Red River Delta Dogfights, 9 May 1972

Operation Linebacker has started and it is all on over the Red River Delta in the heaviest day of aerial combat in the Vietnam War.

http://www.venetic.co/VietnamRedRiverDeltaDogfights.html

Cool looking dogfights OTB.  Hope the pilot in the first home managed to get a lift home.

Either that or he's the latest addition to the Hanoi Hilton.

Great looking aircraft game and exciting.

Tom

BravoSix wrote:Either that or he's the latest addition to the Hanoi Hilton.

I'm sorry but he's experiencing Hilton hospitality as I haven't managed to build a rescue helicopter yet.... I do have a submarine though... Did they use those for aircrew rescue?

I should offer some thoughts on the Crossfire air war rules I came up with: generally they worked well. The whole initiative-based approach of Crossfire works really well for dogfighting, and makes the game more fluid than a turn-based approach. It puts you on the spot too, as once you gain initiative you have to make the right decisions in order to regain control of the situation, particularly if you have a plane on your tail. There was a marked difference in the dogfights between the MiG-17/Skyhawk and the MiG-21/Phantom. The MiG-17 has a spotting advantage, having the advantage of ground-based radar and a bubble canopy providing full 360 degree vision, as well as being harder to spot because it is a smaller jet, and the Skyhawk pilot lost the first dogfight because his adversary spotted him first. There was a far tighter turning circle for the earlier jets, with a 3 - 4 metre turning circle for the latter ones. The game turned quite mathematical if you wanted to climb/descend or do a barrel roll, as I did, but using model aircraft was a far better feel than the usual hex-based boardgame rules used for jet dogfighting over North Vietnam. The MiG-17 is deadly if you allow it to get too close: 2 x 23 mm cannon and a 37 mm cannon will chew you up. Conversely, the US jets have a marked advantage in terms of missiles, with much longer ranges than the Atoll-2. The next step is to do multi-jet interceptions, but my wargame buddy is still coming to terms with the maths involved in following a Skyhawk doing a barrel roll, so we'll see.  The barrel roll itself was interesting: as in real life, you're too busy trying to follow your target to actually open fire at it, so most of the action tends to happen when you are flying level and at the same altitude as your target. Also, a Phantom versus a MiG-17 dogfight would be a tricky game as you have a speed differential: I have written rules to cope with this, but it is next-level stuff. Air wargaming is very cerebral, but one mistake and your plane is a flaming wreck; much like the real thing.

OTB wrote:I do have a submarine though... Did they use those for aircrew rescue?

Not sure, but the "river" in your photos looks a bit dry for a submarine.