Mers-el-Kébir with the French at Sea

So on Saturday we had a short playing session at the library due to other conflicting obligations.   So since we had just a bit of time, we decided to play a twist on the British sinking the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir.  In order to speed up the scenario, we ignored the British aircraft carrier as well as all of the destroyers on both sides.  This left the players with:

• British (Rear Admiral Marty)
• Battleship Squadron
• HMS Hood (Admiral Class)
• HMS Valiant (Queen Elizabeth Class)
• HMS Resolution (Revenge Class)
  
• Light Squadron
• HMS Arethusa (Arethusa Class)
• HMS Enterprise (Emerald Class)
• French (Contre-amiral Kevin)
• Modern Division (Dunkerque Class)
• Dunkerque
• Strasbourg
• Old Division (Bretagne Class)
• Bretagne
• Provence

Kevin chose the French since he thought that he could redeem his performance from last week in which he lost two battleships and two battlecruisers in exchange for a North Carolina class.  Once again, we chose to use the L shaped table configuration because the extreme range of the Dunkerque's guns is 80 inches and we felt that this would permit some pre-contact manoeuvring. 

British Deployment with HMS Arethusa leading HMS Enterprise on the right and HMS Valiant leading HMS Resolution and HMS Hood.

Strasbourg leading Dunkerque on the far side and Bretagne leading Provence on the near side.

Kevin looking over his SSDs in order to maximize the effectiveness of his task force.

 

As the ships approach contact, the British light cruisers lay down a smoke screen in order to help protect the outnumbered battleships.

Kevin finds the smoke to be vexing, and measures the range to the light cruisers.

The French are out-ranging the Brits by a substantial margin (80" to 60").  Therefore the British light cruisers create a smoke screen in order to protect the more valuable capital ships.  These actions proptly made the cruisers a target in the eyes of the French and many poorly paraphrased lines from Scotty were uttered every time the HMS Enterprise was hit.

Kevin is turning his battlecruisers to face Albion's battleships, accepting that at this range it would be better to be a harder target to hit and suffer the armour penalty if hit.

As the Brits fire off their first salvo, one hit is recorded, and the result was a main battery hit on the Strasbourg.  Since the French turrets had a 60mm steel partition between the two half of the turret, we decided to give the French player a 6+ save to see if he would loose the entire turret of 4 guns or just half the turret, leaving it 2 guns.  In this case, Kevin failed the save, and the whole turret was lost...or so we thought.  It was pointed out that the British hit should not have counted since the British player forgot to add the +1 for crossing the T.  With this new modifier, the roll to hit failed, and the Strasbourg's turret reappears as if by magic.

The smoke screen from the light combatants.

Kevin sinks the two light cruisers... The smoke lingers on

In the next turn the French succeed in sinking the British light cruisers and the British score a main battery destroyed on the Dunkerque. 

The French fleet as night falls.

The Final position, and the peanut gallery looks on.

So we had to call this game earlier that usual.  In the final tally the French only had minor structural damage on the Dunkerque and the British lost both light cruisers.  So we called it as minor French victory.