NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC- I'm lookin for a good Rp, based around a naval scenario, the area played over is the Pacific Ocean, bases can be astablished on islands to use as airfield and rearm ships. Therefore small Marine forces are allowed. What I'am lookin for is a good rp with no godmodders with 100's of ships. A maximum of 4 carriers is allowed for each nation to keep air attacks to a minimum. Full fleet lists should be made when you annouce your arrival.

http://www.unesco.org/focus/images/mapapa.gif

Admiral of the Fleet Jonathan Matthews glanced at the situation board on the bridge of HMAS Juland, no enemy forces at present a clear run for Midway he thought as a orderly brought him a cup of Tea.

'Captain Grisham order the frigates Abbot and Able to conduct a sweep of the area infront of the fleet, I want no nasty surprises'

'Yes, sir' Grisham quickly turned to a Lt-Commander and told him to get on the comm system and relay the order.

The fleet was just heading past the south tip of the Marshall Islands chain, the fleet was prehaps the most powerfull naval fore Argyllia had ever put to sea:

2nd Carrier Battle Group

2nd Carrier Group- 2 Battle class carriers, 10,000 men

HMAS Jutland

13th Naval Air Squadron- 12 F-35 Nighthawk
14th Naval Air Squadron- 12 F-35 Nighthawk
15th Naval Air Squadron- 12 F-35 Nighthawk
16th Naval Air Squadron- 12 F-35 Nighthawk
17th Naval Air Squadron- 12 F-35 Nighthawk
18th Naval Air Squadron- 6 EF-4 Phantoms, 6 RF-4 Phantoms
103rd Naval Air Squadron- 6 Merlin AEW Helicopters, 6 Merlin ASW

HMS Gallipoli

19th Naval Air Squadron- 12 F-35 Nighthawk
20th Naval Air Squadron- 12 F-35 Nighthawk
21st Naval Air Squadron- 12 F-35 Nighthawk
22nd Naval Air Squadron- 12 F-35 Nighthawk
23rd Naval Air Squadron- 12 F-35 Nighthawk
24th Naval Air Squadron- 6 EF-4 Phantoms, 6 RF-4 Phantoms
104th Naval Air Squadron- 6 Merlin AEW Helicopters, 6 Merlin ASW

33rd Battleship Squadron- 2 Empire Class Battleships, 1,400 men

HMAS Thomas Picton- 1 Merlin ASW
HMAS Bernard Montgomery- 1 Merlin ASW

24th Cruiser Squadron- 3 County Class Cruisers, 1,050 men

HMAS Essex- 2 Merlin ASW
HMAS Sussex- 2 Merlin ASW
HMAS Middlesex- 2 Merlin ASW

6th Submarine Squadron- 3 Trafalgar Class SSN, 390 men

HMAS Torrent
HMAS Thrasher
HMAS Trunk

15th Destroyer Squadron- 4 Type 45 Class Destroyers, 1,000 men

HMAS Brave- 1 Merlin ASW
HMAS Blackhorse- 1 Merlin ASW
HMAS Battlements- 1 Merlin ASW
HMAS Blaster- 1 Merlin ASW

7th Frigate Squadron- 5 Type 23 Class Frigates, 1,000 men

HMAS Allied- 1 Merlin ASW
HMAS Arlington- 1 Merlin ASW
HMAS Abbot- 1 Merlin ASW
HMAS Able- 1 Merlin ASw
HMAS Acree- 1 Merlin ASW

107th Supply Squadron- 2 Fort Victoria Class replenishment ship, 2 Fort Grange Class ammunition
ships, 2 OakLeaf Class oilers, 1,100 men

HMAS Manchester
HMAS Durban
HMAS Auckland
HMAS Berlin
HMAS San Diego
HMAS Melbourne

1st Amphibious Assault Group

1st Amphibious Assault Squadron and 1st Marine Brigade- 1 Ocean Class Helicopter Carriers,
2 Albion Class Assault Ships, 1,160 men, 3,200 marines

HMAS Rock of Gibraltar

37th Naval Air Squadron- 6 Sea Harriers
107th Naval Air Squadron- 12 Merlin TC
108th Naval Air Squadron- 12 Merlin TC
1st Assault Group- 4 LCAC's
1st Battalion, Royal Marines- 800 men
1st Marine Recon Regiment- 14 Challenger 2, 24 LAV-25, 400 men
1st Marine Artillery Regiment- 24 105-mm howitzers, 400 men

HMAS Splendid

109th Naval Air Squadron- 12 Merlin TC
2nd Assault Group- 4 LCU-10's
2nd Battalion, Royal Marines- 800 men

HMAS Smasher

110th Naval Air Squadron- 12 Merlin TC
3rd Assault Group- 4 LCU-10's
3rd Battalion, Royal Marines- 800 men

35th Battleship Squadron- 2 Empire Class Battleships, 1,400 men

HMAS The Desert Rats- 1 Merlin ASW
HMAS The Red Devils- 1 Merlin ASW

26th Cruiser Squadron- 3 County Class Cruisers, 1,050 men

HMAS Surrey- 2 Merlin ASW
HMAS Devon- 2 Merlin ASW
HMAS Hartfordshire- 2 Merlin ASW

8th Submarine Squadron- 3 Trafalgar Class SSN, 390 men

HMAS Tenacious
HMAS Thor
HMAS Thorn

17th Destroyer Squadron- 4 Type 45 Class Destroyers, 1,000 men

HMAS Big Horn- 1 Merlin ASW
HMAS Black- 1 Merlin ASW
HMAS Blackhawk- 1 Merlin ASW
HMAS Blue- 1 Merlin ASW

9th Frigate Squadron- 5 Type 23 Class Frigates, 1,000 men

HMAS Albacore- 1 Merlin ASW
HMAS Amberjack- 1 Merlin ASW
HMAS Anchorage- 1 Merlin ASW
HMAS Antelope- 1 Merlin ASW
HMAS Apache- 1 Merlin ASW

109th Supply Squadron- 2 Fort Victoria Class replenishment ship, 2 Fort Grange Class ammunition
ships, 2 OakLeaf Class oilers, 1,100 men

HMAS York
HMAS Cairo
HMAS Tel Aviv
HMAS Chicago
HMAS Moscow
HMAS Kiev

1st Cargo Squadron

HMAS Lion
HMAS Gorilla
HMAS Hawk

BUMP

bump

TAG

<OOC>
Check TG

bump

Wooot
I would fight but your navy would creme mine into cheese..............

All I got is:
10 Mao Class Destroyers
25 Federation Class Destroyers
1 Carrier(60 F/A-18's)
50 Patrol boats(can't remeber the class)
10 Karl transports
and 50 hover craft transports...
see what I mean

bump

bump

TAG
OOC: I'll involve myself if I can learn a bit more about whats going on in the area. I can't very well justify to the people deploying forces without cause... oh wait screw the people I run everything.

OOC- Everyone deploy fleets

Admiral Matthews thought through the situation to hostile countries seemed to be unhappy with the fleets progress. He would continue on to Midway to establish a supply base.

'Make 30 knots to Midway, all ships' he ordered

'aye,sir'
.....

Lt Franco was circling the Fleet in his F-35 fighter jet, it was a beautfiul sight a full Argyllian Battle Fleet steaming at 30 knts, I wouldn't swap this job for any other he though to himself as he checked his fuel gauge, 10 mins worth left, he'd better begin his landing pattern. Wobbling his wings he indicated to his wingman to follow him. His jet made a text book carrier landing hitting the 2nd arrester wire with a TWANG, he turned his head and watch his wingman glide in wondeffully and stop barely 6 feet in front of him.

At the edge of space, dozens of satellites maintained their ceaseless oval paths. Several extremely advanced models- smaller than most of the rest- trained their cameras and other sensors at the areas of the globe under their orbital 'footprint'.

Computers within the satellites compared the digital images with pre-programmed parameters. Circuits hummed to life, and images were transmitted to another set of satellites in a much higher orbit. These satellites in turn sent the digitally-encrypted data to a satellite which orbited placidly 30,000 kilometers over the equatorial Pacific. The data was relayed to receivers on the ground by modulated laser.

In a large building on the southwest coast of the continent of Forlorn Hope, a technician called up a screen displaying the satellite data a scant 40 seconds after the observation bird started transmitting. She studied the screen for perhaps thirty seconds before hitting a key to send the images to her supervisor's console.

Eight minutes later, the images were being shown to Fleet Marshall King. She waved the Imagery Supervisor to silence and glared at the screen for a moment. Finally, she nodded and said, "Good work. Send me the write-up as soon as it is done." The technician left, pleased to be out from under the Marshall's obsidian eyes.

Marika King sighed heavily and muttered, "It never rains, but it pours" as she keyed open a channel to Headquarters. The dark features of the Warlord filled the screen.

"What is it, Marshall?"

King tapped several commands into her desk console, sending the imagery to the Warlord's computer. "Sir, a small country named Argyllia is making some interesting naval maneuvers in the north Pacific. This may throw monkey wrenches into the timetable for Operation Riposte."

The Warlord's eyebrows rose, but he made no comment as his eyes turned from the screen to watch the satellite data. The Marshall continued, "This small fleet seems to be headed for Midway- for the moment, anyway."

Frowning, the Warlord said, "We don't own Midway, Marshall."

"That's true, sir. But, we do have an observation post there, and several long-range recon birds are based out of the Midway airfield."

There was a pause as the Warlord called up the relevant file. He laughed suddenly. "Very well, Marshall. I guess that does make this my problem. Go ahead and tell the troops there to go on alert. If our hosts ask, they can only tell 'em to contact me here at the Ministry. I'll be drafting a statement for them in the meantime."

"Yes, sir." The Marshall tapped the commands into her console. "What about the Riposte Task Force? They're in position just north of the Cook Islands."

"Alert them as well. Come to think, put out a general alert to all the northern tier observation posts about this Argyllian fleet. Get the other task force refitted and headed northwest ASAP. I'll alert Admiral Velazquez at SUBRON Four." The Warlord was silent for a moment as he thought.

"Didn't we just send a bunch of heavy air units out that way?"

"Yes, sir. They're included in the alert."

"Good. Tell Air Marshall Dumaurier to load up the 145th Air Transport Squadron with Rapiers and Wotans. I want those outposts- and those Subotai and Tamerlane bombers-loaded for bear in case these Argyllians get to feeling frisky."

"Yes, sir."

Matthews viewed the situation will alarm, the latest intelligence indicated a presence of several recon plans on Midway. He couldn't just ignore them and take the island without attacking them, it was an impractibility. The Marines would not be able to take the island without the destruction of the airfield or planes on it,

'Get me a list of forces on Midway, I want to know everything' the Admiral said, he didn't want any nasty surprises on the island waiting for him

'Sir, latest report in, Naval Intelligence indicates a movement of large naval forces by the country of The Evil Overlord,' Christ this was tumbling out of control, not only that but malfunctions in the Jutland's engines had reduced speed to 23 knts

'Damn, Damn and Damnation' The Admiral cursed under is breath

'Dispatch SubRon 6 to watch the Kiribati strait that is their most likely route of advance, tell Flyco to increase CAP strength to 8 from each carrier' He briskly got about ordering the fleet's
..........

HMAS Torrent part of SubRon 6 recieved its orders and slowed down to 12 knts, the ships crew where tense they had never seen the skipper up so tight before, they knew something was up.

'Captain to crew of Torrent, we have been ordered to the Kiribati strait to observe an enemy fleet I know everyone in this crew will perform their duty to the upmost' The Captain annouced on the subs intercom

OOC- Can I have a detailed list of forces on Midway, thanks

OOC- Can I have a detailed list of forces on Midway, thanks

Orbital imagery would show you between 4 and 6 large aircraft (Subotai BF-6R) in revetments, 3 smaller aircraft (Hessian ST-22T) near the hangar complex in addition to whatever Western Asia has on the island. No one has seen the BF-6 in action, so your techs can only get gross physical data from the imagery.

The ST-22 has been seen all over the world, so your techs can easily identify it. The Hessian is a high-subsonic strategic transport, with a range of around 4000 kilometers and a payload of around 100 tonnes. The ST-22s at Midway appear to be configured as tankers.

There are 3 radar installations, and 2 very large SAM batteries near the large aircraft. Since the SAMs are a variation of the export version of the Skyripper missile system, your techs would be able to identify them. The export version of the Skyripper has a ceiling of 30,000 meters, are terminal active radar homing, and have a second-stage solid booster that propels the missile at mach 5. Maximum range is 60 kilometers. There are 8 missiles per tube, 4 tubes per battery. reloading takes approximately ten minutes with dedicated support equipment, up to an hour manually.

Anything other than a satellite that tries to get a view of the island risks being shot down- by either my forces or Western Asia's.

TEO

<OOC>
Evil Overlord Enterprises has three Task Forces in the southern Pacific for Operation Riposte. Operation Riposte was the seizure and occupation of various unclaimed strategic real estate across the south Pacific. The latest acquisitions were Nauru, the Cook Islands, and Johnson Atoll. The operation was interrupted before it could continue into the north Pacific by the current crisis.

The islands seized and occupied are manned by a varied number of ground troops (from a few dozen on smaller islands to a thousand or more on larger ones), several fixed SAM batteries, and an airfield on which is based as many aircraft as the island will hold. Only the larger islands will have long-range aircraft based on them, but all of the islands will have large inflatable sensor platforms (resembling WW II barrage ballons) in addition to regular radar/lidar stations.


Task Force Reaver (62 ships) is on station between the Cook Islands and Kiribati:

2 Agincourt-class carriers; 1 Elite-class battleship; 1 Heimdahl-class helicopter carrier; 4 Marne-class cruisers; a large screen of destroyers and corvettes; several troop transports, oilers, fast replenishment ships, 5 minesweepers, and 2 large ships which match no known profile.


Task Force Champion (71 ships) is between Johnson Atoll and Hawaii:

1 carrier; 2 battleships; 2 helicopter carriers; 5 cruisers; support, troop transport, and screening ships in proportion; 3 minesweepers; and 1 unclassified ship.


Task Force Howard (51 ships) is just north of Nauru.

2 carriers; 2 battleships; 1 helicopter carrier; 5 cruisers; screening, troop transport, and support ships in proportion; 2 minesweepers; and 1 unclassified ship.

All of this data is easily obtainable via satellite imagery. More detailed data will have to wait until the ballon goes up.

OOC: Midway is, along with the Guam and Wake island groups and a base in Australia, the base for The IDF Naval Corps' Pacific Fleet Command (PAFCOM). PAFCOM consists of the 10th, 11th, and 12th Naval Grand Fleets (NGFs) as well as the 1st and 2nd Amphibious Assault Ready Groups(AARGs) and the 4th and 5th Marine Expeditionary Forces (MEFs) of the IDF's Marine Corps (under the Marine Corps' Pacific Command (PACOM)). Midway is also an integrated part of Western Asia and, along with the other Pacific Territories, is recognized formally as a state of the United States of Western Asia.

Military forces found specifically at Midway include the 10th NGF, the 2nd AARG, and the current deployment of the 5th MEF (minus a company that is training on Wake Is.). The island is covered by a range of missile defense systems as well as many 'offensive' defense batteries of SAMs, long-ranged anti-shipping missiles, a "Gatekeeper" missile bombardment unit, and a trio of BM-747s. The island houses the full aircraft contingent of the 10th NGF, 2n ARRG, and 5th MEF as well as a contingent of Air Corps units tasked to defend the island and a group of long range bombers also under the Air Corps' command. One of the 10th NGF's Strike Groups is out on patrol near Australia.

The forces on Guam and Wake could also be called into any conflict on Midway.

'sir, reports from the last pass of a satalite indicate a large Western Asia force on the islands, estimates vary from 20,000 to 50,000 men on the islands. The good news is that Evil Overlord forces consist only of transports and recon birds, unfortunaley there are several large AA batteries and long-range anti-shipping batteries.' The Intelligence analyst read off the computer

'Didn't we know that WA had troops on Midway?, you call that decent intelligence, what a balls up' Matthews said quietly

'Our ships could probably take the island, but would not be able to defend it without serious reinforcement of men, planes and ships from home.'

'I know, get Argyllian Naval HQ, on the line I need to speak to the Chief of Staff'

'Right away sir'
.................

Meanwhile the Torrent has come into sonar range of the Task Force Reaver,

'slow to 2 knts,' the Captain called softly

'aye,sir' the helmsmen quickly punched in the new arrangements

On Midway Island, Intelligence Command Building, IMINT Center

A technician pulls down the latest satellite scans of his sector and uses his computer station to electronically mark several objects for closer observation. He types in a few commands and pulls up the previous sector map, which he overlays on the map. Within a few minutes, he's tracked the paths of the Argyllian vessels and has pegged their speed at somewhere above 20kts.

He marks the location of TEO's Task Force Reaver on the map and prints out a large copy of the entire marked system. The technician types an email to his superior officer containing his notes on the progress of the new fleet, its proximity to friendly forces, and its approach to Midway itself.

Ten minutes later, his commanding officer has reviewed both the email and the map and the information is quickly passed up the chain of command. Within half an hour of the images first arrival, just as the next scan is being completed by Western Asian satellites, the marked map is sitting on the desk of the base's acting commander and a digital copy has been sent to Western Asia.

The CO of the base speaks to his Intelligence Corps advisor.

"Their progress is unabated?"

"Yes, sir, that's what our tracking has shown so far. They've been heading right towards us for several days."

"Okay then. Have your men continue to track the fleet and update my office on its progress, also send soft copies to the Air, Naval, and Marine COs. Your men continue to show their quality. I'll see you later."

"I will take care of these matters."

As the Intelligence advisor leaves, the CO emails the COs of each Corps' and calls them into a meeting to discuss their options and the risks they face. Before they arrive, he sends another email to the civilian liaison, informing him of an increased danger level and advising him to initiate protective measures for the island's large civilian population.

<Aboard EOE Kursk (AC-7N), 1340ZULU>

"Captain. We have FLASH traffic from Kaligrad."

Captain Martin Cassianon looked up from the sonar console in CIC. He tapped the display with his finger before straightening up and said, "Tell Warrior to get another bird aloft. I want another line of sensor floats along this potential threat axis. I'll clear it with the Admiral." He stood and stretched, then added one more thought before leaving CIC. "Go ahead and contact Yamamoto and alert Captain Kristoff as well."

Out in the passageway, he absently muttered "carry on" to the duty security force and went up the ladder to the Flag stateroom. He knocked and opened the door without waiting for a reply. Admiral Vargas looked up from her coffee and arched an eyebrow.

"Something bothering you, Marty?"

The Captain ran a hand through his thinning hair and nodded. "Yes, sir. We just got a FLASH message from Kaligrad, and Warrior reports hints of movement along the outlying sensor float line."

The Admiral sipped her coffee, then called up the message log on her desk console.

SECRET

FLASH

ALLNAV
ALLRIPOSTE

MAR071338ZULU04

Fleet analysis of ARGYLLIAN naval movements indicates serious possibility of hostile action with or without warning. SIGINT suggests prob70 +/- 5% RIPOSTE units under observation by ARGYLLIAN naval assets.

FltMrshl KING has ordered TRINITY TWO for all RIPOSTE units.

Develop potential threats within 100 kilometers. WEAPONS FREE at discretion of SOPA, within TRINITY TWO limits.

COMCODE ZETA in effect as of 1400Z07MAR04.

The Admiral winced, then cleared her screen. "All right, Captain. We go to TRINITY TWO as of right now. Any potential threats within 100 klicks get piped directly to Flag Plot."

Captain Cassianon nodded and left the stateroom. Vargas was too busy to notice. She called up the Fleet Plot on her console and keyed in several alternate fleet configurations. She selected three, highlighted one of them and hit the execute button. Another button called in her Chief of Staff, Captain Warren. "Warren, I'm sending the transports to Nauru with a couple of the DDs and the Omicron. We'll make a high-speed run due north through Kiribati at the same time. Tell Captain Miller on the Harrier that I want his corvettes running tag team the whole trip.

Get the bird farms at maximum CAP, and I want the air black with helos. Send a req back to Kaligrad for Gentian to load torpedoes and sensor-floats and meet us at Phase Line George in 30 hours."

Captain Warren nodded as he rapidly tapped in the orders to his hand comp. He looked up and asked, "Anything else, Admiral?"

Admiral Vargas had never been particularly attractive, but her face glowed as she stood and picked up her computer remote access. "Make sure everyone knows we're at the edge of war, Jimmie. TRINITY TWO-ZETA."

Captain Warren added the codes to his orders and left the stateroom. The Admiral smiled like a shark at the empty doorway and stalked after him.

The intelligence officers on HMAS Jutland where trying to figure out this sudden increase in activity, obviously combat was immenent and the enemy ships where getting into combat readiness. A large Task Force was barely 300km away from the Argyllian Fleet and baring down on them,

'Tell them if they encroach on the 300km exclusion zone I will be forced into action, also say in no uncertain terms I will respond if a first strike is carried out' Matthews said

'Very good, sir, I'll get on the international frequency straight away'

Matthews ordered the fleet to combat readiness the highest state of alert without being at war, all ASW Helos where aloft and scanning 50 miles outwards in every direction. Messages from Freetown the Argyllian capital had said to be cautious an not provoke a incident, that seemed impossible now.

24 F-25 Night Hawks where in the sky. a squadron from each carrier. They where in fours patrolling the fleets airspace, the elite of the Argyllian Naval Air Arm they knew they would perform well in the up coming conflict.

"Sir, that Argyllian fleet is warning Task Force Reaver to stay 300 nautical miles away. They claim it's some sort of 'exclusion zone'"

The Warlord blinked, then checked his screen to see if he'd missed something. Marshall King shook her head. "You're not missing anything, sir. As far as I can tell, they've created an 'exclusion zone' out in the middle of the open ocean."

After checking the latest satellite data, the Warlord asked, "Is it just my imagination, or are they maneuvering toward Reaver."

"Sir, that's what it looks like to me, too. Admiral Vargas hasn't responded yet."

"Very well, Marshall. I'll have the Ministry send a message to the Argyllian government."

The Warlord's hands tapped in a series of orders and hit the execute button. "Stand by for orders, Marshall. Operation Riposte is now cancelled. You will take command of Operation Highball. Task Force Reaver and Task Force Champion are yours, and I'm releasing the 3rd Fleet (minus Malmedy- she's still in the yards) and the 11th Expeditionary Force. I am also transferring the 31st Maritime Support Squadron, the 15th and 9th Bomb Wing and the Sixth Air Force to Highball.

Your orders are to take whatever action you deem appropriate to protect EOE assets in the expanded Security Zone. If the Argyllians want to play, you have my permission to litter the ocean floor with their fleet. If the Roanian situation gets out of hand in the Marshals, I'll deal with that, so your flanks are clear.

You now have absolute priority on all satellite data- and we have 12 more launches scheduled this week to loft more eyes into the sky. Any supply reqs are automatically granted short of TRINITY THREE. Any questions?"

Marshall King looked up from checking the new orders in her hand comp. "Sir, Reaver is a little outgunned at the moment ..."

The Warlord cut her off. "Admiral Vargas has my permission to engage if necessary. I want Reaver to stay in contact with that fleet until Champion arrives to back Reaver up in ..." A quick check of the Fleet traffic delayed the crisp orders for a moment. "... 30 hours or so. The 3rd Fleet and the 11th Expeditionary will take a bit longer to get there. Once they arrive, any shooting will be over very damned quickly.

Use the bombers deployed to the forward bases as needed- once the balloon goes up. 40 BF-6s and 22 BF-7s ought to help even the odds for Admiral Vargas. When the 15th Bomb Wing gets to Johnson Atoll and the 9th gets to Nauru, you'll have another 70 bombers to play with. I suggest staging the 6th Air Force out of the Cooks- they can rotate birds in and out of the northern tier outposts as needed for local defense and support. Anything else?"

The Marshall closed her hand comp and saluted. "No, sir."

"Get moving, then."

After the door closed behind the Marshall, the Warlord drafted orders for the Air Transport Squadrons at Midway and Nauru, and another set for the Recon Squadrons at Nauru and Johnson Atoll. Once the orders had been sent, he carefully typed up a message to the Argyllian government.


FROM: Eternal Arch-Villain Psychopompos, Minister for Pre-Subjugation External Affairs

TO: Argyllian Foreign Ministry

Subject: Pacific lanes of travel

A quick glance at a map will reveal the fact that any air travel from Midway to any of the Evil Overlord Enterprises possessions in the Pacific will take the aircraft near to or even over the large naval unit you have in the area.

Due to the distances involved, transport aircraft will be unable to detour around this area. There are three scheduled flights of supplies and critical equipment for the EOE units at Midway which cannot be rescheduled. These flights will involve two ST-22 Hessian transport planes flying the direct route from Nauru to Midway. These are unarmed transport aircraft, carrying medical supplies and equipment for the desalination plants at Midway.

The aircraft will launch at 0100 ZULU, and will transit the area of your fleet approximately four hours later. The transponder frequencies are appended to this message.

Any attempt to force these aircraft away from their intended course or interfere with their peaceful transit will be condemning those aircraft to crashing short of Midway, thereby putting the lives of the aircrews and the units at Midway at risk. Any such attempt will be construed as an act of war.

This message is being sent in light of the recent pronouncement of a 300 nautical mile "exclusion zone" around this fleet. His Omniferocity's government does not recognize this so-called "exclusion zone", as the area in question is not territory of Argyllia. Your government does not have the right to restrict free passage through international airspace and waters.

EAP
MPEA
sends

From Argyllian Forgein Military

These planes will be not molestered as they cross Argyllian Fleet airspace, if any deviation happens they will be shot down immeaditley with no exceptions, I will repeat that again any deviation and they will be shot down with no warning. Otherwise they are free to pass.

Harold Wilson, Forgein Minister

OOC- I have a Naval and Air Force Base on the Phillipines from an earlier operation. There are no other bases outside Argyllia

Task Force Dagger consisted of the 2nd Carrier Battle Group and the 1st Battle Group, this powerful force of over 40 ships is steaming as fast as it can across the Indian Ocean to try and get to the beleagured Task Force in the South Pacific, Also the 1st Bomber Wing and 4th Fighter Group have been forward deployed to the Manilla NAF Base, these will provide extra support for forces in thearte.

Admiral Matthews commanded the redesignated Task Force Sword, it was on full alert as the Overlord fleet came onto the Battleships powerful long beam radar, the preperations doubled up and ammunition ships started dolling out extra missiles and shells into ships magazines making it quicker to reload. F-s5's infront of the fleet where now picking up the low radar signitures of the enemy fighters which would flicker and then disappear due to their stealth characteristics.

'Order all aircraft to load with war armaments, combat is immernent, all ships light up radar and any unidentified planes that fly through our path are to be shot down. Ladies and Gentlemen we are in a war zone, it's be killed or kill'

The 3 SSN's in the Kiribati gap where retreating as the powerful taskforce infront of them surged forward, the Captain of the Torrent was busy cummunicating with fleet HQ about the sudden surge it looked dangerously like they where trying to link up with Reaver near Midway. The Captain asked for orders,

The ships had been loading for days. Troop transports and amphibious assault transports; capital ships of all types; destroyers and corvettes by the scores; and the legions of EOE oilers, munition ships, and fast replenishment ships all slipped silently out to sea.

Troop transports and amphibious ships from the now-defunct Operation Riposte hurried into Kaligrad's bustling harbors and loaded fuel, supplies, and troops, then quickly went back to sea. All in all, over 80,000 troops boarded ship to go in harm's way.

Two squadrons of submarines made their separate ways to pre-determined choke points in advance of the Argyllian squadrons, while others made their best speed to specific locations far to the southwest.

Aircraft flew out to meet their aircraft carriers, and hundreds more flew long distances over water to forward airbases all around the southern Pacific. At the Overlord Kosmodrome outside Mikalgard, dozens of OIV's hurled themselves skyward to add scores of satellites to the already vast EOE orbital array.

Out to sea, nearly half of the massive Evil Overlord Enterprises Navy formed into powerful battlegroups. More than one hundred ships set out westward, to intercept the far smaller Argyllian squadrons steaming from the Indian Ocean. Over two hundred ships- including almost all of the troop transports and amphibs, joined up with two carrier battlegroups and headed southwest.

Toward Argyllia.

EDITED for spelling errors

On Board the HDS Assistance...

"Torps deck, conn. Whats the problem?"
"Conn,, torps. Nothing sir, the petty officer just fell asleep and hit the drill button, no problem, the drill wasnt mounted by a tube, could have been nasty, but it wasn't."
"Okay, make sure he gets some caffeine in him warrant officer."
"Sure do, sir."

Captain Valentin 'Shark' Andreyevich looked at the main bridge of the navy's fast attack sub, no HIS fast attack sub, Valentin thought to himself. The Assistance was currently patrolling the surrounding 600NM from the Bree Tonian 3rd Carrier Battle Group. Although he didn't know it, Caotain Andrey'ch was about to have a fun couple of hours...

"Conn, sonar. Contact bearing 145-static, believe to be a supply ship of some sort, looks odd tough, like its got a double fin, doesnt log with me , sir, Three more contacts!!! another supply ship, the same hull, and two destroyers, oh my god! Sir, there is a whole navy dead ahead, first contact 44'000 feet and closing fast, sir, theres tons of them, 30 contacts and improving, at least 4 subs so far, 3 carriers, oh my, sir, this is outta my league, i need the sonar crew from Starboard shift, now!"
"Sonar, conn. What the hell? 30+ contacts, a whole navy? what the hell?"
"Conn, sonar. 65 contacts so far, no more ahead. Tons of ground activity, minimum ten underwater vessels sir, and, wait, yes there is aircraft activity on board carrier number one, designated CV-1, what to do sir?"
"I'll get the starboard crew up and ready, you get some caffeine, and i'll get in touch with the Nucklebak, and the two hades we have, they'll be hear in 4 hours at a steady 14 knots, or approximately that. I am gonna get some acffeine too, on second thought. Out"
"All rooms, this is your captain. We have 65 contacts on sonar, looks like a whole navy. We are not sure how many subs, but too many for us. Comms room, get a red call to Nucklebak, Hellraiser and Hiker. Galley, get your asses into gear, this is gonna be a long shift. Starboard sonar crew, get onto duty, or you aint working for the navy no more, and finally someone get me a coffee, now people, lest get going!"
"Nice speech sir, what plans for movement?"
"take me straight into the tail of that supply ahead, i think..."
"Officer of the deck, make your speed 25 knots, travel at 145 degrees static. Get above the thermocline layer aswell."
" All ahead two thirds, make your bearing 145-static, 30 degrees up on the fairwatre planes."
"Check, all ahead two thirds"
"Bearing 145-static"
"30 degrees up on the fairwater planes, check."
"Movements complete, XO"
"Heading at speed towards the back of that suupply ship, sir"
"Good, inform me of any other activity"
"Torp room, conn. get all 8 tubes loaded and ready, half with Mk.67 and the other half starfishes"
"All rooms, all quiet until further instruction, we want to make as little noise as possible."

OOC- An attack on Argyllia will be repulsed no matter what especially with an invaison force of only 80,000, but if you want to continue Aregyllia consists of three islands, one of which called Iberia is a rocky mountainous island and has two beaches capable of assault. Ankler's Island is the biggest and very flat it produces most of Argyllian food and has lots of beaches, the 3rd island is a purely military island with alot of forces on it.

The situation as I know it is that is that my Task Force Sword is near Midway with Reaver and another task force bearing down on it :D, Task Force Dagger is being approached by a task force of 100 ships in the Indian Ocean. And finally a 200 ship force is heading to Argyllia it self.

'Oh s**t, sir there heading for Argyllia a force of over 200 ships, intelligence indicates enough transport ships for 80,000 troops, maybe 6 divisions of their crack troops' Col MacKay shouted to the Imperial Chief of Staff

'I can see', he said peering at the monitor 'The two naval forces are cut off they will have to fight for themselves, tell them that Argyllia is at state that should put some spirit in them. I reckon we should hold the islands as long as the new bombers become operational in time, they should play havoc with the enemy fleet. Ok deploy the 1st Carrier Battle Group, 4th Surface Battle Group and 5th Surface Battle Group infront of the advancing fleet, Get the 7th Infantry and 10th Infantry to the beaches on Iberia with 12th Infantry Division in reserve. Deploy 1 Armoured Corps to Anklers with the 1st and 3rd Marine Brigades in reserve'

'Immeaditley sir'

Task Force Sword had run out of time, the fleet was 310km away. It was going to happen combat for the first time since the ill fated Madagascar experdition. Matthews could see the situation running out of control, the Overlord fleet had mobilised and heading towards Argyllia. He reached for the tele-printer, it came directly from the Imperial Chief of Staff it said to 'Do any duty that would prevent offensive action from the enemy against the isles of Argyllia', so be it they would fight to the death.

On the HDS Assistance...
"Conn, nav room. We are 3 minutes from the target, i recommend we bring speed back down to 7 knots."
"Nav Room, conn. Will do, thanks for the update. Officer of the Deck, make your speed 7 knots and we will dive to 70 feet."
"Copy that, all ahead 1 third, 30 degrees down on the highwater planes."
"Check, all ahead one third."
"30 degrees down on the fairwater planes, diving."
"Sir, do you want to transmit to the Satellite at our west? We could then identify the nationality of the ships?"
"Okay, X. Comms Room, conn. transmit location to sat 3, also send a batch through to high command and tell 'em to get one of the spy birds up, SR-71s arent they? Anyway, we need a high up monitor of the situation."
"Conn, comms room. Check that sir."

OOC- Who are you targetting

OOC: The sub poses no threat, be assured, it is coming up behind one of your supply ships and is going to track it. It doesnt know it is Argyllian yet, but it will once the SR-71 and satellite take pics. I was hoping that if a conflict begins, Bree Tonia could assist in the Argyllian defense/offense.

Flight Lieutenant "Jo" Johanssen was nervous as she watched the ground crew get her ST-22 ready for the long overwater trip to Midway. Her group leader, Flight Commander Hauser, offered her a cigar. "Will you relax? It's just another milk run."

Jo shook her head to decline the cigar. "Yeah, right. We're just gonna soar over a trigger-happy bunch of wog ships. Just another milk run. You bet."

Hauser grinned and drew deeply on his own cigar, blowing a noxious cloud of smoke into the still air. "HQ told 'em we were coming, and even gave 'em our transponder freqs. No one's gonna be shooting at us. Hell, we aren't even worth a missile."

"You know that. I know that. But do the bloody wogs know that?"

Hauser grinned again and took one last draw on the cigar before tossing the stub into the sand. "I guess we're just going to have to find that out the hard way, Jo."

Thirty minutes later, the two officers were finishing their pre-flight checklists in the cockpits of their respective aircraft. Commander Hauser called the tower after Jo reported she was ready to fly. "Nauru, this is XRay Delta Niner Four. Flight Gentian is ready for take-off."

"Roger, XRay Delta Niner Four. Taxi to runway three. The range is clear, no changes to the weather forecast, and all local traffic is cleared."

The heavily-laden Hessians lumbered slowly to the end of the longest runway on Nauru and turned their noses into the wind. "Nauru, this is XRay Delta Niner Four. Are we clear to launch?"

"Stand by. XRay Delta Niner Four, affirmative. Launch at your leisure. Have a nice trip."

"Thank you, Nauru. XRay Delta Niner Four and Flight Gentian movin' on."

The four turbojets screamed like lost souls as the two aircraft rumbled down the runway. With the throttles all the way to 'emergency maximum' the pilots managed to get 'wheels up' with a half-kilometer of runway left. Once safely airborne and over the water, the planes circled and climbed to ten thousand meters to wait for the tankers to arrive.

Half an hour later, with full tanks, the two ST-22's of Flight Gentian lit their transponders and pointed their noses toward Midway.

'Sir the ST-22's are coming over our positions now, they are following the assigned course and we see no reason why they will divert from their route' the Air Operations Officer explained

'Good, we do not make war on the red cross. Make sure that all ships are aware of the situation and none of them light up any combat systems while they are above our positions. But tell HMAS Thomas Picton to keep 8 Aster30's on the launch alert system just incase these planes aren't what we think they are.' Matthews ordered.

HMAS Thomas Picton one of the new Empire Class Battleships coming into service in the Argyllian Navy was a state of the art warship, with an 192 cell VLS it was an extremely powerful ship. The 8 missiles where readied for launch and the Captain was keeping a close eye on the radar.

2 F-35's got the first visual contact with the 2 lumbering transport planes, they where approaching rapidly and the fighters peeled off into positions behind the planes so that an instant reaction would be easily done.

To- Bree Tonia
From- Argyllian PM

We would greatly appreciate your help in the coming fight, your modern subs would be a powerful asset to have. We officially ask you for an alliance with us for the duration of this war,

Daniel Holland, PM

Transmission
To: Argyllian PM
From: Andrey Zaitzev Nikolay'evich. Ruling Benficiary
Message Follows:
We accept your offer, Our political hand shaks yours and we wish to help you in the coming conflict. I will immediatley dispatch my sub division to your assistance. Thankyou,
[signed]
Dictator Zaitzev

The ST-22's where over Task Force Sword, HMAS Thomas Picton was picking up both planes on their radar, suddenly 2 more planes appeared on screen,

'Where the hell did they come from, is there any of our aircraft in the area at the moment?' The captain said

'I don't think so, there are no Air operating orders out for our area of operations, they aren't ours, I'm sure of it' the young petty officer said pearing at the radar screen

'They must be TEO's planes, there is no other explanation, this is a clear violation of the agreed route and amount of planes. This is a trick I reckon those planes are delivering troops to Midway, it is very lightly defended and they are getting worried. Prepare to fire Numbers 1-8 tubes' the captain ordered

'Yes sir, forward battery prepare tubes 1 through 8,' the Air Operations commanded

'Forward battery ready to fire, we are live'

'Shoot sir?'

'Yes, put them in the sea'

'Fire 1 through 4 at the two planes who have positive identification as ST-22's'

'Yes sir, forward battery permission to fire granted'

'Fire tubes 1 through 8'

The 8 advanced Aster 30 missiles left the deck of the Picton and roared into the sunlit sky leaving clear vapour trails behind them, the range was barely 15 miles, the lumbering transports didn't stand a chance.

The Nation of Bulova York is planning on setting up a defensive stance about 150miles north of the island of Midway.

Our forces are as follows:


B.Y.N.S Felix
VSTOL Carrier
36 F-8 Vodoo Fighters
12 CH-53 Helicopter Transports
6 UH-1 Huey
6 AH-1 Cobra

B.Y.N.S Hermes
VSTOL Carrier
36 F-8 Vodoo Fighters
12 CH-53 Helicopter Transports
6 UH-1 Huey
6 AH-1 Huey


2 Troop Transports
88th Marine EXPD Force
(8,000 Marines)

2 Command Ships

2 Medical Ships

1 Missle Destroyer

The Nation of Bulova York is planning on setting up a defensive stance about 150miles north of the island of Midway.

Our forces are as follows:


B.Y.N.S Felix
VSTOL Carrier
36 F-8 Vodoo Fighters
12 CH-53 Helicopter Transports
6 UH-1 Huey
6 AH-1 Cobra

B.Y.N.S Hermes
VSTOL Carrier
36 F-8 Vodoo Fighters
12 CH-53 Helicopter Transports
6 UH-1 Huey
6 AH-1 Huey


2 Troop Transports
88th Marine EXPD Force
(8,000 Marines)

2 Command Ships

2 Medical Ships

1 Missle Destroyer

(OOC: Argyllia, I hope you do not mind this but..)

In order to promote it's operations, Doujinshi Corporation has offered the nation who ends up "winning" these fine, top of the line, naval vessels.

1 Infusion Class Carrier
35 RF-11
35 DD-3 Sabertooth
5 E2-D Hawkeye
5 AC-150 Tankers
10 DD-2 Infiniti
10 ASW Sea King Helicopters
3 Thatcher Destroyers
1 Norasia Combat Logistics Ship
2 Valiant ASW Frigates
25 Pegasus Patrol Craft
2 Sea Horse Class Attack Subs
2 Seawolf Class Submarines
4 Visby Class Corvettes
2 Skjold Class Patrol Boats

OOC- Bulova York which nation are you supporting in this clash, make it clear before entering, Doujin this is acceptable as long as you yourself don't become involved

New reports of unidentified ship movements north of Midway where starting to worry Matthews although he commanded the most powerful group of ships his nation had put to sea he did not like the odds on taking on the TOE now they had made their intentions clear let alone another nation as well.

The 1st Bomber Squadron consisting of 12 AC-240 Cruise Missile Launch Platforms (CMLP) was put on high alert and loaded with the Hurricane anti-shipping cruise missile (16 each in 4 bays of 4), also the 6th and 7th Fighter Squadrons where fueled for take off and given a combat loading of 4 BVRAAM, 4 AMRAAM and 4 ASRAAM. Patriot air defence batteries where put on high alert untill the new ships could be identified

'Damn!" Flight Lieutenant "Jo" Johanssen shifted violently in her seat. Her co-pilot on the Gentian mission, LT David "Calvin" Coolidge, looked up from his instruments at her.

"What's the problem, Sir?"

Jo swore again, softly, and shook her head in embarrassment. "Nothing, Cal. I'm just nervous."

Coolidge did a quick check of the engine gauges before asking, "Being nervous makes you swear?"

Jo waved her gloved hands in the air. "I'm swearing 'cause I can't chew my nails through these damned gloves!"

Both pilots laughed, and Jo relaxed a little. A loud beeping brought them both to instant attentiveness. Coolidge swore himself, maligning several deities and most of his ancestors. Jo swung around and hit several switches on the panel behind her seat.

"Cal! Get out a position fix on the radio and tell 'em we're being tracked by fire-control radar!" she cried as she brought the system live with practiced care. "And get this tub on the bloody deck! Soonest!"

She ignored Coolidge's voice on the radio as she finished aligning the specially-installed communications and detection array that was the aircraft's sole cargo. The steep nose-down attitude of the plane as Calvin firewalled the engines and dove for the deck reached her conscious mind only to the extent that it made it harder to hit the right switches.

Jo swung her seat back to the flight position and checked the threat warning computer. Her voice was level and calm despite the idiot box's prediction that she would be dead in a few moments. "I show two birds inbound at 1600 Kays relative. Deploying screen." She hit two of the switches that fired the ST-22's only defenses, cannisters of aluminized Mylar strips designed to block radio-frequency radiation across a wide spectrum.

Almost a hundred meters behind the plane, the cannisters burst open and spread millions of tiny Mylar strips in two clouds. The technology was almost as old as radar, and almost worked. One of the missiles locked onto the larger radar signature of one cloud of chaff and soared off into the empty air. Unfortunately for Gentian-2, the plane was on a steep dive, and the slow-falling clouds were too far above and astern of the plane to save it.

800 meters from the surface scatter of the ocean, Coolidge tried one last desperate maneuver. Straining as if he could physically affect the aircraft by muscle alone, he hauled back on the yokes and hit the rudders hard left. On a smaller, more nimble aircraft, this sudden jink up and to the side might have caused the missile to lose lock and miss. The heavily-laden and ungainly ST-22 was never designed for such a violent change of direction. The only result of Coolidge's maneuver was to slow the plane an infinitessimal amount ... just as the missile detonated under the starboard wing.

The wing sheared off under the strain of the maneuver and the sudden shock of the explosion, even before the shrapnel tore through the wing and fuselage. Jo had time to watch her copilot's brains color the armored cokcpit windows before the on-board computer accomplished its programming by blasting open the shattered cockpit and launching her pilot's seat into the air.

The ST-22 slammed into the ocean at about the same time the chute on her seat deployed. As she swung lazily down toward the sea ,her teary eyes saw the smoke trail as Gentian-1 went down in two separate peices. She didn't see any parachutes.

We at Bulova York, are currently supporting no one.

But, if we are attacked. That person will become our enemy.


Right now, this is just a training excerise for our Marines.


Gen. Chester Puller
B.Y.M.C

OOC- Say how many where on the planes and how many got out

'Both planes have been hit and destroyed, they performed violent manouvers and released chaff. These where to no avail the missiles found their targets and only 1 parachute was reported opening' The Combat Air Operations officer said calmly

'Excellent that will show those b*****ds who means business, reload the tubes and clear for action I want this ship to be a impregnable fortress' The capatin said

'Shall I ask the Jutland to scramble a Merlin ASW to hunt for servivers, their ETA will be around 10 minutes'

'Yes, tell them to conduct sweeps at these co-ordinates, we are probably looking for only one survivor out of the 2 planes'

The Bombers took off from Manilla NAF base followed by the escort of fighters, the AC-240's formed in 3 wings of 4. Flanked by the 24 Tornado F.3's of 6th and 7th Fighter Squadrons. When they reached the 1,000 mile range of the Hurricane Anti-shipping missiles they let them go one by one. It took 30 mins for the operation to be completed and by the end of it 192 cruise missiles where flying at 200 feet above the rolling crests of the Pacific. When these missiles reach 50 miles from targets they descend to 20 feet above sea level and increase speed to Mach4.

The missiles where targeted at the outer layer of Task Force Reaver the TOE Fleet off Midway, the aim was to sink as many escort ships as possible, to breach the Fleets outer defences.

At the same time HMAS Bernard Montgomery launched 32 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the TOE air force base on Midway, latest intell pictures showed that there where 6 recon birds and 1 remaining ST-22, hangars and runways where targeted first.

<OOC>
Each plane had a crew of two. No one else was on board. Gentian-1 was almost instantly destroyed when the missiles both hit. No survivors. Gentian-2 had one survivor. Both planes were carrying only a sophisticated communications/detection suite in their cargo area.

Also, TF Reaver is just north of Kiribati, not near Midway.
</OOC>


"Your Omniferocity, I am the bearer of unpleasant news."

The Warlord's screen cleared to show the familiar darkened silhouette on a massive throne. A magnificently gloved hand reached out of the shadows and touched a button on the sophisticated console to the right of the throne.

"So I see." The voice bore no trace of accent or inflection, which was far more chilling than if it had been loaded with emotion. "You have bungled the Dominion into a war."

The Warlord held himself rigidly at attention. His eyes narrowed, and he nodded at the screen pick-up. "Yes, my Lord. I have no excuse."

"Empty words. The Dominion does not fight where there is nothing to be gained. Where is the profit in this enterprise?."

Despite his iron self-control, the Warlord shivered slightly. More than anyone on the planet, he knew what the shadowy figure on his screen was capable of.

"You will withdraw your foolish diversionary fleet back to Phase Line Margolis, and order the task forces engaged north of Kiribati to withdraw south, toward Nauru. TRINITY TWO is rescinded." As the Overlord spoke, the Warlord's main display unit came to life and displayed a map of the Pacific. Units and fleets moved across the display like an absurdly realistic video game.

"This pet Marshall of yours. She will take whatever measures she deems necessary to safely withdraw from contact with the Argyllians. Your principal deputy in the Foreign Office will contact the Argyllian government and demand an explanation of why two EOE aircraft were destroyed without warning or provocation."

More units moved, this time on a map of Forlorn Hope. "The 7th Field Army will embark for possible action against Argyllia if they refuse to negotiate. The 23rd, 14th, and 9th Fleets will form up south of Kaligrad."

A chime sounded on the Warlord's desk console, and a printer ran momentarily. "Once these actions are completed, you will follow the instructions on the orders which have just printed."

The Warlord's screen darkened. Showing no emotion, he immediately issued the orders his lord and master had dictated, after which he picked up the printout with trembling hands.


TF Reaver

Admiral Vargas sat heavily in her chair in Flag Plot. She hit a key on her console. "All Reaver Units. Initiate Gemstone." The SSIN unit clicked as the words were sent to the entire task force. Forty-one green lights lit as the individual ships responded.


22 Rapier missiles roared skyward from the battleships Praetorian and Mameluke. Each missile's secondary boosters lit ten seconds after launch, propelling the massive weapons through mach 5 on a course that would splash them into the ocean almost 50 kilometers beyond the Argyllian fleet.

The cruisers Bannockburn, San Jacinto, Amida, and Tsushima gang-fired 20 Wotan cruise missiles each. BF-5 Mongol bombers launched in pairs from the two aircraft carriers. Previously launched tanker aircraft met the bombers in an intricately choreographed aerial ballet. The dance ended when all 60 Mongols- laden with ship killing Raider missiles- turned their noses north and firewalled their engines. 21 AS-12 Corsarius fighters cruised high above the bombers on the same course.

Several hundred kilometers to the west, a flight of 20 BF-7 Tamerlane strategic bombers gradually accelerated past mach 2. Ahead of them, 35 BF-6 Subotai bombers, less concerned with stealth than speed, screamed past the sound barrier in a prolonged explosion of afterburners. 150 kilometers from the Argyllian outer radar screen, they dropped their loads of Rapier missiles and turned back toward Nauru. The Rapiers climbed rapidly into the stratosphere at Mach 4.

Mameluke, 3 of the cruisers, 10 destroyers, and 9 corvettes turned as one and left trails of foam as their screws chewed the ocean white behind them. This ad hoc Surface Action Group was following the aircraft and missiles north at flank speed.

100 kilometers east of Task Force Reaver, four EOE submarines lurked silently and nearly motionless 50 meters beneath the surface. The ocean above them was studded with several sophisticated sensor floats. They waited patiently for the signal to launch their own strike.

A large, block-shaped vessel north of the task force ignored the ordnance and aircraft going overhead as it steamed in a complicated pattern over the ocean, paying attention only to the course of the mighty Mameluke and her escorts as they surged past.

The first flight of Rapier missiles was still climbing as the missiles crossed the outer line of radar pickets. The predicted impact area was well north of the fleet.

<OOC>

Argyllia, I need you to tell me:

A- what you will do about the first flight of Rapier missiles streaking over your fleet. Specifically, I need to know if you paint the missiles with fire-control radar- or if you don't.

B- how many aircraft you have in the air over your fleet.

C- Which direction the cruise missiles are coming in from.

Midway

Alarms blared from the WA side of the airfield as the missile warning sounded in the Evil Overlord Enterprises signal shack. Sergeant Willie Dreyer locked her body armor down as she scrambled to her duty station at Skyripper-3. She finally got the final latch secured on her 'chicken vest' as she slid into the control seat of the battery's command vehicle.

Willie quickly switched the circuits from 'search' to 'track' and palmed the Lidar system live. She was too absorbed in her tasks to acknowledge the presence of Tech-7 Ibn Rashad- her nominal superior- as he slipped into the left-hand seat.

Reading off the screen, she chanted, "We have multiple inbounds. Signature consistent with cruise missiles flying on the deck. Signals One has a count of three-zero missiles inbound at 60 kilometers altitude 17 meters."

Ibn Rashad keyed his own section of the system alive. "We have confirmation from WA and HQ that Argyllian naval units have splashed two EOE aircraft. We have confirmation of three-two missiles inbound, now at 40 kilometers." He sounded calm, but a sheen of sweat gleamed on his face.

The sergeant saw the indicator light go green on her console, indicating that the computer had positive tracking. "We have positive tracking. Skyripper-3 is in Primary Air Defense mode." She barely heard the reply from the left-hand seat as the first missile snarled into the sky. The initial launching charged was loud, but that sound was buried under the roar of the secondary booster punching the missile through several sonic booms at once. One after another, the Skyripper vehicles launched their missiles, which followed the powerful lidar signals to meet the incoming Tomahawks.

"Signals Four has raid count of three-two inbounds. Booster shows 'probables' on 22 inbounds, 'possibles' on 9, and 'unlikely' on 4." Willie's voice had a slight singsong quality as she recited the data from the targeting system.

Ibn Rashad grunted. "Sounds like our hosts are ready to catch whatever's left over."

"All Signals Units now count 13 intercepts, 5 'probables', 5 'possibles', and 9 misses."

"Now 21 intercepts. Now 22 intercepts."

Ibn Rashad called out, "That's all there's gonna be, Willie. Our last bird just missed. Time to hit the shelter."

Willie kept watching the screens. "Let's see how Western Asia does with the remaining 12 inbounds."


TF Reaver

"Admiral, Skywatch reports 200 cruise missiles inbound. Bearing 209 true."

Admiral Vargas hit the 'acknowledge' button. "Let's take a look at that on the big board."

A large display screen lit up, showing an aerial view of the fleet. Several bright red dots appeared to be circling the fleet. One of them dots started strobing. Vargas snapped, "Get a confirm on that raid count, and let Nauru know where they came from."

She watched as the raid count warning symbols lit, followed by the strobing of all of the remaining Reaver units. The technician at the primary console hit a switch and said, "Admiral, SSIN is in Air Defense. All ships responding."

"Very well. Instruct Praetorian to put up two GRBs on the threat axis. Let's try to whittle down the odds a bit."

The screen showed two green dots leap outward to meet the inbounds. All of the screen numbers fuzzed slightly, following which the green dots were gone.

40 kilometers from the outer radar line, the two Rapiers with GRBs- Gamma Ray Bombs- exploded in a focused, non-nuclear reaction. A stream of gamma rays sleeted outward in a cone from each explosion, into the path of the incoming missiles. Several missiles lost electronic circuits, but their designers had planned for that possibility. Back-up circuits came to life, most of which worked exactly as advertised- 180 cruise missiles continued on course.

The Soldier-class corvettes at the edge of the fleet screening squadron each began firing a steady barrage of chaff rockets into the air. Phased-array radars in the microwave range specifically designed to ignore the ships' own chaff began computing target solutions and relaying data to the flagship to complement the information from the airborne radars over the fleet. Mikalgard-class destroyers followed suit, their more powerful radars and lidar sweeping the incoming missiles and selecting targets.

Praetorian and Bannockburn each maneuvered between the carriers and the incoming missiles. The now-linked computers in each of the Reaver ships were supremely sophisticated designs. They had 800 anti-air/anti-missile missiles available to defeat the threatening 180 cruise missiles, but even if it were possible to shoot down every one of the attacking missiles, the remaining weapons would probably be insufficient for stopping another such attack.

So the computers made recommendations, which Admiral Vargas quickly scanned and then chose. Half of the screening ships would be left to the mercy of their onboard CIWS, as would the battleship and the cruiser. The computers assigned target priorities and dedicated 200 missiles to defending the remaining ships.

Pongo cut three missiles out of the air before a fourth exploded close aboard. Two of the starboard chainguns were damaged, and the fourth missile crashed into the hull just below the main deck. The ship heeled almost completely to port from the blast, which ripped through the aft superstructure and gutted the general workshop on the second deck. Pongo's helicopter, flying low over the sea in a vain attempt to lure a missile away, was hurled into the water when the shockwave from the missile strike pitched her forward.

Fires raged under the main deck for half an hour before Pongo's damage control teams managed to get them under control. The aft engine room would be offline for several days from shock-fractured cables and scorched wiring, but the ship would be able to limp home with just one engine. 38 crewmembers died in the explosion and the fires that followed. The corvette's composite armor had not stopped the missile, but had prevented the damage from being worse than it had been- which was bad enough. Pongo was out of the war as surely as if she had been sent to the bottom.

Two other corvettes also suffered hits. Soldier broke in half after two missiles hit amidships and went down with only a few survivors. Coldstream managed to avoid or shoot down all but one missile, which had actually been aimed at Bannockburn, but the corvette had inadvertently moved into its path while avoiding another. Coldstream had lost the bridge, 10 crew (including the bridge watch standers), and half the forward superstructure, but she could still steam. CIC hadn't been affected.

Two destroyers were sunk, and four more damaged- only one of which was still able to fight. Bannockburn had knocked out the last missile only 30 meters from the starboard side, knocking out one of the chainguns and destroying a 170mm gun mount. Even Praetorian had taken a hit, destroying the helicopter and ruining the flight deck. Two radars had been damaged, and number three turret could no longer turn more than 25 degrees to starboard, but she could still fight, and her engines and VLS had escaped damage.

The two carriers were untouched by the strike, but Task Force Reaver had used 200 missiles in the fight, and had lost still more missiles with the sunken or damaged ships. Barely 500 air-defense missiles remained in the VLS racks.

OOC- The missile attack is coming from the North-west; this is the direction that all attacks from the Manilla NAF base will come from. How many Rapiers where fired from your shore base bombers, when I know this I will RP the attack on my fleet. The answer to your questions will be in this post. Post dead and wounded for the missile attack on your fleet.

Fleet Air operations: 3 Squadrons of F-35 Nighthawks are always airborne (36 planes), 1 Squadron is equipped with 4 ASRAAM’s and 8 AMAAM’s, the AMAAM is a Argyllian developed weapon it has a range of 25nm and is designed to knock down enemy missiles while in flight it has a success ration of only 60% indicating that it is not yet fully developed. This squadron patrols the sides of the fleet, the remaining 2 Squadrons create a quick reaction force that can be directed to any place of danger, these are equipped with 4 ASRAAM’s, 4 AMRAAM’s and 4 BVRAAM’s.
Also airborne are 3 Merlin AEW aircraft that have the powerful radar AD-13, they control the fleets airspace, 4 EF-4 Phantoms provide electronic jamming capability. All frigates have their Merlin ASW scanning the ocean for submarines.

A Merlin AEW was patrolling the southern border of the Argyllian fleet when it picked up 22 incoming cruise missiles, 4 F-35’s where directed to the projected point of attack and the Frigates Abbot, Able and Allied all lit up their missile attack radars and put their VLS Aster 30’s online. The computers on the frigates calculated the missile paths and interception possibilities according to the radar pictue being fed to the frigates CIC by the Merlin. The F-35’s put on afterburner for 25 seconds to get in range with the missiles. They fired 2 AMAAM’s each at the incoming missiles, the AD-13 radar tracked the missiles course as they sped to the impact point at Mach 4.

‘5 missiles have been destroyed, only 3 missed their targets’ the radar operator on Abbot reported to his captain,

‘Good, in a minute it will be our turn to defend the fleet. Arm tubes 1-16 and have them ready to launch’ the captain ordered

‘Sir the missiles are not diving to attack and their trajectories indicate that they will miss the fleet by 50 miles, I think they are just testing our defences,’

The Frigates kept their CIWS weapon systems online as the missiles passed above, suddenly a huge crack was heard in CIC, electronic technicians threw down headsets as it crackled over intercomm

'What was that!!' cried the captain of HMAS Abbot,

'Our CIWS radar's just got fried by an electric pulse, it put a huge charge through the system which got overloadad and shut down'

'Call Jutland tell them to keep all radars off these missiles'

'Yes, sir. Reports indicate the same has happened to Allied and Able they have no CIWS systems online and will not have any untill we can get to a naval repair yard. The nearest one is at Manilla, 1,000's of miles away'

Barely a minute later 80 cruise missiles appeared on the radar screens (now lit up after the anti-emitters passed), the frigates immeaditly began to launch missiles at the incoming threat, big mistake what nobody had picted up was the launch of 32 cruise missiles from 2 enemy subs. 16 of these where anti-emitter.

Abbot, Able and Allied lost their radars after firing 16 missiles each, they had been able to switch fire to the slower moving sub launched missiles but not quick enough. The Asters hit 25 ship launched missiles out of 30 targeted and 12 out of 18 targeted sub launched missiles.

8 F-35's with the fleet defense armament package where now in the location of the missile strike using infomation from the far away Merlin AEW fired 24 AMAAM missiles at the sub launched missiles, they closed at a combined rate of Mach 8 and as they converged it was soon clear their was still 6 missiles left, leaving 61 imbounds still to deal with.

The Cruisers Essex and Sussex didn't use their radar, again a up link was used from the very powerful Merlin AEW radar, they had a total of 192 AA missiles, they where the prime air defence ships of the fleet and they now went into their element. They cycled off 32 of the Aster 30's,

'Sir inbounds are counted at 61 missiles all of those bastard anti-emitters have been shot down, all three firgates on the sounthern picket station are defencless, they are sitting ducts.'

'Well lets do our best, how long to contact?'

'ETA 15 seconds, all birds are running hot, 10, 5, 1. Counting 10 inbounds still incoming'

'Damn those poor men are going to be defenceless against those missiles'

Southern Picket station

The F-35’s fired another 4 AMAAM’s each, it was a speculative effort the Nighthawks where to far away to make the maximum use of their new missiles. Out of the 16 missiles 3 hit their targets, an expensive waste.

7 missiles got through, 3 plunged into HMAS Abbot. The first destroyed the helicopter deck and mangled the propulsion systems, the second hit amidships and exploded in the ships galley. But the 3rd did the most damage, it tore into the CIC and exploded killing all in the room. The Abbot has finished it was listing to starboard and men where getting into the life boats while the damage control crews looked for wounded. Out of the frigates 200 men crew 39 where dead and 57 wounded, before the day ended 10 more would die leaving 49 men dead.

HMAS Able met the same fate 3 missiles broke her back and she sank in 30 minutes with some of the engineers still trapped in the hull. Helicopters from Gallipoli (the other carrier) picked up survivors and rescued wounded from the waters, 77 men where dead or missing and 56 wounded a casualty rate of 65%.

The last frigate on station, HMAS Allied was very lucky it only had one missile hit which smashed into the superstructure and destroyed the ships radar and communication systems. 6 men died and 8 where wounded in the attack, the ship is useless it can't use its weapon systems and will start to steam to Manilla at 10 knots

2 Type 23 frigates sunk HMAS Able and Abbot
1 Type 23 frigate damaged HMAS Allied
142 men dead
103 wounded

Jutland CIC

'The Southern picket has been wiped out, 2 sunk 1 inoperable'

'Damn they got as good there' Matthews swore under his breath.

'Sir quick, we have just detected a missile strike from bombers, they must be stealth we saw nothing coming untill the missiles where fired, they are 80 miles from the fleet and closing. Essex and Sussex are in the best position to engage but they have fired one third of their AA missiles'

'Send the destroyers Battlements and Blackhorse to support, we must stop this attack'

'Sir'

New southern picket station

The Essex fired its remaining 64 Asters at the incoming missiles, the Sussex's VLS jammed after 3 missile launchs. The Blackhorse and Battlements where approaching at 30 knots but they wheren't going to get there intime to provide support for the two cruisers. The Aster's intercepted 57 incoming missiles. The remaining 13 where engaged by the CIWS on both cruisers, this last ditch attempt to stave off the attack knocked down 8 missiles the remaining 5 all targeted the Sussex whose unlucky run continued. They all hit and penertrated the ship, no ship counld take the punishment her hull holed in 4 places she began to settle in the water. After an hour the ship sunk with only 110 men being saved from the ships company of 350

HMAS Sussex sunk- 240 dead, 55 wounded

The Essex began to reload her batteries preparing for the inevitable second strike. 400 Argyllians had lost their lives all ready today they didn't want any more.

A Merlin ASW (which can double as a SAR chopper) was hovering directly over the spot where the parachute had been reported to land. The dull black of the parachute lay on the sea like a drop of oil below them. The winch was lowered with a diver on it; the diver took one last breath and dived under the parachute. He found the body of the parachutist and quickly cut away the body so it would be easier to reach the surface. The body was winched up to the chopper followed by the diver, the chopper returned back to HMAS Jutland with the unconscious body.

bump

OOC: This is my current sub deployment
HDS Nukelbak - Ohio Class SSBN.
HDS Amigo - Oscar Class SSBN..
HDS Comrade - Oscar Class SSBN.
HDS Friend - Oscar Class SSBN..
HDS Assistance - SeaWolf Class SSN
HDS Caller - Crow Class SSBN..
HDS Circulation - Crow Class SSBN
HDS Hawk - Hades Class SSN..
HDS Hercules - Hades Class SSN.
IC:
On board the Assistance...
"Sir, i have confirmed reports of missile batches fired from both sides and dramatic losses on both sides, i beleive we should intervene somehow.2
"Well, i refuse to boom the evil overlords forces with missiles-"
"Okay then sir, what action"

At approximately 20:10 local Bree Tonia time, the first of the nine subs came within range of the EOs fleet.

CRACK-A-BOOM

The noise from the explosion temporarily deafened 3 of the sonar officers, as the HDS Caller was blown into two pieces by a mine. Then the Amigo hit two at once, shredding the front half and compressing the rear to half its previous size. The Nukelbak and Comrade immediatly halted progress, although when the Friend and Hawk turned opposing ways, they hit and crippled each other, the Friend managed to put its ballast tanks on full exit before it imploded, and the Hawk managed to surface, although the amount of sensors was bound to be life-threatening. The Hercules blew its ballast tanks and got as low as possible, as to avoid the mines, and the Circulation and Assistance managed to dive aswell.
Total Losses:
HDS Caller - Total eliminated
HDS Amigo - Total eliminated
HDS Friend - Total eliminated
HDS Hawk - Hull Damaged
HDS Comrade - Sonar damaged
HDS Circulation - 1 deafened sonar officer, may not recover

At approximately 20:10 local Bree Tonia time, the nine subs emerged from the sea 200 metres in front of the evil overlords forces, most of the subs had definite firing solutions on all torp equipped boats, but just to confirm...

If you are going to GodMode, please do it on another thread.

Under no circumstances would any submarines be capable of transiting into the combat area without being spotted

Remember that bit I posted about a large, blocky ship moving in an intricate pattern over the sea? That ship was laying mines and sensor floats all over the expected threat axis.

An earlier post indicated that there were several helicopters in the air near the task force, and also indicated that there was more than one line of sensor floats in place to monitor possible submarine activity. That same post indicated that the task force had moved north at flank speed to avoid a potential submarine threat.

My counterstrike post indicated that there were several EOE submarines some distance off to both sides of the task force, which had also deployed sensor floats.

You should also be aware that Argyllia and I have spent a great deal of time roleplaying where our units are and how they got there. The last I heard, your submarines were leaving your home port- whereever that might be.

Keeping all of this in mind, perhaps you should edit your post.

TEO

<OOC>
Argyllia,
I needed the information I asked you for to finish the counterstrike post. I was hoping you would get it to me before you posted, because those first 22 missiles were not going to hit anywhere. That first flight of Rapier missiles are carrying a thick osmium wire, several large capacitors, and a tank of liquified carbon dioxide. Once any air-search or fire-control radars painted the missiles, the on-board computers would set them off.

The capacitors would discharge their current into a circuit super-cooled by liquid CO2 to act as a superconductor. This current would immediately enter the thick osmium wire, instantly generating an field spike in the electromagnetic range as the wire was destroyed by the current- in short, an electromagnetic pulse. Any unshielded electronics- and specifically any radars operating at the time, would be overloaded and destroyed.

The first few missiles would likely only damage the outlying radar pickets, but the other missiles would get closer and closer, wiping out electronic emitters as they went.

Once the EMP weapons went off, those submarines I mentioned would each launch 16 anti-emitter Wotan cruise missiles, which ought to arrive about 30 minutes or so after the Rapier strike ... just about two minutes before the alpha strike carrier aircraft arrive within your missile range.

The second wave of missiles (from the bombers) should be arriving at mach 4 at 40,000 meters altitude, where they would begin their terminal attacks straight down. Their onboard systems target (in order)- laser-designated targets (there wouldn't be any of these since I haven't got any aircraft close enought to paint your ships, yet), any active emitters, large radar targets, and heat signatures.

I specified that this was a time-on-target attack. The cruise missiles would arrive a few minutes after the Rapiers. 1/3 of the Wotans are anti-emitter weapons, and they will arrive 30 seconds ahead of the rest, which will attack with the same target priorities as the Rapiers.

The carrier-based bombers are armed with 4 Raider missiles each, which will be volley-launched at the edge of your missile coverage. These weapons are laser-guided, and will be targeted on the carriers and battleships. The AS-12s are armed with 8 Valkyrie air-to-air missiles on fuselage and wing mounts, a well as two ECM/ESM pods on the wings and a 30mm gun in the nose. The avionics can engage up to 12 targets at once, and the Valkyrie is a fire-and-forget mach 6 missile with a range of 50 kilometers and terminal active radar and infrared homing.

The surface action group should arrive within gun range two hours or so after the aircraft strike, and they will sprint in under cover of another cruise missile barrage and possibly another air strike- if there are enough bombers left from the carrier planes to manage it.

Losses from your initial strike:
2 Destroyers sunk, 4 damaged= 332 dead, 296 wounded
1 Corvette sunk, 2 damaged= 168 dead, 164 wounded
1 Cruiser light damage= 5 dead, 29 wounded
1 Battleship light damage= 2 dead, 16 wounded
1 Helicopter destroyed= 3 dead

OOC- Sorry, I didn't realise, do you want me to Rp the attack again in the right order, if so I'll delete the other post and do a new one. How many missiles does your shore based bombers carry?

OOC: Sorry for my godmodding, i didnt read closely enough, i hope my re-post is alright

<OOC>
I apologize to both of you for my prickly attitude. Some RL stuff oozed its way into the game, and I was a bit harsh. Sorry.

Bree Tiona, your revised post is fine. I'll TG you with the details of the Dagger mines so you can RP getting through them.

Argyllia, your original post is very well written. If there's a way to salvage it, I suggest trying to do so. Maybe you can edit in the missile attack sequence and stop just as my alpha strike gets into radar range.

The original Rapier launch (from the Task Force) was 22 missiles, all of them configured as EMP weapons. This was followed by 80 Wotan cruise missiles- also from the Task Force.

The 35 BF-6 bombers launched 2 Rapiers each (I thought I had posted that number, but I apparently had forgotten- the Rapier is too large for the Subotai to carry more than two at a time), for a total of 70. These will be arriving from the stratosphere at a very high rate of speed straight down. The good news is that a miss will cause no damage whatsoever (they'll go off so far beneath the water that you won't even notice unless you are a sonar technician). The bad news is that they'll be very hard to hit at the speed and angle of attack.

The 20 BF-7 Tamerlane bombers carry 3 Rapiers each for a total of 60. Like the BF-6's, they will launch beyond your estimated effective missile range. A note about the BF-7: it has a tiny radar cross-section, and the weapons are held inside the fuselage, so the missile launches will probably be the first thing you'll notice. The missiles are not stealthy at all, but they will also be coming straight down from around 40,000 meters.

There are 4 subs, two of which are missile launchers. The missile boats will launch 16 Rapiers each, for a total of 32. These will be easier for your missile crews to deal with since they won't have the same altitude when they start down toward your ships.

The whole point of these alternating waves of missiles is to create confusion, damage your antimissile capability, and really screw with the opposing Admiral's head. First, some of his eyes get put out, then a few more. Then, a bunch of missiles come screaming down from heaven, followed almost immediately by cruise missiles zooming in at 10 meters off the deck. Then another set of high-altitude missiles paired with cruise missiles, followed by short range medium-altitude missiles from carrier-based aircraft, followed by another cruise missile barrage from the approaching Surface Action Group- which will try to close to gun range under the chaos of the missile strikes.

BTW, gun range for the 330mm Hephaestus cannon is 50 kilometers. The secondary 170mm Durendal cannons have an effective range of 30 kilometers. The 330mm is entirely ballistic- no guidance of any sort. The 170's fire teleguided glide warheads. The BB mounts 6 330mm guns, the CGs mount 4 each, the DDGs mount 2 each, and the Corvettes mount 2 170mm guns each. Also, none of these ships have expended any air-defense missiles yet.

My next post will be a bit about the diplomatic angle, so you can edit your response to my counterstrike, and I have to TG Bree Tiona about the mines and sensors he's about to tangle with. Once you've posted the counterstrike, we can do the bit about my alpha strike tangling with your Combat Air Patrol, then we'll get to the surface gun battle and Bree Tiona's submarine attack.

Sorry again for the nasty attitude I had yesterday.

TEO

Realistically, Evil Overlord, you couldn't fire a 330 mm (12.5 inch) and have it go 50 km.. more along the lines of 30-35 km..

Realistically, Evil Overlord, you couldn't fire a 330 mm (12.5 inch) and have it go 50 km.. more along the lines of 30-35 km..

That would depend on the breech configuration and the propellant. The USN is supposed to be test-firing a 3"/50 with autoloaders that can reach around 50 clicks, which is what gave me the idea for the new 330's. In this case, when I designed the Elite-class battleships, I opted for slower rate of fire, smaller bore size, and longer range. The older Hama-class BBs had 400mm main guns, but had a higher rate of fire and shorter range (about 30 klicks).

If Argyllia doesn't agree, I'll reduce the range to 35 klicks.

TEO

The USN is supposed to be test-firing a 3"/50 with autoloaders that can reach around 50 clicks

And where did you hear that?

Fleet Marshall King was not in a good mood.

She finished an impressively long string of obscenities and choked down a cup of the vile swill that passed for coffee on Nauru. The Operations staff was doing their best to avoid calling attention to themselves. General Manolao, her Operations Officer, didn't have that luxury. "Problem, Marshall?"

"Oh, no." She didn't quite snarl at the man. This particular SNAFU was none of his doing. "Everything's peachy! First we get these Argyllian boneheads who get the Warlord all riled up by poking around our zone of control. We send out a unit to investigate, and those previously mentioned boneheads decide to interdict an area of empty ocean 300 klicks across. This has the expected result of getting on everyone's nerves and ramping tensions up all around the Rim.

So the Warlord tells them that we don't recognize this exclusion zone and sends two unarmed transports to Midway- after telling the Argyllians that we were doing so. This was supposed to net some decent Intel on the Argyllian comms and weapons directors."

"Which it did, sir." General Manolao's aide handed him a display of the relevant information. "Gentian-2's last transmission gave us a lot of data from the sensors on board."

"Except the Argyllians decided to splash both birds without provocation!" Marshall King glared around the Ops stations. "Does anybody have any idea why they'd do something like that?"

A deafening silence answered her. She leaned back in her chair and grumped, "Then, once everything got really heated up- with the Argyllians and Admiral Vargas throwing around enough ordnance to vaporize a small archipelago- I get this ... this ... idiotic message!"

The General cleared his throat. "Sir. You still haven't told me what the message says."

"Oh, nothing much. I just have to break contact with the Argyllians without losing too many assets in the process."

"That's insane!"

Marshall King sighed heavily. "I'm glad someone else shares my opinion, General." She tossed the message into her log basket and sat up straight. "Stand by for orders, General."

General Manolao came crisply to attention. "Sir!"

"Get those Subotais re-armed as soon as they get back and put 'em on plus-five. I want half the AS-12's on plus five, and the rest of 'em taking turns on CAP. Get those recon birds warmed up and send 'em out to Reaver. I want a sitrep, and we can't trust any standard channels to be secure at this range. They're to transmit this message to Admiral Vargas on a secure circuit:

Break contact when feasible without additional risk. Withdraw northeast to meet up with TF Champion. Any prudent defensive measures authorized in advance. Air support available on request.

Make sure those spy planes get a reply before they head back. They can use the satlink once they're out of LOS from the Argyllians."

The USN is supposed to be test-firing a 3"/50 with autoloaders that can reach around 50 clicks

And where did you hear that?

Read it in a Naval Engineer's Journal (belonged to the ship's Cheng) a year or so ago. The article was about how to build new weapons platforms to adapt to new technologies. Another section of the article dealt with building new types of carriers to accommodate V/STOL air-superiority aircraft, and a different section dealt with the "arsenal ship" concept.

The article specifically mentioned building longer-range guns for shore support operations. I'll have to see if I can get the date and exact title of the article.

TEO

the farthest a naval gun can get at the moment is a 16" naval gun on an Iowa lobbing a 16" SABOT round over 160 km.. when normally a 16" naval gun, at least in the iowa's case, goes only about 38 km

ive been doing a lot of looking on the ranges of smaller guns.. from what the net says there isn't such a project. and either way.. the USN uses 5" guns, well.. no it doesnt it uses missiles :roll: but many destroyers/frigates/cruisers are equiped with 5" guns

ive been doing a lot of looking on the ranges of smaller guns.. from what the net says there isn't such a project. and either way.. the USN uses 5" guns, well.. no it doesnt it uses missiles :roll: but many destroyers/frigates/cruisers are equiped with 5" guns

Couple of things to mention here:

1- You're right, I substituted the older 3"/50 for the current 5"/54.
2- This is a good discussion, but it's getting in the way of the RP. I have a link to the NEJ for the American Society of Naval Engineers. TG me and I'll send it to you, so we can both look for the article. I found the CVNX article, and the one for the arsenal ship, but the other articles I'm looking for have been archived.

TEO

"Admiral, Hussar reports multiple underwater explosions from the mined areas. She's deployed her helo, and Kaligrad heading that way to assist her."

"Hmmph!" Admiral Vargas stopped and thought for a moment. "Sounds like the Argyllians tried to get a few subs into firing range. Get Trooper over on the threat axis, and tell Captain Jonas to get a pair of TH-36's out there to assist."

The detection Chief called out, "Admiral, we have multiple aircraft inbound. Signature reads friendly."

The Flag Operations Officer, Captain Holtz, snarled, "Make damned sure they're on the right push!"

The Chief was a 17-year veteran, and Captains didn't scare him much. "Already done, sir. The birds report they have FLASH traffic."

The Admiral leaned forward and keyed up the message. She refrained from pounding her fists on the screen when she'd read the message, but she felt like it. "Holtz, get a message out to the SAG. Tell 'em to strike at the Argyllians in passing, but they're to swing to the east of the enemy fleet and screen us. I want a plot to the northeast, getting us closer to TF Champion." She paused for a moment to consider. "How is the recovery coming?"

"Desdemona is running empty, sir. I've ordered all the light wounded to be sent over to her, and she'll be towing the floaters back home."

"Let's stick around long enough to make sure all who can be saved are picked up, but move the whole task force east to get some distance from those sonar contacts. Once the SAG makes contact with the enemy, we'll leave a few escorts for the stricken ships and head toward Champion at flank."

"Admiral, we're getting a little short on escorts." Captain Holtz was somber as he spoke, but someone had to speak the unspeakable, and it was part of his job.

Admiral Vargas shook her head. "We'll have to risk it, Holtz. I won't leave those ships without any protection while we scramble to cover under Champion's umbrella."

On the HDS Hercules...
"Sir, you have been made the official admiralty of the sub divion now, as shark has gone down with major blood loss, the Assistance had a hard shake-up and he's cut his leg open on the main control board in the conn room, he will need bedrest for 48 hours minimum, the medic says."
"Right then, what to do, what to do, we've got 3 subs totatly destroyed, a damaged one and 5 that are OK. I believe the only action we can take will be to get the crew off the Hawk, and get the Nukelbak to take them in their marine bays, then get the Assistance to tow it home, with the escort of another sub, the Nukelbak to help things further, then that means we are left with 4 subs and not so much a huge potential as a faded one."
"Yes sir, i will transmit orders now."
EDIT - italics mistake

OOC- Adapted post beforehand

The 24 F-35's of 13th and 14th Naval Air Squadrons, where directed towards the enemy planes when they where located. These F-35's formed into 3 waves of 8 and turned on the afterburner. 30 seconds later they where 100nm away from the AS-12's, the leading wave fired 2 BVRAAM's at this long range to scatter the pdigeons and knock a few down.

'Fox 1 and 2 away' The lead 8 pilots declared as the missiles disappeared into the distace.

'Radio fleet, 60+ enemy planes airborne possible bombers'

'Sir, reports from fleet indicate the Sussex has just been gone down after being hit an hour ago by mulitiple missiles'

'Do you hear that, lets get the scum'

"Indigo, this is Paradise. You've got multiple bandits at 14K, bearing 046 relative." The voice of the air controller in the ST-22E was professionally bland and calm.

Flight Captain Heinrichs- in command of Indigo Flight- tried to keep his voice level as he responded. "Roger, Paradise. Do we have a count?"

"Wait one. We have 3 waves of approx 10 bandits each, now 97 klicks on bearing 039 relative, approx 14K altitude."

"Approx 30 bandits, 14K altitude, bearing 039, Roger. Break. All Indigo units, execute FASTRACK."

The replies from the separate Indigo units- Ashlar for the fighter units and Cormorant for the BF-5s- were collated by the C&C box installed in the Captain's AS-12 and showed as a pair of green lights on his HUD.

The six AS-12's of Squadron 4 lit their afterburners and roared ahead of the rest of Indigo. They spread themselves into an inverted triangle of three pairs of aircraft and reduced speed. The lead planes of each pair activated their Sylvan ECM pods they carried in lieu of two additional missiles. The effect for enemy radar was a moving wall of electronic noise.

<OOC>
Your fighters' onboard radars should "burn through" the jamming about 10 klicks from Squadron 4. This will only show the six Squadron 4 aircraft until the electronics countermeasures pods are deactivated.
</OOC>

Once Paradise reported that the ECM array was working, the remaining Ashlar aircraft climbed to 20,000 meters, while the Cormorant flight climbed even higher.

The fighter pilots were calm as they each ran down their personal mental checklists for the battle that would soon be joined. They were all confident veterans, using the tactics that had proven so effective in the war against Revalen.

<OOC>
The six Squadron 4 planes will continue jamming until your planes are close enough for your radars to start acquiring targets. At that point, they'll kill the ECM, launch a pair of missiles each, and dive for the deck. The remaining Ashlar planes will also light off their radars and dive toward your fighters. The bombers will push ahead under EMCON until they have LOS on your capital ships (roughly 80 klicks), at which point they will launch their missiles. After the bombers launch their missiles, they'll activate their own ECM pods, break off, and head southeast. Once the bombers are clear, the AS-12s will also break contact and head east.
Your surviving planes would be able to report my SAG missile launch (8 Rapiers and 4 Wotans each from the battleship and three cruisers. Two of the Rapiers will go nearly straight up, where they will deploy a parachute-borne laser targeting array to guide the rest of the missiles in. The targets for these missiles will be your battleships and carriers.
Once the SAG launches those missiles, the entire group will turn northeast. This will put them between your ships and the rest of Task Force Reaver. Note that the Destroyers and Corvettes with the Surface Action Group have yet to launch any missiles. They will engage any aircraft within 100 klicks- including any of your fighters returning from the air battle.
</OOC>

The 2 Fighter Squadrons where still encountering trouble with radar jammers, after a few seconds of not being able to see a thing on their radar the pilots turned them off.

'FS-J requires AEW support and EW support' the Wing commander asked by radio

'4 EF-4 Phantoms are on their way they should be able to jamm enemy radar, that will even it out. A Merlin is on its way, ETA 15 mins their radar should be able to give you a missile launch solution, their isn't much that can block one of those radars' radioed back the Air Operations officer onboard Jutland.

The F-35's reduced to their supercruise capability (Argyllian upgrade) and headed towards the enemy even though they didn't know where they where.

OOC- I think we are heading to a short range air-air combat, unless I can get radar linked to my fighters by the Merlin AEW. Also SAM range for the Aster 90's is 120km or 75 miles, so your bombers will have to get through that first before they fire missiles. Also has you SAG launched or is that just a descrption of what is going to happen?

OOC- I think we are heading to a short range air-air combat, unless I can get radar linked to my fighters by the Merlin AEW. Also SAM range for the Aster 90's is 120km or 75 miles, so your bombers will have to get through that first before they fire missiles. Also has you SAG launched or is that just a descrption of what is going to happen?

<OOC>
My fighters are only there to keep your planes away from the bombers. They'll try to avoid dogfighting (you have superior numbers), instead using the all-aspect Valkyrie missiles to keep your fighters too busy to deal with the bombers.

BTW, with a closing speed of 2500 MPH, I doubt your Electronics-warfare planes will arrive in time to do a lot of good for the air battle.

With the Squadron 4 planes jamming the EM spectrum, your aircraft shouldn't have any idea where the bombers and their escorting fighters are- just where they were before the jamming started. Both groups of the Indigo Flight made a minor course and a major altitude change.

Picture the six jamming planes flying on the same course, with two planes at each corner of a point-down triangle. The pairs of aircraft are 10 klicks apart. Each plane is interfering with EM sensors over a 20-kilometer radius- creating a moving wall of electromagnetic noise 50 kilometers high, 50 kilometers wide, and 40 kilometers deep. This "wall" is closer to your emitters than they are to the rest of Indigo Flight. There is a huge cone of airspace behind this wall that your planes can't see into until the jamming stops (there are several basic ways of getting around this problem, but I'm not going to tell you what they are).

Once the jamming stops, my fighters will do their best to keep your fighters busy until the bombers can launch their Raider missiles from 100 kilometers out. The SAG missiles will launch once the bombers launch theirs.

Raider missiles are medium-range shipkillers. They are terminal laser-guided missiles that fly at high altitude to the target zone, then look for laser reflections to home in on. Each missile flies at mach 5, and has a 500 kilogram shaped-charge warhead with a hardened steel penetrator head (they're designed to penetrate light armor before exploding, but heavy armor will still be defeated by the directed-energy warhead). The missiles will strike the ships from above- avoiding the heavy armor on most ships.

OOC- Ok, you are in complete control of that engagement untill you stop jamming, the F-35's electronic jamming is pretty poor compared to your AS-12's. When you turn off your jammers we can start the dogfight and the ship air defence.

HMAS Picton and Montgomery the two battleships in the fleet had been basically unengaged so far in the combat, that was about to change. Information had been gathered from a satalite pass 3 hours ago that an enemy surface force was closing with the Argyllian Battle Group. After that a Merlin had picked them up at 200nm and tracked them. The Merlin passed the infomation to the two ships and they prepared firing orders for the anti-shipping Hurricane cruise missiles.

On the Picton

'Orders have been given to fire at an ESG approaching from the south, they pose an immeadiate threat to the safety of the two carriers which we are tasked to protect' the captain annouced to the whole crew before addressing the Warfare officer

'Prepare to fire the forward tubes, target the leading 4 ships with 8 missiles each that should give them something to worry about. Montgomery will fire after us and folling them will be the Destroyers on the southern picket station who will fire 16 of those new extended range Harpoons'

'Aye, sir'

'Fire all tubes' he commanded after fire confirmation orders came through'

'Aye sir, Fire forward tubes' the Warfare officer repeated

The two battleships fired their big missiles (Hurricane missiles 1,000 lbs warhead, when reaching 20 miles of target dives to a sea skimming altitude making it very hard to detect and hit) 64 sped off towards the approaching surface group. The destroyers fired their smaller missiles 20 mins afterwards in batches of 4.

OOC- Ok, you are in complete control of that engagement untill you stop jamming, the F-35's electronic jamming is pretty poor compared to your AS-12's. When you turn off your jammers we can start the dogfight and the ship air defence.

HMAS Picton and Montgomery the two battleships in the fleet had been basically unengaged so far in the combat, that was about to change. Information had been gathered from a satalite pass 3 hours ago that an enemy surface force was closing with the Argyllian Battle Group. After that a Merlin had picked them up at 200nm and tracked them. The Merlin passed the infomation to the two ships and they prepared firing orders for the anti-shipping Hurricane cruise missiles.

On the Picton

'Orders have been given to fire at an ESG approaching from the south, they pose an immeadiate threat to the safety of the two carriers which we are tasked to protect' the captain annouced to the whole crew before addressing the Warfare officer

'Prepare to fire the forward tubes, target the leading 4 ships with 8 missiles each that should give them something to worry about. Montgomery will fire after us and folling them will be the Destroyers on the southern picket station who will fire 16 of those new extended range Harpoons'

'Aye, sir'

'Fire all tubes' he commanded after fire confirmation orders came through'

'Aye sir, Fire forward tubes' the Warfare officer repeated

The two battleships fired their big missiles (Hurricane missiles 1,000 lbs warhead, when reaching 20 miles of target dives to a sea skimming altitude making it very hard to detect and hit) 64 sped off towards the approaching surface group. The destroyers fired their smaller missiles 20 mins afterwards in batches of 4.

Flight Captain Simone Victor- call sign 'Dodger'- watched the cockpit monitor closely. The dark speck on the screen could be an enemy aircraft. A few seconds later, she was sure. She keyed her intercom. "Boogie, we got guest for the party."

'Boogie' Bhalstread, the Radar/Electronics Officer for KickAss, the AS-12 fighter he shared with Dodger, clicked his intercom twice in acknowledgement, then powered up the laser communications array. He loved the sweet hardware/software package and its inherent resistance to standard jamming, but he knew Dodger- the front seater- hated the system because it reduced the number of missiles she could carry. A few minutes of searching rewarded him with the tell-tale beep that indicated a target lock. The stabilized laser was now centered on the receiver of Hurlbat, KickAss' wingman.

"JoJo, we got company."

Several seconds elapsed as 'JoJo' Waterfield- Hurlbat's REO- centered her laser on Boogie's receiver. "We got 'em, now, Boogie." she said with her typical clipped tones. "Hacker says we're hot."

"Roger that, JoJo." Boogie clicked back to intercom and relayed the news to his pilot. "Hurlbat is hot, Dodger."

"Copy, Boogie. Key the birds."

Boogie ran his hand across the combat panel and switched all four of the AS-12's Valkyrie missiles from 'standby' to 'on'. "Birds are live, Dodger."

Dodger rested her left thumb on the top of her own combat panel and hit two switches simultaneously. The left switch turned off the jamming pods, and the right switch turned on the AS-12's powerful targeting radar.

Behind her, Boogie watched the sensor panel light up as the Valkyries accepted the returning radar echoes. "Birds are chirping, Dodger!" he called over the intercom as he switched off the laser.

Dodger hit the keys for the two outboard wing mounts and toggled the missiles away. "Indigo, this is KickAss. Fox 2! Smoke 'em if you got 'em!"

The two oversized missiles dropped a few dozen meters before their powerful motors ran up to speed. Both missiles flashed past KickAss on a slight downward angle that looked level to the naked eye. The missiles each followed a separate flight path to two different targets only ten kilometers away. The closing speed between the missiles and the enemy aircraft meant that the enemy pilots had only a few seconds to realize that they were in danger.*

The other five AS-12s in Squadron 4 launched their own missiles within a few seconds of Dodger's radio message. 12 Valkyrie missiles roared through the intervening kilometers toward the enemy aircraft as all six Squadron 4 planes turned their noses toward the deck and lit their afterburners. The surviving enemy planes were going to get their licks in as Squadron 4 ran for its life at mach 3.

30 kilometers behind Squadron 4 and five thousand meters higher, the 16 remaining AS-12s in the Ashlar section of Flight Indigo lit their own afterburners and rushed ahead to attack the enemy planes from the Valkyrie's maximum effective range of 35 kilometers. A few seconds later, the onboard systems showed 'ready' status lights for the targeting radars, and the EOE radio net was alive with calls of 'Fox 3' as the Ashlar planes each launched 3 of their 8 missiles.

Higher still, and sixty kilometers farther east, the BF-5 Mongol bombers increased their own speed to their maximum of mach 2. They'd reach optimum launch range for their Raider ship killers in two minutes.

*
<OOC>

I'm assuming that your planes are traveling about mach 2. The missiles are traveling at mach 6- directly at you. It would only take the missiles a little over 5 seconds to close the gap. If you were going slower than that, the time would go up a little, but not much.

Your return fire will have a slight disadvantage (assuming you shoot at the Squadron 4 planes at all), not that it would make much difference. They're flying away from you at mach 3. Assuming your missiles travel at mach 6, it would take them just over 5 seconds to travel ten klicks. In those five seconds, the AS-12's would only have traveled an additional 2 klicks (assuming that they would have continued closing a for a short period while they turned around and dove. If they'd already been traveling away from you, they'd have gone a little less than five klicks), meaning that your missiles would catch them about 2 seconds later (at a closing rate of .93 KPS). The whole point was to get into knife-fighting range before popping the missiles at you, then running like hell and hoping you don't want to waste missiles on the retreating planes.

The second wave of 48 missiles will arrive about 15 seconds after the first 12.

BTW, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong with the math on this.

OOC- I agree with you on the math, are you going to rp the missile attack on your SAG

'22 bogies 30 klicks, they just appeared from nowhere' shouted the lead pilot of the formation 'missiles in the air, break left, break left'

'Deploy chaff and flares' screamed the squadron leader as he squeezed off some from his dispenser, but even the quick reactions of the elite naval pilots the first 6 missiles knocked down 5 planes of the leading wave with only one being fooled by the mixture of decoys.

'Oh crap' muttered Squadron Leader Smith. On his radar the 16 enemy planes had just fired 48 missiles.

'Squadron, dive right and dispense decoys, when you've got one on your tail break left or right' Smith's voice was clear but fearful. The thing that saved the majority of the F-35 Nighthawk pilots was that the enemy missiles where launched at the edge of their range so they did not have much manoveur time. Still another 6 F-35's where shot down while the rest of the missiles fell into the sea after they ran out of fuel.

Smith could see that half his force had been destroyed in this ambush, 6 enemy planes where going at Mach 3 away from the action and he assumed they wouldn't be back. Now his thoughts turned to the remaining bogies in the area.

'JAW, fire all AMRAAM missiles at the enemy fighter cluster around 30 klicks away, their electronic shield isn't there now so lets shoot them down' Smith ordered through the radio

52 Missiles detached themselves from the planes inside 20 seconds and iniated the first booster stage before going to a cruise at Mach5.

The Southern Picket Station

The bogies suddenly appeared on the radar 80km away, well within range of the Aster 30 anti-air missiles, the Captain of HMAS Essex could see that the fighters where engaging the Fighter force sent to protect the bombers so he would fire at the bombers who posed the greatest threat to the fleet, inside 10 seconds the aft VLS was ready to fire and inside 30 4 missiles where on their way followed by 20 more inside a minute, the Asters went to their maximum speed setting of Mach 7 (A flight of around 30+ seconds), all ships where ordered to General Quarters and CIWS put on full alert.

OOC- The ship launched missiles will reach your bombers before they can fire their missiles, or I think so in my calculations. I suspect that yours would be more accurate so say so if mine are. :D

Palentskiy Verasit Narmonov was the captain of the HDS Hercules. He mainly used his SSN sub as a devout fast-attack escort, although he had been known to be a hugely successful using his missile drills effectively, even though his sub only had 12 VLS tubes, opposed to the regular 24 on the Romeros and Ohios. He had commanded the 4 subs in his division to 1'800 feet, as to avoid any more mines, "goddamned things!" he thought to himself. The subs had a faint reading on two cruisers at surface, seemed like Harne class, to the sonar petty officer on board the Hercules. The subs had no chance of a full-scale assault on the task force, but they could be prickly thorn in the side, with the Harpoon and Seafish ASMs.
"Conn, torp room. All 4 tubes loaded, sir. 2 with harpoons and the other seafishes, shall i pull the pins?"
"Torp room, conn. Go ahead, arm the ASMs, Sonar, what depth will you need to get a firing solution on those two subs?"
"Conn, sonar. Looks like about 400 feet, sir. Although i could get a 80% hit chance at 600."
"Right, i will get her up there then."
"Comms room, conn. send transmissions to all subs to get their backsides up to 800 feet, sharpish, we wanna get these two by surpirse, we will avenge our comrades!"
"Check that, sir"

In the cockpit of the lead AS-12 of Ashlar flight, Flight Commander Heinrich Matuszczyk swore bitterly. "Heads, up, mein kinder!" he called into the Ashlar unit push. "Our guests do not appreciate our gifts, and they are being returned!"

The closing rate on the missiles was almost too fast for human reactions to accomplish anything. What there was time for, the enhanced reflexes of the EOE pilots tried. The sleek formation disintegrated into a series of wild gyrations by individual aircraft trying to maneuver at the precise moment that would break radar lock before the AMRAAMs arrived.

Several dozen chaff canisters and flares were dropped, and four aircraft lost control as their pilots blacked out from the excessive G-forces resulting from their wild maneuvers. Two AS-12s even tried turning their jammers back on, but the AMRAAM's onboard radar was too powerful and too close to be fooled by electronics. Both planes were hit by the sleet of shrapnel from the 4 'smart' missiles targeted on each plane. Ashlar-8 swept through the smoke from the missile strikes seemingly undamaged, but the plane was leaking a cloud of hydraulic fluids and fuel, and the pilot and REO were both leaking themselves- pulped by high-velocity shrapnel that shattered the cockpit before slicing into the fuselage. The AS-12's computer tried desperately to keep the plane flying long enough to eject the crew, but the damage was too great, and the plane slowed into a nose-down position and spiraled into the sea.

Ashlar-7's crew had slightly better luck. The missiles that shredded the aircraft had struck from below. The aircraft staggered in mid-air as both engines shut down to avoid a catastrophic onboard fire. The computer immediately ejected both crewmen as the plane began a flat spin. The REO's chute deployed immediately, yanking him clear of the stricken AS-12 and lowering him relatively softly to the water. The pilot's chute deployed a few seconds later, inadvertently dragging his body into the path of an AMRAAM aimed at another plane.

Commander Matuszczyk was easily the most experienced pilot in the unit. All of his skill proved to be of no avail when luck played as large a role as skill in the face of 'smart' missiles. He jinked hard right, avoiding one missile entirely. A quick roll and drop of a few dozen meters forced another miss. Unfortunately, the remaining two missiles targeted on his plane had a clear shot at the broad underbelly of the fighter in its nose-down, inverted position. Both engines died under the rain of high-velocity fragments. The computer initiated the ejection sequence, but the REO's seat charge fired in stages instead of simultaneously. The insufficient blast pushed him out just far enough to catch the starboard vertical stabilizer in the small of his back. The aircraft and the dead crewman plummeted to the sea together, watched by the pilot who floated slowly in the same direction.

Oddly enough, the four AS-12s whose pilots lost consciousness were the least damaged of the flight. A few seconds after the pilots made their last coherent input, the computers realized that there was a problem, and brought the planes back to level flight out of their mach 2 descent toward the sea. It took several minutes for the crews to recover from the blackout, but they still had 5 missiles remaining on the racks and a mission to perform.

Out of the 16 planes in the Ashlar flight, four were destroyed in mid-air and three others were damaged to the point where further combat was impossible. These three ejected their missiles as the pilots tried desperately to nurse their wounded birds back to the carriers. Two other AS-12's were also badly damaged. These planes fired 3 of their remaining missiles at the onrushing enemy planes and turned to guard their more wounded brethren on the homeward leg.

Four unscathed AS-12s and 3 others with minor damage prepared to sweep through the approaching Argyllian fighters before making their own turns to the east. Pilots uncaged the firing keys for the 30mm Hephaestus cannons under the nose of the fighters. Flight Captain Martens keyed her microphone on the Ashlar push. "Indigo, this is Ashlar-9. Tallyho!"

Palentskiy Verasit Narmonov was the captain of the HDS Hercules. He mainly used his SSN sub as a devout fast-attack escort, although he had been known to be a hugely successful using his missile drills effectively, even though his sub only had 12 VLS tubes, opposed to the regular 24 on the Romeros and Ohios. He had commanded the 4 subs in his division to 1'800 feet, as to avoid any more mines, "goddamned things!" he thought to himself. The subs had a faint reading on two cruisers at surface, seemed like Harne class, to the sonar petty officer on board the Hercules. The subs had no chance of a full-scale assault on the task force, but they could be prickly thorn in the side, with the Harpoon and Seafish ASMs.
"Conn, torp room. All 4 tubes loaded, sir. 2 with harpoons and the other seafishes, shall i pull the pins?"
"Torp room, conn. Go ahead, arm the ASMs, Sonar, what depth will you need to get a firing solution on those two subs?"
"Conn, sonar. Looks like about 400 feet, sir. Although i could get a 80% hit chance at 600."
"Right, i will get her up there then."
"Comms room, conn. send transmissions to all subs to get their backsides up to 800 feet, sharpish, we wanna get these two by surpirse, we will avenge our comrades!"
"Check that, sir"

"Trooper, this is Fortran. The northwest net shows two possible submarine contacts, bearing 343 true, range 12 klicks."

The ASW officer aboard the EOE Corvette Trooper watched the Operations technicians plot the contacts as he replied. "Roger, Fortran. Prosecute as two possible submarine contacts. We're diverting Blue Devil from Hussar to assist."

The pilot on the TH-36S helicopter increased power to the collective and the helo rose smoothly from the position of the sensor float it had been monitoring. The odd-looking tailless helicopter moved directly north for a few hundred meters before pulling to a hover a few meters above the water. "Get that hook in the water, Donna."

Donna Charles, the ASW operator on the helicopter, shook her head irritably as she deployed the sonar transducer on its long cable. A few minutes later, she grinned fiercely. "We got contacts! I count two- count 'em- two sets of hull noises. Classify these as positive submarines coming up from depth."

"What's the depth now?"

She watched the sine wave on her readout with a critical eye. "Sierra-1 is approx 300 meters and rising. Sierra-2 is approx 250 meters and rising." She wiped the sweat from her forehead and continued. "It's a damned good thing you got me on the sensors, Tubby. They're hard to hear with all the transients from the damaged boats heading away."

The pilot grinned as he passed the message on to the corvette via SSIN, and said, "That's Captain Tubby to you, girl. I guess I owe you a beer."

Donna glanced away from the display to check the sensor float readouts. "Better make that a case of beer, Captain Tubby. Sensor floats are picking up hull-popping noises to the south of here, too."

Lieutenant Brewster, back aboard Trooper scowled at the SSIN readout. He keyed his sound-powered phone to the Operations Officer. "Ops, this is ASWO. We have two confirmed submarines coming up from depth on bearing 343, and two probables coming up on bearing 291."

The professionally calm voice of LT Commander Jameson relayed the word to the bridge, then came back online. "Tell Fortran to handle the positive contacts at 343, Brewster." She said quietly. "We'll close to 400 meters to back 'em up. Hussar and Blue Devil will deal with the western contacts, and Kaligrad will be backing up both of us."

One of the Operations techs muttered to herself, a little too loudly. "Why the hell are they bothering us?" he snarled. "We're just protecting the rescue and assistance details for the damaged ships. The bloody carriers are already gone!"

The CIC chief turned in her chair and cuffed the younger man on the back of the head. "Shut the hell up and do your bloody job!" She rumbled harshly. "None of that crap matters! All that matters is those sailors trying to keep Grenadier and Spahi from burning to the waterline will be dead if we don't do our jobs."

The chief leaned closer to the technician and whispered, "And if I hear one more peep out of you that ain't in the line of duty, you'll end up as a combat casualty. Understand? Your folks back home will get a closed coffin filled with 75 kilos of sand and instructions not to open the lid."

Onboard the destroyer Kaligrad, sailors in battle dress hustled to the four triple-mount torpedo launchers on the 01 level. The technicians did their pre-flight checks on the Dagger torpedoes, and the crew leaders reported "ready" to the bridge. The same scene was repeated aboard the two smaller corvettes. Hussar and Trooper moved slowly toward the threatening submarines, their variable-pitch screws barely stirring the waters as the ships moved in harm's way.

<OOC>
None of the three screening vessels generate a lot of mechanical transients for your sonar guys. Unlike most navy ships, all EOE ships do not have enormous drive shafts to transmit power from the engines to the screws at the stern of the ship. The reduction gears required by such huge shafts make a lot of noise. EOE vessels use powerful diesel, nuclear, or gas-turbine engines to power electric motors attached to the screws- thereby eliminating a lot of the noise generated by standard ships' drives.

They do still make noise- no power plant is entirely silent, but a lot of the expected power plant signatures will be missing (the engines run at a constant speed since all they do is generate electricity for the electric drive motors. In other words, the ship's engine noise will not change when the ship speeds up or slows down). You'll still be able to hear the gas-turbine engines, and when you get closer, you'll hear the screws turning.

The three stricken ships in the background (two corvettes and a destroyer) are making a lot of noise, since they're in the middle of frantic attempts to keep the ships from burning to the waterline (the two corvettes) or sinking (the destroyer). There's also a large ship with a lot of internal noise (the now empty Fleet Replenishment Vessel Desdemona, being used to evacuate the wounded from the stricken ships and assisting in the damage control).

Far to the southwest are the remaining damaged ships. These are able to move under their own power (more or less), and are trying to sail back to the nearest base for emergency repairs.

The two carriers, the cruiser, and the battleship have left the area at flank speed and are heading northeast.

If you have contact with your home base, they'll inform you that there are two large EOE task forces on the way toward the battle (one of them still a long way off, the other much closer to the Argyllians than to you), and two truly massive fleets underway far to the southwest- one heading to intercept the Argyllian reinforcements, and the other threatening Argyllia itself by lurking about a few hundred kilometers distant.

FROM: Eternal Arch-Villain Psychopompos, Minister for Pre-Subjugation External Affairs

TO: Argyllian Foreign Ministry

SUBJECT: WTF?

Two days ago, one of your naval units was seen steaming toward the island of Midway by EOE reconnaissance satellites. An Evil Overlord Enterprises naval unit in the vicinity was ordered to move northward in anticipation of defending the island of Midway- on which is based several EOE aircraft and a small garrison, on facilities belonging to an EOE associate, the government of Western Asia (who actually owns the island).

On detecting the EOE naval unit, your navy units turned south in a very aggressive manner and issued ridiculous orders interdicting several thousand square kilometers of empty ocean.

Despite the obvious illegality of this move and without recognizing any such interdiction area, EOE naval units refrained from entering this area. Scheduled air cargo flights to Midway were delayed while your government was informed that the flights would take place. Your government was given transponder codes and a flight plan (See attachment #1 for list), since the only practical flight path would take the unarmed aircraft over your self-proclaimed interdiction zone.

All of these measures were taken to demonstrate His Omniferocity's desire for a peaceful resolution of the sudden potential crisis.

For some reason, unknown to His Omniferocity's government, your naval units fired on and destroyed the unarmed transport aircraft. Immediately following this unprovoked act of aggression, your navy units fired a massive barrage of cruise missiles at the EOE navy units near Kiribati, and another barrage at the island of Midway. Fortunately, Midway suffered no damage, thanks to the quick reaction of the EOE air-defense garrison and the Western Asia garrison's own air-defenses.

Under attack for no apparent reason, the EOE naval units launched retaliatory strikes at your navy units, including missile fire and air attacks. Equipment and personnel on both sides have been lost, and the EOE units are attempting to withdraw from contact with your navy under continued fire.

His Omniferocity demands to know why this unprovoked attack took place. Your government has 6 hours from receipt of this message to reply. Failure to do so will result in the Dominion declaring war against Argyllia.

After the four subs had split there pattern to ascend, on board the Hercules....
'Conn, sonar.'
'Conn, aye.' The navigator answered.
'Sir, i got a possible contact bearing two-nine-five, very faint, but it keeps coming back.'
'On the way.' It was a short five steps into the sonar room. 'Show me.'
'Right here, sir.' the sonarman pointed to a line on the display. Though it looked fuzzy, it was in fact composed of discrete yellow dots in a specific frequency range, and as the time-scale moved vertically upward, more dots kept appearing, regular only in that they seemed to form a vague and fuzzy line. The only change in the line was a slight drift in direction. 'I can't tell you what it is yet.'
'Tell me what it isn't.'
'It ain't no surface contact, and i don't think it's random noise either, sir.' The petty officer traced it all the way to the top of the tube with a grease pencil. 'Right about here, I decided it might actually be something.'
'What else you got?'
'Sierra-15 over here is a merchant, heading southeast and way the hell away from us - that's a third-CZ contact we been tracking since before turn of the last watch, and that's about it, sir. I guess it's too bumpy topside for the fishermen to be out this far.'
The officer-of-the-deck tapped the screen. 'Call it sierra-16, and I'll get a track started. How's the water?'
'Deep channel seems very good today, sir. Surface noise is a little tough, though. This one's tough to hold.'
'Keep an eye on it.'
'Aye, sir.' The sonarman turned back to his scope.
The Lieutenant returned to the control room, lifted the multi-trans phone, and punched the all rooms button.
'Man the fire-control tracking party.'

I am entering the battle zone. I am 150 miles east of Guam. My fleet contains

4 Halsey class carriers
each has:
75 F-35B JSF (stealth)
4 E-2 Hawkeye (AWACS)
8 SH-60 seahwaks choppers
8 S-3 vikings
4 AE-6B Prowlers

16 Arleigh Burke class DDGs (flight III variant)
12 Ticonderoga II class CGs
4 Spruance class DDs
4 Kidd class DDGs
4 Perry class FFGs
4 Seawolf class SSNs
4 Ohio class SSGN (cruise missile variant/non-nuclear)
4 688i class subs

begin action:

Admiral Willis orders to send up 8 Awacs planes. They will fly at differances in angles of 45 degrees. Each will have 4 JSF's with an AA loadout of 4 Pheonix missiles, 4 AAMRAMS, and 2 sidewinders, plus guns.

We are at a hightened state of alert. The crews are well drilled. General Quarters hasn't been called yet.

AWACS big eye 2: SIR! we have the Bree Tonian fleet at a range of 500 miles from the fleet. Bearing is 135.

ADMIRAL: General Quarters! All hands man battlestations for anti-surface and anti-air warfare. Set conditions 1 AS and 1AA.

Captain Patton (CO of flagship USS Halsey): Aye aye.

Captain Tallman (CO of Ticonderoga II cruiser USS Exodus) WE are now ordering all surface ships to launch TASM anti-ship cruise missiles at the enemy ships. With 24 missiles each that will = 384 missiles.

Admiral: good Tallman. We will have the carriers USS Halsey and USS Jerusalem launch their F-35s and load them with ASM and AA missiles

OOC: Erm... just wondering, but...
a) You don't just enter a RP, you must give reasons for presence there and why you don't like/oppose the person you are planning to attack/dfend against.
b) Your less than a month old, like me, so i doubt you've got 4 carriers woth 75 JSFs on each, i have only 2 carriers, light ones at that, with only a total of 19 harriers and 35 JSFs.
c) the 'Bree Tonian Fleet' isn't currently at sea, in character it is being overhauled with updated sonar technology, and my submarine division is the other side of this region to you, so i doubt you could track my sub division even if you did spot it.

To TOEL Forgein Minister

From Daniel Holland, Argyllian PM

We understand your concerns about the conflict and how rapidly it has esculated. I myself have not got a clear picture of the events leading up to the first strike. I have been told that 2 unknown planes where picked up on radar and closed with your planes, at that point the commander of HMAS Thomas Picton decided this was a violation of the rules Admiral Matthews put down so the ship fired some air-air missiles at your transports.

I am more than willing to ened this conflict, I suggest that both our nations order our respective fleets to back down immeaditley and fire no more missiles in an agressive manner. The second stage would be our fleet withdrawing through the Kiribati gap to the south and sailing home towards Argyllia. If you agree to the first stage I will order the neccesary orders to the fleet.

Daniel Holland

00C- Even if this peace offer is accepted there are still missiles in the air that have to be dealt with, so the next thing to do is deal with them and then we can get down to a proper peace talks.

I am entering the battle zone. I am 150 miles east of Guam.

WTF?

Who are you?

Where is your homeland located?

Where did you get that large a fleet?

Why are you getting involved?

How did your ships get where you say they are?

FYI, there are Roanian naval units in the area- occupying the Marshall Islands. Ruhr and California-Alaska have naval units in the area, getting set to fight over the Philippines. And then there are the Argyllian-Bree Tionan units already in theater, tangling with one of three small Evil Overlord Task Forces.

Any one of these nations has a military that could crush your entire country without breaking a sweat- assuming you avoided god-moding and the IGNORE cannon barrage that would inevitably result.

So, please answer the questions I listed above. If you want to get into an RP, it would be nice to contact the primary players- to ask if they'd mind your participation and to get the rules straight. Read back to where Bree Tiona got involved and see how he did it.

TEO

OOC: Erm... just wondering, but...
a) You don't just enter a RP, you must give reasons for presence there and why you don't like/oppose the person you are planning to attack/dfend against.
b) Your less than a month old, like me, so i doubt you've got 4 carriers woth 75 JSFs on each, i have only 2 carriers, light ones at that, with only a total of 19 harriers and 35 JSFs.
c) the 'Bree Tonian Fleet' isn't currently at sea, in character it is being overhauled with updated sonar technology, and my submarine division is the other side of this region to you, so i doubt you could track my sub division even if you did spot it.

Well said.

TEO

To TOEL Forgein Minister

From Daniel Holland, Argyllian PM

We understand your concerns about the conflict and how rapidly it has esculated. I myself have not got a clear picture of the events leading up to the first strike. I have been told that 2 unknown planes where picked up on radar and closed with your planes, at that point the commander of HMAS Thomas Picton decided this was a violation of the rules Admiral Matthews put down so the ship fired some air-air missiles at your transports.

I am more than willing to ened this conflict, I suggest that both our nations order our respective fleets to back down immeaditley and fire no more missiles in an agressive manner. The second stage would be our fleet withdrawing through the Kiribati gap to the south and sailing home towards Argyllia. If you agree to the first stage I will order the neccesary orders to the fleet.

Daniel Holland

His Omniferocity's government is willing to discuss the situation. A general cease fire order has been relayed to Fleet Marshall King- commanding the battle zone from her headquarters in-theater.

In lieu of sailing your vessels through the Kiribati straights, it would probably be best for your units to withdraw west of Kiribati and head south from there. Two very large EOE units are stationed just south of Kiribati, and the proximity of two recently hostile units so soon after a cease-fire creates the risk of additional hostilities.

His Omniferocity suggests the formation of a joint investigation, with personnel from the Dominion, Argyllia, and a mutually-acceptable third party to have access to all records regarding this event. This should be discussed at length between EOE Foreign Service representatives and representatives of your government at some mutually-agreeable neutral location.

00C- Even if this peace offer is accepted there are still missiles in the air that have to be dealt with, so the next thing to do is deal with them and then we can get down to a proper peace talks.


<OOC>
I Agree.

TEO

"Tracking Party, sonar. Contact sierra 16 has made a direction turn 180* around. bearing now 123* true."
"sonar, tracking party. thanks sonar, will change records"
"Looks like he's backing off sir, hes increased to 27 knots, by the look of things."
"Conn, comms room. sir, direct link trans from the admiralty, a general cease fire has been called. I believe that he wants us to back up to a patrol route around the argyllian fleet, out"
"Okay then. get us back to the Argyllian fleet, stat!"
Damn autocratic bum! the XO thought. Anyways, hes the boss...
"Driver, make your depth 450 feet, flank speed to direction 312* static."
Half-Boomers cant make turns like that, pah! he's the boss....
"20* down on fairwater planes, 40* rudder, speed to all ahead full"

OOC: any chance i could be the 'neutral' party, even though the Evil Overlords mines did destroy a proportion of my sub fleet, i could say that this was the fault of my captains, and they would have to agree, full termination of duty, or maybe a court marshal for them. Please consider my offer, thanks.

We agree to your route, the orders to the fleet will be telecopied immeaditley. A full cease fire has been orderded and will be strictly abided to, prehaps a neutral government will be able to arrange a confrence.

We agree to your route, the orders to the fleet will be telecopied immeaditley. A full cease fire has been orderded and will be strictly abided to, prehaps a neutral government will be able to arrange a confrence.

We agree to your route, the orders to the fleet will be telecopied immeaditley. A full cease fire has been orderded and will be strictly abided to, prehaps a neutral government will be able to arrange a confrence.

<OOC
Sorry for the delay, but RL keeps screwing with the scheduling.

I will post the remaining attacks (and losses) later.

Bree Tiona- As far as my people know IC, only Argyllian forces were involved. However, once External Security has a chance to reveiw the data, they'll probably find out about your presence.

TEO

The SSIN operator, eyes wide with disbelief, stumbled to a halt in front of Marshall King. The Marshall paused in the middle of a string of orders to eye the man before asking, "What is it now?"

"F-F-F-F-FLASH traffic for you, sir." Like all communications specialists, the tech should have been trained to deliver verbal reports at all times in a clear manner. His stammering took Marshall King back a bit.

She wordlessly held out her hand for the operation key and called up the message on her display. No wonder the tech was freaking out. she thought to herself. It's not every day you get a message directly from His Omniferocity.

She scanned the contents briefly, then began issuing orders. "Get this out to all units. Cease all offensive action immediately. Take whatever prudent defensive measures are required to break contact from enemy units immediately. Engaged units withdraw east to avoid enemy units."

The techs at the SSIN consoles instantly began sending the messages to the scattered EOE units in the northern Pacific. Once they had finished, the Marshall called for their attention. "His Omniferocity informs me that a cease-fire has been agreed to between the Dominion and Argyllia. Argyllian units will withdraw west of Kiribati and head back to their home waters. Once we have disengaged up here, they will be monitored by other units along their route- including a large, multi-fleet task force loaded with troops that was preparing to invade Argyllia."

A slight buzz of muted conversation greeted her words. She gave it a moment, then went on. "All plots, maps, signals, logs, and computer records will be copied and held under guard until ES personnel arrive to take custody of the originals. Once our units in contact with the Argyllians are disengaged, those tankers and supply ships anchored south of here will move north to assist Reaver. Make sure those recon birds stay in the air, and the island's defenses are still on Trinity Two. If there are no questions, we all have a lot of work to do. Get to it."


Reaver Surface Action Group
Captain Sen Han scowled at the satellite imagery and marked a new plot on his board. He hit the 'enter' key to transmit the data to the SSIN console. "Get that out to the Group, soonest. Their airborne radars have us on their screens by now, and we'll be hearing from the enemy any moment."

The techs silently carried out his commands, and the SAG changed into an air-defense formation. 2 destroyers and 3 corvettes moved out several kilometers farther ahead of the rest of the Group. The remaining destroyers and corvettes formed a broad vee between the vanguard ships and the three cruisers who were escorted Mameluke. The 23 ships covered an impressive amount of ocean, and the entire SAG was under EMCON. The Group Captain was guiding his powerful force toward the enemy by radar data SSINed from the airborne radars covering the rest of the Task Force nearly one hundred kilometers behind.

One of the communications techs suddenly sat bolt upright in her seat and rapidly keyed a message. The Captain grunted when he saw the text appear on his display, along with the relevant plot data. "Listen up, people!" he snarled into the silence of the Group Combat Information Center. "The rest of Reaver got mauled pretty hard by the enemy's missiles, because we weren't around to cover them. Our initial air strike from the big birds chewed up a lot of the enemy's screening ships, but they can still shoot at us.

"There's still an air battle going on about 50 klicks ahead of us, and a few of our AS-12s on the way back to Reaver from that say there's a metric butt load of cruise missiles headed our way." He transmitted the data to the relevant techs and division officers. "We're still not at our programmed launch points, so we're gonna ride this out."

A slender finger touched the screen and re-aligned the symbols for the Group. "We're going to maintain air-defense mode and sweep north at flank. Victor Squadron will remain at point. Shasta Squadron will fall in south of Victor. Padre Squadron will screen us as we move northeast of victor." The display showed the entire SAG converted into a narrow vee pointing at the Argyllian ships- and the incoming missiles. The Captain tapped the 'send' key again.

"Everyone goes to active emitters immediately. We launch the UAVs for aerial coverage as well. The computers will control the defense. We have over 900 SAMs to deal with this strike, so I'm not too worried about the outcome. Once we get through this strike, it'll be our turn." The Captain's smile was genuine, but was not a friendly expression at all. The answering grins from the crew were cut from the same cloth.


Cormorant Flight
The hash of electronic noise from the jammers abruptly stopped, and Albrecht Walters- REO for the carrier-based bomber- swore at the screen. "Skipper, we got clear skies again." he warned over the plane's intercom.

Flight Captain George Takeda watched the radar warning lights flash across his threat board and asked, "Any air threats?"

Walters swallowed as he identified the weapons directors from the enemy fleet. "That ain't our problem, skipper." he choked. "Enemy air threat is nil, but that fleet's launched about 50 missiles at us."

Takeda switched frequencies and called, "All Cormorant units. Light 'em up and get to launch position now. We've got about 20 seconds before every SAM in the world has us for dinner."

Unprepared, the 15 Wild Weasel aircraft hurriedly lit their ESM/ECM systems and went on afterburner, straining to get ahead of the rest of the remaining 35 planes so their on-board electronics could protect the strike. The rest of the bombers tuned their targeting lasers on the still-distant enemy ships, waiting for the chirping tones that told of a target lock. Someone prayed aloud on the circuit, "For what we are about to receive, may the good Lord make us truly grateful"- just as the SAMs arrived.

There were almost as many SAMs as there were aircraft. The closing speed meant that the pilots had no chance at all to maneuver out of danger. The clever electronics of the Wild Weasel planes saved most of them, confusing the missiles' radars enough to create errors in the timing of the detonation. 4 BF-5Es were seriously damaged in spite of the ECM. The crew of one bomber ejected almost immediately, and the stricken plane spiraled into the sea. The 3 remaining damaged planes dropped out of formation and headed back toward the carriers.

Two of the SAMs targeted on the regular bombers behind the ECM birds were spoofed by the electronics, but that didn't save the bombers. The missiles' onboard electronics were fooled by the Wild Weasel spoofing, but they exploded a second or so too late instead of too early. Two bombers were physically rammed by the missiles, breaking the planes in half and filling the air with millions of fragments. No parachutes emerged from the shattered planes.

9 other bombers had even worse luck. The missiles targeted on them weren't confused at all. The missiles exploded at precisely the right spot to fire cones of hyper-velocity shrapnel directly into the paths of the bombers. All of those planes were crippled by the damage. Seven planes survived long enough to eject the crew, but two bombers instantly exploded when the white-hot shrapnel prematurely detonated the warheads of the Raider missiles onboard.

By a combination of blind luck and the tiny edge granted by the [i[Wild Weasel[/i] planes, none of the remaining 24 bombers were destroyed. Many of them had suffered varying degrees of damage- both from the SAMs and the destruction of their sister aircraft- but they could still finish the job. The planes began receiving 'target acquired' signals from their missiles. Once all of the missiles had locked, the surviving planes all fired within seconds of each other. 63 Raider missiles roared down the paths of the invisible laser beams 'painting' their targets- the Argyllian aircraft carriers.

As the last missile roared toward the enemy, Flight Captain Takeda switched frequencies and called, "Reaver, this is Cormorant. Cormorant is Bravo."


Reaver SAG
Group Captain Sen Han received the word from Cormorant with a slight nod of the head as he turned to the SSIN operator. "Get me a raid count on the enemy missiles!"

The technician keyed up the main display for the missile attack. "Sir, Uncle-3 shows several waves of missiles inbound. First wave is approximately six-zero missiles. At least half- that is three-zero missiles- are targeting Victor Squadron." A red caret lit the display. The tech said, "Sir, Mameluke's computer has permitted Victor to engage the missiles."

Takeda grunted in reply. That meant that the 5 ships in Victor Squadron were free to use all 170 of their air-defense missiles for their own protection.


Victor Squadron
"Captain! Mameluke has released us to local defense!"

Commander Coburn- CO of Warrior- hit her 'acknowledge' key and considered praying. Corvettes weren't particularly designed for air-defense, and she only had 30 SAMs in the amidships VLS. Thank Shiva for the SSIN she thought silently as she watched the cruise missiles swarm toward her ship. At least all five Victor ships can share the burden.

The amidships Vertical Launch System went live under computer control from the destroyer Tethys- the Victor Squadron commander. The Foray missiles roared into the air in groups of three, each immediately angling to port. The operations technician read out the intercepts as Coburn watched the missile count on the display.

"32 missiles targeting Victor at 45 klicks. Missiles are riding the deck. We have active targeting from 28 missiles. Confirmed splash on 4 missiles. Now 7. Now 12."

Commander Coburn tuned out the tech's voice and concentrated on the rest of the missiles. She wondered if any of them would divert toward Warrior if the first strike didn't succeed. A quick glance at the display showed that she was down to 9 missiles in the VLS when the point-defense system went off. The two missiles targeting Warrior were chewed up by the rain of 30mm projectiles from the 3 port chain guns. The last missile was destroyed only a hundred meters from the ship. The resulting explosion tore away the mast, shattered the bridge's armored windows, and destroyed two of the chain gun mounts. Damage control circuits came alive with the voices of repair crews responding to the alarms from all over the ship. When the 'cease fire' message arrived, Warrior was already working on re-loading the VLS from the aft magazines.

Sentry hadn't been quite as fortunate. Two of her missiles had exploded close aboard, and she was taking on water from a ruptured seam. Several minor fires were reported on the main deck, and her helo hangar had completely collapsed. Guardian had suffered only minor damage to her superstructure, and was moving in to assist.

Tethys and Sheol had emerged unscathed. Their larger missile capacity was engaging cruise missiles still vectoring toward the group, which weren't a threat to Victor Squadron.

The remaining missiles of the first wave were ravaged by the concentrated firepower of the Surface Action Group. Only two of the missiles did any damage, but Asmodeus would burn for hours as her crew fought to contain the fires, and Dis broke in half when a cruise missile managed to shatter her ceramic/Kevlar armor and detonate the missiles in her VLS.

Liberal use of the air-defense missiles kept any other ships from being lost for the remaining waves of cruise missiles, but Mameluke's two forward main-gun barbettes would be out of action for days from one hit. 2 cruisers, two destroyers, and four corvettes could only make turns for 25 knots, and Hama had to be towed after a missile exploded inside the bow armor.


Reaver SAG

"Captain, we have new FLASH from Nauru."

Group Captain Sen Han turned away from his Combat Systems Officer in irritation. He was preparing a devastating response to the Argyllian attack and was not in the mood for chitchat with headquarters. "What is it now?"

He keyed in the message, then swore. Remembering his duty, he sent the message to the rest of the ships and followed it with a verbal order. "All SAG units will head east and avoid further contact with enemy units. Local defense only. No units are to engage in offensive action against Argyllian units without my direct order."

He swallowed his rage as his eyes focused on the crosshatched icons that represented damaged ships- his ships. "Apparently, a cease-fire has been agreed to. We aren't going to be allowed to hit the bastards back. Mameluke, out."

OOC- Post a losses list

The order to stop engaging enemy units came a couple of minutes too late, the bombers had already released their deadly cruise missiles. Although they had all been targeted at the 2 carriers it was not neccesarily a bad thing because all the fleets SAM ships would be able to shoot the missiles.

Matthews ordered the battleship Picton to close with the carriers and provide the last line of defence for the most prised possesions of the Argyllian fleet.

Southern Picket Station

The ships began their launch cycle which lasted for 15 minutes, the Aster90's roared from the decks of the proud ships and arrowed towards the invading missiles. The inbounds where reduced to 50 then 40 before they where over the ships position and impossible to shoot down.

Main Fleet

Matthews could see the red glow of the missiles propulsion systems in the far distance, he then saw the decks of the Picton and 2 destroyers around the carriers. The inbounds where reduced to 30, 20, 10 and finally 4 where left. They impacted on Jutland like a sledge hammer 4 in succesion BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. The ship was thrown into chaos sirens going off everywhere men running around to get to damage control stations. The ships armour had stopped 2 missiles from penetrating the hull, these two created 2 holes in the side of the ship whish where quickly patched up by the efficient crew. The other two posed a much bigger problem, 1 hit the flight deck went through the preperation deck and blew up in the galley causing massive fires that raged uncontrolled. The other missile hit the bridge square and killed Matthews in a blink of an eye as well as the rest of the 22 man bridge crew. The captain in the CIC took control of the ship and started to plan the fire fighting effort that would go on for days.

275 dead
500 wounded

Free from the need for combat operations, the Surface Action Group from Task Force Reaver conducted extensive Search and Rescue missions for the survivors of the aircraft shot down during the air battle which had briefly raged nearby, as well as Rescue and Assisitance details for the stricken ships within the group.

By and large, the composite armor of the capital ships had protected the crews- although the relatively lighter armor of the destroyers left much to be desired against a direct hit from a cruise missile. Explosions close to the ships had damaged a great deal of equipment and started several fires, but the crews fared rather better. The casualties for the group totalled 295 dead, 350 wounded, and 57 missing- a trivial number for such a fierce engagement, although the deaths and injuries were overwhelmingly important to the men and women who had suffered and died.

Most of the casualties came from the loss of Dis, whose VLS magazine had been hit by an Argyllian cruise missile. The resulting explosion had broken her in half, and only a few crewmen had escaped the shattered hulk before she slid beneath the waves.

The SAR teams did slightly better. They recovered most of the aircrew who had ejected from their shattered bombers, although Acheron still had a helicopter searching for one last SAR beacon before calling it quits. 15 airmen had died with their bombers, and 10 of the rescued airmen were suffering from serious injuries. The recovery of the fighter pilots was a grimmer task. Most of those airmen had died with their planes. Only 6 were recovered. 12 others were listed as "missing, presumed dead".

Following EOE standing orders, enemy aircrewmen were also recovered. Those needing medical attention received it, and the entire group was flown to the flagship once the wounded were stable enough to be moved.

<OOC>
I need to know how many of your fighter pilots ejected. The OAB (Outer Air Battle) took place fairly close to the SAG, so my SAR birds will likely arrive well before you get around to it.
</OOC>

Once the last survivors had been recovered and the last fire had been extinguished, the Surface Action Group sailed southeast to rejoin the main body of the Task Force. The rendezvous took place only two hours before the arrival of Task Force Champion. The wounded and all of the prisoners were transferred to the hospital ship Charon, which promptly got underway for Kaligrad, escorted by the damaged ships from Reaver.

The Argyllian ships were silently shadowed (at a considerable distance) as they left by three EOE submarines until the ships were west of Kiribati. The Argyllian's voyage home was watched by high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft and satellites, and their course was mirrored to the east by a very large EOE fleet- which maintained a precise 400 kilometer distance until the Argyllians were south of Forlorn Hope. Another large Fleet (from New Caledonia) took up the watch, this one 400 kilometers to the west, until the Argyllians were 1000 kilometers from their home waters.

In keeping with the backwards nature of the entire incident, the diplomatic wrangling would now begin.

OOC- 11 planes where knocked down, 7 pilots didn't have enough time to get out and either died when the plane hit the water or where killed in the cockpit.

HMAS Jutland

The crews efforts where going badly, the fire was two rooms away from the aft magazine and if it got to all those missiles the whole ship would go up. There was 3 fire control teams there, they had been down there for over 5 hoursnow and where absolouetly shattered but they where asked for one last effort to save the ship. The water pressure was turned up to max pressure and volume and the 3 hoses where directed onto the fire, after an hour the tide beagn to turn and the fire was being forced back room by room.

The bridge was still a mess the Captain, his executive Officer, Matthews and his flag staff where all dead. It was a huge blow to the Royal Agyllian Navy bigger than any ship lost, their experience from the conflict would have been invaulable to the Navy Doctrine School. Meanwhile the planes and helicopters of Jutland where being transported to the upper deck, even though this meant nothing could take off it was better than losing one of the expensive aircraft to the fire which might reach the repair and storage deck.

Freetown, Argyllia

The PM was relieved, it was all over after hearing the possibility that a carrier might sink he had gone into a small shocklike state. A sunk carrier would spell the end of his Government definitly. The Fleet was now only 800km from home the Battleships Picton and Montgomery where towing the wounded Jutland home, the good news was that the carrier wasn't listing which could have put the planes on deck in jeopardy. His Defence Chiefs told him that Colodia Fleet was 1,400km away and a TEO one was a similar distance away from the home islands but they posed no threat, or thats what he was told. The crazy thing was that he still did not know how the conflict had started, it happened so quickly all decisions had been taken by Matthews who had the best view of the situation.

The parliament had asked for him to resign, but enough of his own party backed him for him to stay in power. Also the national media had portrayed his Government so far as a good one who had restablished Argyllia's world reputation and influence politically and militarily. He now stood infront of his peers and made a speach:

'Argyllia will come out of this conflict a better nation, more experienced in the ways of the world and more aware of world affairs. I promise to find out the reason for this conflict which I believe is a bit vague on both sides. I'am happy to report that HMAS Jutland is in a stable condition and will go straight into drydock when she arrives home tomorrow evening, the Fleet is 800km away from the Argyllian coast and making 20 knts. All wounded personnel are in the process of being air lifted to the Naval Hospital at Port Downtree. They will be treated with the best doctors possible. Any questions will be answered at PM's questions on Thursday, thankyou'