The Crippling Of The Formidable

Bristling Skies

The strike on the United Commonwealth Navy aircraft carrier UCS Formidable was a military engagement fought as part of the Islander War between the United Commonwealth, through its member state the Republic of Ngaionui, and Republic of Nouvolouis. The strike took place on the 7th of March, the first day of the conflict, when the Task Group FORMIDABLE was some four hundred nautical miles northeast off the coast of Ngaionui.
The action, referred to by the Nouvolouians as "Operation Délivrance", was a stand-off missile strike conducted by Faucher AA 5.60 and Gloire 6.10 land based bombers that led to the sinking of one United Commonwealth Navy destroyer, the UCS Echo, and the sufficient damaging of the carrier UCS Formidable to the point where it was no longer capable of conducting flight operations, and was barely able to limp back under friendly air cover.
Task Group FORMIDABLE, which consisted of one Carrier, two Destroyers, and an Auxiliary supply ship, was dispatched south from its homeport, and the 12 Fleets headquarters, at UC Naval Base Klorat, in the Tokëere League. Setting sail on the 2nd, a week before the war began, the Task Group was meant to serve as a deterrent against Nouvoloian aggression, as a symbol of the Commonwealth's commitment to the security of Ngaionui and its citizens. As it transited the East Aukati Sea and approached the southern islands, the Republic of Nouvolouis announced their declaration of war mere hours before striking, catching the Task Group through the use of Wide Area Reconnaissance Orbiters, and launching a strike package of forty aircraft to hit the force in open waters, beyond land based air support.
Preceding the naval invasion of the westernmost Ngaionan island of Paeroa, the strike came as an unimaginable shock to the United Commonwealth. The UCN had not lost a ship to enemy action in over half a century, and as the crippled Formidable pulled into Wiremu Harbour pictures of its damaged hulk were plastered on the front pages the very next day. The action illustrated the sheer effectiveness of modern aircraft and anti-ship missile technology against all but the most well prepared target, and left the already meager UC naval forces on the whole of that World severely weakened, with the Nouvoloians only facing off against the surviving destroyer, two already present frigates, and a single squadron of UC Army Air Service fighters enlarged with the survivors of the Formidable's air wing, until the arrival of Task Group MYSTIQUE three days later.

Background

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War clouds had been brewing over the horizon for half a year by then, with the assassination of the moderate Premier Ministre Mathieu Geroux sometime in October of 153. Frenzied meetings within the General Staff, the Admiralty, and the Executive Committee of the United Commonwealth were held throughout the next months, as reports of a soft coup having taken place, coupled with an increasingly active and ready Nouvoloian military, filtered down the grapevine. After a series of damning intelligence reports and with the agreement of his advisors, Chief Minister Atanda Gbenga instructed the Navy to deploy a "limited" task force into the theater with the intention of deterring the Nouvoloians from escalating further.
With the situation bad and seemingly only able to get worse, orders and instructions within senior UC leadership was caught indecisive. The landing of Nouvoloian marines on the disputed island chain of Ikawai on 3rd February, 154, further shifted the strategic calculus, and so a week later Gbenga revoked his previous instructions and ordered that a far larger deployment be made.
In the face of increasing pressure, foreign and internal, the Admiralty, and Naval Fleet Forces Command, was left with the realisation that they simply did not have a great deal of assets on that World. Only a single Carrier Task Group was present, based around the UCS Formidable, an older Union-class carrier who's capabilities were far outmatched by modern weaponry. The only other Carrier available on such short notice was the UCS Mystique, and it was thought that she would not be able to arrive in Ngaionui for at least a month, too long as far as the Chief Minister was concerned.
As such, the Navy changed its plans. Instead of waiting for the Mystique and her Task Group to fuse with the Formidable's, the latter would be sent in immediately with what escorts and aircraft could be mustered, while the former would set sail at all speed to arrive as a reinforcement as soon as could be managed. It was recognised as a risky decision, even moreso when it was realised that only two of the destroyers Echo and Pioneer, leaving the Task Group dangerously unprotected. The Flag Officer Commanding of the force, Rear Admiral Haidar "Holly" Daudi, said as much, repeatedly communicating his scepticism of the plan, but last minute a meeting of the Admiralty Committee settled the matter. Admiral Ross McCormack, DIrector of Special Naval Activities Command, was a major proponent of the deployment, to the point of circumventing conventional lines of communication to convince the Chief Minister directly of their necessity.

Deployment

If Admiral Haidar thought he was dealt a bad hand, the next cards he would draw were somehow worse. The two fighter squadrons which formed the teeth of his command, one consisting of twenty Auxin Arrows and the other of an equal number of Boxer Blazers, had been sent for a crash refit programme to install the latest iteration of the Operational Relay Network, which would enable the aircraft to securely communicate and share tactical information. However, a shortage of the equipment needed, and defects in some of those present, meant that half the Blazers and a quarter of the Arrows were rendered inoperable, halfway between disassembly and installation, and in total only a handul of aircraft were successfully upgraded.
That was not the last piece of bad news that Admiral Haidar would receive. His most modern escort, the Tempest-Class destroyer UCS Pioneer, developed technical issues with her modern CHARTER Integrated Coordination Infrastructure, which was responsible for directing her sensors and weapon systems. With the UCS Echo being of the older Sabre-class, and equipped with the similarly out of date CRADLE system due to a skipped retrofit, this left the Task Group's best escort fighting with a hand tied behind its back.
This pushed the Admiral into signalling the Admiralty, telling them he was calling off the mission. For one last time, he would be overruled.

Setting Sail

Task Group FORMIDABLE would depart UCNB Klorat on the 2nd of March, putting on all speed. This, however, would not be the thirty five knots of the Pioneers, or the more modest thirty knots of the Formidable or Echo. Instead, after a Warp-Skip that left them with a journey of almost three thousand nautical miles until Ngaionui, they were stuck travelling at a comparatively breath-taking twenty knots.

The reason for this was simple, which made it all the more infuriating. It was the presence of the auxiliary vessel, the approachingly obsolete UCFA Spring Rover which lacked the speed and Warp capabilities of the actual warships. This forced the Task Group to limit its Warp-Skip to the already well charted Transit Zones thousands of nautical miles away from any coast, let alond their destination, and left the Task Group to transit the remaining distance at its own top speed of twenty knots. The addition of the ship was another last minute surprise for Admiral Haidar, also done at the "advice" of Admiral McCormack. It carried half of the 57th Marines, numbering about five hundred, as well as various artillery pieces, light vehicles, and other equipment and supplies. This was meant to help reinforce the existing garrison, and in fact Haidar approved of the idea. Until he was told which ship would be carrying it, that is.
The first two days of the voyage would be entirely uneventful, despite his concerns. The Nouvoloians might as well have been on another World, for all the Task Group saw of them, and its Admiral was left wondering just what they had planned.

Nouvoloian Preparations

To aid in deterrence, the deployment of Task Group FORMIDABLE was publically declared well before it actually took place, though the fact its composition was not was due as much to the fact that it had not been yet decided as it was to protect operational security. Upon learning of this, Admiral Alard Macon, commander-in-chief of the Commandement de la Flotte Combinée and chosen overall commander of the planned invasion, reallocated four whole squadrons of Fauchers and Gloires to the Eastern Fleet, drilling them day in and day out on the planned operation he hoped to use to do what had not been done in almost a century; Sink a capital ship of the United Commonwealth.

The Clouds Of War Break

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Spoilers For Swift Seas And Whirlwinds

Set-Up

Before that faithful day came, Admiral Haidar and the rest of Task Group FORMIDABLE's senior officers attempted to put into place their singular trump card. Before setting sail, they had received an experimental modification to two of the Formidable's ACC.3 Auxin Auspice air combat coordinator aircraft. This modification allowed the Auspice's to alter the electronic signature of their Wave Emission Sensors to the point where, at sufficiently long range, they would resemble the signatures of the surface vessels.
The plan, hatched by the Formidable's skipper, Captain Karlene "Cabby" Saeur, and Haidar's Intelligence officer, Commander Reyna Saval, involved keeping at least one modified Auspice in the air at all times, with another operating in its conventional configuration. The pair of aircraft would fly a seperate course from the Task Group, which would be under complete electronic emission control, with the plan, or more accurately hope, that this would throw off their Nouvoloian opposition from being able to effectively locate and track them. Everyone involved was well aware of how risky a proposition this was, but given the Task Group's circumstances, Admiral Haidar would take whatever advantage he could get.

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Pre-Dawn [0300-0500]

The opening phase of Operation Délivrance had begun well before the first missiles started flying. At approximately 0200 hours, the two Fauchers of the 3e Patrouille Aéronavale (Est), operating in their maritime reconnaissance configuration, took off from air bases in northern Cagnan. An hour later they were flying a racetrack-patrol a thousand nautical miles off the coast, Wave Emission Sensors turned off and listening quietly through their passive sensors to avoid detection.
At approximately the same time, the Task Group put its plan into action. Two Auspices took off, maintaining the heading and speed of the ships, who then turned to a heading almost directly south while the aircraft stayed closer to the west. Three Arrows were launched as a combat air patrol, rotating with their fellow aircraft every hour to ensure their fuel tanks remained topped off. Those not in the air caught little rest, kept on a constant five-minute-scramble watch.
At 0400, Admiral Macon makes the decision to launch his strike package earlier than scheduled, having received circumspect intelligence stating his target has left the Warp early. The full force of the 2e Regiment Aeronavale takes off, the forty Gloire fast jet bombers of the 27e and 30e Escadron de Bombadiers and thirty Fauchers of the 12e. Seventy aircraft take off, spotted in the darkness by an advanced Special Naval Action Service team deployed in country, but the team can only provide the presence size of the force before it disappears into the early morning sky.

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Hunter Killer [0500-0600]

The next hour was spent in blind darkness, neither side aware of the others presence or intent. Finally, at approximately 0500 Capitaine de l'Aéronavale Aurele Traver, flying the Faucher "Adelle" as commander of 3e PA(E), detected faint electronic emissions coming from the east. His wingman, Lieutenant de l'Aéronavale Ansel Mercier flying the Danette, detects them soon after, but at first they believed the signals to be of the Carrier Task Group they were there to find. After analysing the signatures, however, Traver was not convinced, and so ordered his command to follow and shadow the signatures until something changes.
He was soon proved correct, when a technical malfunction on the Auspice performing the ruse caused its sensors to fail, forcing it to revert to its conventional signature and return back to the Formidable. This was immediately picked up the patrol, and observing the course and speed of the departing, and still emitting, Auspice, Traver estimated the position and heading of his target
Aboard the carrier, Admiral Haidar quickly realised his latest bout of bad luck. He orders a reversion to conventional operations for the Auspices, and an increase in the air patrol from three to five Arrows, a third of his total force.
It would soon be needed. A thousand nautical miles northwest of the Task Group, the Danette temporarily turns away to signal the strike package on the estimated location of their target. The force broke off its holding pattern and turned east, the ten Fauchers already close by at the lead.

Ruse De Guerre [0600-0630]

As they approached the seven hundred nautical mile line, the ten bombers released three Croise air launched missiles each. Instead of carrying conventional warheads, however, the thirty missiles carried a highly modern electronic warfare suite, able to mimick with near perfection the electronic signature of a Gloire bomber. Along with their ten launching aircraft hanging back, they unleashed a thick haze of electronic noise, which was immediately detected by the remaining Auspice and identified as an incoming bomber raid of forty aircraft.
Admiral Haidar and his subordinates on the Formidable are informed soon after. Another patrol of five Arrows had been made ready to launch minutes before, and are immediately scrambled and vectored to intercept the "strike". The set of five these were meant to replace had only just landed, and were caught in the middle of refueling, and so instead of ordering the last five Arrows to be scrambled into the air Haidar chose to keep them on the deck until the recently returned flight had finished. Instead, he launched his third and last Auspice, replacing the malfunctioning aircraft which was still returning.
These five aircraft, well aware of the Task Group's vulnerability, raced at full speed to intercept their targets. As they approached one hundred nautical miles to their target, the Arrows utilised their own sensors and guidance provided by the Auspice to burn through the jamming and acquired the approaching forty targets, releasing all thirty of their long ranged Slapshot missiles before closing into range for their Sprinters to finish off the rest.
The Slapshots wiped out twenty five Croises, but as the Arrows approached into visual range they quickly realised that of the remaining fifteen targets, only ten of them were actually the bombers they were thought to be. The rest were missiles, and while the fighters mercilessly swatted their targest out of the sky with guns and Sprinters, they reported back to the Formidable that they had been duped.
At around the same time, Admiral Haidar received another report, this one from his own sensors. His ships had just been scanned, and found.

Knifefight [0630-0700]

As they took off, the five Arrows activated their own Wave Emissions Sensors, still close to their carrier. It was their signatures that Traver and 3e PA(E) were able to detect, barely, but well enough that they now had an approachingly accurate fix on Task Group FORMIDABLE's own location, speed, and bearing.
Upon realising that no other aircraft would be dispatched by the Task Group, and so not be around to defend it, Traver waited until the five that had been vectored to the southeast had fired off their missiles before acting. Once this had been done, the two aircraft of 3e PA(E) activated their Wave Emission Sensors and started radiating. Soon, they had a firm fix on the location of the Task Group, enough for the rest of the strike package to work with. Then, they send it out west.
The rest of the strike package, sixty strong, encoded their Chevalier missiles with the new data in seconds. They fired off their missiles, two hundred supersonic, long range weapons that flew a few hundred metres above the surface. Coming in from further north than their spotters, they rapidly approached the Task Group. With their mission complete, the two Fauchers of 3e PA(E) waved off and bolted west, emissions back to silent and flying at full speed.
The Task Group was caught throughly surprised. Admiral Haidar and his two Captains keep their wits about them, immediately scrambling all ten remaining Arrows from the deck and activating the air defence systems of all three warships, while ordering the heavily laden Spring Rover to make a break for it as far east as it could. The Auspices detected the oncoming missiles in minutes, and the three commanders realised that the five already airborne Arrows were too low on fuel to each them. These were vectored to try and shoot down the retreating Fauchers, while every weapon that coult shoot down a missile was made ready to do so.
The ten Arrows raced northwest, burning fuel and screaming with their sensors. They caught locks for their Slapshots, and released sixty into the air from just under a hundred nautical miles. Their five siblings to the south catch a brief lock onto 3e PA(E) at the same time, firing off three Sprinters before turning back to the Task Group. The bomber crews saw them, and dove to the sea, but a single missile catches the Danette and turned her into a falling comet, with the Adelle and Traver barely escaping that fate.
Finally, the ten Arrows closed the distance, blazing away with their forty Sprinters and cannons. In total, these fighters had felled a hundred missiles, half the attacking force, by the time their magazines and hardpoints were spent.
The rest kept on coming.

Do Or Die Trying

Eight hundred nautical miles lay between the missiles and their targets, barely twenty minutes at their speed. In a last desperate act, the five returning Arrows fired off their remaining seven Sprinters and trickle of cannon fire, downing ten more missiles.
Finally, it was the ships' turn. Pioneer and Echo carried the long ranged Skylines missiles, fifty to the former and twenty to the latter. These slid off the rails or out their cells at a combined rate of once every second, while electronic warfare suites filled the sky with a siren's song and Ship's Defence Systems on all three armed ships were readied.
Then, a final disaster struck. The same technical malfunctions that plagued the Pioneer's CHARTER before she had left for sea, and which had come so close to convincing Admiral Haidar to refuse to set sail, returned with a vengeance, and so after firing only thirty of her Skylines the crucial fire control framework shuts down, frozen, fifteen missiles left cold in their cells. The others find more success, knocking out fifty incoming in minutes.
As the missiles make their final approach, OYSTER based Marlin missiles and URCHIN twenty millimetre autocannons blaze away at the swarm, a frenzied final stand that cuts down missiles like scythes through hay.
And for all their work, six missiles make it through.

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Impact

The Echo takes the first hit. Closest to the oncoming firestorm and with the fewest Ships Defence Systems, three Chevaliers smash across the length and breadth of the destroyer, erupting into great balls of fire. In an instant the forwards magazine detonates, rocking the ship as if it were a three thousand ton twig, and blazes erupt across her superstructure and hull.
Formidable joins her escort a split second later, and Admiral Haidar his flagship. Two missiles hit her, one turning her aft runway, including all of her arrestor wires and landing facilities, into a sea of burning tarmac with a rain of shrapnel. The other strikes the island, and as if seeking to provide one last piece of bad luck to the unlucky Admiral it strikes near the ship's command center, detonating before impact and sending a hail of hot metal and blastwave into the superstructure, which cuts through it like paper. Admiral Haidar and half his staff are crippled with shrapnel, the other half already dead.
Finally, the Pioneer, furthest from the swarm and having executed a last-minute swerve, would make it off with a hard graze from a single missile. This one's blast bathed the aeroship hangar with fire, wiping out the aeroship within and starting a furious, but comparatively small, blaze.

Winners, And The Dead

The rest of the day would be a blur to those who survived.
The control teams aboard the two Auspices wasted no time, breaking signals silence and calling Ngaionui for immediate assistance. A quick look at the Formidable told them that she wouldn't be taking planes anytime soon, and so after regaining contact with Captain Sauer, missing half her right arm to shrapnel but otherwise able to speak, the Arrows and Auspices were ordered to fly towards the islands.
Echo was sinking rapidly, her bridge crew dead and listing heavily to starboard. Individual officers and senior rates activated evacuation protocols, while the Pioneer immediately turned around to assist with recovery, with the Spring Rover returning to help as well.
Having received the emergency call, Commodore Kingi Areta, Flag Officer Commanding of Naval Forces Ngaionui, and Brigadier Tang Si Ying, Commander of Field Forces Ngaionui, immediately dispatched every available force they could. The two frigates that made up NFN put to sea immediately, and eight Boxer Barrows of the 210th Fighter Squadron were launched to escort a pair of tankers to refuel the Arrows and Auspices.
The five Arrows first launched, however, would not make it that long. Flying on fumes, these ditched in the waters surrounding the Task Group, joining the teeming masses on the water and in need of rescuing.
As the morning slipped into the afternoon, the Task Group's survivors started off, moving as fast as it could southwest under a cloud of fighters. They would arrive, barely, late in the afternoon, rushed into port as fast as they could be.