The Doomed Convoy

Had a solo game of Snorkers! (Good Oh!) last night. Another attempt at a convoy scenario. This time a British convoy being ambushed by Italian light forces.

The Regia Marina had 6x Soldati destroyers in two flotillas, and 6x Spica torpedo boat/escort destroyers in two flotillas. Each flotilla diced for random arrival around the end of the table.

The Royal Navy had 2x K class and 1x G class destroyers as convoy escorts.  There was also a cruiser squadron as a Covering Force consisting of 2x Town class and 1x Dido class CLs. 

Each fleet came in at 240 points and 20 Force Morale (before the deduction to Force Morale for the merchant ships).

Spicas making a high speed approach. Soldatis coming in from corner. Cruisers wheeling to cover convoy 

 

Lead torpedo boat pinned by a searchlight and smashed by gunfire 

Remaining Spicas dodge around the flaming wreck and launch torpedoes but miss

The convoy has changed course, hoping to get some cover from a fog bank and avoid oncoming Italians. A flotilla of Soldati rushes in for a torpedo attack sinking 3 merchant ships!

HMS Sheffield and Glasgow move in and sink all three destroyers with a combination of guns and torpedoes. HMS Cleopatra is hanging back to engage the Spicas.

The second flotilla of Spicas, hiding until now in a fog bank, dash forward to launch a daring torpedo attack! 1 merchant explodes. The other 2 torpedo spreads miss.

The Convoy Escort destroyers have pounced on the daring torpedo boats, sinking one, crippling another. But the Second destroyer flotilla, which had been hanging back, changes course to port and weaves between the remains of the First Torpedo Boat flotilla to intercept and torpedo the remaining merchant ships. By the time the British can turn around and enage them they will have disappeared into the night.

And so ended my fourteenth game of the year, with a stunning Italian victory. The British escorts took very little damage, but lost the entire convoy. The Italians lost 3x of their destroyers and 5x of their torpedo boats (3x sunk, 2x crippled). Although the one survivor may not escape from the middle of the British force!

After my last game with Brett and Dan I asked the designer Philip for some clarification on the torpedo rules and it turns out I had been too generous with the "best torpedo arc" template positioning, resulting in a lot of undesrved +1 DRMs. Consequently, there were more torpedo misses this game. A heavy swell and rolling an appalling number of 1s and 2s didn't help either. Fortunately for the attacker, the merchant ships are +2 to hit and +3 on the Critical Hit table.

I may in the next game move the convoy off table, and the attacker will need to get a certain number of ships off the defender's edge with a certain number of torpedoes still onboard. My reasoning being that expending all of your torpedoes to defeat the screen and then have nothing left to sink the convoy doesn't do you any good.

I also note in the rules that Italian and British torpedo bombers can be used at night, which will add a fun dimension once I get some Italian CANT Z.506 or SM 79 torpedo bombers printed.

Stukas and Stringbags

Now that I've got quite a few ships done, I thought it was time to add some aircraft. The aircraft in Ghukek's Wargaming 3d catalog are FREE!, which is cool. They are scaled at 1:900 to go with the 1:1800 ships. He does the smaller fighters and carrier aircraft as singles and flights of three, joined at the tails or with overlapping wings. Large bombers, scout planes etc are all singles. 

Some he modeled with tiny propellers, which are weird. I cut them off where present.

Picture from Ghukek catalog of Bristol Beaufighters. Note individual model and flight of three model

The flights of three is how the Mad Padre printed my aircraft for the 1:2400 project a couple of years back.

Dauntless SBDs (joined wing tip to tail) and F4F Hellcats (joined at the wing tips) fly over a CVE early in the project.

It was easy enough to paint them. Clip off the peg on the post, glue the flight on, brush prime and paint.

Except, due to some casual storage, my flights of aircraft have taken some damage. Flights of three reduced to two, or even one, model with shortened wings.

The SBDs (far left and far right) if you look closely are in rather poor shape.

Don printed me the single models, not the flights. So I had six of each aircraft. These were going to be a bugger to paint and how to base them? And after all that effort, how to keep them from breakage? So solutions needed to be found.

For painting I hit on the idea to superglue them to some sprue. Easy to just pop them off the plastic, right? RIGHT???!!

Painting in progress

Wrong. A lot of wings and tails snapped as I tried to gently pop them off the sprue, even after I put a bunch in the freezer for 24 hours.

Carnage!

Some I was able to repair, because the breaks were simple, clean, and I could find the errant piece.

But many airframes were a complete write off. 2 out of 5 Do17s survived. I managed to repair the damaged Ju88s, so I got all six in service. Of the Me110s and Ju87s I only saved half, 3 each. The rest were unsalvageable.

Do17s attacking HMS Cleopatra off Crete

Two flights of Ju88s make a bombing run

Swordfish from HMS Illustrious attack the Armando Diaz off North Africa

For the British I only lost one each of the Swordfish and the Beaufighters, so I made a flight of three and a flight of two for each.

The British have 4 flights of attack aircraft. The Axis have five flights. One of Me110 fighters, two of Ju88s, and one each of Do17s and Ju87s. The Axis will have to wait until I get some Italian aircraft before they get torpedo bombers.

Me110s

For the flights of three, I cut a triangle of clear plastic from a food packaging clam shell and punched a hole behind where the lead aircraft would go. Flights of two got a rectangle with a hole punched in the center.

The aircraft were then hot glued into position. I left some overlap so the plastic would protect the wings.

Ju87 Stukas!

Beaufighters attacking a convoy in the North Sea, or maybe the Mediterranean.

I think with the next round of aircraft I'll hot glue the models to a popsicle stick, or a wooden skewer. They might be easier to pop free from the hot glue. Painting the bottoms isn't really needed. You don't see them.

The bases wobble a bit on the stands, but they come free to lay flat for storage. The angles also add a bit of drama to the scene as well, and helps you imagine attacking aircraft swooping around, dodging flak, as they pounce on their target.

In Which They Served

The second batch for the Royal Navy has finished their working up and are ready to deploy to the table top.

This group includes two Fiji, or Crown Colony, Class light cruisers from Lee MColl stls printed for me by the Mad Padre. These are insanely detailed, and Mike printed them on an FDM printer. I think better results might be had with a resin printer, but separating masts and guns from supports would be tricky as well. 

So who knows? Shan't look gift ships in the gun turrets so to speak.

Also two Dido class light anti-aircraft cruisers, which were terribly useful in the crowded Mediterranean, where allied shipping was never far from German and Italian airfields. These are the more robust, gamer friendly, stls from Ghukek.

Finally, six J,K, and N class destroyers. Again from Ghukek. These will be formed into two flotillas. One of the J-series and one of the K-series. 

That is the nice thing about many RN destroyers from WW2, you can tell what class it is just from the name.

With this batch I pushed the boat out a bit further with more complicated camouflage patterns which I think turned out well, even though the destroyers don't give a lot of room to work with.

Of course I'm trying to keep this project to light forces. Heavy cruisers were only with Force H in Gibraltar. But I already have a RN battlecruiser and a couple of Italian battleships in the pipeline, because I got the stls for free. So the temptation to get a couple of Queen Elizabeth class battleships keeps singing it's siren song.  The Mediterranean did after all feature one of the very few times that opposing battleships engaged each other in the Second World War.

Molti Nemici, Molto Onore -Regia Marina Gruppo Due

 "Many enemies, much honour."

The second batch of Italian ships has been launched and finished their shake down cruise. This group included a pair of super detailed Lee McColl 3d designs printed for me by the Mad Padre. These are proper Condotierri class light cruisers.

As you can see there are very fine masts, which I'm sure will break off, thin delicate gun barrels reminiscent of the metal GHQ models and freaking port holes!

Nailed it!

I managed to do a pretty good job copying the camouflage scheme in my Osprey Italian Cruisers of World War Two, which happened to be the Luigi Cardona. A name I'd already given to one of the Capitani Romani ships in the first group of Italian ships.

There's an obvious difference in size between the two classes

So I decided I would relabel the models and give the Capitani Romani ships the proper names of the two ships that actually saw any fighting before Mussolini was overthrown and Italy surrendered. They are essentially destroyer leaders rather than cruisers, and were designed in 1939 to match the French heavy destroyers. With four twin 5.5" gun turrets I'll treat them much like the British Dido class.

Ready to attack allied convoys

This group also includes six destroyers. Five Navigatoris and the stray Soldati to fix the last group's mix up. 

And six escort destroyers/frigates/torpedo boats. Five Spica class and one Orsa class (another bagging mix up....sigh). Of course I had to include the Lupo. But the Regia Marina had a lot of these little ships.

Brett and Dan came over to blood my new ships and try my idea for a scenario I'd like to run at KEGSCon in September. An Italian convoy of seven merchant ships, escorted by three Spicas and one Soldati has to exit the top left corner. Royal Navy enters the table top left table edge. Reinforcing Italian squadrons enter top right and bottom right corners.

Early casualties from long range torpedo launches.

Escorts lay a smoke screen but two of the Spicas are smashed by gunfire.

Turn end, the smoke screen ends and more carnage. Another escort is blown out of the water

It doesn't go all one way. The Zara gets a magazine hit on HMS Orion.

And then gets reduced to a flaming, water logged hulk by HMS Sheffield

Cruisers getting in among the convoy. Sailors wondering how far they can swim right about now.

British destroyers kill my other heavy cruiser

Ships exploding everywhere....

End game. The Italians have one light cruiser and four destroyers left. All the ships with smoke on them are floating wrecks. The British have lost a light cruiser and have a couple of damaged destroyers.

It was fun to get the models in a game and try my ideas out. The guys gave me some good feedback on the scenario to noodle about with. Ideally I'd like a game that could handle four to six players, which means it has to be on the big size. Maybe I'll reverse and have the Italians attacking a British convoy to Malta instead? Make it a night action? Or get my aircraft painted? 

So many options.