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Arctic
Convoy: Operational Scenarios
Part 2
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
November 2008
Over the years, I've found a strange delusion
among many of our fans, that somehow our
games are made in a version of Santa's Workshop.
If you're lucky enough to visit the 119694_avalanche
facility, you would find games being played
all over, new games never before seen, with
full sets of lovely maps and pretty counters.
Happy gamers are playing these games to test
them, drinking fine beer and eating chips.
I like that vision. So yes, that's exactly
how these games are made and tested. Crafted
by elves with love, as the VP would say.
I used to work with a man named Tom
Hargrove,
a veteran reporter we all called "Sir!" because
it got an exasperated "I'm not THAT
much older than you!" response. Tom
had a theory that writers turn to excessive
drinking and sex because there's just not
a whole lot that's manly and exciting about
sitting at a typewriter or keyboard and pounding
out copy. That was how he explained me, at
least — Tom stood out in the newsroom
as the only actual normal person we knew.
His theory probably holds true for game design
and historical research as well; while it
might be satisfying to find out which destroyers
were at sea for some mission in the spring
of 1943 I'm not sure anyone's going to enshrine
that "Aha!" moment in a movie someday.
Some guy staring at a book and making notes
just doesn't make for good visuals, not even
in a montage.
Arctic
Convoy came out with a nice
large selection of scenarios, 20 of them
the operational scenarios that I consider
the core of a Second
World War at Sea series
game. They've been played hundreds of times
by elves (that reads a lot better than "Doug
tested them while scrawling on a map with
a fat felt-tip marker and muttering darkly
to himself").
There's actually not a lot the elves can
tell you about the scenarios from these games.
After you write the scenario, you make sure
everyone can actually reach the places they
went within the time and fuel limits of the
game — or if not, you find out why.
With a mature game system like this one,
well-tried in other theaters, you often find
some aspect of the campaign has been overlooked
(which is a good feeling, but again, not
a movie moment). Make sure the victory conditions
match the goals of each participant and are
achievable. Hand it off to the developer,
wait for magical changes, and don't argue
with the result.
It's been a long wait, made longer since
I've pretty much given up excessive drinking
since those newspaper days. But I think the
game that emerged from Doug's magic workshop
is pretty good. At least it does everything
I wanted it to do.
We
looked at ten of the operational scenarios
already. Here's a preview of the other
ten, in no particular order:
 The Forgotten Convoy
1–16 November
1943
With German submarine activity increasing
in the mid-Atlantic, all available escorts
were diverted from the Arctic theater to
that vital area. That left a number of merchant
ships stranded in Murmansk, where they rusted
through the summer while their crews brawled
with the dockside populace. Finally, an escort
group arrived and the merchants set out for
home.
Aftermath
The Germans were ready for the unusual one-way
operation and had the proper permissions
to go after it, but thick fog shielded the
convoy and the support groups from both submarine
and aerial reconnaissance. With no contact
made, the German ships never sortied and
the merchant ships finally made it back to
Western ports.
Self Abuse
21–31 March
1942
Admiral Tovey believed that the Gremans
had been reinforced, and so for Convoy PQ13
he prepared an even stronger surface escort.
Heavy storms drove the convoy closer to Norway's
Arctic coast than planned, close enough that
the local German commander decided to send
out a trio of destroyers on his own initiative.
Aftermath
Four merchant ships were lost to a combination
of air, submarine and destroyer attacks;
two others arrived at Murmansk but were considered
total losses (though their cargo was salvaged)
and two more turned back. Trinidad with three
British and two Soviet destroyers engaged
the German destroyers in a sharp but confused
surface engagement, sinking Z26 but suffering
a damaging hit from one of her own torpedoes
that turned and ran straight back at her.
Scheer Audacity
29 July – 31
August 1942
Since 1932, the Soviets had used the North
East Passage along the northern coast of
Siberia to move convoys assisted by huge
icebreakers between Archangel and the Soviet
Far East. The annual summer voyage continued
during the war, and the Germans decided to
follow up their success against Convoy PQ.17
by doing something about it. A secret base
was established on the island of Novaya Zemlya,
and from there aerial reconnaissance could
lead the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer
and u-boats to the Soviet freighters.
Aftermath
Admiral
Scheer spent a month raiding the
lightly-guarded shipping routes of the Kara
Sea, but inflicted little damage as the wily
Soviet convoy commodores used their big,
tough icebreakers to take their charges into
the pack ice where Scheer could not follow
without exposing herself to ice damage. The
icebreaker Sibiryakov was sunk after a bitter
fight, but the cruiser caught no other victims.
Frustrated, Capt. Wilhelm Meendsen-Bohlken
took his ship to bombard the Arctic port
of Dikson, but found that even here, far
from the front lines, the Soviets had installed
heavy guns that damaged the cruiser and drove
off the marine platoon landed to assault
the port.
 Destroyer Sweep I
27 May – 3 June
1944
Having won the Battle of the Atlantic, the
Royal Navy pressed its advantage over the
u-boats by following them back to their dens.
Destroyer patrols moved closer and closer
to the coast of Norway in hopes of sinking
submarines or driving them back before they
even reached the Atlantic. Apprised of these
movements, Capt. Rolf Johannesson of the
German 4th Destroyer Flotilla decided to
interrupt their hunt. Complicating things
was a British carrier strike also at sea.
Aftermath
The British tin cans sank one submarine,
U289, but despite reports from the stricken
u-boat the German flotilla missed the British.
Both sides returned to port unscathed, but
they would get another chance to find one
another in the cold northern waters. The
carrier force could not attack Tirpitz in
the worsening weather, and never contacted
the German destroyer flotilla.
Destroyer Sweep II
28 June – 3
July 1944
A month after Johanneson's sweep failed
to produce results, a very similar opportunity
presented itself and he prepared to take
advantage again. Three of the British 3rd
Flotilla's destroyers were tasked with rushing
ammunition and mail to Murmansk for the escorts
there, and the German 4th Flotilla had a
chance to intercept them.
Aftermath
Johannesson got his flotilla into position
to stop the British destroyers on their way
back from Murmansk, but somehow the two small
forces missed one another in the wide gray
seas. Once Tirpitz was repaired once again,
the German destroyers lost their freedom
of action as they now were tasked with supporting
the battleship.
Flight of the Weser
Fall 1942
German aircraft carrier development went
through several starts and stops. In the
summer of 1942 Adolf Hitler ordered the nearly-complete
heavy cruiser Seydlitz converted into an
aircraft carrier. Her superstructure and
armament had been removed when Hitler changed
his mind again in January 1943, when all
work stopped. With only a very small air
group, how much help would the carrier have
given the Kriegsmarine on the Murmansk Run?
Aftermath
Germany's inability to maintain secure communications
meant that any radical move — like
deploying aircraft carriers to Norway — would
have been detected by the Allies. Heavy American
reinforcements to the north would have slowed
the campaign in the Pacific, but would have
made the German task very tough even with
a tiny aircraft carrier of limited capabilities
to help them.
 A Supported Convoy
8–22 April 1942
With Tirpitz still lurking somewhere in
the Norwegian fjords, First Sea Lord Dudley
Pound urged his political superiors to suspend
the convoy traffic. This could not be done,
but U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt backed
his tough talk with a powerful task force
to support the Home Fleet. The convoy went
forward, as the Germans prepared a coordinated
air and submarine response.
Aftermath
One of the most successful Allied convoy
operations, PQ.14 only lost one ship (to
a Ju.88 bomber). German destroyers hove within
sight of the cruiser Edinburgh, but veered
off without engaging her. The American task
force did not need to sail, and even before
the convoy arrived Wasp was detailed to carry
British fighter planes to Malta.
The Golden Cruiser
26 April – 9
May 1942
While public statements called the materiel
sent to the Soviet Union "Lend Lease" or "aid," this
was not strictly true. The Soviets were expected
to pay for the weapons, ammunition and other
goods, and since the ruble was not convertible
into dollars or sterling, the payments came
in gold bullion. A lighter brought five tons
of gold destined for the United States to
the cruiser Edinburgh before she sailed from
Murmansk. "It's going to be a bad trip,
Sir," an RN rating told an officer as
the rain washed away the painted labels in
large red splashes. "This is Russian
gold, dripping with blood."
Aftermath
Stricken by both bomb hits and a u-boat
torpedo, Edinburgh turned back for Murmansk
with two British and two Soviet destroyers
as escort, plus several minesweepers. The
Soviet destroyers had to leave to refuel,
and before they returned three German destroyers
came out of the snow. After a confused fight
the Germans sank the cruiser and left both
destroyers dead in the water, but fled when
the British destroyers in turn sank Heinrich
Schoemann. Divers salvaged the lost gold
in 1981.
Coming Home
13 – 20 May
1942
The sinking of Edinburgh shook
the British naval command, and they laid
on a major fleet operation to make sure the
damaged cruiser
Trinidad and
several damaged destroyers made their way
back from Murmansk safely. Soviet welders,
most of them female, had patched up her self-inflicted
torpedo hit as best they could, stiffening
the inadequate plates provided by the Royal
Navy with scavenged railroad iron. A long
stint in an American shipyard awaited Trinidad,
if she could make it home. The Germans meanwhile
had shifted their two "pocket battleships" to
Norway — as they used relatively plentiful
diesel fuel, the Kriegsmarine's fuel oil
shortage would not keep them from sailing.
Aftermath
The damaged cruiser could only make 20 knots,
and her two damaged consorts weren't much
faster. A single Ju88 dropped a stick of
four bombs directly on Trinidad, blowing
open her damaged plates and setting many
fires. Destroyers took off her crew and Matchless sank her with three torpedoes. Sixty-three
crewmen lost their lives.
 Solo Efforts
29 October – 14
November 1942
Soviet anger over the abandonment of PQ.17
had not abated when convoy missions halted
following PQ.18. The warships that had been
covering the convoys were needed for Operation
Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa.
Seeking to mollify Josef Stalin, Winston
Churchill promised to send individual unescorted
freighters to Murmansk under cover of the
dark Arctic nights. Seeking to mollify Franklin
Roosevelt, Churchill promised they would
all be British ships with volunteer crews.
But every other ship was American, with some
Soviets thrown in for good measure, and no
crew of any nationality was asked its opinion
before setting out. Anti-submarine sweeps
only managed to alert the Germans that something
was up.
Aftermath
Operation FB saw about half of the merchant
ships dispatched actually make it through.
With no escort or convoy, crews of stricken
ships could expect no rescue in time to save
them from the freezing waters. The cruiser
Hipper proved singularly ineffective, sinking
a single Soviet tanker, with most of the
sinking attributed to u-boats.
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Arctic
Convoy now!
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