Ill Met By Moonlight After Action Report

The set up in this scenario gave HMS Oberon the choice of five possible points to deploy, each one marked by a Sonar Contact marker, which I distributed in a roughly even pattern in the Royal Navy deployment zone. The submarine commander chose Contact Marker Two, not far from one of the islands and shut down all of the non-essential systems to go to silent running. This gave HMS Oberon a modifier to her noise rating of +1 which meant the opposition would need at least a 13 to detect her, so virtually impossible unless using active sonar at close range.

In Turn One to Four the three Indonesian frigates ploughed ahead at full speed in line astern, led by KRI Kakiala, followed by KRI N.Rai and KRI L.Mangkurat in that order. They all tried and failed to defect the submarine using passive sonar whilst HMS Oberon successfully detected the first two frigates without too much trouble, again using passive sonar in order to maintain hidden as long as possible. The scenario prevented the Indonesian frigates from switching to active sonar until attacked, so they bumbled along in ignorance, trying and failing to identify Sonar Contact Marker One over and over again.

In Turn Five HMS Oberon fired a salvo of four heavy guided torpedoes at KRI Kakiali, which had moved into intermediate range. Of the four fired, three locked on and hit while the fourth missed but subsequently hit KRI N.Rai, which was within 12cm of the target. In the explosion that followed, KRI Kakiali was blown to pieces, while KRI N.Rai suffered Light Damage and a sonar malfunction. The attack meant that the Sonar Contact markers were now removed from the table and HMS Oberon placed in her actual position, although not detected yet by the enemy.

In Turn Six, the frigates initiated ASW drill and split formation, KRI N.Rai steaming ahead while KRI L.Mangkurat turned to port and moved forward, both switching to Active Sonar to sweep for the enemy submarine. However, as the range was still either intermediate or long, neither ship could locate the submarine and, as HMS Oberon had the initiative, she was able to launch a second  attack, this time a full salvo of six heavy guided torpedoes at KRI N.Rai. This salvo hit home, causing the frigate to be blown to smithereens, with only one torpedo missing the target, locking on instead to KRI L.Mangkurat which suffered heavy damage, a fire and a gun mounting destroyed.

In the final Turn, HMS Oberon moved ahead to get a clear shot at KRI L.Mangkurat, which though detected had craftily slipped behind the shoals that surrounded the nearby island. This closed the range just enough for the frigate to finally achieve an active sonar detection of the submarine, enabling her to launch a full salvo of three heavy guided torpedoes at HMS Oberon. The submarine itself had already launched four torpedoes at the frigate, having assumed that she would remain undetected and taking a calculated risk in order to finish off the last of the enemy frigates. 

The end result was two hits on both the submarine and the frigate, destroying HMS Oberon but not quite sinking KRI L.Mangkurat, which took two more heavy damage markers, two fires and two more weapons knocked out, yet just managed to stay afloat. She subsequently failed to put out her fire, thus adding an engine failure and flooding to the overall damage inflicted. I decided to see if she remained afloat, rolling a D10 with a 50% chance of success, which resulted in the crew managing to save the ship or what was left of it. This meant that the Indonesians managed to scrape a very narrow victory from the jaws of defeat. although strictly speaking it was a draw according to the scenario guidelines.

I enjoyed this game more than the last one and had far fewer headaches with the damage procedure or the confusing text in the rules, despite yet more typos and missing words. In the next scenario, two Royal Navy frigates will be searching for the missing submarine, only to be attacked by Indonesian bomber aircraft. This will give me the opportunity to try out the rules for air attack and air defence, albeit without any missiles. It will be interesting to see how easy it is to hit a ship with bombs but also how difficult it is to shoot them down using only good, old fashioned anti-aircraft guns, secondary weapons and the dual purpose 4.5'' main armament?