Background Soviet and U.S. carrier fleets are tangling in the Sea of Japan in the early 2000s. Forces have been exchanging strikes and fighter sweep missions for days, attempting to establish sea and air superiority. In a furball, two aircraft get separated from their wingmen and go after each other in classic 1 v. 1 style. Aircraft Map Hex Fac Alt Spd Load Conf F-14D A 1012 N 17 6.0 8 CL Su-27B A 0914 SSE 17 6.0 10 CL Game Length: 8 turns 1. Both aircraft begin spotted, both are air superiority gray 2. Both pilots have no characteristics. The Soviet pilot is a crack carrier aviator and does not suffer the -1 initiative modifier. 3. Loads. F-14A: 9,10--AIM-54C, 6,7=AIM-7M, 1,5=AIM9M, DDS=8F/8C. Su-27B: 1,8=AA-11, 2,7=AA-10C 4,5,9,10=AA-10B, DDS=10F/IOC 4. The Tomcat is allowed 5 turns of A/B power, the Flanker is allowed 6 turns of A/B power. Results Let me give a quick explanation of the results before I get into the analysis. Each row in the table above represents a match-up at a given table. The first three columns are for the Tomcat player, the last three are for the Flanker driver. The innermost columns (plain type) show the scenario points earned by that pilot, while the outermost columns (bold VAX) show the match points they received. For example at Table 3 Mother, took the Tomcat against Hollywood in the Flanker. In that scenario, Mother racked up 16.3 points while Hollywood got 1.2. While there are no detailed scenario summaries available my guess is that Mother got a shot in on damage table 6 (8 points) for a C result (8 points). Hollywood probably went from Disadvantaged to Neutral once and scored his 1 point that way. The fractional points came from the fraction of A/B turns remaining. This was intended to act as a tie-breaker but after the first round, I decided to drop fuel points as being a pain in the neck without accomplishing much. The bold match point numbers were awarded as described in the tournament guidelines. In this case, Mother's 16.3 scenario points was higher than 7 other Tomcat pilot's scores, so he received 7 match points. The most striking thing about this table is the scenario point totals for the Tomcats. To my very great surprise, the F-14s kicked butt big-time. Only five of seventeen matches were won by Flankers and you would expect five or less wins by one side in an balanced scenario only about 7% of the time. Obviously the scenario was not as balanced as I had thought. I had intended to move around the room so I could describe the action more throughly, but when J.D. came wandering in about twenty minutes late, I had to take him on as the "odd man". As a consequence I can tell you what happened at our table in a rather one-sided contest. (Hey, J.D., remember all that abuse you gave to Stora Harris about crew rest?) J.D. won the initiative on the first round so I decided to take advantage of the Flanker's 30 degree angle advantage to put the pressure on. I snapped, rolled twice and climbed for my final movement point, turning 90 degree and setting myself up for a vertical maneuver if necessary. J.D. decided he didn't like that 30 degree advantage I had, so he pulled ETs to turn through 120 degrees and leave us canopy-to-canopy at about two miles separation. In one of my rare feats of good fortune (I always get them when it's timely, you'll notice), I rolled the initiative for the second turn. J.D. broke low and under the Flanker, extending towards my right. I expected him to go for an energy fight at this point, so I continued to turn hard, intending to secure an advantage. I figured J.D. would reverse back into me shortly, and we would exchange head-on shots. For reasons which will forever remain unclear, J.D. decided he was going to go for big separation. Losing the initiative again on turn three, he continued almost directly away from me in an unloaded dive, ending up near the Tomcat's max speed (11). At this point I was really confused. An old adage of flying modern jets is that you can't outrun a missile (well you can, but it's none too easy) and I couldn't see that his maneuver gave him any advantages. But I decided that if he wanted to be chased by missiles, I'd oblige him and I cranked around in a dive and loosed an AA-10C at him. I thought the missile would probably miss or be decoyed, but it would force J.D. to turn into me anyway. That would enable me to cut across his trn and get a shot with a much deadlier missile. Much to the surprise of both of us, the missile cleanly ignored J.D.'s decoys and struck home for H damage. When I rolled the damage typel, I got "airframe damage, supersonic flight not allowed". Tragically, J.D. was well past sonic and his Tomeat disintegrated. Oh well, so much for taking a better shot, huh? Afterthe fight I asked J.D. about his choice of tactics. He was still rather sleepy and he admitted that he wasn't on top of his game. He recalled the similar ACM we flew against each other last year (the "Hornet Dance" scenario from ORIGINS 88) and told me he didn't want to get into a turning fight with me after losing the initiative. His intent was to separate to LONG range and allow his Phoenix missiles to enter the game. If my missile had been just a little bit slower, his plan may well have worked. At the other tables, though, the Tomcats fared much better. A keen example of superior American technology? A demonstration of scenario design by the brain-damaged? A stacked deck in terms of player capability? All were suggested as reasons for the discrepancy, but a closer analysis reveals that the pilot quality was not entirely one-sided. Tomcat pilots finished the day with an average of 32.7 match points, compared to Flanker drivers who averaged but 29.3. But the standard deviation of these scores was about 14, so the difference is statistically insignificant. As for scenario design-- I just don't know. Maybe our illustrious readers will try this scenario at home and send in the results so we can get a larger survey. I truly thought (and still believe) that the planes are a good match and the weapon systems don't matter much when staring at close range. Even if you give the Tomcat a performance edge (debatable), the Flanker's 30 degree offset should help neutralize this. Maybe all the Tomcat drivers just got initiative on the first turn. The first round was strictly timed to prevent people from getting wrapped up in intense play too soon. The decisions to time rounds cost at least one player (Target) a chance at a much greater point total as he was about to fire at the Flanker when the round was called and probably would have brought it down. Despite his continuing protests for the remainder of the day, we pressed on into Round Two with the following scenario. Back to Table of Contents -- Air Power # 15 Back to Air Power List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1991 by J.D. Webster This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com