4 replies to this topic

[Malcolm Wright]

Demo & Curry night. HG 74What a great fun Saturday night that was! Plenty of good chatting and fellowship overlots of food, (Our curry night) followed by a very good Wargame that had allthe participants laughing as well as enjoying it. Eighteen adults attendedalthough only 8 remained for the Wargame itself.The game to be played was 'Deadly waters ©', my recently completed gamefrom the as yet unreleased Cruel Seas series. The first one 'Rising Storm©' covers the start of the Battle of the Atlantic. The one we playedconcerns the convoy runs from the UK to Gibraltar during the most hectictime on that route. The game date fell into late 1942, so the escort wasreasonably strong.I put Brett as the Escort Commander.....mostly because he kept complaininghe knew nothing about warships! He was leading a Canadian escort group fromthe destroyer HMCS Athabraskan, and had five corvettes in company. Simontook the front right flank. Scott had the front left flank and left flank.Trevor was on the right Flank and Hugh at the rear.Les and Rick were Axis commanders. I ran the rules.The convoy HG 74 sailed in nine columns, each of three merchant ships,giving 27 in total.They had a pretty easy time of it for the first 2/3rds of the convoy run toGibraltar. At one point a HF/DF signal was picked up by Athabraskan, butBrett chose not to pursue this. Often that would be a bad idea, because thesubmarine (U117) was obviously sending off a sighting report. However Brettwas lucky. The next two nights and days were beset by bad weather. TheCondor's could not fly and other U Boats didn't make contact, so they werenever actually subjected to a wolf pack assault. The weather was bad, butdidn't stop the convoy from plugging on.The Germans had a bit of bad luck when a British submarine intercepted andsank one of their U Boats as it carried out a transit of the Bay of Biscay.This reduced their numbers by one submarine in the event of any multipleattacks being rolled.Then when the convoy was less than 72 hours from the destination; things started to gowrong.. The first trouble was the freighter 'War Pathan'loaded down with cargo, and a deck load of aircraft. The ship suffered aserious cargo shift and a machinery breakdown that left her wallowing in theheavy seas. After some deliberation and 'terse' exchange of messages….those from Scott suggesting to DO SOMETHING!!! (Anything!) A decision was made. Theconvoy ploughed on, but left Simon with the Corvette HMCS Barrie behind totend to the immobilised vessel. It took him five hours before the weathermoderated and he could get a tow across. By then he was fifty nautical milesbehind the ten knot convoy, and the best he could make towing was five knotsNone the less he eventually got the War Pathan underway.Back at the convoy the change of weather made it easier for the shadower.The type IX U Boat U 117 which had been shadowing for two days, and wascommanded by Rick, closed in for an attack during daylight. By sheer luckthe point of contact was where a gap had been left in the screen when theBarrie left to help War Pathan. Rick quietly slipped in and torpedoed twovessels. The medium sized tanker 'Wallingford', with a load of aviation fuelblew up, while the 'War Hindoo' surprisingly survived the attack on it.Somewhat annoyed at the resilience of the small freighter, Rick gave itanother torpedo from his stern tubes as he passed. That was sufficient andthe freighter followed the tanker to the bottom. Rick dove deep!Now the escorts were aroused. After a bit of deliberation....(and someblatant suggestions from his junior commanders).....Brett ordered 'Artichoke.While the correct action to take, the gap in this was again that caused bythe Barrie having been left astern. Rick was able to dive to deep, and sneakout the back of the convoy. He was briefly picked up by Big Trev in the HMSC Ville de Quebec, which got a brief contact and some depth charges weredropped without result. After that U 117 made its escape. Once they realisedthe U Boat had escaped, the corvettes HMCS Dauphin and HMCS Snowberry,picked up survivors. Only ten from the Wallingford, but forty from WarHindoo.Fifty or so miles behind the convoy, the 'events beyond the convoy' chartwas consulted, and the disabled 'War Pathan' was torpedoed and sank. Simonquickly slipped the tow....and set off in search. However U404 escaped awide of the mark depth charging. Simon increased speed to rejoin the convoy,after picking up 20 survivors. Considering the speed of a flower classcorvette being somewhat unspectacular, this took him five hours plus. Eventhen he was only at the rear when the next event unfolded.The Barrie had no sooner arrived at the rear of the convoy than night felland darkness brought with it squalls and low visibility. During that theCargo Ship 'Northwest' got out of station and collided with the rear of Daedelus'. The latter ship lost her rudder and propellers, leaving herhelpless, but without too much floatation loss. Northwest came to a halttemporarily, but with stove in bows was unable to make more than five knots,which was half the convoy speed. Simon once again volunteered to help (Hiscrew probably hated him!) and went to the aid of Daedelus. HMCS Chicoutimi,the ship commanded by Hugh was to provide an ASW screen while Barrie towedthe Daedelus. This little group of two ships and two escorts became asub-convoy that we ran separately, rather than use the events beyond theconvoy chart. They got underway at five knots and radioed Gibraltar for helpThey were promised air cover the following afternoon and two old V&W classdestroyers were sent out to help bring the damaged ships in, but thedestroyers could not arrive until the next evening.During the night a single submarine, U 117 again, carried out another attacksinking the freighter 'Sutherland' and then slipping away into the darknessunseen. (Rick was not only the shadower but was now being a real nuisance,as with U 404 now acting as the squealer he was free to attack) Dawn over Gibraltar prevented flying, but out at sea two Fw200 Condorsflying down from Biscay bases, pulled off a surprise attack on the rear ofthe main convoy. Much was expected of the Auxiliary flak ship HMS Alynbank,but unfortunately for Brett its AA fire was none too accurate. Two shipswere hit, but the bombs were light, so only minor damage resulted, withnothing to slow the ships down. The old freighter 'Pershwah' lost some cargodue to damage. The only concern was the heavy lift ship 'Balboa' which hada fire in the aft hold, but that was eventually extinguished. Right at theend of the attack, with seemingly ineffective flak bursting all over the skyone of the huge Condor's took a hit from the corvette Ville de Quebec andcrashed. That was a pretty good effort for a corvette, considering their poor AA fire.Next day Sunderland aircraft from Gibraltar provided air support, and duringthe morning two J/K class fleet destroyers arrived from Force H tostrengthen the escort. The main convoy then arrived at Gibraltar during thelate afternoon but lost the tanker Retford Kennel when it struck a mine asthey approached 'the Rock'. The tanker blew up in spectacular fashion, butthe rest of the ships steamed in, with a relieved Brett smiling at last.The two ships in difficulty were being escorted to Gibraltar separately byBarrie and Chicoutimi. Some bad weather helped them, but as night fellthings cleared up and not long after darkness two U Boats made contact. (Wecalled this a Wolf cub pack as there were only two) The ever annoying U 117and the type VIIC boat U190. They were unaware of each others presence whenthey fired a salvo of torpedoes from opposite sides of the small convoy. TheBarrie and Daedelus were hit simultaneously by U117 and both sank at once.Barrie had no survivors but 60 men from Daedelus got off. Meanwhile on theother side, Ville de Quebec turned toward the attacking U190 in order toprotect the limping 'Northwest'. However Luddite Les let fly with a bow shotwhich to everyone's amazement scored a direct hit, sinking the Canadiancorvette instantly and also without survivors. LLes then turned hisattention to the unprotected Northwest, but missed with his torpedoes. Thiscaused rather a flurry of manoeuvre on the part of U117 which was comingfrom the opposite direction and almost fell victim to friendly fire. Rickturned about and fired his stern tubes, but not only did one miss, the othercircled back at high speed. Again the U117 carried out some drasticmanoeuvres and again escaped damage. The U190 now fired star shell,illuminating Northwest, and both submarines engaged the sitting duck withtheir deck guns.Some hits were scored, adding to the damage the ship had suffered in hercollision. Both subs quickly ran low on ammunition. In the end both opted toleave the wallowing Northwest to its fait and headed off into the darkness. Despite a fire, which the crew were able to extinguish, Northwest survivedfor a while. Indeed it looked as if she would survive completely, but it wasnot to be and after the two U Boats left, she finally foundered. Nextmorning the air cover arrived, sighted survivors in the water and directedthe two V&W class destroyers to the spot. 80 survivors, a mix from bothships, were picked up and taken to Gibraltar.As far as wargames go, there was lots of excitement and everyone seemed tohave plenty of fun, despite many of the events being weather or mechanicallyrelated, rather than direct combat. The new (land lubber) players achieved asteep learning curve and looked a little more comfortable in sea boots bythe time the game was finished. They along with the experienced naval gamersseemed to have a lot of fun, despite some of the misadventures.Rick and LLes, had plenty of success as U Boat commanders. Rick is a veteranof my naval games, but Les is a submarine 'ace' from many years of gamingwith me. It was good to see LLes again after a gap of several months, duringwhich he has been very ill. He doesn't Look at all well still, and has lostlots of weight, but at least he laughed a lot, and talked happily to peopleall night. It was good to welcome Scott Elaurant to the group. Most of ushad seen him at conventions such as CANCON but not wargamed with him before.He certainly had some excellent ideas and we hope he will attend again. Withthe newest child in the family now over 3 months, its hoped we can startseeing more of Hugh Davie as well. Simon, Brett, Big Trev, Rick and myselfare of course Wargame animals who will lift an ear to any rattle of the dicebut we all had fun too.Lots of fun and a really good night. Probably best of all is that the convoygames don't take all that long to play, so after eating all that curry,everyone left well before 'The wind blew free'.....but it might have been 'abit sniffy' riding home in the car with some of them! :S Mal WrightNon-torsii subligarium(Dont get your knickers in a twist)

[Wayne Pocock]

Mal, sounds a very intresting game. What sort of play area do you use and do you use models with it ?Wayne

[Malcolm Wright]

The area required to play depends on the scale models. With 1:3000 scale or 1:6000 we have no trouble using a normal tabletop. Or we can add a 4ft x 6ft naval board onto a table and use that. Of course we need lots of plastic over the furniture and the carptet.That's to protect against the cold wet seawater tossed into the players faces to keep it real!;)

[Wayne Pocock]

Reminds me of someone in NWS idea for a U-Boat game

[Malcolm Wright]

For convoys to Russia I prefer they crush the icecubes first, before chucking them in my face. :(