Route Pack 6a, no less. but it wasn't enough. His mentor since arriving at Udorn was now a lingering smoke trail over the jungle valley and he was, for the first time since becoming a Phantom pilot, alone.
The Phantoms returned to Udorn without incident as the MiGs had all bugged out after a full engagement and a successful series of ambushes. Whiskey 02 had a stuck Nose landing gear door, but the emergency T-handle blew all three struts down and locked for a safe landing. The film cassettes were pulled from both RF's as the crews dismounted their jets. Jim told a photo-tech to make damn sure copies of those SAM site photos get over to TacAirOps, TODAY!!!. Two dead aircrew should have earned at least that much hustle on the ground crew......
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At Hoa Loc airfield, Van Cuong and Van Co stood as they were proclaimed Heroes of the Party. They were awarded an equal share in 2 1/2 kills of Yankee Air Pirates over North Vietnam and held up as shining examples of what the DRV was prepared to do to defend itself against incursions by American aircraft.
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When the missile tracked and killed the phantom and its crew, it unknowingly got a recon bird, and that meant both damaged birds were the gunfighters, who had been forced to jettison when damaged earlier, so they were guns only. With little hope to prevent the MiGs from re-forming at airfields and rearming to re-engage on the egress if they pressed on for a possible overflight by the remaining recon bird, Jackson aborted and the Phantoms were untouchable in the 7 or so turns it took them to race off at dash throttle. Recovery rolls had one damaged F-4 down safe and the other touching down good but close to the threshold for danger.
Today, the US learned that a multilayered air defense was something to "Respect" over North Vietnam, just as the scenario title said.
After his trip to Siam Riep, Jackson and I will be going on for the next scenario in his learning curve over Vietnam - "All Tomorrow's Parties" which will finally give him the full complement of tools, jamming, ARMs, full CSAR, Iron Hand, Alpha Strike Package, MigCAP, TarCAP, and StrikeCAP; vs the DRV SAMs, AAA, Fire Cans, and MiGs, along with NVA troops armed with SA-7s. It is the final " learning" scenario in the set, designed to expose the player to the capabilities of the game and its units.
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AAR, I think the only thing I would have done differently as the US player would have been to break the gunfighters off at the first sign of MiGs, split that flight into two individual planes and use one to engage before the MiGs could while the other screened the recon birds against the next MiGs in line. This would have allowed the guns to switch off from flight to flight screening the RFs until they could get their pics along a single rail line finished and turn for home. Still may well have cost an F-4D, but the mission would have stood a better chance of completion IMO. The DRV used every advantage given and scored big on the good DRs because of them.
KRL, jon H