Spoilers apply!

 

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After Action Report: GIU2 v1.1 - Operation "Channel Watch"

 

Acting as ECON, and with friendly forces arrayed through France and northeast to Denmark, the objective for the player is to suppress UK air defences over the English Channel and to prevent American reinforcements from reaching British shores.

 

Intelligence reported that a US convoy was incoming, under the cover provided by a US Navy carrier and its escorts, and that the Americans had returned in force to Iceland.

 

With 9:18:05 to go, I achieved minimum victory after the destruction of the USS Harry Truman Carrier Strike Group, the HMS Ocean battle group, most of a surface action group in the English Channel and another off The Wash, and all but one of the seven enemy bases in the United Kingdom. (This too was destroyed shortly thereafter, but the enemy base in Iceland remained intact).

 

I had lost three ships (together with their embarked helos) and a total of 56 fixed wing aircraft.

 

Interestingly, most of the friendly air losses were F-35s. In fairness to the F-35, this was probably because I used them as the spearhead of my air operations. At the same time, however, when they engaged in air combat (often against other F-35s or Super Hornets), they tended to take losses. This seemed to be most often because of a lack of weapons capacity and speed.

 

Many of them were Royal Navy F-35B JSF operating from a pair of Queen Elizabeth carriers in the North Sea. That group saw a lot of action.

 

Red suffered 678 air losses, resulting in a somewhat better ratio than the 10 to 1 that I usually see occur in the player's favour. Also destroyed were the carrier and 21 other ships.

 

A few other interesting events included:

 

* friendly French Barracuda class SSN torpedoing a good portion of the Truman CSG, including the Virginia SSN USS North Dakota, followed up an effective GBU-53 strike against surviving vessels

* friendly German 212B class SSK U35 torpedoing the 688I class SSN USS Montpelier

* Red launched several cruise missile attacks and bomber raids, the latter presumed to have launched from Iceland, but these were repulsed

* U35 was later sunk in a torpedo exchange with an unidentified enemy submarine

 

Major victory was achieved four hours later, with the destruction of the USS America, its two Wasp class cohorts and a number of supporting vessels and escorts, and without further friendly loss.

 

This scenario was a real slug fest, with some frantic command & control happening at times, and was a lot of fun. Thanks for sharing it!

Thank you for the AAR, CV32.

 

You did a great job, taking few losses.

 

Stay tuned, I'm working on the sequel GIU3.

 

One thing I noticed is that I should try to coordinate AI air strikes better in the future. It will make life harder for the human player.

Looking forward to it.

 

Btw, one thing I did notice was an obvious lack of use of 'neutrals'. Any particular reason you avoided using them?

Frankly, I've never used them before. :-)