One Day in a Long War (large historical TE)
-
One Day in a Long War: May 10, 1972
Following another breakdown of talks in Paris and no ceasefire in sight for the communist offensive in South Vietnam, President Nixon authorizes the first major strikes against North Vietnam in 4 years. Operation Linebacker is about to begin, with both USAF and US Navy aircraft poised to deliver the first attacks.
Well, that’s basically all there is to this TE - allowing for a few minor changes (type and weapon substitutions, minor game-oriented tweaks), this is essentially a faithful recreation of the action that day, based largely on the book of the same title by J.L. Ethell & A. Price (1989). The scenario is meant to be played from the US perspective, with a total an ATO containing 348 USN and USAF sorties - with mission rosters, loadouts, times and even altitudes based on historical documents from that day. The only objectives at the moment are primary ground targets for all strikes - for a maximum of 100 points (with a score somewhere in the 70s being average for an AI-only run-through).
A few compromises that had to be made include some of the targets - they are in the right areas, but sometimes had to be substituted for other objectives. For example, the most prized target of the day was the Paul Doumer Bridge in Hanoi, which was successfully taken down by an early all-PGM (LGB/EOGB) raid - unfortunately, there is no bridge there in the theater at the moment… but there is a factory in basically the exact same location, so I improvised Likewise, the fact that there’s no EKA-3B (only an EA-3B) on the Navy roster, and buddy refueling on the nearest equivalent (EA-6D) doesn’t seem to be working correctly meant that some KC-135s had to be recruited to help the USN. A few other minor type swaps were made, and a couple of missions streamlined to avoid extra confusion. In some cases, flight plans had to be padded out a little to stick to historical T/O and TOT; other timing tweaks included making carrier launch windows for strikes longer than in reality in order to avoid aircraft failing to “spawn” or falling off the deck.
These are long missions - averaging about 2 hours long for most of the USN strike and fighter flights, and about 3 hours for the Air Force sorties (requiring at least 2 refuelings). With the Navy and Air Force following different doctrines and attacking different target areas, both offer different challenges. I built it specifically as an educational tool to explore the dynamics of that day’s action - in a way only Falcon 4 can do (what other sim can handle this scale?)
You can take a look at a timelapse of the mission playing out in 2D (in just a couple of minutes) here:
I am still working on tweaks to the mission, and would be grateful for any input!
Documentation is a work-in-progress as well - see next post for the documents - with more to be added later…
Thanks if you decide to check it out
DOWNLOAD LINK: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jmdSy1N3NgCRrfGS6GfZuPYqTEKWud2u
-
Documentation:
-
MISSION DOCUMENT: (work in progress)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FzTC2mYDvfSogMgAQUijYZ_CmOfBE6eOou_BV0wbh1U/edit?usp=sharing
Background, briefing information -
SCANNED EXCERPTS: (from Ethell & Price (1989) “One Day in a Long War”)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dxe04ePfL4mN6jWSjokt8MK6igDWT0glmK8j-CyzuWw/edit?usp=sharing
Historical details about the first day of Operation Linebacker
US Strike ATO map showing all the sorties over North Vietnam (not including the Red force, of course!) -
-
And just for fun - another timelapse, this time in 3D view!
2 flight hours squeezed into just 8 minutes (with no sound, as intended)
This one is from an A-7E, flying as part of the first Alpha Strike against Haiphong in the morning.(I didn’t actually pilot it - it was 100% flown by the AI “combat autopilot” for testing. I also set the con layer to 10,000 ft to help make the other flights in the package a little easier to see in the video.)
-
Thank you CCIP…
The position update of the units on the 2D map is very frequent. Is there any setting about this?
-
Great job.
and thanks for exploring the possibility of vnam mod.BTW thanks for checking Dragon Jaw issue… we really need this objective!
For example, the most prized target of the day was the Paul Doumer Bridge in Hanoi, which was successfully taken down by an early all-PGM (LGB/EOGB) raid
-
Thank you CCIP…
The position update of the units on the 2D map is very frequent. Is there any setting about this?
Do you mean in the video? That’s running at 12x64x speed (so, 768x in total!), so if it looks a bit too fast that’s because it is
If you mean something in game - I didn’t notice it. The only thing I can think of is the fact you see all the enemy ground units at first, but they disappear from view after just a couple of minutes.
Great job.
and thanks for exploring the possibility of vnam mod.BTW thanks for checking Dragon Jaw issue… we really need this objective!
Glad to hear
Yes, the Paul Doumer bridge was a sort of “second Dragon’s Jaw”, and arguably more strategically important. It wasn’t quite as tough, but still over-engineered and had one upside - a lot more spans, which individually were easier to repair. But this particular strike was damaging enough that it was never fully repaired.
Pretty different from the Thanh Hoa Bridge - but still a very juicy (but hard) target! -
Did you accelerate the footage as well?
-
And just for fun - another timelapse, this time in 3D view!
2 flight hours squeezed into just 8 minutes (with no sound, as intended)
This one is from an A-7E, flying as part of the first Alpha Strike against Haiphong in the morning.(I didn’t actually pilot it - it was 100% flown by the AI “combat autopilot” for testing. I also set the con layer to 10,000 ft to help make the other flights in the package a little easier to see in the video.)
Carriers in Vnam are all very functional. I have never seen this many carriers working in one theater.
there are at least 17 working carriers to choose from in TE_NEW.
watching this video with all the planes spawning and taking off is awesome! I couldn’t help but notice that RC-5 on deck! One of my favorite new toys from ccc. -
Did you accelerate the footage as well?
I did, that’s why no sound - sorry about that, kind of a lazy way of capturing video
It’s 4x accelerated in game plus 4x sped up in video - the real mission was 2 hours long (which would’ve still been 30 minutes of video without the speed-up!)
I’ll try to do a better video demo when I have some time!Carriers in Vnam are all very functional. I have never seen this many carriers working in one theater.
there are at least 17 working carriers to choose from in TE_NEW.
watching this video with all the planes spawning and taking off is awesome! I couldn’t help but notice that RC-5 on deck! One of my favorite new toys from ccc.I love the Vigie as well! Yeah, it’s an impressive sight - it was actually somewhat more impressive earlier, when I ran the full Alpha Strike launch in just 10 minutes. Unfortunately, I then realized that a few planes would “spawn” wrong and fall off the deck/explode - so to keep it safe, I extended the launch period to 20 minutes instead of 10.
And actually, that reminds me - while the carriers in the mission seem to be working perfectly, I did have a problem earlier where the carriers didn’t seem to want to appear in certain combination (for example, the USS Constellation can be added as a carrier, but when I had it along with the two other carriers in the scenario, I would not be able to choose it as a base for some reason.) It’s not a big issue - but might be worth checking into, I suspect there’s some sort of overlapping ID. That’s why the scenario has Independence in place of the historical Connie at the moment.
-
CCIP, sorry, but the question concerns 2D. It’s smooth. I suppose you accelerated the footage in addition of the 32x in the UI.
-
CCIP, sorry, but the question concerns 2D. It’s smooth. I suppose you accelerated the footage in addition of the 32x in the UI.
Yep, that’s correct! Sorry for the odd look - yes, the effective acceleration in the video is 768x (64 x 12). That’s why I called it a timelapse - it’s just meant to be a quick snapshot
Falcon comes from an era when just having primitive 8-directional sprites (as opposed to vectors) was common on 2D maps. Not much that can be done about that (although I think it’d be neat if someone made a mod to replace the aircraft silhouettes with NTIDS symbols!) -
Thanks for making this historically accurate TE. Does this TE work with BMS 4.35?
-
Thanks for making this historically accurate TE. Does this TE work with BMS 4.35?
No not at the moment. A the moment, I have a 4.35 version that is working, but it needs many fixes for the DB etc. It is a really rough Alpha. Manos is doing a lot of heavy lifting for the theatre. So please be patient, the 4.35 version will be quite a bit of an upgrade over the 4.33 version.
-
And I just can’t await to…
I know, Gavin, that you know
With best regards.
-
This was a fun theater. Glad to see it getting some attention.