A Night Out with the H Class

The fifth Destroyer flotilla was out and about on my wargames table this week, using a nice old Admiralty chart of the English Channel I randomly generated a scenario that saw four German Z class destroyers trying to pass down the channel to get to Occupied St Nazaire.   The Flotilla Leader would be the (fictional) Light Cruiser HMS Orion, with HMS Hardy, Hasty, Hero and Hotspur as her destroyers.

The location of the action was also randomly generated, between the Varne and Colbert banks, with the Germans having past Cape Griz Nez and its long range guns, and approaching Dungeoness.  

The 5th Destroyer flotilla was proceeding up channel, with a torpedoed merchantman added into the mix somewhere ahead.   

With the action taking place at night the visibility is limited in the extreme, but this is mid-war so I allowed Orion radar.  

The first action was HMS Hunt taking survivors from the burning wreck of the merchantman.  Some tricky dice work needed to see it off.  As that was going on the Z Class intervened and Hunt had to withdraw, damaged.  

Orion intervened and began a chase, knocking out one of the Germans almost immediately.  The Germans actually ran through shoaling water to get clear.  

HMS Hero stood off the sinking German to take off the crew, whilst Orion, Hotspur and Hasty made after the Germans.  HMS Hasty incidentally consistently rolled low and wallowed behind the others, perhaps with boiler problems.

The Germans lost one more destroyer to a parting salvo from Orion, before contact was lost.  This occurred just in the location some helpful sailor type has written on my chart,  Still it was only a couple of quid on eBay... 

Game over, with one British destroyer damaged and two Germans sunk.  

I will have to sort out that Narvik chart!