"AAR North Sea Convoy" Topic

The AAR used a modified Fletcher Pratt system. There were 5 players, 3 allied, 2 axis and the site where all turns were posted only allowed the players to see what they normally could from their own ship.

This fictional battle had the Axis sortie into the "Artic" sea from their baes in "No-way" to intercept the Allied convoy. Allied players had the added burden of being a mixture of US and UK ships hampering communication (I had to do little of that since they did well enough by themselves) and their goal was to protect the all important transport they were escorting.

Each players pictures and write ups can be viewed at:

link

Pictures are typically in the order of salvos at target, enemy salvos on your fleet, movement of the fleets taken from that fleet's edge of table and midtable.

Enjoy

Great write up, definately liked the picture aspects.

It was great fun to play, even though we lost.

Wow Glen …thats a monumental effort. Great pics and presentation. Very impressive!

-CH

Thanks all….it was a lot of work but enjoyable from my perspective seeing how the players react and their orders.
I also learned a few things to make the job of GM easier too. Using the white pipe cleaners to mark the ships movement was easier than photo shopping the wakes. Also learned that pics from certain aspects, tho nice to look at, were not of benefit to the players, so eliminated those.

Running a game with 5 players and taking pics from the players perspective and photo shopping them takes a lot of time!!!! Glad you all enjoyed them.

Late to the party here … just read through the entire AAR. Here's my analysis:

The Germans made a critical mistake by splitting their forces. It was many turns before the Prinz Eugen and its DD entered the fight, by which time the other DD was history and the Hipper was nearly out of the fight. While the battle was a clear German tactical victory (sinking the transport, two destroyers, and the Tuscaloosa, it was a strategic loss, with both CAs out of the war for a minimum of half a year.

The Allies lacked any coordination in the early game and stumbled into an excellent position, pounding the Hipper. Then the fleet commander started to exercise command … That spelled doom for the Allies. The orders were mostly too short-term, were often unclear, and typically produced a march-countermarch-march-countermarch … situation. The worst mistake was the combination of ordering the Tuscaloosa to "finish off" the Hipper while withdrawing the Jamaica from the fight and leaving one destroyer to "finish off" a nearly undamaged Prinz Eugen! Step one: kill or drive off the enemy. Step two: worry about the transport.

Even at the end, if the surviving destroyer had had two moves to zoom around the end of the smokescreen and get in torpedo firing position, the Allies might have killed the Prinz Eugen. If they'd spent the wasted four or five turns with both cruisers raining shells on it, it would have been crippled at a minimum and might well have gone down.

Oh, and the Hipper's inability to hit anything was impressive and helped the Allies build their big advantage. While both sides were firing torpedoes at awfully long ranges, the Allies seemed to be worse about this than the Germans.

Of course, my hindsight is 20/20, so your mileage may vary.

Very well reported. However, I would suggest that this is an absolute defeat for the allies, both tactically and strategically. The purpose of the operation from the allies' viewpoint was to get an important cargo to the Russians. It must have been of supreme importance, otherwise they wouldn't have protected a single cargo ship with such an impressive escort. That this vessel was sunk despite such an escort, is evidence that the operation failed. Therefore it is a strategic defeat. The allied losses, includinng a cruiser suggests a tactical defeat also.