A few and me were the last pilots of the 36st Fighter Squadron that arrived to Osan Airbase (South of Seoul and almost on the west coast of Korea), just one day short of the start of the hostilities between North Korea and the combined forces of the Republic of Korea and the USA.
Now is day one (D1), around 5:40AM, and my wingman and me were being briefed for our first mission. All of the sudden, the alarm goes off and we are called to scramble. Enemy aircraft inbound!
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| With just one familiarization flight, this interception in the dark is going to be challenging. |
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| The early hours of the first day of the war. Climbing to intercept. |
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| Despite AWACS vectoring and our own frantic search, we did not find the enemy. The sun rises and we have to RTB for our next mission. |
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| A few minutes before heading south towards Osan Airbase. No enemy to be found. |
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| Now descending into Osan, just to be greeted by the air traffic controller with a five minute hold so he can sort out the tremendous amount of inbound traffic. |
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| Osan airbase on our left, getting ready for final approach. |
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| Touchdown. Now for a quick taxi and check the status of our original BARCAP mission, which briefing was suddenly interrupted by this interception. |
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| Nothing more disappointing than landing with all your ordnance unused. |
Cheers,
Thanks for your report mate, interesting as usual. I also play falcon but mostly freefalcon since I don't own the original falcon 4.0 copy. But overall I tend to prefer naval sims or naval strategy like Harpoon or even tank sim. In Tank sims or Navy sims the identification of the target must be done alone without much help from technology, while one thing of aerial jet comabat I don't really like is that the identification of the enemy is mostly done by your radar IFF or NCTS and AWACS. What do you think about this aspect? Do you also prefer when you must identify the targets visually like on Helicopters FLIR/TADS, or in Tank Optics rather than relying too much or external help (AWACS) and technology (IFF/NCTS).
ReplyDeleteKeep up these great posts mate and thanks.
Thanks for your report mate, interesting as usual. I also play falcon but mostly freefalcon since I don't own the original falcon 4.0 copy. But overall I tend to prefer naval sims or naval strategy like Harpoon or even tank sim. In Tank sims or Navy sims the identification of the target must be done alone without much help from technology, while one thing of aerial jet comabat I don't really like is that the identification of the enemy is mostly done by your radar IFF or NCTS and AWACS. What do you think about this aspect? Do you also prefer when you must identify the targets visually like on Helicopters FLIR/TADS, or in Tank Optics rather than relying too much or external help (AWACS) and technology (IFF/NCTS).
ReplyDeleteKeep up these great posts mate and thanks.
You better be happy there's no contact. I still seldom survive a fight in Falcon. :( I just can't do BVR tactics properly.
ReplyDeleteBeatiful and athmospheric :)
ReplyDeleteI wish they would modify the BMS installer to accept F4:AF as an acceptable version of F4. Obviously the F4:AF people had the blessing of whomever owns the rights to F4 to put out their product, so it should be considered a legitimate copy. The only thing the disc appears to be used for by the installer is verification that you own a copy of F4.
ReplyDeleteHi Max,
ReplyDeleteAll the gadgetry/technology can't help a bad shot like me. I don't think that the challenge factor is reduced because of AWACS and such. The enemy is getting vectored pretty much the same way.
Jerry: there has to be something in the works. This update takes everything else out of the water and it would be a pity to limit distribution just because people don't have such an old disk.