Recently I was lucky enough to get hold of a pair of new Martlet’s and a couple of the grey and green Beaufighter’s and was desperate to get them on the table. My thoughts turned to a solo attack on a battleship, using torpedoes and bombs from the new planes. I spent hours searching through this site for information on torpedoes in this sort of game and came up with Skafloc’s WWI and WWII Coastal Rules and Charlie3’s And all the Ships at Sea as well as a thread with some interesting observations by Flying Helmet and a partial insight into his rules but not the rules themselves.
Skafloc has lots of card damage decks in the files section but I don’t believe they all refer to the rules he has posted and I couldn’t decide which related to which set of his rules so I printed them all, intending to pick and mix what seemed best. Charlie3’s seemed to be a complete set of rules and cards so they were printed as well.
I come to this area of warfare a bit like a babe in arms, I’ve never had any interest in WWII naval games and so have no idea of the amount of damage a bomb or torpedo can do to a ship and the likely difference between different ships, eg a Merchant ship and a Bismarck.
Sorry for this preamble but I’m interested in finding a simple, cohesive set of rules to enable me to torpedo a variety of ships and do a realistic amount of damage, if anyone can point me in that direction I will be very grateful. This is what I came up with, miss matching all the information I had and as I’ve checked things to write this AAR, I see I’ve made lots of mistakes in counting the bomb damage specifically.
THE GAME
The sun was just breaking over the horizon when we made contact with the German Battleship Donutz, she was steaming south and could be seen clearly against the rising sun.
We’d had a 90 minute flight across the North Sea and had discovered her almost at the exact position the Intel chaps had given us.
The 2 Beaufighter’s were flying low, Red One was carrying a Mk13 Torpedo and Red Two had a pair of 1000lb bombs on board.
They were streaking across the sea towards the Donutz and would pretty soon get a rough reception once they came into range of the big Flak guns on the Battleship.
Blue 1 and me, Blue 2 on the port side, were flying the Martlet’s, carrying 2x100lb bombs each. The plan, which was a little loose as plans go, was for us to provide fighter cover if the Donutz was protected by German planes and keep them off the back of the Beaufighter’s and allow them to make their strikes.
Wing hadn’t been able to put together enough planes for us to make an effective attack and so we were hoping to cause enough damage to slow the Donutz down for the next wave of planes to kill her.
Red 1 drops his torpedo and runs straight into the heavy flak.
The Flak are the big AA guns from Charlie3’s rules, with a 2 ruler range, a Battleship has 4 of these, 2 either side. I used Charlie3’s burst templates placed before the plane movement card was placed and if the plane peg was in the circle it took 1D damage, In this case the peg was covered by both circles. In addition to this, once in 1 ruler range the smaller guns open fire and ALL planes take 1 or 2 B damage depending on range.
Charlie3 has torpedoes drop behind the planes and then run 5 card lengths after which they sink out of sight. He has them go end over end to cover movement with a neat 9 card deck to determine where they hit the ship, bow, amidships, and stern but I’d decided not to use his damage results and instead used Skaflok’s torpedo hit deck. This has 24 cards, 6 of which destroy the target 8 miss and the rest do different amounts of damage. I don’t think this deck of cards is what he envisioned using with his rules but I quite liked them, so removed 4 of the destroy target cards and went with the rest as is.
The big flak guns are loading but the smaller guns open fire, Red 1 is within ˝ a ruler and takes 2 chits, Red 2 only takes 1.
The torpedo is now in the water and running.
Red 1’s cumulative damage is too great and he goes down in the drink.
Red 2 drops his bombs from altitude 2 and they hit amidships. Blue 1 Martlet has dropped his bombs from alt 4 and they are in flight, just beyond the splash from the Beaufighter.
The Flak guns fire again, both hitting and the smaller guns also fire, Red 2 is on borrowed time after taking 16 damage. The splash on his starboard side is all that can be seen of Red 1.
The bombs caused 100 points of damage for a direct hit and take out the A turret, using Skaflok’s Special Damage hit cards, which I believe he does mean to be used with the rules. These inflict a variety of specific damage including sometimes additional damage.
(The bombs should have caused 200 points of damage, the ship damage card I’m using is Skaflock’s Iron Duke and can take 254 points of damage, the actual paper cut out is HMS Warspite from WWI, - you take what you can get)
Blue 1’s bombs have now hit the Donutz, he is pealing away to the south, Blue 2 (me) is still flying in a straight line and has dropped his bombs and they are in flight from alt 4 and the Donutz has fired the Flak guns again.
The small 100lb bomb from Blue 1 hits and instead of causing a puny 10 points of damage the special damage card indicates that the bomb penetrated the gun magazine causing catastrophic damage and the Donutz explodes.
Well I didn’t expect that.
(Again the 10 points was for a single bomb)
This is the fire from the small AA guns on the Donutz and the torpedo is still in transit.
The explosion of the Donutz causes damage to planes within ˝ and 1 ruler distance. This is sufficient to destroy Red 2 the last Beaufighter.
As the Donotz explodes in a ball of cotton wool, the torpedo and my bomb strike home. The torpedo causes 54 points of damage plus 75 from the torpedo damage deck, and I destroy the Y gun turret plus 20 points of damage.
The Donutz AA guns continue to fire to the last but probably because they have other things on their minds they miss both Martlet’s.
Blue 1 makes his turn to the south.
And I make my turn to the north.
Home in time for tea and crumpet.
I played this as a test to see if I could get something useful out of all the information I’d downloaded. When the 1st Beaufighter went down and the 2nd one flew into a wall of lead I thought it was going to be a total failure, the Martlet’s 100lb bomb blowing up the ship was a surprise, it’s very unlikely to happen, a bit like the explosion card in the regular game but it made my day and so I thought I’d share what I’d done and hope for some feedback on torpedoes and damage v ships strengths.
Originally I mistook damage per bomb in the rules for total damage and my premise that with 100 points from Red 2 plus 54 from the torpedo + 10 each from the Martlet’s together with card turn up I couldn’t destroy a 254 point battleship was correct but the reality was I had 274 points plus card turn up and so had a good chance of winning the game.
The key seems to be deciding on an appropriate level of damage a ship can take and then allocating damage from the various weapons systems but I’m open to correction. The other variable is ship movement, both rule sets use a stationary ship that can change it’s angle to incoming torpedoes and then some form of chance deck to see if the torpedoes hit.
Any thoughts?
Pip Pip
Flying Officer Vagabond
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