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[W. Clark]

Convoy PQ Boo Hoo

Scenario Set Up

Season: Winter           Location: Norway      Watch: 2000 hours     Sea Haze: None

Wind: Force 5             Speed: 20 knots         Direction: Westerly                Smoke: 1 GT

Sky: Cloudy                 Moon: Quarter           Squalls: 4        Squall Reduction: 2,000 yards

Visibility: 20,000 yards           Squall Type: Snow     

 

Convoy Entry: South Edge     Convoy Heading: North                     Convoy Exit: North Edge

Convoy Speed: 11 knots

 

Sweep Entry: Eastern Edge    Sweep Heading: Player choice          Sweep Speed: 25 knots

 

It was 2000 hours on a dark and some what stormy night off Norway in late 1942.

 

Commander Outinfront peered into the gloom ahead from the bridge of HMS Boreas. The commander oversaw the close escort for Convoy PQ ##. He had the RN destroyers HMS Beagle, Amazon, and Ambuscade under his command. The destroyers were spread out in a line abreast in front the convoy with Boreas to the starboard of the line.

 

The convoy consisted of three columns of four ships each. The heading was north and their speed was 11 knots. They had been warned of a possible sortie by the Kriegsmarine but there was no evidence of that so far.

 

At 2048 hours Boreas had a radar contact at 16,000 yards off the starboard bow. The destroyers turned to starboard in line ahead and increased speed to close the contact. The destroyers continued north to cross the contact’s Tee as its heading was roughly SSW.

 

At 2100 hours there was eruption of fire off the starboard bow and Boreas was hit 5 times that knocked out her fore gun, torpedo mount, damaged her hull and other serious structural damage slowing her to 16 knots. The other destroyers swung round their stricken leader to its unengaged side and turned to a heading of 270 degrees. Radar had picked up at least 7 more contacts with the contacts appearing to be two columns of four ships each. One column to starboard and the other dead ahead heading west and threatening to cross the convoy’s bow.

 

The commander informed the distant cover Commodore and the heavy cover Rear Admiral. Commodore Nearsighted responded immediately but Rear Admiral Late declined saying there was no evidence of German capital ships yet.

 

Over the next 18 minutes the Germans (later identified as Leipzig. Koln and 6 Type 34 destroyers sank Beagle, blew up Amazon, reduced Boreas and Ambuscade to 16 and 9 knots respectively. Ambuscade was the only one to get any torps off before they were knocked out by the relentless German fire. She fired at Leipzig but the cruiser ducked into a nearby snow squall along with her accompanying three destroyers. A short while later there was an explosion and Leipzig when she came back out of the squall was reduced in speed and her fire had slackened by up to a third.

 

The convoy had turned to port and was trying to withdraw when President Adams exploded in fire and sank. Boreas had fired star shell at the trailing destroyer of the easterly enemy column and that revealed capital ships of the Bismarck and Scharnhorst classes as well as a Hipper class cruiser. A renewed call for assistance was placed to Rear Admiral Late and he promised to get to them after his tea (I rolled a 12 for his response and wanted a 1).

 

Meanwhile Commodore Nearsighted had crossed what had been the convoy’s rear and engaged the easterly enemy column. USS Tuscaloosa hit a K class cruiser once and then thrice more reducing her speed. USS Brooklyn engaged that column’s leading destroyer and hit her thrice knocking out her fore guns and reducing her speed to about 25 knots. But the return fire knocked out Tuscaloosa’s fore turret. Commodore Nearsighted could now see that he was too close and turned away under smoke.

 

The Brit destroyers were consistently out shot by the Germans and their efforts to cover the convoy were obviously insufficient as Neville exploded and McCawley’s crew abandoned her afire from stem to stern and sinking rapidly.

 

The Boreas and Ambuscade were saved by the bell when the clock in the host’s house struck five PM and I had to go home. But where was Rear Admiral Late? He was two turns from entering the west edge and 36,000 yards NNW of the action with HMS Rodney and Nelson (ships that I have yet to get onto a table).

 

This AAR report was written the Allied POV and it can only be described as myopic indeed.

 

WMC

 

[healey36]

Some remarkably good shooting by the Kriegsmarine, especially given the darkness.

 

I need to reacclimate myself to WW2, as I've a good friend who's building up a sizable IJN contingent and is nagging me about serving him up some fodder. A scenario such as this would be a good way to ease back into the world of oil-fueled ships and burning floatplanes.

[W. Clark]

I had not realized just how well the CRTs have the Germans shooting. They were without RFC a band better than either the Brits or the US. My only answer was torpedoes and they knocked out three out of four mounts before I could get them off. If I'd had better luck with my torps surviving their fire, I suspect my DDs would have given a better account of themselves. As it was, they damaged Leipzig and got a couple of nonconsequential hits on her DesDiv. Tuscaloosa and Brooklyn damaged the Koln and a DD respectively from the other German column but had to run for their lives as Tirpitz and Scharnhorst went after them immediately.

 

I set up three pairs of cruisers (2 Brit & 1 US) for the Distant Cover and ended up with the US. I set up three Close Escort DesDivs (again 2 Brit & 1 US) and ended up with the weakest (gun & torpedo wise) of the three. I set up two Brit BB pairs (KGV & Rodney classes) for the Heavy Cover and ended up with the slowest pair. But besides the bad acquisition rolls it was the Heavy Cover's response that put me in a hole. My thought (as usual) was that commanders not in visual or even radar contact might not grasp the situation correctly and might be just a bit dim on top of that. So, I rolled for (call him) Admiral Late's response and got a 12 when I wanted a 1. The rest is in the AAR.

 

​I love the Pacific; the surface fights can go either way. May your friend happy and start out with Java Sea. It's not as lop sided as it appears on the face of it. Both sides have advantages. IMHO it favors the Japanese but if they make any mistakes, they could lose their collective behinds to the ABDA's 6" superiority. And don't forget that there a RN torps there also. 

 

WMC

[healey36]

I suspect it will be a throw-a-few-ships-on-the-table-and-pound-away type encounter. If there's any planning to be done, it'll be on me. I presume ODGW provides a point-based system somewhere for matching up forces and scenario development?

 

 

[Kenny Noe]

We do have a points based system for Mein Panzer.   Unsure about GQ.   Will need to ask Lonnie....

[W. Clark]

You could try GQ 3.3 rule 1.19.3 Scenario Generation. 

 

WMC

[healey36]

You could try GQ 3.3 rule 1.19.3 Scenario Generation. 

 

I looked at that. It references chart 18B for scenario generation, but I'll be danged if I can find it.

[W. Clark]

The charts are located after the Sub logs. I couldn't make heads or tails of them with a quick look. They seem rather involved to me.

 

But in my experience, it is not that hard to put together a balanced scenario if you make sure that each side has some strengths and weaknesses that each other can try to exploit while trying to avoid the other side exploiting them. If one side shoots better, then I give the other side another cruiser or something to balance it out. You cannot account for dice, and I don't try too. I just try to even the odds.

 

WMC 

[healey36]

It looks like chart 18D is a tool for scenario generation, but there must be some sort of write-up somewhere that suggests how best to use it. Maybe I'll put a query out there under the GQ3 section of the forum.

 

And I agree, it's usually easy enough to just hammer something out oneself, but it would be fun to sort of randomly produce something, especially in terms of mission and objective. My biggest challenge is fashioning something relatively balanced, especially given the disparity between navies and ships within classes. It never seems to line up very well.

 

No intention of throwing this completely off-topic (although I likely already have). Apologies...

[W. Clark]

​I like discussing scenarios and ways to generate them, so no apology is needed at all. Rob, the guy I normally game with can easily run 12 ships or so as can I. So, I tend to set our scenarios up with that as a limit. But I certainly make exceptions. I just realize that we are probably not going to be able to fight it out to a complete finish unless morale intervenes. That limit often translates into a cruiser division and two destroyer divisions of some kind. Rob tends more towards historical OBs than I but puts up with my more whimsical what-ifs.

 

WMC

[healey36]

That limit often translates into a cruiser division and two destroyer divisions of some kind.

 

That sounds like a reasonably-sized scenario, maybe with some sort of objective tossed in. I think a cruiser div and one or two destroyer divs might actually reach a satisfactory conclusion in 3-4 hours. 

[W. Clark]

Rob's in Portland and I drive up from Salem, so about an hour each way. That leaves us about 3 to 4 hours of game time before I need to get home to my JRT. There is not a lot of leave way for the inevitable delays in play that occur. But morale normally interjects itself before time runs out. Both of us have lost due to morale failure just as it appeared that victory was within our grasp. I've seen it occur with the loss of a single ship as each new failure caused another check that failed also. Kind of a cascade of bad die rolls. 

 

WMC

[healey36]

Apologies for going further off-topic...JRT are cool, but the one next door tries to take a hunk out of me every time I go over there. He's a ferocious little bugger, even at more than a dozen years old. I once saw him chasing an adult fox through the back garden. 

[W. Clark]

This is my second Parsons JRT. Jack, my first loved everything he didn't see as prey (including cats). Prey, he killed immediately. Nicki is female (my first) and contrarian even when she actually wants what she is saying no to, just like a two-year-old. I like their looks and their smarts and Jack was the best flushing dog I've ever seen. He cleared a field and missed nothing. However, they sometimes solve problems you would just as soon that they didn't. But. they are not a dog you leave alone for long periods of time if you like your home/car in the condition it was in when you left them.

 

WMC

[healey36]

A Scotsman I count amongst my closest friends who made a living training and showing dogs at some of the great venues of the trade, once explained to me that the terrier line was originally bred as a great ridder-of-vermin for the barn and farmyard, so I always took that as indicative and explanative of their demeanor. Fiercely territorial and loyal, they're not to be trifled with. That said, we left one of our retrievers home for a few hours on Christmas Day one year and she took it upon herself to take up the wall-to-wall carpet in our family room. Never turn your back on any of them 

 

Back to convoys, one of the game group wants to give the submarine rules a spin, like a three or four sub wolf-pack up against a large merchant group with escorts. I've only obliquely explored the sub rules, so I'm wondering how entertaining it might be.

 

 

I gave him an inventory of suitable ships on-hand and told him to write something up. 

 

[W. Clark]

I played subs in modern rules decades ago and ran out of sonar buoys I'm a cruiser/destroyer lover and I avoid subs, mines and a/c as much as is possible. So, I'm afraid that I have little experience in that kind of scenario. Now, give me a couple of destroyers, a round dozen merchies to protect and a pocket battleship to torpedo and I'm your man.

 

WMC

[healey36]

The Battle of the Barents Sea (Operation Regenbogen) has been "floated" by the game group as a possibility sometime this winter. That would seem right up your alley, WMC. 

[W. Clark]

Actually, I'm not that hot to trot about convoy scenarios. Most of the ones I've done lately were either for a linked set of PB involved scenarios I was helping test or ones that Rob wanted to do. But they can be fun as well as challenging. I managed to sink Deutschland twice before Herr Hitler could rename her Lutzow and that appealed to my cartoon brain.

 

WMC

[healey36]

I managed to sink Deutschland twice before Herr Hitler could rename her Lutzow and that appealed to my cartoon brain.

 

 

No wonder he wanted to scrap the surface units and build a few shore batteries.

[W. Clark]

That along with snorkels for tanks that were too heavy to cross bridges kind of shows the way his mind worked. Nevertheless, he was a brilliant politician who got into power without even needing to get elected to the office. Of course, as with most politicians that is when the nightmare began.

WMC