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Heinz Fischer

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Just a couple of reports and a few screenshots from two games last night! Courtesy of the Jutland chatroom on xfire :)

Run to the South

Players:
Heinz Fischer - British
(Syndic - originally also British but dropped)
Zonebar - German battlecruisers + screens
Joeumama - German light forces

Once the light screens made contact, both forces began closing in on each other, the British going east and the Germans - West. Originally Syndic was supposed to look after the British BCs and their immediate screens, but he dropped due to falling prey to the "British host" bug (see here: http://forums.gamesquad.com/showthread.php?t=81227). So I began re-organizing my very large force, slightly overwhelmed but still able to manage.

The first step was to slow down the BCs somewhat to keep them from outrunning the attached QEs too far and getting pummeled. This turned out to be a wise decision later. Meanwhile I set up my cruisers to follow each other and eventually assemble in two formations - one for the smaller 28kt ships, one for the larger 25kt ships. These would sail ahead of the force and provide a screen against enemy light forces. This turned out a wise decision also, as I will note later. I organized my destroyers into larger flottillas, but kept them close to my main battle lines, sailing in parallel. This turned out to be a bad decision very soon.

Zonebar's main fleet was closing in directly on my fleet, while the light forces under joeumama's control were moving slightly to the north, probably looking to outflank my main force and catch some of my screens off guard.

At 25km, a squadron of destroyers crossed the path of the 5th BS (the QE ships), and chaos ensued in which two destroyers rammed each other. This was the first damage which occured in the course of the battle. Both were ordered to withdraw back to the west, having lost much of their speed. Fortunately, the battle line re-formed before the main engagment began.

At about 21km, I turned both the battlecruiser line and the battleship line directly south in an effort to cross the Germans' T. This is where chaos broke out for the BC line, which became entangled in their own destroyer screen (oh, the joys of having a lot of forces to manage alone!), with all the BCs going in different direction, despite my best efforts to get them back together. Just then Zonebar's BC squadron seized the moment and opened fire. Ironically it was probably the disorderly sailing of the battlecruiser force that also saved them from taking heavy hits early on - except Lion, which sustained several direct hits midships and caught fire. Over the next half hour, the ship's crew would battle to keep it afloat, but eventually Lion succumbed.

Other BCs began taking hits as well, but just as I was about to give up on them, the QE squadron, trailing behind only slightly, came in range. This is where the tide turned in my favour. In the first two minutes of firing, Derfflinger appears to have been struck in the magazine, exploding immediately. The odds now decidedly against them, the German BC squadron was slowly dismantled by the 15" guns, with some help from the battlecruisers once they managed to re-form their line.

While this was going on, the 25-knot line of cruisers, sailing in front of my battle force, kept the enemy screens at bay. They singlehandedly dismantled a destroyer flottilla and denied counter-attack on the british large units as they carried out their bombardment of the troubled Germans.

The final stroke, however, was delivered by a heroic charge of a British destroyer flottilla against Von Der Tann:



As they sailed past the sinking hulks of the other ships, they sent 3 torpedoes directly into the last battlecruiser. Destroyer Pelican can rightly take credit for sinking Von Der Tann.



This spelled the end for the German battlecruisers, which went under one by one over the next several minutes.



To the north however, as you can probably see in the above mini-map, trouble was brewing. One of my destroyer flottillas straggled to the north and got the German light force's attention (under joeumama's command). His CLs and destroyers quickly shredded the whole unit.



My immediate response was to send my CLs ahead to deal with it, but the manuever to turn them around did not go completely smoothly. Two of my CLs collided, with the unfortunate Birmingham ending up with an unfixable hole in the starboard side. The ship foundered sometime later, suffering no other damage. She became the only major ship loss other than Lion.



The German light forces began to flee once they saw that my entire fleet's attention was now on them. Unfortunately for them, Tiger survived the earlier battle without taking any damage (other than a non-penetrating hit in the armour belt). With the German CLs being hopelessly slower than the 28-knot giant, they turned around for a suicide charge, distracting it so that the lighter ships could get away.


(four German CLs at foreground, Tiger in background to the right, closing in).

The Germans shot wildly at the Tiger with their smaller, HE-only guns, scoring many hits. Tiger, however, remained in damage status of "none", although her new paintjob probably did not please the camptain:



And thus the battle ended, with only german DDs escaping. For some reason, right at the end of it, the neutral Danish "Fjord", which the German fleet stopped to examine before the engagement started, was torpedoed by my CLs as they passed by. I guess they were angry :)

To be continued with another battle report...
 

Heinz Fischer

CCIP @ Subsim.com
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Stormy Tuesday

German Fleet: Heinz Fischer
British Fleet: Joeumama

Actually, not a terribly long report on this one - it was an exciting scenario to play but it really went relatively straightforwardly. On first contact with cruisers to the south, the German force successfully chased them away and began preparing for the inevitable encounter with the British BCs, which came in contact from the north. Visibility went up and down, between 13km and 19km, which made contact unpredictable. Fortunately, the German scouts saw the British force first, at the cost of one of the CLs which took an unlucky 13.5 inch shell hit squarely in the middle, which made a huge hole and disabled the ship's engines.



At about 16km, my battle line sighted the Lion, Princess Royal, Queen Mary and Tiger, steaming towards us. We were in favourable firing position and opened up. The two lines came up parallel at 15km and shooting continued for as long as 10 minutes, before Queen Mary took an unlucky hit and exploded. The British BCs then turned back to retreat.

Soon their second BC squadron, composed of the poor I-ships came up. In the meantime I had a chance to turn my battle line around and get into a favourable position to fight at long range again. A long shoot-out ensued. Soon the remaining newer BCs returned as well.

Here are some screens from my force in action, including what seems to be a bridge view from Derfflinger :)








After as much as 1.5 hours of duelling, with the range never closing to less than 13km and visibility fluctuating between 14 and 19km, the results were sad for the British battlecruisers. All 8 sank in the end, with 7 (!) suffering catastrophic explosions (ACH was disabled, I checked). The German force got quite lucky - Lutzow took a heavy beating and slowed down, but the damage missed critical parts of the ship and even all turrets kept in operation. The other ships took a variety of hits, with Moltke suffering only a single impact on the after superstructure. Derfflinger had one of its turrets disabled, while Von Der Tann lost two, although neither ship was heavily damaged otherwise. In the end it was luck and good armour that saved the germans - although the British gunnery was noticeably worse, they did have more ships and did score a substantial number of hits on the German BCs (except Moltke). Of their ships, only Tiger did not suffer a catastrophic explosion, gradually succumbing to flooding under heavy fire.

Joeumama's destroyers executed a masterful torpedo attack from the west towards the end of the battle, but unfortunately miscalculated - they fired their torpedoes just as the German BCs were executing a 180-degree turn, so their torpedoes did not even break the formation, sailing well wide of their targets. About 1/3 of them were then dispatched by the accompanying German CLs.

At the end of the battle, the British losses were 8 battlecruisers and several destroyers, while the Germans lost 4 unlucky CLs to battlecruiser fire - which did do a good job of distracting the enemy force and keeping them in contact when they attempted to get out of sight.

Good game :)
 
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kotori87

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Wow, this was amazing. I was listening in on the action with xfire last night, so I got to hear the entire action unfold. The experience was much like in the movie "Memphis Belle," in the scenes where Col. Harriman is listening to radio reports about his squadron of bombers. Reading the report here, and seeing the screenshots, makes the battle come alive for me.
 
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