Nimitz Kriegsmarine v Royal Navy

Another one-off game of Nimitz with my Kriegsmarine taking on Andy's Royal Navy, this time with some limitations on what we could choose after our last game (basically no just picking Battleships for me!).

The Gneisenau, Blucher and an escorting destroyer:

The Tirpitz, Graf Spee and another destroyer make up the rest of the German force:

The RN have two main groups, one of a number of Cruisers and Destroyers and the other of two old slow battleships:

Tirpitz and Graf Spee move quickly to engage the British Cruisers before their supporting Battleships arrive:

Guns blaze away at close quarters:

Gneisenau and Blucher exchange long range fire with the British Battleships:

German gunnery is abysmal while the RN manage to cripple the Graf Spee which turns away from the action:

The Gneisenau joins the fight but German gunnery does not improve and little damage is caused to the British:

The Graf Spee is sunk:

Meanwhile the Blucher has also taken a pounding and is crippled:

The Blucher is finished off:

With the Gniesenau badly damaged and the RN having only lost a single Cruiser the Germans conceded the action and would attempt to escape together with the largely undamaged Tirpitz.

This was pretty much a complete reversal of the last game we played where, if I remember rightly, the big German ships sank the RN Battleships quickly and then were largely immune to the remaining RN Cruisers and Destroyers!

The much more vulnerable Graf Spee and Blucher didn't last long and the fire from the Germans was largely ineffective. 

Andy also played a smart tactical game, his old and slow (but well armed and armoured) Battleships led to me attempting to close to short range with his Cruiser group where their more numerous and lighter guns were more effective before Andy could bring his big ships into action. 

On reflection I should probably have stuck to the plan from last time which was to deal with the big ships first then, once they were out of action, take on the rest of the enemy fleet.

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Nimitz Kreigsmarine v Royal Navy

Another Nimitz game against Andy with equal points of Germans and British battling it out over an open sea!

I chose the Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and six destroyers for a small but very powerful force which could quickly overwhelm any larger RN ships then mop up the rest!

The fleets approach. As expected the RN fleet is considerably larger but only has two battleships:

Action Stations! The Warspite and Nelson engage the Germans:

The Warspite is quickly sunk:

The German destroyers fare less well against the more numerous British:

The Nelson follows the Warspite to the bottom of the sea:

The British now have no answer to the German's big ships, with minimal damage inflicted on them and most of the British having fired their torpedoes the British retire what is left of their fleet:

We actually played two more Nimitz games last year that I didn't write up, the first being the Norway campaign which ended in a decisive British victory without having an actual surface engagement played out and the second a points based game with the RN against Italians which the British lost comprehensively! 

An interesting set of rules and a fun game but I suspect it is quite hard to achieve reasonably balanced forces especially if you use some of the tougher ships. 

Nimitz Straights of Sicily Campaign

Andy and I's second Nimitz campaign, this time the Strait of Sicily scenario. The British (me) are attempting to run a convoy from Gibraltar to Egypt over 8 days while the Italians (Andy) try to stop them.

After my experience with the Murmansk campaign I went for five TF containing a single destroyer (HMS Tynedale, Hambledon, Jervis, Khartoum and Kelly),  one containing just HMS Ajax, four dummies and a final TF with everything else in it (HMS Howe, Rodney, York, Belfast, Norfolk, Hermione, Spartan, Offa, Orwell, Mohawk, Zulu, Cossack, Eskimo, Jackal, Eagle (the only carrier) and twenty merchant ships. 

In addition I had some Hurricanes and Swordfish on Malta and a medium sized submarine force.

The general plan was to hope that Andy would find it hard to identify the convoy with effectively only a 1 in 11 chance of him hitting the right TF each time he succeeded in identifying a TF. When he did identify it all the defenders would be in place and, combined, the ships had an impressive AA ability together with some Fulmars from the Eagle. 

The initial set-up with my Sunderland flying boat getting some use! The wind was blowing down the map and the only two storms were on land:

Andy's initial move was to hit Malta with a large force of Italian fighters and bombers. Despite scrambling four Hurricanes the Italians broke through destroying four Swordfish on the ground for the loss of a single fighter:

The remaining two Swordfish find the Italian destroyer Freccia and immediately attack:

A torpedo strikes home and the Freccia is sent to the bottom of the sea:

Andy then launched another attack on Malta destroying the remaining two Swordfish that had just sunk the Freccia and a Hurricane for the loss of a single fighter again.

Malta was not finished yet though with submarines operating from the island finding the main Italian fleet (three capital ships and six destroyers):

The Italians close in on the British:

Stuka's discover HMS Ajax:

HMS Ajax is sunk:

Not everything goes the Italian's way though as the Bolzano is sunk by a torpedo from a British submarine:

The convoy is still undiscovered and on it's way to Malta:

HMS Hambeldon is the next ship to be found by the Italian air force. Surprisingly one Stuka is shot down, the other misses and the Hambeldon is undamaged!

The convoy has now passed Malta and is making good progress:

Another destroyer, HMS Jervis, is found. In another surprise outcome the Jervis shoots down both Stukas and sails on unconcerned!

Finally the Italians identify the TF containing the convoy. They are somewhat shocked by the number of defending ships and the morale of their surface force drops considerably when they consider the odds against them. The Italian air force is undaunted though and attacks the Eagle:

The Eagle is unlucky and explodes when a single bomb hits it. No more air cover for the convoy but they still have considerable AA ability from the ships:

With the Italian surface fleet sloping off to safety it is down to their air force to try to stop the convoy getting through:

Six large merchant ships are sunk, a few Italian planes shot down. A serious blow for the British:

The convoy is almost through but still vulnerable to air attacks:

The Italians are starting to run out of planes but launch another attack:

Another large merchant is sunk:

Remarkably after this encounter the Italians failed several times to locate the convoy again and it sailed on to Egypt safely.

The British got VP for sinking the Freccia and Bolzano, shooting down numerous planes and getting ten small and three large merchantmen through. The Italians had sunk the Ajax and the Eagle, six large merchantmen and destroyed several aircraft resulting in a narrow win for the British 109 to 97 VP.

The campaign was good fun and quite intense, Andy's unerring ability to choose the wrong TF to investigate meant the convoy made good progress before he got to attack it and, once he had found it, it was very apparent that any attack on it by his surface force would be suicidal. As a result all the action was air and submarine attacks with no surface action at all.

Having played two campaigns now I think they are fun but have a bit of a flaw in that, certainly for the convoys, they are unlikely to result in surface actions which is kind of the point of playing.

It feels more like playing a board game and, I suspect (from my very limited knowledge of naval warfare) may be 'realistic' in that in fact almost all of the action was by aircraft and submarines with the German and Italian fleets lurking in port and surface actions being few and far between. Next time we might do the invasion of Norway (which Andy has played once against someone else) or I might suggest we just do a points value surface action to get the ships on the table and fighting!

Nimitz Royal Navy v Kriegsmarine 'Murmansk' campaign Part 2

Andy and I played the second part of or 'Murmansk' Nimitz campaign last week. When we left it the convoy had made it about half way and was still undiscovered but the Germans were closing in rapidly with an undetermined force which must be strong in numbers as they hadn't committed much in the way of ships yet:

Day four began with a German air attack on TF 9 containing HMS Implacable. Implacable managed to launch two Hurricanes which shot down one Me109 and a Stuka while losing one of the Hurricanes. AA fire then accounted for a JU88 but unfortunately the remaining JU88 managed to hit the Implacable causing some structural damage:

The British then attempted an air strike of their own from HMS Implacable of TF 9 on TFE (the main German fleet) but the British Skua's failed to find the target and returned to the carrier.

The Germans then successfully identified the convoy (TF 3) with a destroyer. To prevent the German main fleet attacking the convoy TF 6 engaged the main German fleet. Unfortunately the British lost the initiative and had to set up first. HMS York leads followed by Howe, Belfast (damaged in a previous air strike) and Rodney. The destroyers HMS Jervis, Khartoum, Kelly and Jackal form a second line:

The German TF contained the Tirpitz (Bismarck class); Scharnhorst; Scheer (Deutchland class); Nurnberg (light cruiser), 6 of the earlier German destroyers and 3 of the later Type 36A  ("Narvik" class) destroyers. A very powerful force indeed:

Initial manoeuvres:

The British concentrate on the destroyers while the Germans hit the larger British ships:

Several German destroyers are sunk or crippled:

The Germans lose three Destroyers sunk and two crippled. The British lose the Howe, Belfast, York, Kelly and Jervis! It's all over for the British with only the damaged Rodney together with Jackal and Khartoum escaping:

With nothing much left to defend the convoy the British admit defeat and concede the campaign. 

As ever with Sam's rules there is a lot to think about for future campaigns. It's apparent that I didn't pick a suitable force really (too many aircraft that I never used for example), my task forces were badly organised and in the final battle I both underestimated the abilities of the Tirpitz and Scharnhorst and overestimated the dangers of torpedo attacks.

  

Our next campaign will be the Sicilian convoy scenario where my British will take on the Italians. I'll certainly be trying to incorporate the lessons from this defeat in my plan for the next game!

Nimitz Royal Navy

Just in time for some action tomorrow the Royal Navy ships I bought for Nimitz are ready for action!

Battleships HMS Rodney and Howe

Cruisers HMS Belfast, Hermione, York and Spartan:

Cruisers HMS Norfolk and Ajax

Carriers HMS Ark Royal, Implacable and Illustrious:

Destroyers HMS Jervis, Khartoum, Kelly and Jackal:

Destroyers HMS Cossack, Zulu, Mohawk and Eskimo:

Destroyers HMS Orwell and Offa:

Skua's for the carriers:

Fulmars for the carriers:

The mighty Sunderland flying boat:

Swordfish:

A decent force to play Nimitz with, though I probably got too many carriers and aircraft really. The ships are all 1/3000th from Davco, the aircraft 1/600th from Tumbling Dice and the carrier deck markings (which are excellent) from Flight Deck Decals who provide a great service considering they are based in the US which is normally awful to order from.

They were all well cast and easy to paint so another force which wasn't that much effort to produce and may well get some action in the future!