Part 14: Mission 14 – Operation Aurora, June 18th, 2005
Breaking ArrowsMission 14: Operation Aurora – June 18th, 2005
Overview: Mobius 1 is dispatched to intercept a cruise missile barrage inbound for an ISAF troop convoy in the Ice Creek region of Northern Usea.
Guest Commentator: Dr. Snark joins me again for his fourth straight icy hell hole level in an Ace Combat game.
BROKEN ARROW
The title of this mission comes from a semi-obscure piece of US nuclear terminology pertaining to any incident up to and including accidental detonation involving nuclear weaponry. To date, the Pentagon has formally acknowledged 32 Broken Arrow incidents, the majority of which have involved B-52 crashes.
The term came to contemporary cultural awareness in the mid-90s with the John Travolta/Christian Slater action movie Broken Arrow by John Woo. It was not a good movie. But as seen with the Named Ace references in Ace Combat 2 (and later Ace Combat 5), someone at Project ACES absolutely LOVES schlocky films of all stripes, so a Broken Arrow shoutout is simply keeping the flame alive.
Additionally (with thanks to forums poster HereticMIND), the term "broken arrow" is also used in conventional, non-nuclear battle situations as well. If an on the ground commander calls for a "Broken Arrow" artillery strike, they are requesting bombardment of an enemy position with full knowledge that the strike may or will result in friendly fire casualties due to the enemy's proximity to allied troops.
Broken Arrow strikes are usually called in only as last ditch desperation measures.
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Abell
- Plane: F/A-22 Raptor
- Mission 14
- Spawn conditions: Appears in the far north of the map after the second wave of missiles spawns.
Kadorhal posted:
Ace Number Fourteen is Abell. Named for George Ogden Abell, born March 1st, 1927. American astronomer and teacher at UCLA, best known for his catalogue of clusters of galaxies collected from the Palomar Sky Survey. His work demonstrated that second-order clustering existed, disproving the earlier hierarchical model of Carl Charlier. The Abell Catalogue of rich clusters of galaxies owes its existence in part to Abell's "Northern Survey" of 1958, supplemented by a "Southern Survey" compiled in 1989 by Harold Corwin and Ronald Olowin.
He also co-discovered the periodic comet 52P/Harrington-Abell and determined that planetary nebulae were formed from red giant stars; he also helped produce two educational TV series (Understanding Space and Time and Project Universe), co-founded the Committee on Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, served as president of the International Astronomical Union's Cosmology Commission, and was to have been editor of the Astronomical Journal starting from 1984 before his death. The Summer Science Program at New Mexico Tech and University of Colorado Boulder memorialize him by way of the Abell Scholarship Fund. Died October 7th, 1983, at 56 years old.
Tracks featured in Mission 14:
DISC 2