Japanese vs the Rest of the World (nearly)

An historic scenario in more than one sense.

Battle of the Java Sea - A mid war, Pacific naval battle (which have been played a few times before at the club using various rule sets.)

This game also heralded the suprise return of Jack, who's not been seen at the club for a few years.

From GQ3

At the start things don't look too good for the Japanese with only the solitary squadron vs the combined fleet of Brits\Aussies\Dutch and Yanks, but things should soon improve with the rest scheduled to come on soon after.



The Brits split off from the main group, heading to starboard with the Exeter in the lead. Their destroyer screen was eventually reduced from three ships to one, but they did manage to get their torpedoes off and sink a Japanese destroyer.



The main body of the Japanese arrive and actually make good use of some spotter planes to do some long range gunning. The Dutch also had a spotter available but failed to lauch it in time.



Waves of torpedoes are crossing each other as the Japanese fire off their long lances as the British try to close to the effective range of their own torps. Formations become difficult to maintain as damaged ships start to slow down.



Soon ships are exploding everywhere, particularly the lead destroyers.



Things ended up much bloodier than the historic outcome, with torpedoes from both side causing havoc, In GQ3 they do seem very powerful. But the final result was the same with the allies taking a pounding with a number of their ships disengaging due to excessive damage.

In other news, Martin has announced on the Shipwreck Yahoo Group that he plans on developing a new edition of the rules with the assistance of the group members.