Airfield Strike - Six Day War

I finished painting up my Brigade Models buildings, along with some Oddzial Osmy SAM and AAA ground assets for Missile Threat, so I decided to lay them all out on the table and do a strike mission.

The target is a heavily defended airfield. For game purposes the actual target is designated as the control tower in the centre of the field. All other buildings are purely cosmetic.

Iraq:
4 Hawker Hunters - 1 Competent, 3 Average - Enter Turn 2 Alt 2
6 SA-2 SAMs
2 Fan Song guidance radars for the SAMs
2 Heavy AAA
8 Medium AAA
12 Light AAA
2 Fire Can guidance radars for the AAA
1 Spoon Rest early warning radar
Total: 368 points

Israel:
3 Vautours - 10 bombs, all Average - Enter Turn 1 Alt 1
4 Mystere - 4 bombs, all Average - Enter Turn 1 Alt 1
2 Mirage - 2 Shafrir I IR missiles, 1 Competent, 1 Average - Enter Turn 2 Alt 1
Total: 371 points

Turn 1

Flight Plan Phase:

There are no Iraqi planes entering on Turn 1, and all the Israeli strike aircraft are at altitude 1. As radar is ineffective at alt 1 during the Six Day War, the Israelis can deploy pretty much wherever they like. I put them a move away from the target on converging courses, so that they can bomb in the action phase. This was a dumb move, they'd have been better deploying right next to the target, as they could still drop bombs on anything they move over in the mandatory phase. That way they might have had a chance of moving clear of at least some of the AAA hell they were about to encounter.

 

 Mandatory Move Phase:

The mandatory move involves some fiddly balancing of the plane stands on top of buildings and ground assets. I was worried this wasn't going to work, but in practice it's not too bad. Most games probably won't be as dense as this one, and there was only one instance where I had to swap out a AAA model for its counter substitute.

 

Action Phase:

All but one aircraft hit with their bombs, racking up 84 victory points.

Ground Asset Phase:

And this is where it all starts to go horribly wrong for the Israelis. The medium and light AAA guns open up, damaging most of them and shooting down a Mystere.

Turn 2

Flight Plan Phase:

All the Israeli strike aircraft decide it's probably best to make a run for it. They will still have to endure another round of AAA fire before they can limp home.

4 Iraqi Hunters and 2 Israeli Mirages enter. The Hunters have no radar and so deploy first.

The Mirages bounce the Hunters:

Action Phase:

Both sides now each have a Competent pilot, so they roll for initiative. The Iraqi goes first, making a turn and barrel roll, ending up directly behind the Israeli and plastering him with four 30mm cannon. It doesn't end well.

I seem to have forgotten to take any photos of the rest of the action phase. Briefly - the other Mirage is also shot down by one of the other Hunters; the remaining Israeli aircraft turn back into the Hunters to prevent any of them getting a firing solution. Two of the Mysteres manage to turn onto the tails of two of the Hunters, damaging one of them, but not claiming any kills.

Ground Asset Phase:

All the remaining Israeli aircraft are shot down by AAA with the exception of one Vautour. The wounded pilot makes it home in the Flight Plan Phase of turn 3.

Conclusion & Thoughts

AAA:

This was clearly a major disaster for the Israelis, and although the Iraqi Hunters had some very good dice rolls, and the Israelis made some pretty dumb moves, the main cause was simply the amount of AAA. In Missile Threat AAA fires at every target in range and I wonder if that's a little excessive in some situations. There is no way you can swamp the AA fire with multiple attackers, because all the attackers get fired at as if they were the only plane in the sky. On the other hand, MT is a very abstracted, hand-wavey set of rules, and so it's reasonable to assume that the placement of the models represents the planes moving through the space, but not necessarily at the same time, so they could all be shot at by each AA gun. Nevertheless, it does feel a little excessive, so I might try imposing a limit of say 4 targets per AAA unit in future games.

*EDIT: I've just been informed by MT's designer Tom Jensen that I've got this all wrong. It appears I've been using an outdated set of rules. The rules now say AAA only fires at a single target each turn. Suffice to say this would have made an enormous difference to the outcome.

Recon:

Even with such a limit, I think the approach taken by the Israelis in this situation would probably still result in a bad outcome. With 20 active light and medium AAA, going directly up against them at low level without some attempt at suppression should be bad. It would perhaps have been better to send in some cheap stuff - Ouragans or Magisters - to strafe or bomb the two SAM radars and the heavy AAAs. This would have made the airspace from alt 4 and above safe from ground assets, and the Vautours could have come in at alt 4 and bombed the target free of those nasty AA guns.

It's all very well to see that with hindsight, but when you're planning your forces blind you have no idea what you're going to be faced with or how to counter it. It seems to me that generally speaking air ops are not conducted in this sort of blind fashion. It's true that some of the Arab strikes on Israeli airfields were done in a pretty scrappy low-intel sort of way, but Israeli operations seem to have been very carefully planned. In general if you're going to commit a load of very expensive air assets to a strike, you make sure you've done sufficient recon to know what you're up against.

How to simulate this? My first, simplest and probably best idea is to have the defender work out their points first, and then deploy the mission target and all the ground assets, after which the attacker makes their list and flight plan. Clearly this would favour the attacker somewhat, but I think it would make for a more interesting set of decisions in the planning phase.

Another option might be to make a dice roll for intel level. Perhaps something like this:

• Both players roll 2D6.
• The attacker may spend up to 5 points to use as a + modifier for their roll.
• If the attacker's modified roll is higher than the defender's, recon has been successful and the defender must make their list and deploy the ground assets and target before the attacker.
• If the attacker's modified roll is equal to or lower than the defender's, recon was unsuccessful and both players make their lists simultaneously as normal.

 I'm not sure about this approach. Giving an advantage to one side or another on the basis of a single die roll before the game even starts might feel a bit too random.

Option 3 would be to have some kind of pre-game recon mini-game segment.

• The defender makes his list first.
• Both sides may allocate a number of their points to recon.
• If the attacker chooses not to spend any points on recon, this whole segment is skipped and both players make their lists before deployment
• If the attacker chooses to spend points on recon he must purchase at least one recon aircraft, which must be equipped with a camera. If there is no camera-equipped plane listed for that side then any plane may be chosen, but that plane is considered unarmed and can make no attacks. (Planes listed as having a camera do not suffer this restriction, they may be armed as usual).
• The attacker may also purchase additional aircraft to use in the recon segment, and they may be armed normally. They may make both air and ground attacks.
• The defender may buy aircraft to use in the recon segment, but is not obliged to.
• Any aircraft used in the recon segment will not be available in the main game. They still count toward victory points.
• The defender sets up the mission target as normal.
• Both players make their flight plans for the recon game.
• The defender may then also deploy any, all, or none of his ground assets in the normal way (anywhere at least 24" from the attacker's edge). These assets will be available to use as normal in the Asset Phases, and will remain in place after the recon game (assuming they're not destroyed).
• Play out the recon game in the normal way. If the recon plane(s) manage to photograph the target and make it back to base then the defender must deploy all his remaining ground assets before the attacker spends his remaining points.

 Although this obviously lengthens the game considerably, I like this approach. It gives a solid well defined role to the recon planes, which otherwise feel a little bit 'meh' in MT. I'll play this same scenario out again using these rules, and report back.

If they work ok, I'm thinking it would be cool to extend the game further into an operational mini-campaign with multiple raids on the same airfield. There could be different targets with varying hit points. You'd have the chance to repair stuff in between raids, and perhaps your repair capability would be affected by certain targets being damaged (Control Tower, crew quarters?). Cratering the runway would put it out of action, so there would be limits on how many aircraft the defender could use in the next raid and their range would be limited (they're flying CAP from other airfields). Even a very heavily defended target could slowly have its air defences chipped away over successive raids.

Such ponderings may have to be put on hold for a while though, as I currently feel myself being drawn down an entirely new rabbit hole: Henry VIII's navy and the Battle of the Solent.