German Convoy Action

Henry and Colin came around for another day of Cruel Seas gaming. I wanted to give the Vospers an outing for a change, so we had two groups of 3 MTBs conducting a raid on a German coastal convoy. I took the convoy, which consisted of a merchantman and a tanker, escorted by a Vorpostenboot and a torpedo boat. The Germans also had the possibility of some air cover, at the end of each turn the German player rolled a d6, if they scored equal or lower than the current turn number a stuka would enter the table in the following turn.

As the Vospers are spotted the convoy speeds up to full speed whilst the torpedo boat heads towards the nearest group of British boats. A lucky shot from a forward 4" gun knocks a big hole in one of the Vospers and took his forward 20mm gun out.

The damaged Vosper launched torpedoes while it still could.

The MTBs veered off from the big torpedo boat. Unfortunately I'd forgotten to allow for the minimum range on the 4" guns and the Vospers were too close for my big guns.

So I fired at the more distant group, but missed. The Vospers were putting multiple torpedoes in the water in a wide spread in front of the convoy. I now rolled a 2 at the end of the turn, so I had air support during turn 3.

My air support turned up and despite taking one hit the pilot pressed home his attack, hitting one of the Vospers and badly damaging it.

I pulled the torpedo boat across the front of the Vospers, intending to run over the torpedoes before they had gone far enough to arm. I took two of them out but an unexpected bonus was that the MTBs were all moving too fast and despite taking evasive actions two of the slammed into the side of the big boat. They badly scratched my paintwork. but both of them exploded into matchwood!

That's a lot of fish in the water! In the meantime a lucky hit from one of the twin 20mm cannon took out one of the forward 4" guns on the torpedo boat.

Two torpedoes hit the Vorpostedboot and a third hit the tanker.

Checking results, one torpedo missed the escort but the other two were on target and both ships took heavy damage.

Despite my best attempts the merchant men dodged one torpedo, but took a hit from the other.

The next wave of torpedoes smashed into the Vorpostedboot,which broke up and quickly sank beneath the surface. Still afloat, the merchant fired at the nearest Vosper with it's machineguns and managed to sink it (the earlier hit from the 4"gun had left it with about 3 HP left).

Game end, the last wave of torpedoes run harmlessly by the tanker. Moments later a salvo from the torpedo boat hit both of the Vospers, destroying them both. A German win, the merchant and the tanker were still both afloat (all be it only just!).

After lunch and a beer, we tried the scenario again, with Colin and myself swapping sides. This time the British had better aim with their torpedoes. One MTB launched torpedoes at the big German torpedo boat, which it avoided, but in so doing was forced away from the convoy. In the meantime the MTBs dumped all their fish and sunk the Vorpostenboot and both merchant ships with multiple torpedo hits (one did need finishing off with guns), for the loss of only one Vosper. The survivors then legged it off table before the torpedo boat could bring all it's guns to bear.

One All!

In our after game discussion we agreed that we were not really happy with the damage that the torpedoes caused. It seemed impossible for a single hit to sink a merchantman, which didn't seem right to us. Admittedly, historically there were occasions when a ship did survive a torpedo hit, but equally lots of times when a single hit was enough to send a ship to the bottom. I've seen some ideas for making torpedoes more effective online, so we will try some of those out in future games.