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1987 Nordkapp


Lace

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  • 2 weeks later...

Finally had time to try out mission 6 and I really like it. Probably my favorite so far. Can't help but being in awe of those Backfires when you get up close. And a true "Dance of the Vampires" moment when the missiles start flying. I think it has good potential for re-playability. Played it twice so far and definitely will again to try out different tactics. The range of the AS-4's poses a real challenge. Thanks for sharing it!

Experienced two minor quirks, in case you ever want to revise/update the mission:

  • In contrast to the previous missions, my wingman took a long time to start up the plane and didn't start taxiing until I was airborne. Not that he was of much use anyway, but at least a welcome distraction for the SAMs.
  • It seems like the "Solex" name for the AWACS isn't supported that well by DCS. The radio messages didn't read out the name, but only the number. So the radio chatter was a little repetitive ("Enfield 1-1, 1-1, BRA, ...").
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  • 5 weeks later...

I've flown all 6 missions and have some remarks, ill go over mission specific ones first and then general ones

 

  1. ROE is vague and led to confusion. The backdrop had me on toes thinking I could start ww3 if I was to agressive. After flying formation with the su17s for a few minutes one of them managed to get behind me and shot me down. Radio messages from GCI or AWACS should provide updates on ROE developments. If memory serves I got jumped by two su27s on the way back. All in all a tense mission when you fly out in the horrible weather complete in the unknown about whats happening, which is fitting given the scenario. Wingman bingo and ejected over the North sea in the worst weather, rip.
  2. This was an unexpected adrenaline pump caused by the 3 wings of su24s, first wing was shot down by ai cap and the others seperated over ~40nm or so. After flying out to deal with one of them I had to ditch tanks and go full afterburner mach 1.6 as that other flight came dangerously close to our base. Trackfile indicated there was a 4th wing but they crashed before any encounters.
  3. Wingman bingo at wp2, how he managed to burn trough ~10 000 pounds in that time I dont even.. Loved arriving at the dam just as the rotary crafts came down the valley, very fun flying a heavy viper in pooooor visual conditions feasting on the hips that was threatening the ground forces at the dam, both mi24v's seemed to crash before this on most attempts. Speaking of attempts, attacking the redfor artillery position is suicide, DENSE ZU-23-2 coverage in the valley and a Tunguska(?) made the snakeeyes worthless. Scripted counter artillery was a huge dud, it had no feedback so until I saw the stream of dots coming I thought it was broken, and they didnt hit anything. All the aaa in the valley left me no choice but to just abandon mission, you need to be a better pilot than me to pull that off with iron bombs and that cloud layer. On the way back a pair of parked floggers just sat on an airstrip (senaki kolkhi), im not sure if they are supposed to believe that airbase is friendly or if the mission waypoints casually flies me over an enemy base. Huge moment during this mission was when I was looking up at the skies for the artillery dots and suddenly an igla passed over my left side when I was a bit too sure I was safe from enemy manpads. Also, without dots it would be next to impossible to locate that artillery site.
  4. While the previous mission made me think of Finnmark, this mission is what the Norwegian doctrine was all about, destroying every bridge between Russia and all the way until Trondheim if need be. Short and thematic mission, wingman was bingo by wp 3 again tough. Loved how doing target of opportunity attacks against the hips saved ground troops, and how killing the mortar team across the bridge could relieve the recon force. Also loved the F-5 cap, if only we had some Starfighters too...
  5. A nice valley run mission, nothing special but still fits well. Exit flightpath over enemy airbase was borderline suicidal tough.
  6. Another mission the wingman had no chance to conserve his fuel trough. It's a decent cap mission where fuel management is important and the paltry range of the aim9's against big fast bombers show. Got to down quite a lot of big bombers and dodge sams as I was quite aggressive. Really would have loved to have a GCI/AWACS declaring when I could go off cap.

 

All in all I found these enjoyable and thematic, some of these missions really could have fooled me I was on the Tundra of Finnmark. Theres quite a bit of polish that could be done, but the number one thing I would love to see is just more scripted feedback so I dont fly around making my own decisions unsure of what to do, especially ROE updates in mission 1 and when I can go off station during CAP. AI crashing and running out of fuel, this probably isnt the missions fault, its kinda wonky.


Edited by Myrsnipe
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Thanks for the detailed feedback.  Much appreciated.  A few points to counter.  

 

I deliberately set the AI skill to random in order to introduce an element of unpredictability and replay ability to the missions.  In hindsight this seems to be a mistake as too many flights are either crashing or not properly engaging into the mission.  I am in the process of rewriting the missions with higher AI skill levels which will hopefully fix some of this.

 

Wingman fuel management - what can I say, even giving them an extra bag of gas they still seem unable to manage their fuel consumption.  It seems more of a DCS issue than a mission issue as you say.

 

Mission 1 - Noted about ROE, though a little tension and uncertainly was intended here.

 

WRT to the MLRS in mission 3 - again with random skill sometimes they hit, sometimes not.  I will add some feedback on the fire mission request.  Also I believe abandoning the mission due to heavier than expected ADA is a realistic outcome.

 

Mission 5 was a bit of a tough one.  My intent was to have the SCUDs launching as the player approaches down the valley.  They have a 7 minute prep time before firing so it was tough to get the trigger point right given the amount of variation possible regarding player GS and distance covered in that time.  It worked in theory, but not so much in practice.  Thinking about it now I will trigger the SCUDs at mission launch, then stop them after 600sec, and resume when the player flight is one minute out.  That might be a better solution.  I get that it was more a procession than a combat mission and certainly not one of the better ones.

 

Mission 6 would have been better with AIM-7s, but unfortunately our pretend A-model Viper doesn't support them.

 

I had intended to write full flight plans including times on/off station, friendly OOB etc.  but more feedback from the AWACS could work in the meantime.

 

Again regarding the general lack of direction - this is intentional to an extent.  I was attempting to simulate a dynamic and unpredictable WWIII scenario where it was highly probable that much of the chain of command would already have been disrupted.  The first casualty of war is the plan, and in my experience confusion is generally the order of the day.  I can only imagine how bad it would be for real.

 

I wrote these missions primarily for myself, but the feedback received on this thread has been really valuable in how to improve them and what type of missions other people enjoy flying.

 

I have been a bit slack with missions 7 and 8 but I'll try to get them published soon.  7 is an airfield attack and 8 is supporting a USMC heli landing.

 

 

Laptop Pilot. Alienware X17, i9 11980HK 5.0GHz, 16GB RTX 3080, 64GB DDR4 3200MHz, NVMe SSD. 2x TM Warthog, Hornet grip, Virpil CM2 & TPR pedals, FSSB-R3, Cougar throttle, Viper pit WIP (XBox360 when traveling). Rift S.

NTTR, SoH, Syria, Sinai, Channel, South Atlantic, CA, Supercarrier, FC3, A-10CII, F-5, F-14, F-15E, F-16, F/A-18, F-86, Harrier, M2000, F1, Viggen, MiG-21, Yak-52, L-39, MB-339, CE2, Gazelle, Ka-50, Mi-8, Mi-24, Huey, Apache, Spitfire, Mossie.  Wishlist: Tornado, Jaguar, Buccaneer, F-117 and F-111.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Apologies, I know it's been a while since the last mission.  I've finished 7 and 8 is almost there now.  I had intended to roll the two into one but was having issues with some elements of the helicopter landings.  To simplify things, 7 is a runway attack, and 8 will be top cover for an assault.

 

I'm on 2.7 and as I understand  it these missions are not backward compatible, so apologies to anyone not on openbeta, but I wanted to try out some of the new clouds a try (you will need your ILS to get home on mission 7!).

 

Northern Flank 7.miz

 

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Laptop Pilot. Alienware X17, i9 11980HK 5.0GHz, 16GB RTX 3080, 64GB DDR4 3200MHz, NVMe SSD. 2x TM Warthog, Hornet grip, Virpil CM2 & TPR pedals, FSSB-R3, Cougar throttle, Viper pit WIP (XBox360 when traveling). Rift S.

NTTR, SoH, Syria, Sinai, Channel, South Atlantic, CA, Supercarrier, FC3, A-10CII, F-5, F-14, F-15E, F-16, F/A-18, F-86, Harrier, M2000, F1, Viggen, MiG-21, Yak-52, L-39, MB-339, CE2, Gazelle, Ka-50, Mi-8, Mi-24, Huey, Apache, Spitfire, Mossie.  Wishlist: Tornado, Jaguar, Buccaneer, F-117 and F-111.

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Thanks for continuing this enjoyable line of missions Lace. I really like mission 7 because it's so technically demanding due to the low visibility conditions. It takes a lot of precision to line up correctly with the target, and an instrument landing in such low visibility always carries challenges of its own.

I've flown it a few times, but never managed to get any points under "Results", even though I've had a good number of hits on the runway. Perhaps I'm being overly confident that they were good hits or perhaps the mission goal triggers aren't working quite right.

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2 hours ago, Col. Kernel said:

Thanks for continuing this enjoyable line of missions Lace. I really like mission 7 because it's so technically demanding due to the low visibility conditions. It takes a lot of precision to line up correctly with the target, and an instrument landing in such low visibility always carries challenges of its own.

I've flown it a few times, but never managed to get any points under "Results", even though I've had a good number of hits on the runway. Perhaps I'm being overly confident that they were good hits or perhaps the mission goal triggers aren't working quite right.

 

My pleasure.  I'm glad there are some people out there flying them.  I mainly make them for myself.  I'll take a look at the scoring again - I wasn't completely convinced of the mechanics of the process, and whether the scoring would total up for multiple hits, or simply count a hit once and score accordingly.

 

As I've said before, this is a learning process for me and the feedback is invaluable.

 

I've test flown #8 a few times now, and it is a tough scrap, but at least the weather is better!

Laptop Pilot. Alienware X17, i9 11980HK 5.0GHz, 16GB RTX 3080, 64GB DDR4 3200MHz, NVMe SSD. 2x TM Warthog, Hornet grip, Virpil CM2 & TPR pedals, FSSB-R3, Cougar throttle, Viper pit WIP (XBox360 when traveling). Rift S.

NTTR, SoH, Syria, Sinai, Channel, South Atlantic, CA, Supercarrier, FC3, A-10CII, F-5, F-14, F-15E, F-16, F/A-18, F-86, Harrier, M2000, F1, Viggen, MiG-21, Yak-52, L-39, MB-339, CE2, Gazelle, Ka-50, Mi-8, Mi-24, Huey, Apache, Spitfire, Mossie.  Wishlist: Tornado, Jaguar, Buccaneer, F-117 and F-111.

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I think for some reason that those "Bomb in zone" triggers don't really work for mission goals. Another thing is that it will only test if the bomb is inside the zone at some point - not that the bomb actually hit the runway. As for the latter part, the thread below discusses how to check for runway damage. A bit more involved than what I thought it would be.

In any case, the mission scoring isn't crucial, although it is nice to have some built-in battle damage assessment.

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16 hours ago, Col. Kernel said:

 

In any case, the mission scoring isn't crucial, although it is nice to have some built-in battle damage assessment.

 

It is nice to know, but IRL, unless there is a post-strike recce element tasked then the debrief and BDA will depend heavily on the pilot's own assessment of the delivery.  Personally I use Tacview for the AAR/debrief rather than the DCS mission debrief as it is a much clearer presentation of what actually happened, especially in a mission with a lot of AI vs AI combat to resolve.

Laptop Pilot. Alienware X17, i9 11980HK 5.0GHz, 16GB RTX 3080, 64GB DDR4 3200MHz, NVMe SSD. 2x TM Warthog, Hornet grip, Virpil CM2 & TPR pedals, FSSB-R3, Cougar throttle, Viper pit WIP (XBox360 when traveling). Rift S.

NTTR, SoH, Syria, Sinai, Channel, South Atlantic, CA, Supercarrier, FC3, A-10CII, F-5, F-14, F-15E, F-16, F/A-18, F-86, Harrier, M2000, F1, Viggen, MiG-21, Yak-52, L-39, MB-339, CE2, Gazelle, Ka-50, Mi-8, Mi-24, Huey, Apache, Spitfire, Mossie.  Wishlist: Tornado, Jaguar, Buccaneer, F-117 and F-111.

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The mission went by fast, not much to it than bomb the runway and head home, other than the strela or igla flying up from behind me without tracking properly. The visibility in the snow had me do a second fly over as I missed the angle of the airfield. I also realized why this is such a dangerous task in real life, British pilots doing this in Iraq did not have clean pants coming home, flying predictably straight over the entire airfield is scary stuff..

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Mission 8 ready for anyone still following.

Northern Flank 8.miz

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Laptop Pilot. Alienware X17, i9 11980HK 5.0GHz, 16GB RTX 3080, 64GB DDR4 3200MHz, NVMe SSD. 2x TM Warthog, Hornet grip, Virpil CM2 & TPR pedals, FSSB-R3, Cougar throttle, Viper pit WIP (XBox360 when traveling). Rift S.

NTTR, SoH, Syria, Sinai, Channel, South Atlantic, CA, Supercarrier, FC3, A-10CII, F-5, F-14, F-15E, F-16, F/A-18, F-86, Harrier, M2000, F1, Viggen, MiG-21, Yak-52, L-39, MB-339, CE2, Gazelle, Ka-50, Mi-8, Mi-24, Huey, Apache, Spitfire, Mossie.  Wishlist: Tornado, Jaguar, Buccaneer, F-117 and F-111.

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I had a go at it yesterday, interesting air cover mission, solely due to the aim9 mikes being horrible. The mig29 flight arriving later had me sweating, especially those off boresight fox2s, but using the hills to my advantage it was doable.

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14 hours ago, Myrsnipe said:

I had a go at it yesterday, interesting air cover mission, solely due to the aim9 mikes being horrible. The mig29 flight arriving later had me sweating, especially those off boresight fox2s, but using the hills to my advantage it was doable.

 

We've been spoiled with the X-Rays haven't we!

 

I find dragging the MiG-29s into either the landing party SHORAD or shipborne SAMs helps too.  

Laptop Pilot. Alienware X17, i9 11980HK 5.0GHz, 16GB RTX 3080, 64GB DDR4 3200MHz, NVMe SSD. 2x TM Warthog, Hornet grip, Virpil CM2 & TPR pedals, FSSB-R3, Cougar throttle, Viper pit WIP (XBox360 when traveling). Rift S.

NTTR, SoH, Syria, Sinai, Channel, South Atlantic, CA, Supercarrier, FC3, A-10CII, F-5, F-14, F-15E, F-16, F/A-18, F-86, Harrier, M2000, F1, Viggen, MiG-21, Yak-52, L-39, MB-339, CE2, Gazelle, Ka-50, Mi-8, Mi-24, Huey, Apache, Spitfire, Mossie.  Wishlist: Tornado, Jaguar, Buccaneer, F-117 and F-111.

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Thanks for posting Lace. I also struggled with the MiG-29s and the Sidewinders. The most reliable tactic for me was to stay back in SAM cover and keep the Redfor occupied while having the SAMs take them out. For some reason the Su-25s tended to egress by flying over the Hawk batteries, which most often proved fatal.

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  • 3 months later...

Hey Lace.  100 days have passed, is the topic dead and locked?

I was flying your campaign daily in May.  I meant to tell you how much I liked it.  But then the Hind appeared, and I dropped everything to learn it.  You really need to place Nordkapp in user downloads.  There are only 12 Viper campaigns.  Each has 300+ downloads, yours will have 500+.  Share, don't be selfish.  DCS needs more content not less.

Fencer intercept, dam defense, bridge strike, Scud hunt, bomber intercept, Sea King escort, these were all really good missions.  The only mission I didn't like was M1.  Didn't think the rigs were valid economic targets, and the Soviets would not strike them on day 1.  POL storage and pumping stations perhaps.

The weather was atrocious.  I really believed I was above latitude 60.  Amazing you can achieve that with only visual effects.  I was a bit lazy, you forced me to learn ILS in the F16.  Thank you for that.

So, what are you working on now?

 

HORNET/VIPER/HARRIER/SABRE/FISHBED/FROGFOOT/HOKUM/HIND/JUG/ISHAK

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2 hours ago, dfpoor said:

Hey Lace.  100 days have passed, is the topic dead and locked?

I was flying your campaign daily in May.  I meant to tell you how much I liked it.  But then the Hind appeared, and I dropped everything to learn it.  You really need to place Nordkapp in user downloads.  There are only 12 Viper campaigns.  Each has 300+ downloads, yours will have 500+.  Share, don't be selfish.  DCS needs more content not less.

Fencer intercept, dam defense, bridge strike, Scud hunt, bomber intercept, Sea King escort, these were all really good missions.  The only mission I didn't like was M1.  Didn't think the rigs were valid economic targets, and the Soviets would not strike them on day 1.  POL storage and pumping stations perhaps.

The weather was atrocious.  I really believed I was above latitude 60.  Amazing you can achieve that with only visual effects.  I was a bit lazy, you forced me to learn ILS in the F16.  Thank you for that.

So, what are you working on now?

 

 

 

Thanks for the feedback.  To be honest, things just got a little busy at home and at work and the mission creating took a bit of a back seat.  I wasn't sure there were many still flying these missions.  You are right though, it does need some kind of closure.  I'll look into uploading to 'User Files', is there much more traffic there than on the forums?

 

Regarding M1, although not strictly accurate as a D+0 target, I did want to set a scene of isolation, which I feel the open water and poor weather helped create.

 

I have started another mission set you might like given it involves the Hind.  This will be multiplayer, with REDFOR comprising a military coup which has taken over a nearby island from a BLUFOR ally.  REDFOR playable units will be Mi-24 and Mi-8.  BLUEFOR will be land-based F-5s, and AV-8Bs from a small amphibious task group sent to assist.  Weather should be better though (although, you can get typhoons that time of year...).  The only thing holding me back on that one at the moment is the poor performance everyone seems to be experiencing with the Marianas map.

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Laptop Pilot. Alienware X17, i9 11980HK 5.0GHz, 16GB RTX 3080, 64GB DDR4 3200MHz, NVMe SSD. 2x TM Warthog, Hornet grip, Virpil CM2 & TPR pedals, FSSB-R3, Cougar throttle, Viper pit WIP (XBox360 when traveling). Rift S.

NTTR, SoH, Syria, Sinai, Channel, South Atlantic, CA, Supercarrier, FC3, A-10CII, F-5, F-14, F-15E, F-16, F/A-18, F-86, Harrier, M2000, F1, Viggen, MiG-21, Yak-52, L-39, MB-339, CE2, Gazelle, Ka-50, Mi-8, Mi-24, Huey, Apache, Spitfire, Mossie.  Wishlist: Tornado, Jaguar, Buccaneer, F-117 and F-111.

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On 8/27/2021 at 2:06 AM, Lace said:

 

Regarding M1, although not strictly accurate as a D+0 target, I did want to set a scene of isolation, which I feel the open water and poor weather helped create.

 

For M1 I would have preferred Soviets strike EWR/P-3/FFG.  Even civillian shipping by mistake.  But I offer constructive criticism only to prove I am not a fanboy.  The campaign is A+.

 

Please place Nordkapp in Downloads/User files.  It is a difficult, unique, interesting campaign.  Viper pilots will love it.  It is 95F where I am.  Maybe a high arctic winter campaign won't fly off the shelf until October.  On the other hand, it is winter in Australia and Argentina.

 

 

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HORNET/VIPER/HARRIER/SABRE/FISHBED/FROGFOOT/HOKUM/HIND/JUG/ISHAK

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  • 1 month later...

Mission 9 attached.  Anti-ship strike against the Marshal Ustinov.  Don't get too close, those CIWS are vicious.

Northern Flank 9.miz

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Laptop Pilot. Alienware X17, i9 11980HK 5.0GHz, 16GB RTX 3080, 64GB DDR4 3200MHz, NVMe SSD. 2x TM Warthog, Hornet grip, Virpil CM2 & TPR pedals, FSSB-R3, Cougar throttle, Viper pit WIP (XBox360 when traveling). Rift S.

NTTR, SoH, Syria, Sinai, Channel, South Atlantic, CA, Supercarrier, FC3, A-10CII, F-5, F-14, F-15E, F-16, F/A-18, F-86, Harrier, M2000, F1, Viggen, MiG-21, Yak-52, L-39, MB-339, CE2, Gazelle, Ka-50, Mi-8, Mi-24, Huey, Apache, Spitfire, Mossie.  Wishlist: Tornado, Jaguar, Buccaneer, F-117 and F-111.

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  • 1 month later...
22 hours ago, Bouli306 said:

In misison 1 the jets start with no missiles at all. is that what's the intention? For me it is no problem to get weapons but what about the wingman (who is useless most of the time anyway :-))

Hmm, no. It wasn't like that before.  Maybe something changed with an update.  You're right though, the wingman isn't much help in the fight.

Laptop Pilot. Alienware X17, i9 11980HK 5.0GHz, 16GB RTX 3080, 64GB DDR4 3200MHz, NVMe SSD. 2x TM Warthog, Hornet grip, Virpil CM2 & TPR pedals, FSSB-R3, Cougar throttle, Viper pit WIP (XBox360 when traveling). Rift S.

NTTR, SoH, Syria, Sinai, Channel, South Atlantic, CA, Supercarrier, FC3, A-10CII, F-5, F-14, F-15E, F-16, F/A-18, F-86, Harrier, M2000, F1, Viggen, MiG-21, Yak-52, L-39, MB-339, CE2, Gazelle, Ka-50, Mi-8, Mi-24, Huey, Apache, Spitfire, Mossie.  Wishlist: Tornado, Jaguar, Buccaneer, F-117 and F-111.

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22 hours ago, Lace said:

Hmm, no. It wasn't like that before.  Maybe something changed with an update.  You're right though, the wingman isn't much help in the fight.

I've just tried it on my system, and I start with 6x 9-Mikes.  Warehouse quantities show 30 Mikes and 30 Limas.

Laptop Pilot. Alienware X17, i9 11980HK 5.0GHz, 16GB RTX 3080, 64GB DDR4 3200MHz, NVMe SSD. 2x TM Warthog, Hornet grip, Virpil CM2 & TPR pedals, FSSB-R3, Cougar throttle, Viper pit WIP (XBox360 when traveling). Rift S.

NTTR, SoH, Syria, Sinai, Channel, South Atlantic, CA, Supercarrier, FC3, A-10CII, F-5, F-14, F-15E, F-16, F/A-18, F-86, Harrier, M2000, F1, Viggen, MiG-21, Yak-52, L-39, MB-339, CE2, Gazelle, Ka-50, Mi-8, Mi-24, Huey, Apache, Spitfire, Mossie.  Wishlist: Tornado, Jaguar, Buccaneer, F-117 and F-111.

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  • 1 month later...

Tried Mission 9 this week. All wingmen were bingo at target but delivered payload before they splashed. The two flankers coming over the mountains had not even reached the shores by the time I was on final to land at homebase, they would have made a great surprise if it could be timed better

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