Last Friday was a change in pace as Eric brought up his ships for a nite engagement off Guadalcanal. Larry and I were the “bad guys” as Jim and Eric took the Americans. Neal played Eric’s forces when he arrived later. Our forces were Haruna, Nachi, Jintsu, Hatsuyuli, Uranami, Nowaki, Hamakaze, Kuroshio, and Ushio. ( 1 BC, 1 CA, 1 CL, and 6 DDs). Among the similar-sized forces opposing us was BB Mississippi , CL Honolulu, and CA Chester.
This was a night engagement using General Quarters 3rd edition rules.
Jintsu's column hammers the Honolulu
The US ship’s radar gives advantages at night, so they have an edge for detection. Basically, each ship column roll to detect and acqire enenmy vessels. If enemy is detected, ships may elect to fire star shells to illuminate potential targets.
Each side scored several hits to each other, with Haruna on fire from the big guns of the Mississippi. Fortunately, I doused the fire on the next turn and several turns later repaid the damage with a critical hit on Mississippi…a turret pentration which endangered the ship if uncontrolled. Jim couldn’t control the damage, so scratch one battleship!
The battle was pretty much over at that point. The picture shows Jintsu’s column raking the hapless Honolulu. Although Jintsu is afire, it’s guns were still active! What’s not shown are the tracks of the 9 torps in the water heading dead for the slow-moving US target! The “circles” are the star shell bursts for illumination.
We called the game at that point. Jintsu would manage to put out the fires later, but her speed was down to a crawl. We thought she would make a juicy target for the Marine aviators on the island and wrote her off.
