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#2988535 - 04/03/10 04:10 AM FC2 - Campaign Mission #008  
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 24,314
BeachAV8R Offline
Lifer
BeachAV8R  Offline
Lifer

Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 24,314
KCLT
After my failed attempt to strike the clustered fuel and supply trucks, I'm tasked to step it up a notch and strike two different armor positions. The briefing even warns that rearming might be a requirement.



The strike sites are fairly non-descript and I know this is going to be a brutal mission with lots of eyestrain.



The high overcast and lighting add a lot of atmosphere to the mission...



My wingman and I depart and head directly to the east and the first (southern) strike point.





The yellow smoke pops and I quickly get eyes on the first target tank nearby...



And off goes a missile...



Elsewhere in the mission area a pair of Apaches work over enemy positions to our north.



As we break away and set up for multiple runs at the target from stand-off range the enemy fires many short range IR missiles at us, but they are usually decoyed easily by our flares.



On one run in I have the pleasure of seeing one of my missiles strike a ZSU-23 at the same time it opens up on me...


The mountains to the southeast look like a good place to run an insurgency from..



After much straining and close approaches onto the target I finally spot the last tank at the first strike waypoint.



As I transit between the south strike point and the north strike point a couple of rounds from a ZSU hit me and knock out my hydraulics which slows my control response but everything else is working fine.



I peel off to the south and a couple infantry launched IR SAMs arc up toward me but the flares do their job.



Fuel pours from my right wing as I taxi off the runway at my base where I've landed for repairs and rearming.



I laugh when I see the two Apaches enter the traffic pattern at the field, one of them is shot so full of holes he looks like a ragged piece of cheese, the other has a few rounds in the canopy. I can't believe the first one is still flying. They shouldn't have gotten so shot up with those awesome stand-off Hellfires.





After taking off and heading back to the east to the north strike area I pull up my Mavericks and see a vehicle on the road. I assume this is my target because the briefing stated that they north targets would be on the "hardball", so I fire.



It turns out it just a truck moving on the road and I've wasted a missile.

I finally do spot the correct target area and quickly identify two tanks and manage to get off two shots on one pass.



One isn't a tank though, but I'll take a kill on a SAM vehicle any day...



Out of missiles and with too many low and high threats to effectively use any of my gravity weapons, I head back to base and pull up on the ramp long enough to grab some weapons.



In my utter stupidity though I am distracted as I leave the ramp and I run my wing into a refueler! Fortunately, I just catch on fire and rip the wing off.



After a few minutes of repair, I'm amazed that the sim lets me taxi the rest of the way THROUGH the refueler and once I'm free I'm good to go!

Up at the target area I find one more tank, but it takes me 10 minutes of looking while dodging AAA fire. After I launch my first Maverick I lock back on it with my second so that I can watch the explosion on my monitor.



With two tanks burning it is a struggle to find the third tank. I refuse to resort to labels, but I do use the zoom and pan liberally to find the last tank.



He's right there next to the power transmission tower.



Once I get an idea of where a target is, I don't have much problem re-finding it. But finding them is darn difficult!





I get the message that I've cleared the north target area and I head for home.



Now - you all are going to think I'm lying, but this is the God's honest truth and how it actually happened. I made a beeline for homebase, which is only about 2 minutes flying time back to the west. A few miles from the base I see my caution light is on, but I didn't get an audible warning, so I can't figure out if I got hit by AAA or something. I glance down at my caution panel and the L/R Fuel Low warning lights are illuminated and the fuel gauge is reading zero. I had just put the speedbrakes out to slow for the landing, so I quickly retracted them, then added throttle to keep the speed up and I realized the engines weren't responding. I really had run out of fuel! Where is the low fuel warning? Do those lights just come on when you are totally OUT of fuel?



I had just enough energy left to make the runway, but I elected to land on the taxiway instead because I suspect (but am not sure) that if you exit a mission while on the runway you might not get credit for the mission (?). I clear the tail of the C-17 parked in a revetment at the end of the taxiway and plunk it down right on the taxiway.





Now, according to the after action report, I flew for about 45 minutes, so unless I didn't have full tanks at the beginning of the mission I have only one explanation for why I ran out of fuel. I didn't refuel during either of my 2 rearming stops, but I did receive that damage and was streaming fuel when I was hit between target areas. Perhaps I lost that much fuel in the short time I was flying back to base and then, not having refueled, the level was very low? No matter what, I can't believe the fuel ran out literally at the last second. Another 30 seconds of flying around away from the airfield and I wouldn't have had enough speed to make it home. One of the coolest things I've ever done in a sim (I once lost both engines in EECH though and managed to autorotate to an airfield where I got repaired, that was pretty cool too..)



And verification that it was the ZSU that hit me..

Looking forward to the next mission!

BeachAV8R



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#2988595 - 04/03/10 09:29 AM Re: FC2 - Campaign Mission #008 [Re: BeachAV8R]  
Joined: Jun 2005
Posts: 16,082
- Ice Offline
Veteran
- Ice  Offline
Veteran

Joined: Jun 2005
Posts: 16,082
Philippines / North East UK
Exciting stuff there Beach, I like the way you ran out of fuel and the way the sim let you continue after the stupid fuel truck incident (it's a wonder you guys didn't fireball!).

I wonder if real A-10 missions are like this though? I mean, fly out, get a couple of targets, fly back to base, rearm, then go back out? Because I seem to remember a teaching in Falcon that F-16s do only one pass on their target and they never overfly their target if they don't have to... and those are fast-movers! I wonder how the lumbering A-10 does it?


- Ice
#2988630 - 04/03/10 12:53 PM Re: FC2 - Campaign Mission #008 [Re: - Ice]  
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 24,314
BeachAV8R Offline
Lifer
BeachAV8R  Offline
Lifer

Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 24,314
KCLT
I believe (working from memory here) that in Desert Storm the A-10 pilots were assigned a "box" to patrol..and that they would sometimes come back to "hot refuel" and rearm and do 3 sorties back-to-back. Particularly when the action was hot or when they were helping with a SAR or something. I seem to remember reading that..



#2988743 - 04/03/10 04:52 PM Re: FC2 - Campaign Mission #008 [Re: BeachAV8R]  
Joined: Nov 2009
Posts: 59
DSLam Offline
Junior Member
DSLam  Offline
Junior Member

Joined: Nov 2009
Posts: 59

#2989828 - 04/05/10 07:11 PM Re: FC2 - Campaign Mission #008 [Re: DSLam]  
Joined: Mar 2010
Posts: 143
PishPosh Offline
Member
PishPosh  Offline
Member

Joined: Mar 2010
Posts: 143
California
Great read Beach, I wasn't able to finish off the last T-80 in the first group as I was out of ammo and a bad shot with my bombs. I lost my hydraulic pressure and one engine got flamed so I took it back to base for repairs. I figured out how to rearm, but how are you able to repair? The airbase also refused to give me fuel with a "unable to comply" message, however I think that was because I had holes everywhere.

#2990038 - 04/06/10 01:38 AM Re: FC2 - Campaign Mission #008 [Re: PishPosh]  
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 8,152
Cat Offline
Egyptian Mau
Cat  Offline
Egyptian Mau
Hotshot

Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 8,152
Somewhere....over the Rainbow
This reminds me of one of the best sim-missions I ever flew. It was in Falcon 4.0, and I was flying from Osan. The mission was a bridge, to be taken out with PGMs. After the bridge I was on my way back across the DMZ and took hits from enemy SAMs. I had hydraulics go out and most in-cockpit electronics. With the warning horns screaming in my ears and controls starting to get erratic, I could see an emergency highway-converted airstrip below, just east of the stadium complex outside Seoul, if I'm not mistaken. I lost my engine on the descent, but got gear down and dead-sticked it onto the emergency runway. And just as I got the bird stopped I hit a HMMWV and blew up. Man, I hated that, after such an awesome recovery to get fragged like that right at the lasst minute.

Good times.

Miao, Cat


Miao, Cat
#2990123 - 04/06/10 04:46 AM Re: FC2 - Campaign Mission #008 [Re: Cat]  
Joined: Dec 2006
Posts: 502
otterspotter Offline
Member
otterspotter  Offline
Member

Joined: Dec 2006
Posts: 502
Another great read!


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