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.

Patria e Onore

Motherland and honour!

The first squadrons for the Regia Marina are ready to sortie from Taranto.

Putting to sea

Two Zara class heavy cruisers.

Two Condotierri class light cruisers.

These are technically Capitan Romani class cruisers. But when looking up names for that family of ships I learned that only three of them were commissioned and only months before Italy surrenderd to the Allies. So instead, I've given them names from a group of the large and varied Condotierri class.

That's what I get for buying ships without doing my research or paying attention to the lists in the back of the rules. But having ships named the Pompeo Magno and Scipione Africano seemed too cool not to do.

Next are the first (of many!) destroyer flotillas.

Six destroyers. Five Soldati and one Navigatori class, because someone got into the wrong bag, and I didn't notice until the initial dry brushing. 

Soldati class DDs

Navigatori

With the Italian ships, picking names was less of an issue. Some classes only have two units anyway. I asked Don to "print me 6 of every destroyer", and then it turns out that the Orsa class of torpedo boat/escort destroyer only had four ships. Fortunately they were very similar to a preceding class of torpedo boat, so I borrowed some names from that family of ships.

While waiting to get the lables printed, and fighting with the printer to get it to recognize the juicy new ink cartridges, I also got the convoy of merchant ships painted up. There are two different .stls; the Liberty ship and a German Auxiliary ship. Both were free! The small ship is also a Liberty ship printed at 1:2400 scale by Mike Peterson a few years back when I first started on this nautical adventure. It's lost some derricks, but I'm not sure it matters?

They have generic labels so they can be an Allied convoy one game, Italian the next, and once I get German units, they can be a German convoy in the North Sea as well.

For the merchant ships, I used spare plastic bases from  Warlord Napoleonic infantry sets. 20mm x 100mm and 20mm x 60mm. I've also found the 100mm bases very useful for strings of pack horses.