Sheer's Lone Wolves Strike Again

[bill44]

Flushed with the success of Lutzow's raid in to the Northern waters, Sheer sent Seydelitz on a raiding cruise, her orders, sink any AMC's she encounted, capture any British CS's, and lead the GF and BCS on all over the ocean, make a mockery of Britians sea power.
Seydelitz's first vitim was the AMC Andes, at 21:41 under a broken cloud cover, she spotted her quarry barley 5000 yards off her starboard beam and on a converging course.
Within a minute her 15cm guns were hitting home, a minute later her main armament opened up, and mortally wounded the Andes, burning fiercley the AMC tried to fight back to no avail, barly 8 minutes after it begun Andes slipped beneath the cold grey waters.

It was a chilly morning when her lookouts spotted the AMC Orcoma, Seydelitz rang up full power surging ahead at 27 Knots, she closed the range to under 5000 yards before opening fire. The Orcoma's captain began evasive manouvres, trying to throw off the German gunnery, and it worked - for a while, Seydelitz altered course to bring all her guns to bear on the hapless AMC. One by one her starboard guns were knocked out thier gallant crews cut down in a hail of shrapnel, Seydelitz's 15cm guns were chewing up the AMC, but her heavies were still missing.
Her gunners however did start hitting and her fate was sealed, when she slipped under the waves, the battle had lasted some twenty minutes.
Seydelitz found no merchants on this cruise, but did encounter the BCS, which she easily out ran and with the help of the zepplins evaded, she had expended 40% of her ammunition however, and headed for home.

 

[bill44]

Off the coast of Norway, Seydilitz bagged two more CS's, Benledi and Christianssund, this was offset by the British capturing 3 more German CS's.

Churchill was less than happy with the situation, and made his feelings know to the Admiraltiy in a letter:

The loss of HM AMC's Alcatara, Orctava, Andes, and Ocoma is a loss we can not continue to bear, these vessels are the back bone of our efforts to strangle the German supplies comming in from overseas, and without them we will need to place warships in this role. This is not a situation I favor, as the only suitable ships for this purpose would be our Armoured Cruisers, and should these come up against one of these German raiders, I have no doubt they would be soundly beaten.

I am appalled that a lone German raider could sail willy nilly around our northern waters sinking our ships and capturing our cargo steamers without the Royal navy being able to locate and destroy it. You would be aware of the presses reaction to this "lone Wolf" as they are now calling it, and their critisisim of the Royal navy. It would also appear there are more than one of these raiders prowling home waters, I read the contact report from one our TB's sighting a lone battleship off the coast of Aberdeen, gentlemen this simply must be stopped, the public must have confidence that we can not only take the fight to the enemy on the open sea but also protect our own territorial waters from attack.

You are to formulate a plan to deal with this menace by Friday week.



You are to formulate a plan to deal with this new menace

 

[JebUSMC]

This is actually a pretty good strategy as long as you can avoid a close in night time fight with the British fleet elements. They will come after a lone BC. I've been using a similar strategy in the channel only using predreds. They don't seem too interested in coming out after a lone predred that far south and I haven't built up the guts to send a predred up north since they can't outrun 1BS or the BCF.