"Eyes on."
Spectral green images moved across the night vision display.
"Got them, engaging."
The pilot of the AH-6 helicopter showed no emotion, no excitement. His concentration was total. Before him, he saw the tracer arcing towards the Iranian minelayer, he saw sparks as the rounds hit the superstructure, he saw men running on the deck, he saw men fall.
"Good hits."
* * *
It's been a long time coming, but after our last game nearly a year ago ( TMP link ) young Henry and I finally got on to Game 4 of out Earnest Will campaign.
The scenario was that the US had intelligence that the Iranians were sowing mines in the deep water channel of the Persian Gulf using a converted Japanese landing craft, the Iran Ajr.
I had two Perry class frigates, the Jarrett and the Klakring, as per the historical action, but I also had some additional support due to positive public opinion. I decided on an E-3 Sentry, flying out of Saudi, and an additional frigate, the USS Bagley.
The action was short; Henry had decided he couldn't win this fight so he preserved his forces, waiting for future games where he could concentrate his forces.
I had to prevent the Iran Ajr laying mines in the channel, but I had a number of surface targets ahead. The time was 2300 Delta, and I also had two air contacts moving in from the north west.
"Air contact, five-zero miles north, north west of my position, this is US warship. Identify yourself."
The targets moved closer. Thirty miles out, "Air contact, this is the USS Bagley, please identify yourself"
Still no response. If they maintained their course they would pass about 10 miles to the south. The E-3 passed targeting data: I was cleared to engage, but I didn't want to risk shooting down a civilian airliner.
I hailed the contacts again in English and Farsi. Still no response; I eyed them carefully as they passed by.
Once the threat had receded, the special forces 'Little Bird' helos, which had taken off from Jarrett and Klakring, sped off to identify the threats.
The first was a harmless merchant ship.
The second, however, was the Iran Ajr, still slowly making her way towards the deep water channel.
As the recon MH-6 observed from 8 miles out, an AH-6 attack helo approached the Iranian ship, raking her decks with machine gun fire. The Iranians abandoned ship and I was able to land a search team, finding valuable intelligence to be presented to the world as evidence of Iran's guilt in mining the Gulf.
Henry decided to call it a day; he wanted to preserve his forces, knowing that he would, one day, get his chance to throw everything at me.
In the post-game analysis it transpired that, of the two air contacts, one was a pair of F-4 Phantoms. The other was commair – a commercial airliner – Henry makes extensive use of commercial air corridors and shadowing commercial traffic to mask his movements. In the end he bottled it; he didn't want to lose any aircraft, so after my challenge he decided against attacking. He also had a group of boghammars, which I never detected, but these never got close enough to see action.
On reflection, I was most scared of having my helos shot down – this far into the Gulf, off the coast of Qatar, I had no carrier aircraft to support me, so if his F-4s had stood off out of range of my frigates while still in range of their Sparrow III missiles, he could have made it impossible for me to close. Similarly, if he'd used the Damavand, a WW2 vintage destroyer, to escort the Iran Ajr, he could have made things very difficult (the Damavand had recently been equipped with new Soviet SAMs).
As it was, I got the intelligence to present to the world and suffered no casualties. A good night's work I'd say.
The next mission will be Operation Nimble Archer. We'll see how it goes.
Nick