Thread by @PaulHuangReport

Argentina vs England (War)
Having some fun playing the new Falklands War DLC of Command Modern Operations #CMO, one of the best air & naval combat simulators out there.
Time is May 4, 1982, can I repeat Argentine Air Force's famous (or infamous) feat that day?

We know the history: Argentine AF, with just a few Super Etendards jets and Exocet anti-ship missiles (ordered 15 from France but only 5 delivered)
launched a daring attack on @RoyalNavy main fleet and sank HMS Sheffield, a Type 42 destroyer, to the horror of British public.

In CMO Falklands War DLC we are given the same limited assets as the Argentine commander had: 2x Super Etendards each with just 1x Exocet, facing Royal Navy armada TF 317.8 of 2 aircraft carriers escorted by a dozen destroyers and frigates, not to mention the Sea Harriers on CAP!

Recon first. At dawn I dispatch a P-2 Neptune maritime patrol aircraft to search for the RN fleet. Neptune's radar is the then already ancient AN/APS-20, but still gets the job done and located British TF 317.8 about 400nm off Argentine coast..

..which brings us another problem. To have any chance of penetrating British defenses our Super Etendards need to attack flying sea-skimming altitude but that would put us out of fuel range. I therefore dispatch a KC-130 tanker to refuel mid-way, as Argentines did historically.

The Super Etendards, piloted by Capt. Augusto Bedacarratz and Lt. Armando Mayora took off from Río Grande and soon reach 100nm within British TF 317.8. Fortunately British Sea Harriers on patrol seem to be far north and didn't see us coming otherwise this would have gone badly...

From here I set Super Etendards to fly at the lowest, sea-skimming altitude of 300ft. This is to take advantage of earth's curvature to avoid British ship radars and sneak up on them. Again, an important modern naval warfare concept one can learn from playing enough CMO!

At 30nm out, Argentine pilots quickly climb to higher altitude, open their Agave radars and.. Ooh la la! The whole British TF 317.8 is on their radar and they had only seconds to pick targets. Staying here any longer and they could be killed by British ships' SAM at anytime.

So they quickly fired off the precious 2 Exocets and turned back. Historically they targeted the ship on the outskirt - the HMS Sheffield. However here I selected the two contacts in the center, guessing those could be my top prizes - Brits' two carriers HMS Hermes & Invincible.

CMO, unlike real-world, assumes all ships and combat systems function 100% at any time. In this case it means my meager 2x Exocets have little chance of making through Brits defense as SAMs and CIWS easily chew them down almost every time until I reloaded/replayed the 8th time..

HIT! One Exocet made it through and struck a ship in the center! Which one could it be?
Historically Argentine pilots only learned the result of their attack later from newspaper. Since they had no safe way to conduct close battle damage assessment (BDA). With CMO however..

..I could simply switch to UK side with editor to see what happened. The lone Exocet struck the smaller RN carrier HMS Invincible! While the damage seems moderate, the hit evidentially took out many Sea Harriers and Sea King helos parked on the deck!

Obviously a hit on HMS Invincible would be even more rewarding vs sinking Sheffield for the Argentines as it could cripple UK fleet's air power and jeopardize the whole war, not to mention morale damage on the British public. Imagine the headlines on these British tabloids..

In fact Argentines later tried repeatedly to attack the British main fleet and two carriers but all failed as they ran out of the most potent Exocet missiles and had to resort to close up attacks with A-4s using unguided bomb! (came with heavy losses)

Nevertheless CMO gives us an interesting way to experiment with alternate history.
Finally here's an interesting article about the several Argentine A-4 attack runs on British fleet, telling from Argentine pilots perspective. It's worth a read!
theaviationgeekclub.com/former-argenti…