Club Night 25th September

On Friday Steve K and I set up a Modern Naval using the Shipwreck rules. Steve took command of the Americans, with USS Cochrane, Farragut and Pharris escorting USS Detroit, a Sacramento class AOE to rendezvous with a carrier group. Satellite Intel had tipped off the soviets and they dispatched a Sovremenny class and a Charlie II to intercept. Both fleets started out as counters steaming toward each other until detection was achieved. As the Soviets where expecting the Americans they started with a helo up with its search radar on. Unfortunately this was detected by the American group and they turned south to avoid it. Meanwhile the Charlie was carefully closing the range, and despite one brief contact achieved by sonar staying undetected.

Having closed to medium range the Charlie came to stop and started searching out precise contacts to find its target. It detected the fleet and let loose with 6 of its 8 missiles, saving 2 for anything that came after it. The sudden appearance of these missiles caused panic among the Americans as they swung to unmask their AA weapons and released Chaff. The missiles swept over USS Farragut and onto USS Detroit. Only two of the salvo beat the AA fire and the chaff, and one of these hit. Unfortunately for the Soviet sub commander it hit right at the back of the supply vessel and only succeeded in heavy damaging it and destroying its helo pad.

Having been forced to switch on their radars the Americans now had a firm contact on the Soviet helo they knew had been buzzing around just outside detection range. As they knew it probably had a passive bearing on them they released a missile and blew it out of the sky. In response the Sovremenny turned South and illuminated its own radar. Almost simultaneously Cochrane and the Soviet vessel detected each other. The Americans quickly shared the data over their advanced systems and let fly salvos of S1MER and Harpoon missiles. The Sovremenny had hoped to hold off firing until it had detected the primary target, but now decided to fire at its attackers to ensure if it was lost it would not be without retaliation. The heavy Soviet missiles beat the US AA screen and homed on on Cochrane hitting her square amidships and sinking her. The fire from the Americans is shown below.

Six Missile in-bound with only CIWS and chaff to defeat them...

...which they fail to do...

While this had been going on the Charlie had been attempting to penetrate the screen and attack Detroit again with torpedoes. Despite intermittent contacts the US could not pin down the contact, until they finally got a bit of luck and located her with the helo from Pharris, which promptly dropped a pair of Mk46's on her. Despite her captains best efforts she could not escape the guided torpedoes and they impacted and broke the sub, the in rushing water dragging her to the bottom

Despite the loss of Cochrane the US had destroyed a Soviet destroyer, and successfully prosecuted and eliminated an enemy sub, and USS Detroit had managed to get most of her systems back on line and could move at three-quarters speed, so it was a clear US victory.

This was a great fun game, and after a few false starts I really like the way suns work in shipwreck, abstracted but it has a nice feel, without the need to do complex map movement, which is a real boon for an easy club night game. Maybe next time I'll have a Los Angeles class try and take out Moskova, Kirov or Kiev. Tat could be a challenge...