This day after the snowstorm, Chuck pulled together a game of flaklighter, a ruleset for small ship combat set in WWII. It’s a set of rules that was published by the Last Square that I’m not sure are still in print or not but least for our historical group is something we’ve alway enjoyed.
Chuck provided all the 1/600 boats and setup the scenario. We Americans were patrolling the Med and have reports that there is a damaged German sub trying to make it’s way back to port for repairs. Off to the bottom right of this picture is where the port is.
Conditions are daytime but cloudy with bits of rain.
Raymond and I set our patrol to go back and forth with an idea of trying to catch anything and then bring numbers. If we hit S-boats, our poor little PT boards would be outmatched generally. These PT boards only have 2 twin MGs and then a 20mm off the back. So we’re not very good for Front, Port/Starboard shooting but when shooting off the aft we pack a punch. Likewise 4 torps each, but of course they aren’t exactly reliable since this is still early war.
The dice off in the distance are random things to look for, turn 1, nothing in sight.
Next turn low and behold a couple of S-boats coming in fast. Thankfully I saw them and they didn’t see me so I opened up. Effective range is about 10″, but a swing and a complete miss. Hitting the aldis lamp I quickly let the crew know, we were in trouble, easily outmatched unless we could swarm them.
Some of Raymonds boats headed my way quickly. Thankfully while I was to Darin’s front he couldn’t bring full guns to bear and likewise I was getting full guns from me. We both landed some hits tho in my case taking an engine hit as well as taking on water was bad for the ship closest in this pic.
Now the swarm was forming and Chuck taking over to Raymond was able to let fly a top. Thankfully shooting from all involved was piling on some damage. It would seem the tables were starting to turn. As Chuck was coming towards me another single S-boat was sighted at the far end of the table, the very very top of this picture and just out of frame).
Misfortune for us in so much that the torpedo missed. Misfortune for the Germans in that all our combined fire ended up landing some crits onto the two S-Boards amounting to flooding and fire. One of the fires on the S-Boat spread quickly and the poor little boat exploded.
The second S-Board would met a similar fate the very next turn. On our side one of my PT-Boats had it it’s damage point where it needed to make a run for it, so it did.
Darin’s final moments, another torpedo coming his way. After this the remainder of our boats would turn towards the lone S-Boat on the horizon in hopes that the German sub we were looking forward was there. We were smelling victory.
Alas my last picture. Were you see the white white red die was another S-Boat and the Sub after all. The sub having two deck guns was bit time trouble for us.
We quickly went after this S-Boat, and it too perished very quickly in fire with an explosion.
With the sub and this new S-Boat in sight, we charged in.
It ended up heavily damaging two of Chucks PT boats and worse he was out of place to make a torpedo run. I lined up with my 2 remaining boats fired off a total of 4 torpedoes, hitting the sub once and it was a dud.
Having seen what the sub was able to do with it’s good sized guns, we decided to enjoy our tactical accomplishments of 3 S-Boards sunk to our 3 PT boards damaged.
A very fun day!