Sky Crawlers Mission 17 is another fighter sweep, this one prearranged, far from the Cougar base and over medieval Mont St Michele, the famous French island abbey with the high tides – here called Togakuten(which might have something to do with musical grammar). The mission turns out to be a three parter. It’s tough enough that I haven’t finished Part 3 yet, but I thought I’d put up my experiences so far.
Part 1 (furball)
In Part 1 you fight against a cloud of Lauterns. Continue reading
Haven’t posted in a while, because, as they said in Jurassic Park, life gets in the way. Still trying to crack Mission 17.
I shall return. Just not for a bit. Meanwhile, here’s a picture of an airplane.
Suiga
The the base that Cougar Flight operates from in Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces is called Hariyu, but from the maps, it’s in the southern part of the Czech republic, in the Brno area. One possibility is the CAF base at Náměšt nad Oslavou.
Here’s a picture from December 2003. The mottled areas off each corner of the northwest end of the runway, and off one side of the southeast end, are earth-covered hardened aircraft shelters, presumably installed after the Lautern raid that destroyed everything on the base except for the runway, the taxiways, the parking aprons, the hangars, the tower, and the BOQ.
In this photo from 2007, you can see four L-159s, one SU-25 Frogfoot, and one SU-17 Fitter parked in front of a hangar. This must be a little like what Hariyu base felt like, with just a handful of planes of disparate types.
NOTE: This updates two prior Cougar Base entries with newly-acquired historical coverage from Google Earth.
Mission Description
As predicted, we’re back on the Elbe at Kiriki, watching Mozume take off in the suggestively-shaped, steam-powered, possibly coal-fired, dreadnaught dirigible, Wolfram, straight out of a Heterodyne Boys story (and possilbly a hat tip to Castle Wulfenbach). This is another three part mission: kill the Wolfram‘s defenses, kill the Wolfram‘s engines, and kill the Wolfram‘s bow cannon. That last is required because of a severe design flaw, (which makes you wonder if you shouldn’t have just thrown the Chief Designer overboard in the Lake Nabaru mission), in that the bow gun is evidently hooked up to the scuttling charges, and when you take it out, the whole ship goes down — but not before Mozume finishes his emoting.
I’ve broken the weapons and tactics discussion into three parts. In Part 2 I’ll give you the perfect formula for killing the engines. It’s not a cheat, and it’s something the designers obviously didn’t think of.
Weapons and Tactics, Part 1
Just about any aircraft will do here. You are shooting at searchlight-aimed flak units positioned at various places around the tail of the dirigible. Continue reading
With the tolling of bells and somber, funereal, music we find ourselves back over Ubasama, City of Eternal Winter Twilight. This time we are chasing Ukumori, Ishitobi, and Watari as they try to defect to Lautern, but we don’t have the radio color commentator we had on Mission 2.
Mission Description
It’s twenty minutes of air-to-air against the three defectors and their Lauternite friends, followed by twenty minutes of air-to-air against Ukumuri. Your job is to shoot them down. Their job is to run out the clock. Their job is easier. Continue reading
Mission 14 is hard. At least, it’s hard at the Hard level. It’s not hard in the same way Mission 6 is hard, it’s hard because, well, it’s hard.
Mission Description
The industrial center at Kiriki (on what is probably the Elbe River, near real-world Magdeberg, Germany) is in trouble again. Kiriki was where we had to chase out a bunch of Lautern ground forces back in Mission 4. Now, we’ve chosen this same location — close to enemy ground forces, on a disputed river — as the best place to build our top secret weapon, the armoured dirigible Wolfram. The Lautern forces have caught wind of our clever plan and are sending a combined tank/heavy bomber attack. One of the things that makes this such a hard mission is that you have to switch from AA to AG and back. Continue reading
Mission 12, Tokatsu* is billed as a 25 minute, deep penetration raid against a number of Lautern supply bases in the Savoy/Val d’Aosta region of the Alps. It turns out to be a strike on a secret lab, one that’s well protected by AAA.
Mission Description
The first part of the mission sets the routine. You have a flat spot in the mountains with a tower or two, barracks, a communications node, and some trip-A for protection. You fly in, shoot them up, and fly out. You do this four times, with no problems, but the fifth time opens up the hornet’s nest. More light AAA around the lab, a ring of heavy AAA in concrete positions on the ridgeline surrounding the base, and a half-dozen Lautern fighters stunting about. Continue reading
Mission Description
This is the closest thing so far to a bunker-buster mission. It’s a 15 minute strike on a buried Lautern fortress on the slopes of Mount Etna (AKA Shikibo Yama), Sicily, complete with a play-by-play from another radio announcer. She’s not as excitable as the first one, but neither is she an Edward R. Murrow “This… is London” style reporter. As usual, Intelligence lied about the status of the big gun you’re trying to kill, and Operations lied about when the second wave will show up. The cannon, the Amoebic Dysentigrator or something, shoots shells the size of Volkswagons, and just its wake turbulence can bring a plane down. Too bad for Lautern that it takes so long to reload. Or maybe that’s good. I doubt their munitions budget could support a rapid fire ‘bic. Continue reading
It collects all my comments on sky crawler missions in one spot. I have reorganized it and updated it. I will be adding new missions as I fly, or refly them in note-taking mode.
