A couple of guys and myself do a flight night every Tuesday and over the past couple of months, we've flown campaign missions and even gone as far as commandeering our own squadron so we can frag our own missions. So far, we managed to clear out most of the SAM threats and airbases in the western side of Korea, with only the north-west coast still having SAM cover. Most airbases on the western side are damaged or destroyed as well, with functional airbases only hosting bombers or tankers.
Tonight was a CAP flight over the FLOT at 1730hrs on Day 1. Our squadron was left with 8 aircraft and we fragged a 4-ship to do this flight as we noticed quite a few enemy aircraft were flying over the FLOT and over our guys. Aircraft 1 (me), 2 (Crash), and 3 (Coolts) were human flights with aircraft 4 as AI. Ingress was uneventful and AWACS kept telling us the skies were clear but just before hitting our initial CAP waypoint, we found a couple of MiGs puttering about to our east. I sent 3 and 4 to engage and they managed to take one out but they were having difficulty with the other, so I sent 2 to help. He managed to take out the enemy, but not before firing upon #3. Great. Anyway, Coolts jumped into the #4 slot and we continued on. We managed to down a couple of MiGs but while chasing a MiG-19 who was down low, I got AAA flak around me so I lit the burner and climbed back up and away from the AAA. Annoyingly enough, a lucky hit got me when I streaked past 29,000 feet --- I didn't know they can reach that high?! Luckily, the damage was minor and I was able to limp to the alternate airbase. It was one of the best flying I've done.... I needed full right trim and about 60% right deflection on the stick to keep it from rolling, and about 60% nose down trim and 20% forward deflection to keep the nose on the horizon. The sun was setting when I got hit and by the time I managed to limp to the alternate, it was dark. A night landing on a damaged aircraft that wants to go left-and-up... hell, I'm just happy the gear dropped down! I'm not sure if there was any crosswind as well, or if it was just my rudder being damaged too, but it was one of the scariest landings I've ever done, coming in over the fence at 200 knots and touching down at around 180. Talk about pucker factor.
Haha! There's no way missions like these can be scripted. The only downside to this fiasco is that there is no way to take screenshots... I'm so saturated by trying to stay alive and keep SA that the only time I can get any pictures is either on takeoffs or after parking.
