Battle of Comro Gulf - Day Two

I took this pic to show the size - or lack of it -
of my 'Mini Chubby Marine' pieces. Those hexes are 
5cm across.

I find, checking through these pictures that I took rather fewer photos than I thought I had. Pity, really, because the second day's battle had plenty of excitement for all concerned. The land battle still raged, with little progress to report. The beachheads still held, but they were not expanding either (the fact was, I simply ignored this part of the story as ... incidental).

Early morning air strikes...

The moment the sun lurched itself above the eastern horizon, both sides launched air attacks. It became at once apparent that the Allied air resources had become very slender. Keeping back the fighters to protect the carriers that had become very precious, the respective Saabian bomber wings had available 24 fighters still, but just 60 bombers between them.

The Ra'esharn air arm, slightly outnumbered 24 hours earlier now far outmatched the Allied. In the picture above, you might observe in the distance the swarms of aircraft 'flying' eastward, approaching a far less weighty Saabian mission coming the other way. Now, a point here. As there is a heck of a lot of air space, and each turn represents something between 60 and 90 minutes (actually 80, but I prefer to fudge it), the air forces in effect fly through, around, over, under each other and carry out their missions. They just don't see the enemy at all. Those air armadas have been placed there for convenience to signify they have been launched, but have yet to arrive over their objectives.

Not a lot left of the Allied air forces!

As there was quite a lot of air activity this new dawn, with attacks going in at about mid-morning, we'll begin with the strike by Ra'esharn's southern wing upon what remained of covering force south. It turned out to be something of a disappointment. 

Although the fighter squadron drew the fire of the escorting destroyer, S3, the bombers failed to hit the battleship at all, and lost four of their number (1FlyP) in the process. So disconsolate, the aircrews returned to their carrier.

Strike Force South coming back ... but...

Not a lot left of Covering Force South!

Saabian air attacks upon Strike Force Centre.

Meanwhile, large scale, all-in air attacks struck the Allied fleets close by Comro Island. The Apollyon wing struck at the Saabia Covering Force East, targeting the battleship and both carriers. The fighter dogfight cost the attackers 4 aircraft; and flak accounted for 8 bombers, but they managed a hit upon Bake-Kajura. Now, that fleet carrier had been heavily damaged the day before, but overnight repairs had restored at least some of its operational capacity. Nevertheless, the single hit was serious enough: 6FP of damage at once bringing the vessel close to its critical point (overnight repairs had brought the carrier back to 12FP, but the critical point remained at 5. After the bomb hit, it was down to 6FP...)

For all that, it was not a whole lot to show for the loss of 12 aircraft.

The Angra-Mainyu wing struck the Kiivar fleet, aiming for the capital ships. Fighter Squadron 53 and Dive-bomber Squadron 25 attacked Pteranodon. The fighters managed to knock out some AA defences (which might have had an effect on future air defence) and drew some of the fire, but Ra'esharn still lost 8 aircraft for no other result. The attack upon Harrier by 26 and 33 Squadrons was equally fruitless - and at equally high cost. Sixteen aircraft Ra'esharn lost in these attacks, with little to show for them. Yesterday's superb elan seems to have deserted the Ra'esharn air crews.

Even less successful was the mission by Bake-Kajura's wing against Strike Force North. Of 28 aircraft, more than a third were brought down by the curtain of flak. Not a single bomb or torpedo found its target.

Probably the most dramatic - and the saddest - mission of the day belonged to the Bahamut wing. Thirty-two aircraft went in, a squadron against each carrier, and the third aiming for the battleship Bushyasta. The flak was appallingly accurate. As the squadrons went in, one by one they were shot out of the sky, the few bombing attacks failing to score any hits at all. Last of all, Torpedo Squadron 201 were seen descending into a maelstrom of fire from the fleet carrier Apollyon and its escorting destroyers. Two thirds of the squadron hit the water in flames, or exploded in the air. But a single Flight Point made it through the storm to launch their torpedoes... and struck! 

But one torpedo hit upon the heretofore uninjured fleet carrier was small recompense for the devastation wrought upon Bahamut's bomber wing. Just twelve aircraft remained to limp back to their carrier. There was nothing left with which to complete the job.

Here comes the Ra'easharn - with a single battleship to 
stop them

Altogether, the wholesale air attacks of the morning had been almost entirely barren of results - apart from the appalling attrition of the aircraft and their crews. Thirty-six aircraft Saabia had lost - the morning's bomber force halved. Losses among the Ra'esharn aircrew - twenty-eight the official count - were bad enough, but they still had plenty in hand for further strikes, should they be required. 

The melee in the north...

By late morning, the skies clearing of aircraft, their missions completed, the opposing fleets again moved rapidly into gunnery range. That range shortened rapidly in the confined archipelago waters, and the began a deadly duel of gunfire and torpedoes. Now, I took very few pictures, so, once again, a written narrative will have to suffice. Of course, the main targets were the capital ships, the destroyers waspishly flitting about - fragile, but with enormous stings... and, it seems, charmed lives.

The sea is criss-crossed with torpedoes, and gunfire;
both sides take heavy damage...

On the Ra'esharn side, the brunt of the fight was carried by Strike Force North. Early in the morning the cruiser RNS Chemosh took some heavy damage from long range fire from SNS Karkanos, and its luck did not improve as the morning advanced. By mid morning gunfire started more fires; then the destroyer S9 shoved in a torpedo and Chemosh went down.

By late morning RNSS Baphomet and Charanzon were also coming in for rough treatment. Late in the morning, the cruiser was ravaged by heavy gunfire, 'B' turret knocked out, and speed reduced. In such a  close quarter battle it would be no easy matter for Charonzon to extricate itself from the maelstrom. It turned out impossible. Early in the afternoon the Kiivar destroyer K41 finished her off with a torpedo.

Finally, RNS Baphomet itself took so much damage that she too had perforce to pull out of the battle - 'Y' turret knocked out, half the secondary armament u/s, and its speed impaired. Yet, during all this while, the destroyers might as well have been invisible, so little damage was being done them. R71 and R81 were both hit, but remained in action. The capital ships were certainly priority targets for the Allies!

Strike Forces North and Centre link up...

For their part, the Allies were not coming out of the battle unscathed. SNS Karkinos - already bearing the scars of yesterday's battle, came in for heavy damage during the course of the morning. Further hits in the early afternoon put the battleship out of the battle, its rear main turret out of action. At the same time the cruiser Sarimanok found itself being hammered by gunfire throughout the late forenoon. The cruiser never got the chance to draw out of the action, further gunfire sending her under. Once again, the destroyers were coming in for little attention, only S7 and S9 taking any real damage. 

The Kiivar Covering group was rather less lucky. KNS Harrier had emerged from yesterday's battle with only minor damage, mostly patched up (23FP out of 24). That did not much avail the battleship on Day Two. Having survived the earlier air attacks unscathed, its crew might have supposed the worst was over, but, shortly before midday, the torpedoes struck home. The damage was appalling: 20FP all in one strike.  Before Harrier could find an escape, gunfire from Barbatos and Bushyasta finished her off. 

Kiivar's sole remaining capital ship - carrying deep injuries from the day before, survived into the early afternoon. Then battered a quick gunnery battle, Pteranodon also fetched up on the bottom of the sea. At the same time, the one Allied destroyer that had taken serious damage, K713, was seen, smoke pouring from several fires, pulling out of the fight.

There remains the retelling of the gunnery duel in the south. All that remained of the Allied covering group there was the battleship Hakamai and the destroyer S3. But even with two battleships, two cruisers and six destroyers (leaving aside the fleet carrier), the odds were less steep than might have been supposed. Both Ra'esharn battleships were without their 'Y' turrets (which might have been fortunate given their instructions to carry the fight to the enemy), and, even taken together, their stamina for a battle was less than that of the battleship facing them. The critical factor lay in the smaller craft Ra'esharn carried into the battle. 

On the whole, the big Ra'esharn ships were getting the better of the gunnery duel early on. Five FP of damage lit upon Hakamai before it landed some telling blows late in the morning. It was about then Hakamai's luck ran out. The Ra'esharn cruisers and destroyers inserted themselves into the battle, whereat the Saabian ship came in for a ferocious battering from gunfire and torpedoes. By midday she had taken 14FP of damage; and shortly afterwards took another eight. It's little companion was at that time overwhelmed by the secondary guns of the cruisers and destroyers, and the wreckage sent to the bottom. But before S3 went down, it released a volley of torpedoes. It's dying act took a revenge for its demise, as two torpedoes struck RMS Charun. There was no stemming the inflow from the gashes in its larboard side. 

As the burning hulk of Hakamai tried to crawl its way out of the battle a torpedo from R61 finished the job. Covering Force South was no more.

Such was the situation by mid-afternoon, when Admiral Setiyawan received the news of the annihilation of his southern task force. It was clear to him now that the Allied fleet could not remain close by Comro Island in support of the landings. Although he might yet have held his own against Ra'esharn's northern two strike forces, there was nothing now to stop the southern. Not to put too fine a point on it, the Allied fleet was so close to have been encircled.

Taking stock of a situation suddenly become disastrous, Admiral Setiyawan took the decision he knew would end his career in the navy. He ordered that the land forces to be abandoned, and the remnants of his fleet to break out to the east. As if by mutual consent, the battle sputtered to a close (which is Narrativese for 'I called the battle at this point').

This operation turned out an utter disaster for the Allies. Not only had they lost two fleet carriers, one of them the giant KNS Condor, but three battleships and a battlecruiser as well. The additional loss of three cruisers and five destroyers hardly counted in the reckoning. For their part, Ra'esharn got off surprisingly lightly. One carrier lost and three cruisers, but only two destroyers, sunk. On the other hand three battleships would be out of the war for a long while. They had taken significant damage that would take a considerable time to repair. 

A page of my battle log:
Day 2 Ra'esharn Navy

Both sides would mourn the loss of so many aircraft and air crew. Of the 216 aircraft (18 Squadrons; 54 Flight Points) the Allies took into the battle, perhaps a quarter remained more or less operational - and only half of that remainder were strike aircraft. Considerably better off, Ra'esharn still lost a large proportion of its air strike power. The two days' battle had cost Ra'esharn one hundred aircraft, a trifle over half they had to begin with - a considerable attrition of trained personnel. I would never have believed ahead of time that there would be such a toll among the aircraft. Of course, the loss of the fleet carriers contributed much towards that attrition.

Well - that was my 'interpretation' of Leyte Gulf ... sort of. 

 

Side 2 of the above battle log:
details of air states and missions.

I've pictured here a leaf out of the battle logs. I kept a leaf for both sides, one for each day - four leaves in all. They aren't especially legible. But they kept much of the information that might have been reserved for the 'buckets of dice' that usually adorn pictures of these battles. It is possible, however, that in keeping these records, I rather neglected the pictorial narrative, especially late in the action. 

At some point I may carry out a similar large scale operation, but with an increased role for the shore landings and land operations. I have the kit for it, after all!

Battle of Comro Gulf - Afternoon action

 ....

As the sun passed its zenith, aircraft took off from RNS Achlys - their targets, the Saabian capital ships barring the way at Spot Island. The flak having taken its toll, the surviving bombers failed to hit SNS Hakamai, but the already crippled Calaeno, its anti-air reduced (halved) from earlier damage, was a sitting duck. Damage accrued well past the 24 Flotation Points - twenty-eight, withal - Calaeno went down. 

Two of the Southern Covering Force destroyers also having been sunk to Ra'easharn gunnery during the late morning, all that remained to block the incoming Ra'esharn Strike Force South, was Hakamai - hardly damaged so far (just 3FP of damage to enemy gunfire), Chimaera (so far unscathed), and two destroyers, S2 and S3. The loss of carrier, battleship, cruiser and three destroyers had reduced the covering force to little more than a remnant.

Not that their Ra'esharn adversaries had come off unscathed. Badly damaged, its 'Y' turret knocked out along with half its secondaries and air defence (17/24FP damage), RNS Banshee was already staggering out of the battle. Destroyer R64 had been sunk, R73 critically damaged. Belphegor and Achlys had also taken some incoming, but so far the damage incurred had not been concerning. The Ra'esharn here had given back far more than they had received.

In the meantime, the Northern Strike force was bearing down from the northeast. Ordering most of his destoyers to flank the oncoming column from the east, Admiral Setiyawan brought his main force, led by a destroyer, onto a northwest bearing. The Kiivar strike force returning, more than somewhat discomfited from its encounter with Adniral Yamazuki's fleet, effectively flanked Admiral Suzumaha from the northwest. 


In effect, Suzumaha was bringing his whole Strike Force into a sac, a gunfight in which he had allowed the enemy to 'cross the T'. However, this arrangement took some time to develop so that by the time the 'trap' could be sprung, the day was drawing to a close. Unwilling to bring on a night action in such murky circumstances, both sides withdrew, the Saabian and Kiivar allies closer to Yelta City, the Northern Strike forces well beyond gunnery range. The latter's withdrawal allowed the Kiivar Group, somewhat trapped itself by the manoeuvre Setiyawan's manoeuvre, to slip by down the Comro Island coast to join the main Saabian force.

I'm going to be honest, here: I can not for the life of me recall what happened - or didn't happen - on the afternoon of the 23rd Octember. I do recall the rather nasty situation Northern Strike Force and the Kiivar Group found themselves in. There was a brief exchange of fire, and torpedoes criss-crossed the ocean doing no damage, but the thing appears to have been uneventful. Apart from SNS Bake-Kajura taking a couple of hits from a SFN cruiser, and RNS Chemosh taking a hit from Harrier's secondary weapons, the log is silent. I rather think I mistimed everything, and suddenly realised that night was falling before the gunfire could take place. The gunnery melee was not to happen this day...

The log is not so mute concerning the fight in the south. Bravely standing in the way of Strike Force South (SFS), Vice-Admiral Sirega put up a stout fight. Already having taken some damage in the morning, RNS Belphegor ran into a couple of torpedoes from S2 late in the afternoon, although the destroyer itself took heavy damage coming in, and was sunk shortly afterwards. 

In little short of a sinking condition, the battered Belphegor - just 2FP remaining - slunk out of the battle. Like its consort, Belphegor was minus its 'Y' turret. The cruiser RNS Crocell also received a pounding that forced it to abandon the action, its 'A' turret wrecked. For their part, gunfire and torpedoes accounted for SNS Chimaera, sunk in little more than the half-hour of action. 

Heavily outmatched on paper, Covering Force South could claim perhaps to have got somewhat the better of the late afternoon gunnery battle. All the same, the sole surviving destroyer, S4, had been critically damaged, which, had there remained more hours of daylight, would have left SNS Hakamai alone, with no destroyer screen. On the morrow, it would have a single battered one.

Nightfall brought the day's action to an end, both sides having lost heavily. The Allied losses were severe enough already: 

• Saabia: 1 fleet carrier, 1 battleship, 2 cruisers and 4 destroyers sunk;
• Kiivar: Fleet carrier and 1 destroyer sunk; battlecruiser critically damaged.

• Ra'esharn had lost fewer units sunk, but many critically damaged: 1 fleet carrier and 2 destroyers sunk, 2 battleships and 1 cruiser critically damaged.

At least as critical from the Allied perspective was the loss of aircraft and their crews. Mostly due to the loss of their carriers, the Allies were minus 132 aircraft overall (33 Flight Points), only 24 (6FlyP) having been lost in air sorties. Just 84 aircraft remained (21FlyP), 24 fighters and 60 bombers, to take up the battle on the morrow.

On the whole, Admiral Kaito Vanuzuki, commanding overall the Ra'esharn operation, felt tolerably pleased with the outcome of the day's battle. He knew his Strike Forces had handed out some hard knocks, however disturbed he was at Admiral Suzumaha's performance, and the loss of a fleet carrier. 
That carrier had in effect taken 48 (12FlyP) aircraft with it. The other three carriers had lost 28 aircraft (7FlyP) among them - a total loss of 76 (19FlyP). Out of 192 (48FlyP) with which the fleet began, that was a consideration.

Now - how might such an action be continued? Overnight both sides had withdrawn, leaving a considerable space between themselves and their enemy. The Allies were mostly crowded around the beach landing area of the Comro east coast.  The Ra'esharn Strike Forces took station several nautical miles west and north towards whence they had approached in the pre-dawn. The 24th Octember would see the action renewed.

At this point I decided that some running repairs might be done to the damaged units in an effort to bring them into action the following morning. These repairs were effected as follows:

1. All damage to Flotation Points halved, halves rounded up.
2. All critical damage to weaponry remained as too difficult to repair with the means available.
3. Speed reduced by critical damage was restored.
4. The original Critical Point of damage remained unchanged.
   
   

Example: RNS Belphegor was very badly knocked about in the afternoon's gunnery battle, taking two torpedo hits from destroyer S2. Altogether, 22 FP of damage, leaving just 2FP keeping it afloat.
Overnight repairs brought it back to 2 + 11 = 13FP. 
But Belphegor remained without its 'Y' turret, and only half its secondary and AA weaponry remained serviceable...
... And its critical point remained 8FP of damage. 

It wouldn't take all that much to drive it out of the battle once more.

Note, by the way, the slight change to the original rule set, wherein secondaries were reduced by one-third upon a critically damaged vessel. That was careless of me. Half is a much more tractable number, and so I have adopted it.

Meanwhile, all aircraft lost have been permanently lost. Whether or not the aircraft from RNS Azir-Dahak that survived the air attacks on Covering Force East found refuge on Comro Island, they too were out of the action for good. Maybe they could have been recovered later. Maybe.

To be concluded - The Second Day...