The First Five Minutes — Seven Ways a Mission Fails

F-2 MISSIONS has no flight assists. Even so, what goes wrong early on is almost always the rules, not your flying.

The game is also not very forthcoming about why you failed. “MISSION FAILED came up and I don’t know when” is usually one of these seven.

A. The ones that end it on the spot

1. You moved before takeoff clearance

This is the most common sudden death by a wide margin. It is not a deduction — it is an immediate MISSION FAILED on every grade.

Takeoff runs to a fixed sequence.

(control check) → READY (automatic) → tower clears you → roll → climb

If the jet starts moving before the tower’s clearance, the mission ends at that instant. The trigger is passing roughly 3 u/s (≈11 km/h). The classic way to lose is to open the throttle while you wait and creep forward without noticing.

You do not need to wonder whether it rolled away on its own. A parked jet never moves by itself — left at idle for 30 seconds with no brake and no throttle input, it reads 0.000 u/s and 0.00 u of travel. If it moved, you moved it.

You can hear the clearance, too. Do not open the throttle until the controller’s radio call and the beep.

Note that the control check — six items, running pitch, roll and rudder to both stops — is only asked for on the first sortie of the syllabus; later takeoff missions skip it. It is there less as procedure training than as a controls tutorial that makes you discover the rudder is its own axis: on iOS a drag from the middle of the stick is bank and a tap outside the divider is rudder, and you can otherwise finish the game without ever finding that out. The check only counts while you are stopped.

2. You crossed a gate backwards

Gates on the low-level courses have a direction you are meant to cross them in.

• Crossing off the required heading → a deduction
• Crossing from the opposite side → instant disqualification

Past 90° off, you are on the disqualification side. Cutting across at an angle only costs you heading points, so the classic version of this is panicking mid-recovery, turning back to re-fly a gate you already passed, and disqualifying yourself by taking it from behind. Do not go back for a gate you have already passed.

B. The ones that grind you down

3. Rolling into bank raises your stall speed

This is what “I’m pulling and it won’t turn” and “it fell out of the sky the moment I rolled in” actually are.

Holding altitude at bank angle φ needs load factor n = 1/cos φ, and stall speed rises with its square root. The 1g stall speed is about 240 km/h.

So at 300 km/h in a 45° bank you have 5% of margin left. Pull there and angle of attack goes into the stall region (past 15°), lift drops rather than rises, and the turn rate never appears. The harder you pull the less it turns, and then it departs.

The stall line on the HUD speed tape moves up and down with bank angle. That is exactly this Vs/√|cos φ|, put on the display for you. In a turn, keep checking that your speed is above it.

There is more in Stalls and turns — why pulling harder doesn’t turn you.

4. Too slow to follow the bends in the valley

The valley courses are meant to be flown along the river. The common mistake here is slowing down “to be safe,” and it is exactly backwards.

450–600 km/h is the working range in the valleys. Below that you cannot pull G, and turn radius falls apart quickly.

At the same time, more speed stops helping at around 460–500 m of minimum radius. Lift (∝V²) and centrifugal force (∝V²) cancel each other, so “faster turns tighter” is not true. In practice it becomes throttle back just before a bend, throttle up on the straights.

5. You strayed too far off course

Low-level runs and some formation missions have a course-following limit. It is measured from whichever is closer: the gate you just passed, or the one you are heading for.

• About 5 km → RETURN TO COURSE on the HUD
• About 6 km → out of bounds

Losing the course and going off to look for it is how you leave the box. When the warning comes up, point the nose back toward the next gate first; sort out altitude and speed afterwards.

The numbers vary by mission — carrier missions use 10 km / 12 km from the ship, land-base missions 30 km / 36 km.

6. Radar picked you up (low-level runs)

Low-level courses have a radar ceiling, and you are detected above it. What gets missed here is that the ceiling is height above ground (AGL).

You start at 60–80% of it.

So level flight alone will push you through the ceiling as soon as the ground rises. That is what “I got detected and I wasn’t even climbing” is. Heading for a ridge, lower the nose beforehand and buy the margin back.

7. You ran out of time

Every stage is on a clock. Carrier missions run around 300 seconds, low-level 300–600, formation 480–630.

Stacking up retries eats all of it. If you are going to go around, decide early — that ends up saving more time than anything else.

Summary — what to do first

1. Don’t touch the throttle until you are cleared. That alone removes most of the sudden deaths.
2. Build the speed before you turn. Don’t try to turn below 450 km/h.
3. Watch the stall line on the HUD. Learn by feel that banking lifts it.
4. Never go back for a gate. Backwards is instant disqualification.
5. Lower the nose before the ridge. The ceiling is measured from the ground.

That covers the failures you can prevent just by knowing about them. Past here, it really is about flying.