Unsere Schiffe sind Müll

Club night and another try out of Victory at Sea: Age of Dreadnoughts, we got some ideas from a set of house rules posted on the net, which streamlined some of the game mechanics, they worked fine. This time we introduced some destroyer escorts to the two squadrons of battlecruisers and battleships and played a simple meeting engagement. The British played very well and kept their fleet together, while we on the other hand made a mess of it, the battlecruisers went straight for the Royal Navy protected by smoke, but we hadn't really thought what would happen when the smoke cleared. When it did the battlecruisers were targets for the whole British battle line, including some big 15" gun battleships. SMS Lutzow took a severe pounding as did the Von Der Tann. A lucky, very lucky, shot blew up the Royal Oak and the Revenge had her engines disabled, a cheer went around the German fleet heard in Berlin, but the elation did not last long. Lutzow, ablaze from stem to stern settled in the water and was then hit by several torpedoes fired from British destroyers, she started to go down, the Seydlitz too, ground to a halt in flames while the Von Der Tann suddenly found herself the target of the complete British Fleet.

Where was the German battleships in all of this mayhem, I had positioned them badly at the start of the action and then found out that they would have been faster with sails, also the smaller German main armaments caused me a problem as only the Kaiser managed to get off some long range shots. In hindsight the Battlecruiser's should have turned and led the British on to my guns, but it's a wargame, not real life. The German destroyers were useless apart from giving smoke protection at the beginning, the British small ships managed two successful torpedo launches, one did no damage but the second did, to even survive to make the attacks was good work on their part.

The game went slightly faster but I am not sure how a really big game with more squadrons would play, especially trying to keep 'in period' with the rigid formations of WWI. And the title, it's German for my ships are rubbish!

 The Royal Oak is just about to go up in smoke and the return fire is going to basically put the German battlecruisers out of action while the first British destroyers ready their torpedoes. Those 15" splashes are upturned, mangled, golf tees, great idea or what.

 No point in putting a lot of pics up of small ships, so here is a real sailor, and may I also say that having been in the Navy, it does not make you a better fleet commander.

I don't have my roads yet, there was a seven week delay for terrain mats which I thought or hoped did not apply to roads, but it would seem I was wrong, but no bother I can wait. I also needed to order up some paint and found out that Army Painter Anti-Shine comes in brush on bottles as well as the spray, so as I need to spray in a warm atmosphere, the house or Post Office at this time of year, and need to keep the flak from the missus down to a minimum, I am going to try the brush on stuff.

"Something wrong with our bloody ships........"

Club night and our Dogger Bank refight had to be reorganised as we ended up with four players instead of two. I adjusted the two battlecruiser squadrons and added two of battleships, so in essence the Germans had achieved parity with the Royal Navy in numbers, and had an opportunity to fight on more or less equal terms. The battlecruiser squadrons immediately started trading long range fire and seemed determined to close the range, the battleships also made towards each other but it would take time before they could open fire. At first the Germans targeted the Queen Mary while the British opened on SMS Seydlitz, knocking out one of her main turrets with their first salvo, despite this setback, the ‘lucky’ Seydlitz was dealing out heavy punishment to Queen Mary. King George V managed to fire on Blucher at extreme range. As the scouting forces closed both sides changed targets frequently, but the Queen Mary was suffering heavily. The battleships now came into optimum range and the British managed to put full broadsides into the Friedrich der Grosse while the German fire had little effect. With things looking good for the Royal Navy and with expectations of crippling the Friedrich der Grosse with following salvoes, disaster struck. A lucky hit from the Blucher penetrated one of Invincible’s turrets and caused a catastrophic explosion which sent her to the bottom, this was followed shortly after by Seydlitz doing the same thing to Queen Mary. This left the Lion to run a gauntlet of fire from the three German battlecruisers while Jellicoe (me) in King George V, with numbers heavily against him, plotted a course for Rosyth. Eerily we lost two of the ships which blew up at Jutland.

The opening moves.

Royal Navy power.

Old and new, outdated Blucher brings up the rear.

The position just before disaster struck.

Top: the Queen Mary explodes, 1,266 men are lost, eighteen survive. Bottom: Invincible blows up, 1,026 men die and only six survive, five were in the control top seen just to the right of the explosion on the tripod mast, one, Gunner Gasson was actually in Q turret when the ship exploded.

I joined the Royal Navy at the tender age of 15 on Tuesday, 8th October, 1968 (D110948Y sir!). Over the next couple of years my two brothers and three neighbours joined, my two brothers-in-law are also ex-Navy. I met most of them at various times from the West Indies to Singapore. One of my brothers was involved in the Cod War with Iceland, where we frustratingly were ordered not to sink the blighters, one of my brothers-in-law was on the Sheffield when she was sunk in the Falklands. I received £6.40 salvage money for rescuing a yacht in the North Sea and spent ten weeks off the coast of Mozambique supposedly blockading supplies getting to Rhodesia, I got a nice tan. I also spent some time looking for gunrunners off Northern Ireland, and Russian listening devices on the Clyde.

HMS Tartar (above) along with HMS Sheraton were my favourite ships, I was on the bridge during this photo shoot. Anyway, enough swinging the lamp, the rules were easy and we will play them again.