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[Richard Cornwell]

Jutland - The run south

In honour of it being nearly the centenary of Jutland, we thought we'd dust off FAI and fight the battlecruiser action. Just using the battlecruisers.

The two forces started about 20,000 yards apart, with the Germans having the advantage of being down wind. The 5th Battle squadron was some distance behind but would appear on table after 7 or 8 turns.

The initial shooting was generally inaccurate, with occasional hits. The Germans managed to repair some turret hits, The most significant hit was an engineering hit on Derfflinger, which slowed Hipper down for some turns until repaired, letting the 5th Battle Squadron edge closer.

The Germans adopted a slightly converging course and gradually closed the range, and the fire accuracy increased. Despite the advantage of the smoke hampering the British fire, the Germans didn't hit a lot more frequently than Beatty's ships. Most hits were on turrets or secondary or tertiary armament. The ships weren't slowed much.

The Queen Elizabeths finally got into range and started giving Von der Tann at the rear of the German line a hot time.

By now the range had closed and the hits started increasing. Just as the High Seas Fleet came into view, and the British turned north, the Lion took a severe beating, losing 3 turrets and being reduced to 12 knots. Jellicoe's warning to Beatty about losing speed near the main German fleet coming to reality. The remaining battle cruisers still had good speed, although New Zealand only had one turret left and Tiger had lost 2 turrets.

At the same time the von der Tann took a pasting, also losing all but one turret and slowed to 12 knots. Lutzow and Seydlitz had also lost most of their turrets, although Derfflinger and Moltke were in reasonable shape. However, with four super-dreadnoughts in range Hipper was going to pull back for the time being, while the High Seas Fleet chased Beatty and Evans-Thomas.

We called it a night at that point with Lion going to perish under the guns of Scheer's fleet.

FAI did a pretty good job at this. I let the German's get a bit too close which increased the damage, but the small number of hull hits on the damage chart meant that most of the ships kept up their speed for the entire action.