Nimitz Straights of Sicily Campaign

Andy and I's second Nimitz campaign, this time the Strait of Sicily scenario. The British (me) are attempting to run a convoy from Gibraltar to Egypt over 8 days while the Italians (Andy) try to stop them.

After my experience with the Murmansk campaign I went for five TF containing a single destroyer (HMS Tynedale, Hambledon, Jervis, Khartoum and Kelly),  one containing just HMS Ajax, four dummies and a final TF with everything else in it (HMS Howe, Rodney, York, Belfast, Norfolk, Hermione, Spartan, Offa, Orwell, Mohawk, Zulu, Cossack, Eskimo, Jackal, Eagle (the only carrier) and twenty merchant ships. 

In addition I had some Hurricanes and Swordfish on Malta and a medium sized submarine force.

The general plan was to hope that Andy would find it hard to identify the convoy with effectively only a 1 in 11 chance of him hitting the right TF each time he succeeded in identifying a TF. When he did identify it all the defenders would be in place and, combined, the ships had an impressive AA ability together with some Fulmars from the Eagle. 

The initial set-up with my Sunderland flying boat getting some use! The wind was blowing down the map and the only two storms were on land:

Andy's initial move was to hit Malta with a large force of Italian fighters and bombers. Despite scrambling four Hurricanes the Italians broke through destroying four Swordfish on the ground for the loss of a single fighter:

The remaining two Swordfish find the Italian destroyer Freccia and immediately attack:

A torpedo strikes home and the Freccia is sent to the bottom of the sea:

Andy then launched another attack on Malta destroying the remaining two Swordfish that had just sunk the Freccia and a Hurricane for the loss of a single fighter again.

Malta was not finished yet though with submarines operating from the island finding the main Italian fleet (three capital ships and six destroyers):

The Italians close in on the British:

Stuka's discover HMS Ajax:

HMS Ajax is sunk:

Not everything goes the Italian's way though as the Bolzano is sunk by a torpedo from a British submarine:

The convoy is still undiscovered and on it's way to Malta:

HMS Hambeldon is the next ship to be found by the Italian air force. Surprisingly one Stuka is shot down, the other misses and the Hambeldon is undamaged!

The convoy has now passed Malta and is making good progress:

Another destroyer, HMS Jervis, is found. In another surprise outcome the Jervis shoots down both Stukas and sails on unconcerned!

Finally the Italians identify the TF containing the convoy. They are somewhat shocked by the number of defending ships and the morale of their surface force drops considerably when they consider the odds against them. The Italian air force is undaunted though and attacks the Eagle:

The Eagle is unlucky and explodes when a single bomb hits it. No more air cover for the convoy but they still have considerable AA ability from the ships:

With the Italian surface fleet sloping off to safety it is down to their air force to try to stop the convoy getting through:

Six large merchant ships are sunk, a few Italian planes shot down. A serious blow for the British:

The convoy is almost through but still vulnerable to air attacks:

The Italians are starting to run out of planes but launch another attack:

Another large merchant is sunk:

Remarkably after this encounter the Italians failed several times to locate the convoy again and it sailed on to Egypt safely.

The British got VP for sinking the Freccia and Bolzano, shooting down numerous planes and getting ten small and three large merchantmen through. The Italians had sunk the Ajax and the Eagle, six large merchantmen and destroyed several aircraft resulting in a narrow win for the British 109 to 97 VP.

The campaign was good fun and quite intense, Andy's unerring ability to choose the wrong TF to investigate meant the convoy made good progress before he got to attack it and, once he had found it, it was very apparent that any attack on it by his surface force would be suicidal. As a result all the action was air and submarine attacks with no surface action at all.

Having played two campaigns now I think they are fun but have a bit of a flaw in that, certainly for the convoys, they are unlikely to result in surface actions which is kind of the point of playing.

It feels more like playing a board game and, I suspect (from my very limited knowledge of naval warfare) may be 'realistic' in that in fact almost all of the action was by aircraft and submarines with the German and Italian fleets lurking in port and surface actions being few and far between. Next time we might do the invasion of Norway (which Andy has played once against someone else) or I might suggest we just do a points value surface action to get the ships on the table and fighting!