2/22/2211

AAR 2-22-2011

We logged in to Titanic Tuesday and a bomber mission with escorts was announced.

The map showed a sizeable Knight attack on a Rook small airfield at A100. The Specs gathered at A50 NE of the target and rolled

5 bomber formations of B-17's piloted by Fuze, Engr, Swoose, Luft, and Joker. MILT led the rest of the group in heavy P-51D's

for escort and cleanup duty.

We launched SW, but after a few minutes of flight it was necessary for me to re-up at A66, which was in our path, due to ...uhhh...

.technical difficulties.

Once I had the drones I needed things got back to normal.

We proceeded SW until we were just north of A80, and then we turned due south to the target. As we overflew A80 it appeared that

our primary target A100 was being swarmed by a large number of friendlies, and the main bomber targets, the hangars, were already

down.

I believed that A100 would be captured before we could assist the effort, so we decided to hit our secondary target at A101.

We flew another half sector south, then turned SE directly to A101 at a cruise alt of 15k.

Ditto flew ahead to the target and took out the radar.

As the main group entered the target area we did see several enemy fighters, but these were quickly taken care of by our escorts.

Our first pass over the target didn't yield as much damage as I had hoped for...only 2 hangars I believe.

We egressed SE, made a wide 180 turn, and came back over for another drop.

This time we did manage to close down the field, with Fuze doing the main damage on the hangars and the rest of us hitting other

field structures as well as the town.

We lost several bombers to enemy planes during this time, but most of us made it back to the rtb base safely.

By then C193 had moved into position on the eastern side of A101. We re-upped in heavy F4U's and F6F's and continued the attack on

A101. Our attack and the defense by the Rooks had attracted a lot more attention by then, so there were quite a few Knights as well

as Rooks involved in the battle.

We did take out the ords as well as the shore battery fairly quickly with dive bombing attacks, but the Rooks kept sending in medium

bombers from further south to hit our cv.

The battle for 101 raged on for another hour or so until the Rooks finally sank C193.

Although we did not manage to capture A101 the mission was still enjoyable, and we did have some success with bombing and some

landed kills.

The past couple of buff missions I have been pleased to see that for the most part our formation flying is great, which makes it much

easier for our escorts to defend us. We do become separated over the target while in scope, which seems unavoidable to some extent.

Also, our escorts did a great job of protecting the bombers and helping to clean up targets.

We still need to work on level bombing skills, with target recognition being high on the list.

Along with the mission map I am sending out the Fuzemaps for any of you who don't have them. I have these printed out and sitting

next to my computer for easy access.

I know you can add them to your maps file and see them online, but I guess I always felt I already had more than enough happening

on my computer screen.

Just make sure you can easily check them any time you need to.

Thanks and a crisp <<S>> to all the pilots who flew the mission.

Joker <S>