Atlantic Fleet - the CombatAce review

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A few more scenes from my Kreigsmarine campaign!

 

...it's December 1939 and in mid-Atlantic, my U-Boats are seeing plenty of action, like this Type IX...

 

 

...though this Type VII was lucky to survive this depth charge attack:

 

 

Two boats co-operate in a night attack on a small convoy, sinking the destroyer escort and then surfacing to sink the merchant ships with gun and torpedo...

 

 

Starshells illuminate the enemy in the North Sea, as a mixed force of cruisers and destroyers engages a British destroyer in a night action:

 

 

Later, the same force engages and destroys another smaller enemy force. Last to go is the destroyer Vanoc, a famous U-Boat killer in the real war, but not in this one...

 

 

 

Still having a great time with this one!

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Some more scenes from my Kriegsmarine 'Battle of the Atlantic' campaign!

 

 

Even though I have now worked out how to move ships around on the map and how to get them back into a port when they need repaired or re-armed, it's still swings and roundabouts. Lutzow (she's represented by the 3-d model for Graf Spee and [in her early guise) Scheer) met and sank a Royal Navy light cruiser and a destroyer in the mid-Atlantic...

 

 

However, Repulse caught and sank Scheer in the south Atlantic. Revenge was sweet, duly delivered by a U-Boat, when a wolfpack ganged up on a convoy Repulse was escorting, a bit further north...

 

 

 

 

 

 

The remainining escorts were simply overwhelmed. They turned out and started shooting at our periscopes, scary but not terribly accurate, though the depth charge attacks sadly cost us a boat.

 

 

Then, we went after the merchantmen...

 

 

 

 

Only one of them escaped, before my three surviving boats disengaged.

 

 

I had pulled Scharnhorst and Gneisenau back east, both to avoid the likely hunt for them in mid-Atlantic, and as a preliminary to pulling them back to the heimat for re-arming and some repairs. They promptly met and smashed another convoy, sinking a 'County' class cruiser and a pair of destroyers, before running down and sinking the freighters.

 

 

 

Unsure of their value, I had kept many of my light cruisers destroyers close to the German Bight end of the North Sea, but they actually made themselves useful, assisted by air support in clobbering some British destroyers who rather unwisely came sniffing around.

 

 

 

My U-Boats met another battleship-escorted convoy, and one of the boats managed to put a tight fan of four torpedoes into Warspite, which refused to go down, but reeled away listing, with 'A' and 'B' turrets evidently out of action.

 

 

Meanwhile, Hipper survived being bombed in the North Sea by a Sunderland...

 

 

...only to be caught, run down and sunk by the fast battleship Queen Elizabeth, when she tried to break out into the Atlantic via the Faroes Gap.

 

Revenge came again when another U-Boat caught up with the Warspite - still displaying the damage she'd suffered in the attack a few days earlier - then sank her escorting destroyer. Although the old girl dodged the first fan of tin fish, the next one got her.

 

 

Brilliant game!

 

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I just discovered that the Battle of the Atlantic campaign incorporates historical events. I got to June 1940 and saw this..

 

 

...so now, I have friendly ports closer to my route out into the North Atlantic, and I don't have to sail my ships all the way back to German ports, to re-arm and repair.

 

And I love these set-piece screens! They are a treat to look at, and a set of them in sequence would make a great screen saver (does anyone use these ,anymore???).

 

After putzing about for a while, I finally realised that I ought to be spending some of the 'renown' points I earned on building up my fleet. Bismarck isn't available for another year, but anyway, I decided that fun and sexy though surface ships are, I would start taking winning the campaign a bit more seriously (instead of treating it as a fancy battle generator). U-boats are what's really needed to clear the seas of enemy convoys so I 'bought' a bunch of them, a mix of Type VII and IX, saving some 'Renown' for a rainy day...or Bismarck. So, the war against the convoys has now begun in earnest.

 

 

I split my new U-Boats, dividing them into two packs, and moving one astride each of the main North Atlantic convoy routes. It wasn't long before the first pack met and mauled a convoy. I ended up firing fans of torpedoes from both sides at longer range than I'd have liked, but it was a daylight encounter, and even zig-zagging, the convoy was rapidly drawing ahead of my submerged boats. This had the desired effect and I got the sole escorting destroyer, as well as a couple of merchantmen.

 

 

After that, we came to the surface and hunted down the defenceless shipping with our deck guns, with only a fast frieghter managing to out-run us.

 

 

In a U-Boat encounter, I almost invariably ignore destroyers on their own, but will tackle them if a good shot comes my way, or as a last resort in self-defence; the 'down the throat' shot being quite effective, as practiced by US subs in the Pacific:

 

 

Back on the surface, 'pocket battleship' Lutzow ran into the heavy cruiser Berwick and fought a stiff night battle. I faffed up the gunnery, failing to change over to AP rounds from starshells in what should have been my first full salvo. I did that twice, believe it or not.

 

 

Berwick took full advantage, and with some holes in my hull and the pumps damaged - which seems to be a vulnerability, in this class of ship - I thought I was destined for Davey Jones's Locker. The shame, six 11-inch guns beaten by eight 8-inch! But I found the range and down went Berwick, instead, leaving Lutzow able to make an ultimately-successful run back to a home port, for the much-needed repairs...

 

 

The Royal Navy in Atlantic Fleet seems to replicate the unsuccessful early-war tactic of anti-submarine sweeps by destroyers, with fewer dedicated to escorting convoys. I don't know if this will change as the war develops, as it did in real life. I ignore these partols when I meet them with U-Boats, but though I have reduced my German Bight surface patrol to one light cruiser and four destroyers, it is still more than strong enough to snap up an RN destroyer patrol, when it ventures too close...

 

 

Earlier, I had lost Hipper when she was chased down and smashed up by battleship Queen Elizabeth. My heart was in my sea-boots when the same powerful ship intercepted Gneisenau and the damaged Scharnhorst, on their way back to port via the Denmark Straits. I had the faster ships but less well protected and with lighter main guns. This time, I decided to fight it out, rather than run. From line astern, I swung my two battlecruisers left and right, opened my 'A' arcs right away, and began raining 11-inch shells down onto Queen Elizabeth from two different directions.

 

 

My shooting was not too bad for once, and I managed to get the range first. My Scharnhorst evidently isn't the lucky ship the real one was, by repute, for she drew the enemy's fire and took some 15-inch hits, adding to her existing damage. But between us, we soon had the big British warship reeling. Scharnhorst had to jink left and right to 'chase the shell splashes' that fell all around her - those 15-inch AP rounds hit the sea with quite a whack! So I was mightily relieved as our fires began to pummel the enemy battleship. After several minutes of this treatment, she lost way, listed to starboard and then rolled over, burning, to sink by the stern. Revenge for Hipper was sweet! And 'Salmon and Gluckstein' then made it back to Wilhelmshaven, where no doubt the RAF will bomb them, as happens in this game.

 

 

 

Atlantic Fleet doesn't have the more sophisticated ship or division handling and gunnery systems of Fighting Steel, and apart from anything else, this can increase the workload in multi-ship battles or wolfpack attacks. However, it has more than enough content (not least, the subs and planes, as well as surface ships) and depth to be a terrific WW2 naval battle wargame in its own right, with delightful visuals, sounds and effects, all presented in a polished and well-designed package, a good old-fashioned PC-sim-sized package for the price of a mobile app. Top notch stuff.

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My new 'U-Boat primacy' policy is going rather well; in fact my boats are running amok in the North Atlantic.

 

First, U-47 - Gunther Prien's boat, of Scapa Flow fame - came across a small convoy, and wiped it out, including the single escorting destroyer, which made the mistake of turning into a merchantman I had just torpedoed, just as it came to a halt, straight across her bows. Before Assiniboine could extricate herself, I torpedoed her, too.

 

 

Then it was onto the surface, for a stern chase after the fleeing survivors, two tankers and two more fast freighters. The deck gun did all the work. I left the first tanker a wrecked shambles and barely under way, chasing after the others to sink them in turn. Then it was back after the first tanker, with a starshell to show the way in the gathering darkness.

 

 

U-37 was even luckier, for in the Denmark Straits, she fell in with battleship HMS Revenge, leading the aircraft carrier Glorious, with just a single destroyer for company. From a near-ideal position not too far off Revenge's starboard bow, I put three tin fish into her, then racing on ahead, another one into Glorious's bows, as she started to turn away. That slowed her down, and I was able to wait for a fish to be reoladed, and I then gave her that, too. It did the trick...

 

 

The destroyer, HMS Obdurate, had come after us and spotted my periscope, though, which was duly shelled before I crash dived. A big pattern of depth charges followed, but I went deep and was able to slip away.

 

 

I reckon that'll be a Knight's Cross each, for the skipper of both of those boats! Looks like it's the first 'Happy Time' for Doenitz's boys, come early, and a dangerous time for Mr Churchill.

 

 

To be entirely honest, I don't ever recall having quite so much fun, with a new game!

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Mission reports, further illustrating single battle, dynamic & static campaign gameplay, are here:

 

Battles of Sept Iles and the North Cape

 

Battle of the Atlantic

 

RN static campaign