"Falklands Air Mod" Topic

I'm modifying the Downtown/Elusive Victory system for the Falklands (using Vassal or ZunTzu) – and which, by the way, I think would work great as an air system to go along with Shipwreck. (The system would work nicely with 1/600 air too.)

I will, of course, develop historical scenarios, but for solitaire play I need a way of randomly creating realistic incoming raids (if you're playing the British – or conversely, ship dispositions (if you're playing the Argentines).

A couple of early artwork samples here:

link

It's pretty easy to do, just do a bit of reading on the historical battles, and come up with some forces to use – make a chart of them, and then roll a die for which one arrives, the number of aircraft, entry and exit points, etc.

Same goes for the ships.

I have used Clash of Sabres miniatures rules with Shipwreck for the Falklands, using 1/600th scale aircraft, and 1/600th and 1/700th scale vessels. The rules work well together with a few minor modifications.

Except that I need some kind of idea how the Argentines detected/chose their targets, and how much their flight plans varied. How much was planned and how much was targets of opportunity?

The Vassal module covers the entire island and surrounding area (at 2.5 nm per hex), so you could have a number of different potential target areas that a single strike might pass near.

Most likely, "We have a report of ships at this location, go there, find them, and sink them" type orders?

Gracias,

Glenn

I believe that for the Sheffield strike they had a Neptune picking up the emissions of the British ships, so they knew where the strike should look, but not exactly what it was looking for.
Cheers,
Bertie

The designer of Downtown/Elusive Victory had a Falklands game being tested which was I believe called Air Warning Zulu or something like that. I'm not sure what the status of it is, but hopefully we'll see it someday soon.

Near land, the Argentine ground units, and/or their land-based radar on the island could pass details on to HQ.

There might be some movement of units for expected positions by the time the raids arrive.

In the open sea detection would be more hit or miss – some found on armed recces, some detected by their air search planes (early on in the conflict), and some from land-based radar, or sigint. The radar didn't always detect the ships per se, but the general area of the carriers the Harriers were flying to/from, when performing sorties against the islands.

A number were also detected as they bombarded coastal areas in support of the ground troops, or on harassment raids.

You might get an occasional report from a fishing trawler too, but these were usually shot up by the Sea Harriers, or captured British forces.

I imagine some reports could be from their submarine too, but there doesn't seem to be much info on that. Supposedly, it was located near shore, for protection from all of the background noise present in the shallow coastal waters.

From impressions I have gained from reading, the attack pilots didn't so much choose their targets as attack those that presented the first opportunity to do so, in both their bombing raids, and/or their Exocet strikes.

I imagine you could put in some sort of basic rule where they attack the largest target seen on radar, since many SSM's have that capability to program in to their seeker systems. Alternatively, they just need to detect the ship of their choosing that is within a limited visual range, since they are coming in very low, possibly being fired at, trying to avoid crashing into the sea or vessels, having to watch out for Sea Harrier CAP's, and their windscreens are obscured a bit from sea spray and salt buildup.

"…captured British forces" should read "captured by British forces".

Somewhere online last week I came across an article with a discussion of how the airstrikes of the 25th of May were carried out by the Argentines – which bases they came from, refueling, and routes (including a crude but decent map). Now I can't find it. Anyone know where to look?