More Nimitz action last night, this time at Firestorm Games where Douglas Baldwin commanded the Italian Regia Marina while James Churchill and I commanded the French Marine National in a fictional action set in June 1940 before France has signed the Armistice with Germany. Enraged by “Il Duce’s” stab in the back, the French Navy has sent four cruisers to carry out a night-time bombardment of Genoa to gain some satisfaction.

The bombardment complete, the French squadron heading home at high speed as daylight comes up to meet their covering force of five battleships ready to escort them safely home to Toulon.
However Mr Baldwin is out with the Italian Navy ready and eager for revenge with six heavy cruisers in hot pursuit, with four destroyers as their escorts.

I commanded the four French cruisers which I had steaming down the table edge hoping to outrun the Italians. The six Italian cruisers split into two groups one speeding along matching course for course and attempting to close the range. The other three headed towards our wake intending to cross out “T”.

The two groups of four Destroyers each closed on each other with the French torpedoing and sinking one Italian destroyer. However Mr Baldwin was determined to sink my destroyers and succeeded in doing so by concentrating his cruisers’ fire upon them. My cruisers fired on his cruisers somewhat ineffectually as the Italian Cruisers armour was rather better than mine.

Soon however, much to my relief, James brought his five battleships into action and in short order disposed of all three of the closer group of Italian Cruisers. The Italian battle line, chasing after their cruisers, finally got into range of my trailing cruiser, the Duquesne, and sent her to the bottom in short order.

We called it there as my cruisers had reached safety and the immediate Italian pursuers had been destroyed. The result then, three Italian heavy cruisers sunk and four destroyers. The Marine National lost Duquesne, one heavy cruiser, with another heavy cruiser, Foch, damaged.

Of our seven destroyers, five were sunk and the other two damaged. Of the three Zara class heavy cruisers, Gorizia was crippled and Pola damaged.
Both fleets would have limped home after the action.

A good game. We once again used the Nimitz rules and, save for using the QRS, we had no need to refer to the Rulebook itself at all during the game – such that I managed to leave it behind. Thankfully Sid Bennett spotted it and took it home with him for me. A big thank you to Sid for that.

Our thanks to Michael for putting on an impressive game!

See you Friday for our visit to Blaen Cwm gaming community!