Another North Sea Engagement

Steve and I had another game of WWI Naval Thunder at Maelstrom Games a week last Thursday. Unfortunately, it was a couple of weeks ago I have lost the notes of all the ships involved so this may be a bit sketchy.

This time I would play the Germans and Steve would play the Royal Navy. The scenario was that a squadron of four German Battle Cruisers escorted by a squadron of four German Light Cruisers were returning to home ports when they encounter a flotilla of Royal Navy destroyers at maximum visibility (24").

The Light Cruisers immediately increase speed and chase after the destroyers, who also turn and try to disengage. Chasing the destroyers the Light Cruisers encounter a squadron of three ancient Armoured Cruisers, completely out gunned and out-ranged by these Royal Navy ships the Light Cruiser squadron executes a turn to port and increases the range, eventually getting out of range, but not before one of the Light Cruisers has taken severe hull damage.

Now it is the turn of the German Battle Cruisers to pound the British Armoured cruisers, but the fire is not so effective, knowing that is it only a matter of time before the Armoured Cruisers are pounded to bits, Steve also disengages these and out of the mist a squadron of four old pre-Dreadnoughts appear. With a surfeit of targets the Battle Cruisers start to engage the ancient Battleships allowing the Armoured Cruisers to re-engage and add their weight of fire. The German Light Cruisers wisely stay out of the way as they would add nothing to the engagement

The superior fire-power of the German Battle Cruisers is telling and for little damage to themselves the old pre-Dreadnoughts are soon in a right old state. However, all is not lost for the Royal Navy, the Destroyer Flotilla rejoins the engagement and launches as salvo of torpedoes at the Battle Cruisers, the lead Battle-Cruiser, Seydlitz, is badly hit in the engine room and her speed is reduced drastically.

It was time to end the game, as the German player, what was to be done, should we risk more damage to the Battle Cruisers from the emboldened destroyers and continue the engagement or should we disengage and leave Seydlitz to her fate.

The forces were:

Germans:
4 Battle Cruisers, one was severely damaged, the other three took light damage
4 Light Cruisers, one was severely damaged

Royal Navy:
1 Destroyer Flotilla, lightly damaged
3 Armoured Cruisers, one severely damaged, one heavily damaged
4 Pre-Dreadnoughts, three severely damaged, one heavily damaged

Apologies for the state of the photographs, there seems to be a blur on my lens and I stopped taken shortly into the game .

German Cruiser Blucher

German Cruiser Dresden

German Battle Cruiser Squadron

German Light Cruiser Squadron

The two German Squadrons

The Light Cruisers encounter the Destroyers

Royal Navy Destroyer Flotilla

Royal Navy Armoured Cruisers

The German Light Cruisers turn to disengage

Somewhere in the North Sea - 1915

At Mansfield Wargames club we have has a few games of Naval Thunder: Battleship Row / Bitter Rivals and these have given some great games for a club night that as well as being easy to pick up give a fun game with a result that usually feels about right.

Steve has a massive collection of WWI ships for both the Grand Fleet and the High Seas fleet so he recently purchased a copy of Naval Thunder: Clash of Dreadnoughts

Yesterday evening at Maesltrom Games we played our first game of WWI naval using Naval Thunder to a scenario of Steve's devising.

A squadron of Royal Navy Battle-cruisers encountered a similar number of German Battle-cruisers. The initial forces were:

• HMS Lion (flagship)
• HMS Princess Royal
• HMS Queen Mary
• HMS Tiger

Lion, Princess Royal, Queen Mary, Tiger

• SMS Lutzow (flagship)
• SMS Derfflinger
• SMS Seydlitz
• SMS Moltke

Lutzow, Derfflinger, Seydlitz, Moltke

The squadrons were approaching on a roughly parallel course at extreme range. As the Royal Navy Battle-cruisers were renowned for being poor shots they would have a +1 crew capability for shooting only.
Peter and myself would take the Royal Navy, Karsten would take the Germans and Steve would ensure it all ran smoothly.

In the opening turn we turned slightly away from the Germans to open the range - we out-ranged them quite considerably so tried to make that pay. Indeed in the first couple of turns we were able to fire unopposed at the Germans, although our poor gunnery accounted for naught. In more good news, a squadron of Royal Navy fast Battleships steamed into the fray:

• HMS Barham (flagship)
• HMS Valiant
• HMS Warspite
• HMS Malaya

Despite our poor shooting things were looking up for the British.

Of course this was not to last, in the next turn we also sighted German Battleships entering the area in the form of the following:

• SMS Koenig
• SMS Grosser Kurfurst
• SMS Kronprinz Wilhelm
• SMS Markgraf

The German Battle-cruisers had also found the range of ours! Derfflinger had a rather spectacular salvo at HMS Lion, three shots hit the hapless Battle-cruiser, all three penetrated and all three caused critical hits in the engine-room, our flagship had been reduced from 7" per turn to 1" per turn in a single salvo. We attempted to move the flag to the next ship in line - the Princess Royal - who misunderstood the signal and broke off the contact with the enemy steaming away. The flag was eventually moved to the Queen Mary. What a turn, one Battle-cruiser was crippled, one Battle-cruiser had sailed off and German battleships were in the vicinity.

Lion belches steam from the catastrophic engine-room damage, Queen Mary breaks off and the rest of the squadron is in confusion

The Germans do not have it all their own way though, before breaking contact the Princess Royal scores a hit below the waterline on the Derfflinger and she starts to list badly which the damage control parties struggle to contain.

Unable to keep up with the battle-line, HMS Lion is still fighting gamely, a salvo of 13.5" shells crashes into Derfflinger worsening the list, Derfflinger quickly capsizes.

The British Fast battleships are now engaging closely with their German counterparts, but they are find to their cost that their shells are not as good as they thought. There is a rule in Naval Thunder to simulate the poor quality of the British shells, if your penetration dice is an odd number, the result is downgraded so that a penetrating hit becomes a non-penetrating hit and a non-penetrating hit has no effect at all. Well, we rolled very poorly and although we were shrugging off hits from the German 12" guns, our own 15" monsters were having hardly any effect at all. 

To paraphrase 'There is something wrong with our bloody guns'

After nine turns of play we though the  game had played out very well and the effect seemed about right. The British certainly had the material superiority, but with poor shells and poor gunners on the Battle-cruisers had only sunk a single German Battle-cruiser. Meanwhile, the Germans had managed to cripple the Lion but had not been able to put the killer blow on any of the Royal Navy ships.

Here are a few more images from the game, all the ships belong to Steve and are mainly Navwar models

The new flagship - HMS Queen Mary

The Princess Royal, before leaving the fight.

Derfflinger prior to being sunk

HMS Lion is hit thrice in the engine room

Action in the North Sea 1915

Steve has quite a collection of WWI ships and has had a game in mind for quite some time to represent a theoretical, but highly possible engagement in the North Sea towards the start of WWII. We would be using the General Quarters III rules

I would take the part of a German Admiral with a force of four Battle Cruisers including Derfflinger, Moltke and Seydlitz, four Light Cruisers and three half flotilla of Torpedo boats. Our mission was to bombard Yarmouth on the British coast with a view to drawing out the British Grand Fleet.

Visibility was 14,000 yards

Steaming westwards at 15 knots towards the British coast we sighted Royal Navy destroyers from the south and two half flotillas of torpedo boats were despatched to engage them and to screen the fleets continued eastern progress. The advancing torpedo boats then spotted British Light cruisers, so the entire fleet turned to engage. It soon became apparent that the Royal Navy were here in force as both Armoured Cruisers and Dreadnought battleships entered the fray. These represented the fleet based at Harwich.

The  Royal Navy destroyers did their job and the and quite badly shot up the  Imperial Navy torpedo boats, but not before those torpedo boats had sunk a Royal Navy Arethusa-class light cruiser. But the torpedo boats also managed to sink one of their own number who strayed into a torpedo track during a confused close-quarters melee with the Royal Navy Destroyers.

Although badly outnumbered, the  Imperial Navy battle-cruisers soon had the measure of the Royal Navy ships and soon had inflicted severe damage on the Royal Navy cruisers and battleships and taking little punishment in return, but a Royal Navy destroyer launched a torpedo at Derfflinger, causing light damage but severing the steam line limiting the vessel to 18knots.

With their major unit slowed and the possibility of being intercepted by the Grand Fleet on their, the Imperial Navy ships broke contact with the slower Royal Navy counterparts and headed back to their home ports.

The Royal Navy had lost a light cruiser and three destroyers sunk, another light cruiser, two armoured cruisers and two Battleships were severely damaged. The Imperial Navy had lost four torpedo boats and Derfflinger had been damaged. If the Grand Fleet had been on an intercept then Derfflinger may have been caught, but likewise the trap may have also been sprung.

A half flotilla of torpedo boats is despatched

Royal Navy light cruisers

Torpedo boats attempt to penetrate the destroyer screen

Melee between torpedo boats and destroyers, Imperial Navy battle-cruisers to the rear.

In the foreground are the RN light cruisers, then the armoured cruisers, then dreadnoughts.

Imperial Navy battle-cruisers in the foreground, light cruisers in the background.

All the ships are from Navwar and were painted by Steve as part of his collection.