Jutland - The SMS Moltke Makes a Stand - Part 1

Due to heavy work load at my day job (end of quarter, yay!), I will be posting short and little these days. Looking forward for the weekend.

If you have the guns, you may as well use them ...

The game: Jutland (Storm Eagle Studios)
The (purely fictional) situation: the battle cruiser SMS Moltke, escorted by a demi-division of destroyers gets jumped by a Royal Navy scout force.

The SMS Moltke, sailing along with an escort of four destroyers, is in it's last leg before entering the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal when the crew spots a Royal Navy scout force composed by the scout cruiser HMS Boadicea and four destroyers.

This is a fictional, nonsense scenario that I threw together to cut my teeth into naval warfare during the beginning of the 20th century.

Ships and formations: red for British and blue for German. The arrows indicates heading. I have my destroyers on the port side of the battlecruiser Moltke.

This is the view from the Moltke. In the distant background, the blue carets indicate the position of the German destroyers. The red carets of the British scouts can be seen farther back.

For twenty minutes or so I kept my ships sailing towards the Canal, with the destroyers on the port side of the Moltke. For some reason I feared that the British would launch their destroyers towards me and I wanted my battlecruiser screened from such threat.

It became evident that the British were sailing in a column formation, with the Boadicea in the van. I then pulled off my destroyers from their station and moved them into the starboard side of the Moltke. So much for a destroyer screen ... With the Boadicea in the van of the British column, I'd rather have the 11 in guns at the Moltke as a greeting!

The Moltke has its guns already trained on the British formation (red carets in the far background) as my destroyers (green circle icons) cross into their new station on the starboard side. The HMS Boadicea is still out of range for my guns.

One of the four German destroyers, now in the new station at the starboard side of  the Moltke. 

The English sail relentlessly towards us.

The view from the deck of the Moltke. The gray things connected by a tube in the top of the turrets are rangefinders, which I hope don't fail us today! 

A few knots of advantage ... Or just better sailing. The Boadicea closes and comes into range for my guns. In this image, the first rounds are fired from the SMS Moltke to no effect. The guns of the Boadicea are too small to respond at this range. Note how the position of the enemy ship results in only 6 out 10 big guns being fired.

Stay tuned,

Cheers,