Italian Attack on A British Convoy

It's been a long time since I put on a miniatures game mostly due to REAL LIFE imposing it's ugly head on my important business.  Well last night I brought out my 1:2400 WW2 ships and we fought a convoy action.  And I have to say that my rustiness showed - but we did get a good if much bloodier game than I expected.

Sylvain took the Royal Navy side and was assigned a small convoy of 5 merchantmen escorted by;

• HMS Carlisle an old WW1 cruiser refitted with 4" AA guns
• HMS Manxman the fast minelayer/AA cruiser/fast transport/jack of all trades
• 3 H class destroyers
• 3 Hunt class destroyer escorts
• Readers with keen memories might recognize this as the covering force that Curt used when we fought our larger convoy action against the Kriegsmarine.
• Originally I had intended to have a covering force of 4 RN cruisers and 6 DDs (3 Tribal and 3 J class) to play the part of the cavalry and arrive part way through the action.  However this was downsized to 2 cruisers on sober second sight when I starting laying the ships out on the table and these never made it on table.

Stacey took the Italian Side with the following forces

• the cruisers Gorizia, Trento  (both 8") and Bande Nere (6")
• 3 Soldati class DDs
• 3 Navagatori class DDSs
• Again readers might recognize this force as being approximately 1/2 of the forces from the Savos Island games.  
• Once again, the other half of the Savos Island RMI forces were intended to be on table but got downsized on reflection.

The RN arrived on the east end of the table and were intercepted by the Italians from their Northwest.  The convoy had to get across the table to exit on the west edge.  The RMI were given orders not to take serious damage, and couldn't follow off the west edge for fear of land based air on Malta.

Rules were of course GQIII and despite my rustiness, the lads made a good fight of it.  In the end the two sides closed far too close with the Italians trashing most of the escort at the cost of hull damage to 2 cruisers and several destroyers.  At this point I ruled that both sides would retreat, the convoy back to the east to fall back on the distant escort and the raiders to nurse the cruisers back to home ports.

Photos to follow…oh yes the action included a collision between two cruisers and an intention ramming attempt.