The training had begun. Time to break formation. Kreiss watched as Phantoms 2 and 3 flew off in their respective directions without further ado. He made no move to give out commands, not trusting his tactical knowledge and leadership skills at all. Instead, he lowered his throttle input to slow down and let Phantom 4's F/A-18 overtake him. He slowed down to a considerable pace, taking note of the swarm that was starting to appear on his visor. He glanced over to check up on Phantoms 2 and 3's progress every once in a while. They seemed to be doing well.
One of the bogeys had set it's sights on Kreiss, trying to place itself at a good angle to possibly fire a missile shot. Kreiss swerved from side to side, not wanting to stay in one place for too long, in case the bogey wanted to fire a homing missile such as the F-15C's SAAM. Despite the danger at 6 o'clock, he kept an eye out for Phantom 4.Phantom 4 was caught in between two bogeys, on in front, possibly as a diversion while the one behind could get a clear shot of the F/A- 18.
"Rodeo! Danger at 6 o'clock. Swerve until I get there! Do not attempt to shoot the bogey before you! It's a distraction! " he called out, increasing his speed, while his pursuer followed suit.
'The last thing you want to do is chase another jet. It's a disadvantage. I wonder how many people know that? ' he thought to himself, starting to climb towards the bogey behind Rodeo. The chaser would forever be under the whims of the chased, all the chased had to do was keep on flying and possibly pull out a couple of maneuvers. The chaser, on the other hand, had to predict, and had to make the RIGHT predictions.
"Phantom 4, keep your speed uniform. Do not increase your speed. I'm intercepting the bogey at your 6!" he informed, bringing his craft into a barrel roll,ascending above and coming down, intercepting the bogey behind Phantom 4. As expected from AIs, the bogey chasing after Kreiss immediately followed and crashed into it's comrade's glowing figure. Kreiss grinned at his success as the two glowing planes flickered in a jumbled mess in his visor.
"Those don't register as kills now, do they? I have to shoot them. But to hell with it. " he yelled over to his squadron before focusing on Rodeo. "Alright Phantom 4, you've got a bandit in front of you.Let's try and get it."
No sooner had he said it, when another bogey came up behind him, another chaser. He could pull off another collision if this bogey decided to still chase after him. Now below Rodeo's F/A- 18, the F-15C slowly overtook it's comrade plane and angled towards Rodeo's bandit. He brought the plane into a steep angle of attack upwards, causing the bandit's AI to slowdown and angle upwards as well to avoid a collision. However, from that angle of attack, Kreiss decided into an inside loop, cutting off even more of the bandit's escape, causing it to continue moving upwards. He felt the familiar pull of gravity and the force of the acceleration, a discomfort, but not unbearable.
"Aim above, Rodeo! Bag the kill! " he yelled over to Phantom 4, returning from the inside loop. To his surprise, it seems that the bogey that was chasing after him had it's AI reacting to Kreiss's style and adjusted accordingly, decided not to chase. Now, Kreiss had a bandit in sight.
"If you want to play it that way, then let's go. " he said, proceeding into a chase. The bandit was rather skillful and managed to evade 7 of the F-15C's missiles and managed to avoid several of it's burst machine gun fires. A large amount of the machine gun ammo had been wasted,more or less about 300 of them. Eventually, after a lengthy chasing time, and the wastage of 3 more missiles and another 100 machine gun ammo, the bandit decided to move into a Chandelle maneuver, banking into a 180 degree turn while steadily climbing. Kreiss reacted to this by bringing the more mobile F-15C into a Canopy Roll, angling straight for the bandit from below.He fired off a missile that blew into the underside of the bandit plane. But that wasn't enough to bring it down. Kreiss returned to the chase by recovering from the Canopy Roll quickly. This time, the gap has closed between them due to the usage of the Canopy Roll. A few more fires of the machine gun took off one of the bandit's glowing wings. And that was the end for that bandit.
"I've got one, got one. " he relayed the information over. He had spent so much time aiming for that one fella, he had only managed to shoot one down. The timer was almost over and Kreiss went over his ammo stats. He had not used any of his SAAM, hoping to save them for the anti-ship segment, knowing that the F-15 C ultimately had no proper air-to-ground, or in this case, ocean, ammunition. The SAAM was a good substitute for that. And with the slow movements of the ships, Kreiss was sure he was going to bag more for this run.
It was possible that he was the one who grabbed the least kills at the current moment, unless they counted the collision as 2 kills. Left with 8 SAAMs, 5 missiles and mere total of around 230 machine gun ammunition, Kreiss had the feeling that he was doing rather badly compared to the rest of the others. Not a very satisfying outcome. He gave a disheartened sigh and radioed in to the Phantom Squadron.
"This is Angel, Phantom Squadron, prepare to leave for Point Beta soon. "