So, we're at our FARP somewhere in Central America. Our orders are to support friendly ground troops. If the friendlies are save, we are to destroy an enemy HQ.
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Mission briefing
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Every briefing gives you a primary and a secondary objective. Missions can be either night or day missions and even the weather plays a role.
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| Mission mao |
The mission map gives you a certain feeling what to expect. Of course the map doesn't reveal everything. In the planning stage you can see only US installations (HQs, FARPS and bases) and the primary and secondary objective.
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| Intel |
G-2 gives you his estimation on what to expect from the enemy side. We take a special note on what AA-threats we will be up against. And most important: There will be Hinds operating in the area!!
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| Weapons |
Before we take off, we will talk with the crew chief about how we will arm the help for this mission. In most cases I will take the standard layout. Note that there are AIM-9 Sidewinders on our wingtips!
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| Yep, I will. Loading times on the C-64 were terrifying. |
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| Ready for Take off ... |
A few moments later we will find ourselves in the cockpit. Pressing the 1 and 2 keys starts up our engines and a quick press on 3 engages our rotor. The raise collective with the F1 key and we're airborne.
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| Hinds! And we're not even airborne. Great ... |
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| Friendly APC ahead. Good thing the computer identifies the targets for us. Not sure if I could have IDed that thing. |
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| Enemy infantry! |
After a few minutes we make contact with enemy troops. We dispatch a few infantry with our 30mm cannon. Below the CRT you can see the actual active weapon.
- 60 Rounds 30mm cannon
- 2 AIM-9 Sidewinder
- 19 FFAR rockets
- 8 AGM-114 Hellfire
- 10 Chaff/Flares
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| Ahh, piece of cake ... |
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There he is: the Mi-24 Hind. Shortly after the picture was take it was downed by one of my Sidewinders.
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| Badly damaged. |
When I attacked the secondary target we got beaten up pretty badly by the bad guys. So I decided to abort the attack and head home. You can see the damage on the upper part of the cockpit.
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| Password challenge |
Every time you return to base you're challenged with the password of the day. You have to look up the correct answer in the manual. No, it's not a copy protection! All in the sake of base security.
If you fail to give the correct answer you're shot down by your own AA.
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| Mission results |
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| Purple Heart awarded |
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| Leugengroot's service record |
Well, I think I'm going to take some days for extended R&R and recover a little bit. Overall Gunship is still a lot of fun after all these years. I had way more fun than with DI's F-16 Combat Pilot. I think I will keep on flying for some more days just for pure entertainment. Next time I will take a look at the manual.
cu
Jens
BTW: Thanks for all the nice words for the blog so far. It would be great if you guys could fill the comments on the blog directly a little bit.
This was a great game! I remember playing this for many hours as a 12 year old kid. Also the manual was great and sure forced me to learn quite a lot of English language, which here in Finland was of course a foreign language. This and many other same era sims also sparked a lifetime interest in military aviation. Great stuff.
ReplyDeleteYep, learned a lot of english vocabulary with all those Microprose manuals PLUS all those great text adventures from the 80s (Infocom!!)
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