Part 9: Mission 9 – Operation Bunker Shot, January 24th, 2005

Operation Bunker Shot

Mission 9: Operation Bunker Shot – January 24th, 2005


Overview: ISAF’s long-planned invasion of the Usean mainland begins as ground troops make landfall on the Seal’s Bridge peninsula, just outside of Stonehenge’s firing radius. Mobius 1 and the ISAF air strike team are tasked with providing top cover for the landing operation as well as eliminating Erusean artillery positions further inland to clear the way for the ground troops.



Guest Commentator: We welcome yet another newcomer to the commentary stable with this mission. Today I am joined by LEGO Genetics, because he volunteered to be here. He doesn't have any LPs to plug either his own or anyone else's, but if he eventually wants me to plug something here I will edit this line in the update... (If you're still reading this line on the LP Archive, you can infer how this bit went )





BUNKER SHOT

Today’s “Crow Explains Things That Are Out Of His Depth” is all about golf. And my exact experiences with golf involve many rounds of minigolf as a small child, a few sporatic weekends with my father swigging a club in a field or at a driving range, touring a few local golf courses but not actually playing on any of them, a Saturday night binging Kuvo’s Neo Turf Masters LP, and a few disastrous games of Golf With Your Friends with a select core of the Team Frog Nugget Discord crew. Mission 9, meanwhile, takes its name from a particularly tricky golf shot known as, pointedly enough, the bunker shot.

In the loosest possible terms, a bunker shot is any golf swing made during a golf game in order to get a golf ball out of a sand trap (formally known as a bunker) after it has landed one from a previous swing. Getting a ball out of a bunker is a particularly difficult task in golf, due the bunker’s sand lining and often its craterous shape. The loose sand often makes getting clean contact with the ball difficult thereby diminishing the power transferred from the club to the ball and other physics type stuff that ultimately translates to you having a hell of a time trying to get the ball out of that hole.

They don’t call them “hazards” for nothing, people

An “Explosion Bunker Shot,” meanwhile, is described as a bunker shot that sends both the ball and an accompanying spray of sand onto the green.



ISAF COUNTERSTRIKE

This mission in particular is one of the major turning points of the war with Erusea. With the Erusean bomber flights and the Aegir Fleet destroyed, ISAF GHQ is safe from any foreseeable attack by the Eruseans, taking the pressure off the Allies to allow them to plan and conduct this invasion attempt. The satellite launched from Comona has already provided valuable intel on Erusean troop positions and movements, as well as allow for clearer and more frequent communication with ISAF and civilian resistance fronts behind the Erusean lines in places like Los Canas, and San Salvacion.

However, ISAF still faces an intense fight ahead of it. Though similar landing efforts to Operation Bunker Shot have been made along the entire east coast of Usea, ISAF’s ground forces are still vastly outnumbered and outgunned by the Eruseans, and at present only 20% of the continent can be viably liberated. The rest of Usea still remains largely inaccessible under Stonehenge’s firing umbrella.

Any attempt to push inland beyond the Tango Line and hold territory remains doomed to failure until Stonehenge is destroyed.



ACE COMBAT DOES HISTORY

Yep, it’s time once again for Ace Combat Does History… Poorly. We return to Ace Combat’s favorite historical haunt, World War II, for this mission, specifically the D-Day landing.

This mission is basically “D-Day With Modern Fighter Planes,” in terms of historical replication. Much like the actual Normandy landing operation from World War II (codenamed Operation Neptune), it revolves around a massive allied force making landfall from the sea at a set of strategic beaches in order to establish a foothold on an occupied continent in an effort to repulse the invaders and liberate the continent. This mission as even features the exact same troop carrier landing crafts originally used in World War II itself, as seen in the concept sketches down below.

The three codenames of the beaches featured in this mission; Crowne, Halle, and Cranada; are reminiscent of the six codenamed beaches that the Allies landed on in Normandy; Utah, Pointe du Hoc, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword.

The landing resulted in a decisive Allied victory and the establishment of a foothold on mainland Europe and set the Allies on the path of beating back the Nazis from all occupied areas, eventually leading to their downfall and a complete Allied victory in Europe.

So you can probably see where things in 04 are going to be going from here on out…



PRIMING THE FIRES

One of the real fun things about playing the older games for this LP project has been going back and finding the DNA of what would eventually become other Ace Combat games hidden in plain sight throughout Shattered Skies. Every modern Ace Combat, for better or worse, has been built on the bones of 04. After playing the later games and then coming back to 04, certain parts of the game really stand out and you can go “oh, so THAT’S where that comes from.”

We saw the genesis of the massive air battles in Zero last time in Comona, and the inspiration for certain big giant superweapon boss battle missions is coming up in the near future. But for here and now, this mission primarily played a big role in inspiring a large chunk of Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation.

Fires of Liberation features several missions of this sort where you are playing air support for the soldiers on the ground and hopping between different parts of the battlefield essentially carrying out sub-missions on a pop up basis. And just like in this mission, you get the sense that while you’re playing an important part of the battle in your own right, the real meat of the mission is actually taking place on the ground outside your purview. All the base elements of 6 are there in this mission, they just need a little more mechanical refinement before they assume the form we see them in in Fires of Liberation.

Tuttle

• Plane: F-15C Eagle
  
• Mission 9
  
• Spawn conditions: Appears north of the mountains over the central (Crowne) beach.

Tracks featured in Mission 9:

DISC 1

• 20. Operation Bunker Shot
  

Concept art of the gameplan for this mission and shots of the three beaches: