Sound General Quarters - 1943

Having gamely taken a thumping at Force on Force, Jez took the reins and organised a Naval encounter using a classic old set of Naval rules; General Quarters.

I took on the role of the Japanese Admiral, with a fleet of a heavy cruiser, two light cruisers and two groups of three destroyers.

Against these, Rich had two heavy cruisers and two pairs of destroyers.  Generally the American ships had more firepower, and were better at range, thanks to their radar.  Aside the numerical advantage, the Japanese could at least rely on more Torpedoes.

The game began with the two fleets at an already effective range, at which stage the Americans started laying smoke whilst I charged the Japanese forward to get in close.

At range the American cruisers pounded the light Japanese ships, but their sacrifice allowed the Japanese destroyers to close and start to swarn the American escorts, and permitted the Japanese heavy cruiser to bide its time in cover.

This stage of the engagement was dominated by torpedo fire causing the loss of one American cruiser and one Japanese destroyer.  Despite losing two of my cruisers, it was now apparent the Americans were on the back foot, with their destroyers starting to look worse for wear too.

At this stage I released the heavy cruiser from behind its veil of smoke, at which point the American fleet scattered.  Whilst all of the other ships were heavily battle scarred, the Japanese heavy was untouched, and any fire it laid down was now brutally effective.

Rich's fleet saw this as the perfect moment to disengage.

For a very old set of rules, they seemed to work well enough, and we were just about able to run through the shooting and damage tables autonomously by the end of the game.  As a period and size of engagement this cruiser & destroyer engagement was nice and simple, but I did find the smoke overly effective.

Still, as my first naval game in a couple of years, it was good fun.