Not cautious enough

HMS Ramillies

Today is the 70th anniversary of an interesting incident during the German commerce-raiding campaign. On Feb. 8, 1941 the German battlecruiser twins Scharnhorst and Gneisenau came across the "fast" transatlantic convoy HX-106 with 41 merchant ships, a scenario depicted in both Atlantic Navies (Clash of Arms) and in Bismarck (Avalanche Press). The Atlantic Navies scenario is called "Excessive Caution," but this may be a misnomer as it turns out.

I decided to try it out using the Victory at Sea naval miniatures rules by Mongoose Publishing, with models from Axis & Allies War at Sea! The Scharnhorst is shown below.

Given that mix, I'm not sure which game deserves the most credit, but I'd call it primarily a Victory at Sea game.

The unusual thing about this battle is that the Germans, despite having a powerful force, called off their approach when they discovered the convoy was being escorted by the old British battleship HMS Ramillies. Adm. Luetjens was under strict orders NOT to risk engaging any British capital ships and so the German squadron fled. This scenario explores what might have happened if the Germans risked a battle.

The two German ships have several advantages over the Ramillies, especially speed and gun range, having about a third more of each.

What they don't have is unlimited time. Given enough time the British convoy could either escape or at least disperse. The German ships couldn't just hang around at extreme range to try to pick off merchant ships. That would cause a prodigious expenditure of main gun ammunition because of the difficulty of hitting small targets at very long range. This was never the practice of German raiders. generally they closed the range enough to cause the targeted ship to stop and then finished it off with secondary guns or torpedoes. German capital ships, in fact, carried large batteries of torpedoes, in contrast to any other navy. While the game doesn't track ammo, a time pressure was added by placing the convoy 15 turns away from the board edge.

One odd thing about the scenario as presented in Atlantic Navies is that the British are given four H-class destroyers as an escort. I found this suspiciously strong, especially when I noticed that none of the British ships were named. In comparison, the same battle in Avalanche Press' Bismarck shows the convoy escorted by just one armed merchant cruiser in addition to the Ramillies. A little Google research led me to a fantastic site which provides the exact composition of every World War II numbered convoy! This revealed that not only did HX-106 never have four H-class destroyers in its escort, even the armed merchant cruiser had left by Feb. 8! The sole escort for the convoy was the battleship. On Feb. 12 a half dozen ASW escorts joined up as the convoy neared the British isles, but on Feb. 8 it was the Ramillies alone.

I decided to go ahead and leave the four DDs as depicted in the book because I thought the British needed the help, but my judgment is that they're merely a game balance/interest addition by Clash of Arms and were not actually present.

The British were faced with a dangerous approach strategy by the Germans. The Gneisenau was off to the northwest of the east-bound convoy while the Scharnhorst was due south, splitting the British response. Each battlecruiser was 38-inches from the center of the convoy, well within their extreme gun range of 45 inches.

The 41-ship convoy was represented by three "immortal" merchant ship models. As each merchant was sunk it would be immediately replaced by a new target in the same place. As about half the historical convoy was transporting petroleum of some sort, there was a 50/50 chance whether any particular targeted convoy ship was a tanker or a freighter. The four destroyers were on station at the four corners of the convoy box, with the Ramillies slightly south of the convoy.

Portraying Adm. Luetjens was Game Store Tony, while I took the British command.

The German strategy was straightforward. The Gneisenau would close on the convoy to shoot it up while the Scharnhorst kept the Ramillies busy. The destroyers would be watched, but Tony did not consider them a major threat.

I started off by peeling off three destroyers to make a run at the Gneisenau while the Ramillies turned to deal with the approaching Scharnhorst. One destroyer remained close to the convoy. The first turn the destroyers made smoke but a check of the rules revealed that the radar-equipped Germans wouldn't be hindered and so the destroyers concentrated on maneuvering instead.

The battle on the northern side went moderately well for the Gneisenau. It managed to land one 11-inch hit on a destroyer that caused some light damage (passed through, I suppose) and two damaging hits on freighters, knocking out the engines on the Kheti (a 2,700-ton freighter carrying sugar) and crippling the freighter Temple Arch (5,100 tons carrying lumber and wheat). The Gneisenau dodged a torpedo salvo from one destroyer while closing on the convoy. Unfortunately for the Germans, events on the southern side decided the action before the Gneisenau could do more.

The Scharnhorst's intention was to close within long range (for better gunnery) while staying outside of the Ramillies main battery range but the closing speed was misjudged (realistically, in my opinion) and the Scharnhorst found itself under fire from the Ramillies. The two ships spent a few turns dueling with the Scharnhorst definitely coming off the worse. While the Scharnhorst was able to land multiple hits on the Ramillies, the lack of hitting power of the German 11-inchers and the heavy armor for the old British battlewagon mitigated the damage. In four turns the Ramillies lost 8 of its 34 hull points for 23.5% damage -- significant damage but not devastating. A couple of fires were started but quickly doused and the ship's fighting ability was so far unimpaired.

On the other hand the heavy-hitting 15-inchers on the Ramillies were able to land a series of punishing blows on the Scharnhorst for 19 points of damage or 54%. Even worse, there were a couple of serious critical hits. The first one hit the Engineering Vital System, knocking out the Scharnhorst's ability to conduct damage control. This proved to be devastating when, on the following turn's critical, the Scharnhorst had its Engines Disabled, dropping its speed to zero -- and unrepairable!

At this point the Germans were defeated, as no amount of future damage to the convoy could make up for losing the Scharnhorst. We agreed that the Gneisenau would undoubtedly withdraw at high speed to avoid compounding the disaster and that the British destroyers would have called off their pursuit in order to guard the convoy. While it would tempting for the Ramillies to finish off the crippled, dead-in-the-water Scharnhorst, I believed that the realistic course of action for the battleship would be to also pull away and return to protect the convoy as well. After all, the Gneisenau was still in the vicinity and it certainly wouldn't do to risk the welfare of the convoy in order to sink the doomed Scharnhorst. And the Scharnhorst was clearly doomed, with its engines disabled and sitting just 700 miles off the coast of Canada, it would be just a matter of time before another British force arrived on the scene to finish it off.

The outcome of the battle suggests that the German high command's caution was not necessarily unwarranted. As I noted, while the Germans had a range advantage in good visibility, good visibility can't be counted on during the North Atlantic winter and extreme range gunfire was a very inefficient way to sink merchant ships. Therefore the German raiders had to risk getting closer and any misjudgment could easily bring a ship into the range of the old British ship where it's hard-hitting shells made every salvo a potential catastrophe. Any significant damage would require ending the raiding cruise at least and held the prospect of losing a capital ship. Just a few months later the Bismarck experience would show how relatively minor damage could have fatal consequences.

If I were to replay the scenario I think I'd leave out the destroyers. They were not actually present and they don't really add much to the British defenses anyway.

Operation Catapult at sea

HMS Hood

While it's too involved a rules system to easily use with the Game Store Crowd, the Admiralty Trilogy's Atlantic Navies provides good scenario fodder for simpler games such as Victory at Sea.

On July 6, 1940 the British attacked and devastated the French fleet in harbor at Oran, but it didn't have to be that way. The French had time to sortie.

This scenario assumes the French capital ships went to sea and were intercepted by the British Force H. For scenario purposes it's assumed the respective light forces cancelled each other out and we just looked at the opposing battle lines. The French order of sail was Dunquerque, Strasbourg, Bretagene and Provence. Force H was Hood, Resolution and Valiant. The British also had three flights of Swordfish torpedo planes from the Ark Royal.

The victory conditions were straightforward. Historically one French BC escaped, so if the French did better than that, they would win. If no French capital ships escaped the British would win.

Game Store Tony took the French and followed a policy of concentrating all fire on one ship at a time, starting with the Hood. The British tried to spread the damage, hoping to slow down enough ships to keep the French from scooting away. While some damaging hits were landed that slowed the French temporarily, good French damage control prevented those hits from changing the result Good shooting by the French buried the Hood in a deluge of shells and it was the first to go down, followed by the Valiant. Meanwhile the Swordfish attack was completely ineffective, despite the anemic French AA fire.

Both the Strasbourg and Dunquerque eventually escaped. Dunquerque had 50% damage, but the Strasbourg was unscathed, having never been shot at. The two old French battleships were not as fortunate and both eventually succumbed to British fire. The surviving British battleship, Resolution, was also heavily damaged by the end, taking 60% damage, leaving it nearly crippled.

All-in-all it was a clear French victory and suggests the French lost an opportunity historically. The two French battlecruisers were speedy enough that the British Force H was ill-prepared to deal with them. Only the Hood could keep up, but it didn't have enough of an edge in combat power to defeat them.

The game was played using Axis & Allies War at Sea miniatures, Victory at Sea rules with Order of Battle supplement, on a Hotz mat and scenario information from Atlantic Navies. It took about an hour and a half to play.

Victory at Sea session -- 1940 battlecruiser clash

The first encounter of battlewagons in World War II came on April 9, 1940, during the initial stages of the Norway campaign. Shortly before 4 a.m. the HMS Renown (6x 15-inch guns) ran into the German Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, (9 x 11-inch guns each) in bad weather off the Norwegian coast.

This encounter is one of the given scenarios in Mongoose Publishing's Victory at Sea simple naval miniatures battle rules. With just three ships it seemed like a good introduction to the game to bring to the local game shop, where Game Store Tony is always willing to try out something new.

The initial setup given in the rulebook is shown below and right off the bat I saw I'd have to make at east one adjustment and rule that despite the bad weather the radar-less HMS Renown could still see the German ships at Extreme Range. I felt this change was justified by the historical fact that the Renown opened the action by firing on the Germans first and by the game consideration that strictly following the rule would make the scenario unplayable as the British ship would never be able to fire if the Germans followed a strategy of running away.

With that change, we started playing. I took the HMS Renown while Game Store Tony commanded the Gneisenau and another store denizen took the Scharnhorst. One reason why Game Store Tony is always a tough opponent is that he has a very commendable focus of the victory Conditions. While many players would be sore tempted to turn the two German capital ships towards the Renown and force a showdown, Tony noted that he could also win by withdrawing off the left map edge. He, as squadron commander, ordered that both ships should turn hard port and make for the board edge and stuck to that plan despite events that might have shaken the resolve of others.
The course of the battle therefore followed a more or less historical result. The leading Scharnhorst turned to port and made a beeline for the edge, using Flank Speed often, unmolested by the Renown. The Scharnhorst's return fire was negligible. The Flank Speed threw off its aim and it had just one turret to bear and so hits were few and those few failed to penetrate the armor of the Renown. So the battle was really a duel between the Renown and the Gneisenau.
That duel for a while looked to go against the German ship. While most of the time the Renown had only four guns bearing, the range was long and bad weather all hindered the British chances of hitting, those 15-inch shells that did hit were quite damaging and a couple of critical hits reduced the German ship's speed dangerously. Meanwhile the German return fire was spare and did little damage when they did hit home. In total the Renown took four points of damage, or just over 10%. In contrast the Gneisenau limped off with 14 points of hull damage and 23 dead crew factors for damage levels of 40% and 33% respectively, as well as 33% off its maximum speed. But the Gneisenau did limp off the map and escape, and so the Germans won the scenario. This was mostly due to successful damage control by the Gneisenau's crew, which was able to restore enough lost sped to make it off the map before the ship took a crippling level of damage.

Everyone enjoyed the scenario and it only too about an hour to play
This battle also appears as a scenario in Atlantic Navies, the Command at Sea series game from Clash of Arms and it's interesting to compare this game's more detailed treatment with the Victory at Sea scenario. Here's the initial situation according to Atlantic Navies:

The first thing to note is that the historical British force also included a bunch of destroyers. The very bad weather precluded them from taking a meaningful part in the battle, however, so ignoring them seems to be a reasonable design decision.

On the other hand the initial configuration of the capital ship's is also radically different between the two. Given its attention to detail, Atlantic Navies seems to be the more reliable source and the initial deployment shown even matches the VaS scenario description better because it notes that "During a break in the weather, the (German) battlecruisers were sighted by HMS Renown, which closed the range and opened fire as soon as she was able." This sequence of events isn't really possible with the VaS as written while it does match the Atlantic Navies setup (which includes a rule that visibility is one table better to the East (in the direction of the German ships) which accounts for the Renown sighting the Germans first. Note also that Atlantic Navies has the two forces on reciprocal courses while the VaS scenario shows them on parallel courses.

The point of this is that scenario designers for simpler wargames have to play close attention to the scenario parameters in order to avoid the blunder where a scenario becomes unplayable as written. Whereas a detailed game like Atlantic Navies can expect that its internal procedures will account for the important factors that affected a battle and it will wpork out naturally a simpler game such as Victory at Sea doesn't have that back up. Unless a sceanrio special rule is used the British fleet can't enagge the German fleet before it escapes. In addition, the scenrio seems to have satrted the two fleets much too far apart, which again defeats the scenario's design.

While a veteran gamer can be expected to make the adjustments required, the idea of a simpler wargame is to be accessible to new and inexperienced players who may be thrown for loop when confronted by a flawed scenario, so for this reason I don't think the presentation of this scenario was successful. A btter setup would be for the two German ships to be setup reversed, heading toward sthe "bottom" of the sceanrio map and the distance between them and the Renown should be reduced to the maximum sighting range of 30 inches and should start with the British attack phase. (In other words, both sides have already moved for the turn and the British won the inititative. The Germans, being surprised, don't get a shot.). Thes mininal changes would bring the scenario closer to the actual event.

Flukes at sea

Bismarck as depicted in Axis & Allies War at Sea

A fluke can be a fish, the fin on a whale or a part of an anchor in a nautical context, but it's also a recurring feature of naval warfare in the sense of a stroke of unusual luck.

Land and aerial warfare involves innumerable interactions between actors, weapons, environment and the laws of chance so there's a tendency for things to average out. Fluke events tend to be of local impact, although there are exceptions, of course.

HMS Hood from War at Sea

But naval combats are much rarer than land and sea engagements and comprise many fewer moving parts as well, so each battle is full of unique events. The famous Battle of the Denmark Straits which was fought on this date in 1941 perfectly illustrates this.

While a very popular topic for naval games, indeed, nearly every naval wargame seems to include this fight among the scenarios, it's a hard battle to replicate.

From a strategic point of view, the engagement represented a major British success. Their cruiser patrol meant to detect a German breakout attempt succeeded in finding and following the German raid force. The British countermeasure of deploying a powerful surface action force of battleships also succeeded, with the interception of the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen by the battleship HMS Hood and the new battleship HMS Prince of Wales.


It's true that the two British ships, individually, had flaws that put them at a disadvantage compared to the Bismarck, but together they should have been more than a match for the German ship. Especially when considering that the British had to merely achieve some damage the German raider to force it to abort its raid.


So it was truly an amazing fluke when the Bismarck landed that fatal blow on the Hood that exploded the ship within the first few salvos. While the venerable British battlecruiser had a design flaw, it's also true that that design flaw only represented a vulnerability for a limited amount of time and for a limited set of circumstances of range and geometry. The Prince of Wales problems were less of a matter of luck, being mostly self-inflicted breakdowns caused by the ship's incomplete state. Still, under most circumstances the Hood and POW could be expected to score some damaging hits on the Bismarck before being KO'd and in many cases they will outright defeat the German ship.

Despite the disastrous turn of events for the British on May 24th, the essential soundness of their strategy was borne out by subsequent events. Before being forced to withdraw, the Prince of Wales did manage to land a hit on the Bismarck. While not a particularly damaging hit by battleship standards, it was sufficient to end the Bismarck's raiding voyage and send her heading for France. (The undamaged Prinz Eugen departed to begin a raiding cruise).

A few days later, after being harassed by carrier aircraft and destroyers, the Bismarck was intercepted by another 2-battlewagon British task force that wasn't much stronger than the Hood/POW combo. The HMS Rodney and the HMS King George V had no difficulty pounding the Bismarck into ineffectiveness in a relatively short time, which makes one wonder how things might have been if fate had given the Hood a little more time.

70th anniversary of a fight you never heard of

One of the neat things about Larry Bond's Admiralty series of games is the exhaustive research that goes into them, to the point that wargamers can, if they are so inclined, recreate some truly obscure incidents.

One such episode was an early morning encounter on April 23, 1940 between three French destroyers and a small German mine-laying force comprised of two mine ships and two patrol boats off the coast of Denmark. The actual incident itself resulted in no damage to either side, although shots were fired. It's a scenario in the La Guerre Navale book in Atlantic Navies, Vol. VII of the Command at Sea series of naval games by Clash of Arms.

Before dismissing this out of hand as uninteresting, I think that this sort of scenario reminds us that it's not all grand battles and important campaigns in wartime. Indeed, most of it consists of unsung routine duty that nevertheless carries danger. A sailor is just as dead whether he dies in a famous fleet action or in some forgotten naval skirmish that will hardly rate a mention in history. I think it's certain that this small action in the Skagerrak has never appeared in a wargame before and nearly as certain that it will never appear again.

But it's nice to see that it appeared at least once, and that the French and German seaman who risked their lives that morning are not forgotten entirely.

Sometimes you need to fill a gap

I enjoy Axis & Allies War at Sea naval miniatures as a game in its own right, as well as a good source for painted ships suitable for other naval wargames, including Larry Bond's Command at Sea system, represented in my collection by Atlantic Navies. But Bond's game is not for the faint-hearted or casual gamer. What I really lacked was something in between the two.

Or, more accurately, something in-between them that I'd likely get someone to play. My previous gap fillers comprised Panzerschiffes TG-2 and ArmourSoft's Shipbase III computer-assisted rules -- both of which are now really obscure. The Shipbase III game is a DOS-based computer program that's awkward to try using on newer machines. And Panzerschiffes replaced the dice-based TG-2 with a card-based TG-3 some time ago. I got a lot of good gaming out of both titles, but they're out-dated now. I also have some "antique" naval rules, Fletcher Pratt's and a set called "Victory at Sea" from 1971, but neither is playable by current standards.

So I picked up Mongoose Publishing's Victory at Sea (no relation to the 1971 game of the same name) which seems to hit around the same spot as far as complexity goes while being reasonably popular these days. I'm aware of some criticism on realism grounds, but it seems pretty passable on that score. If needed I'm sure I can borrow a rule or two from Command at Sea, but if I need a detailed simulation I'll use Bond's game anyway.

A&A War at Sea is really a board game that uses miniature ships, so it doesn't really fill the need for a real naval miniatures game (although the model ships do). So I decided Victory at Sea was my best choice among the similar titles out there. Now I need to play it a couple of times to see if I'm right.

Operation Cerebus --Feb. 12, 1942

The Bismarck is probably the best-known German warship of World War II, but I think a case can be made that the most storied career was experienced by the Battlecruiser Scharnhorst, usually in company with its sister ship, Gneisenau.

The Scharnhorst has an amazing run as an Atlantic raider, carrier killer and dueler with battleships. One of its most dramatic escapades was the "Channel Dash" or Operation Cerebus. Starting late on Feb. 11 and completed by Feb. 13, the key day for the operation was Feb. 12, 1942. The length of the voyage meant that the German ships would have to endure at least one day's daylight hours within close range of British airpower. The audacity of the German move served them well, however, and the British were unable to effectively mobilize against the German task force, which comprised the two battlecruisers, the heavy cruiser Pinz Eugen, a half dozen destroyers, 14 torpedo boats (small destroyers) and 26 S-boats (PT boats).

The Scharnhorst miniature from Axis & Allies War at Sea.

Despite its fame, Operation Cerebus isn't featured in many wargames, but it is a scenario in the new Atlantic Navies game from Clash of Arms, vol. VII in its Command at Sea series. The tactical scenario depicts the torpedo attack by five British destroyers from the Harwich force. The historical result was a defeat for the British, as they achieved no hits and ad one destroyer very badly damaged. Given the disparity in force, the British seem to have done well.

Good fortune smiled on the Germans for the most part, although the Scharnhorst was damaged by a mine. Overall the episode was a humiliating defeat for the British and a propaganda coup for the Germans, but in the grand scheme of things it didn't have a big impact. It may have even simplified the strategic situation for the British by removing the threat of a sortie from Brest into the shipping lanes.