Operation Bunker Shot

Lore & Background

Stonehenge was never meant for war. Conceived as humanity's shield against the heavens, its eight massive railguns could punch clean through an asteroid—or, in enemy hands, gut an entire air fleet from beyond the horizon. Operation Bunker Shot was born from desperation: Allied sorties were being swatted out of the sky, ground forces pinned under orbital-grade fire. The plan demanded pilots skim canyon floors at Mach 0.9, trusting their altimeters over their eyes, while enemy radar and anti-air batteries tracked every heartbeat. One well-placed missile into the facility's geothermal core could sever the neural spine of the network. Failure meant the war bled out in the desert.

In Their Own Story

The morning sun bled red over the canyon rim as the flight leader's voice cut through static: 'All units, this is it. We don't get a second chance.' Below, the desert floor blurred into a ribbon of sand and shadow, punctuated by the cold glint of Stonehenge's barrels rising from the haze. The pilot's gloved hand eased the throttle forward, feeling the airframe shudder as they dropped into the valley. Flak ripped the sky into black blossoms, each burst rattling the canopy like hail on tin. In the cockpit, the radar pinged steady, a metronome against the thud of their own pulse. They knew that beyond the next ridge lay either the key to turning the tide—or a grave of twisted metal and silence.

Reader's Guide

The operation unfolded in three razor-thin phases. First, diversionary squadrons baited Stonehenge's tracking radars, painting false signatures across the eastern horizon. The core objective: a two-second window to salvo anti-runway penetrators into the facility's geothermal coolant vents, crippling the railguns' power regulation. Timing was everything—any delay let enemy reserves flood the sector from hidden hangars. The aftermath saw Stonehenge fall silent within minutes, its barrels frozen mid-traverse, and the Allied tide began to turn.

Did You Know?

• Operation Bunker Shot is a direct reference to Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies, which features the Stonehenge superweapon originally built to destroy asteroids.
• The Stonehenge railgun network in Ace Combat Infinity is a Type-3 base located in Turkey, captured by the Sons of Troia prior to the rescue operation.
• In Ace Combat Infinity, the player character Reaper helps destroy a Stonehenge Type-3 base alongside the Ridgeback squadron and UN Marines.
• The Ulysses disaster that led to Stonehenge's construction is set in 1994, with the meteor storm hitting Earth in July 1999.
• Stonehenge's railguns were designed to destroy about 10,000 meteors heading for Earth after an asteroid collided with Jupiter's moon 5254 Ulysses.