The Run to the South - Jutland

[pierre the shy]

We re-fought the opening 90 minutes or so of Jutland on last Saturday using GQ1/2 rules - not one battleship in sight  

Beatty decided to close the range on Hipper's 1st Scouting Group as soon as they were spotted by the British battlecruisers. Meanwhile Hipper went to full speed and kept heading south, hoping to draw Beatty onto Scheer's battlefleet, which was still some distance over the horizon. Having closed the range Beatty opened fire on the head of the German line, to which the German ships in range eagerly replied.

As was to be expected the initial salvos mostly fell off target, but a 13.5" shell from Lion's second salvo critically penetrated one of the Lutzow's forward turrets, causing extensive damage, Only the quick decision to flood the ship's forward main armament magazines saved her from total destruction (she lost two complete armament boxes - half her main armament). Further down the German line Seydlitz was also being pounded by the Queen Mary. This set the tone for the next several turns, though the Germans did manage inflict some damage on the British, with Von Der Tann finding the Indefatigable's range consistantly.

After some 60 minutes of pounding the British were clearly winning, silencing the Seydlitz's guns and making her turn out of line, while both Lutzow and Derfflinger, the second ship in the line were becoming increasing damaged. The Princess Royal however received a hit deep in her engineering spaces and she veered out of the British line slowing to a crawl, though luckily the Queen Mary was able to narrowly avoid colliding with her as she raced by.

Hipper decided that enough was enough and with three of his five ships being combat ineffective it was time to turn away. At the head of the German line the Regensburg, flagship of the escorting Torpedo Boat Half-Flotillas, rang up full speed and morse lamps clattered, quickly ordering the escort to cover the battlecruisers retirement with smoke and, if possible, a torpedo attack on the enemy's capital ships.

The British light cruisers and secondary armament on the battlecruisers threw everything they had at the Torpedo Boats of the 6th and 9th Flotillas as they raced for the British line, which was now in some disarray due to the Princess Royal's turn away and damage taken by Lion and Indefatigable, which was now much reduced in speed thanks to another salvo from the Von Der Tann.

Commodore Heinrich (aka Peter), the Torpedo Boat leader, manouvered his ships skillfully enough to bring them into reasonable torpedo firing ranges of the leading British light cruisers and the Indefatigable as well as a long shot at the Lion to at least force them to turn away. Each half flotilla launched a full broadside of large 19.7" torpedoes at their assigned targets and turned away, their mission complete and felling assured that at last some enemy ships would soon be heading for the bottom.....

In GQ2 guessing where ships would end up determines if torpedoes have a chance of hitting, but I have a fairly infamous reputation of guessing the wrong place. The British light cruisers emerged undamaged from thier torpedo swarm as they had surprisingly continued straight ahead rather than turning away (as I would have thought any cruiser captain would have done   ) 1st MISS. However I had much better luck in targeting the British battlecruisers as I guessed both correctly (the Inde couldn't go fast enough to maneuvere anyway). So I end up with 4 torpedoes heading straight for the Inde, some of which will contact if I roll 3 or less on a D6, so (of course) I roll a 6   2nd MISS. The Lion is at extreme torpedo range (34cm, with 35cm maximum) so I need to roll a 1 then any even number to hit her with one of two torpedoes. Roll a one - whahoo!!! then a 5, so Beatty doesn't get to go swimming....3rd MISS.

As it was getting late we called the game then with a 12 1/2 to nil VP win to the British, so Paul and Lester are showered with promotions and many letters to put after their names   

A fun evening, even if history was not quite repeated               

[paulr]

It was a very fun game

The early British hits were telling, the reduced German fire was unable to do significant damage to most of the British (Princess Royal and Indefatigable excepted)

The mounting damage to Princess Royal's hull was causing concern but fortunately her fire was uneffected. The shifts of target when she pulled out of line did give the Germans some respite. The splendid seamanship of Queen Mary was noted

There were certainly some tense moments on the British Cruisers and Battlecruisers as the German Torpedo attack unfolded

Regensburg should be very relived that British initial ranging was still so poor, as she headed for the smoke screen she was the target of 3 Battlecruisers, none of which came close to hitting

The British Battlecruisers weren't going to pursue through the German smoke screen and before the British Cruisers could have driven the Torpedo boats off we were due for a little surprise from the south, the German High Seas Fleet

We got through 14 or 15 turns with 11 Battlecruisers, 18 Cruisers and about 10 Destroyer/Torpedo boat Divisions on table. Not bad in 3.5 hours including set up and pack up

[Techno]

Sounds great fun !

Cheers - Phil

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Sounds like a great game!

[d_Guy]

Thanks, guys, enjoyed the reports! (Picture follow, right?).  British newspapers will have a field day with these reports. 

[Ithoriel]

Involved in a Jutland refight over the weekend using 1:6000 scale ships.

Sadly the only camera there was mine. Sadly, because it turns out the problem at Falkirk was not the memory card but the camera which ate another card and has only about 75% of the viewfinder screen still working.  So, nae photies.  

Commanding the fast battleship squadron I was given co-ordinates and speed by the player representing Beatty which turned out to be wrong (North/South and East/West transposed and speed given in mph but being a plain number I took it to be knots) resulting in my squadron meeting the German Battlecruisers with the British ones nowhere in sight. Opening fire at long range with next to no chance of scoring hits there followed the only decent run of die rolling by any player over the two days. 30 minutes of game time later 4 of the battlecruisers were sunk or sinking and the 5th limping off trailing smoke and flames to it's rendezvous with a torpedo spread fired by a British submarine. The Germans hadn't managed to close the gap enough to open fire let alone managed to score a hit.

There followed a complicated game of cat and mouse in the fog during which the main fleets made contact only once resulting in one British and four German Battleships being sunk and a number of others on both sides being damaged. I finally managed to get information about Beatty's location. His sterling navigational ability resulted in the Battlecruisers entering a British laid minefield with two suffering significant damage at which point they all returned to Rosyth. Moving to join the Grand Fleet I came across a damaged SMS Deutschland which was running away from them and sank her.

There was some skirmishing between light forces during the night phase with damage done to both sides but nothing actually sunk.

A very unhistorical victory for the Royal Navy down in part to my uncanny ability to roll  to hit the German battlecruisers on chances ranging from 9% down to 3%. My opponent expressed disbelief when my initial salvoes hit his ships, so when it was time to check the progress of the fires that had started I passed him the dice and said,"roll them for me then." 4 ships, 5% or less chance of an explosion, 3 ships blew up!

"I know he's a good general, but is he lucky?" ― Napoléon Bonaparte

[d_Guy]

Another great report! (Sorry about your camera however.). So far it's 2 - nil, Brits.

[paulr]

Sounds like another good game

There seemed to be something wrong with the bloody German ships last weekend 

[O Dinas Powys]

By complete coincidence I caught a small bits of a documentary on BBC2 about Jutland last night! (Just checked, it's on iPlayer: Battle of Jutland: The Navy's Bloodiest Day.)

One interesting bit was attempting to sink model hulls by flooding sections where damage was recorded historically on various ships. From this they concluded that several of the the British ships that were lost were probably not intrinsically any worse in their design or construction than some of the German ships which survived to limp back to harbour.

Unfortunately, it seems that sloppy practice by the Navy allowed for catastrophic explosions to occur within the deep magazines

It then went into the effects on families after the debacle.

Very thought provoking, hopefully I'll get a chance to watch the whole program.

Meirion

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Sounds like a brace of great games!

[pierre the shy]

One piece of trivia about Jutland that was mentioned in the local press here was that HMS New Zealand was built via a loan taken out by the NZ Government prior to World War One and she was scrapped in 1922 under the Washington Treaty.

However the final installment of the loan was only paid off in 1944, some 22 years after the ship was broken up 

[d_Guy]

However the final installment of the loan was only paid off in 1944, some 22 years after the ship was broken up 

I had a car like that once. 

[pierre the shy]

A couple of pictures of our GQ2 game played last Saturday showing the German torpedo boat attack late in the game:





(Un)fortunately all the German torpedoes missed.....

Note the residue from the brown lignite coal used by the Germans to make smoke.....(actually some smoke markers that Roy had right next to the table ) 

[O Dinas Powys]

With the 100th anniversary of the battle being commemorated here are a couple more BBC links to iWonder pages:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/zp9x39q?intc_type=singletheme&intc_location=avs&intc_campaign=iwonder&intc_linkname=timeline_jutland_contentcard3


Cheers,

Meirion

[pierre the shy]

Thanks for the link. Very interesting.