Atlantic Chase

"In naval warfare, success and failure are only a hairline apart. A wrong decision or one a minute late, the wrong interpretation of a message, a bad change in the weather, an unfortunate hit – any of these can change victory into defeat in a twinkling."
-- Grossadmiral Erich Raeder

In the warm electric light beneath Westminster in the heart of London, the Prime Minister stares intently at the wall. He is pondering lines drawn upon a massive chart in his underground Cabinet Room. That map records the last known positions of numerous convoys and task forces in the Atlantic Ocean, each represented by pins and strings. Anxiety and frustration keep him there. The pins and strings convey old information, and the Prime Minister is keen to update the situation as he waits for new reports that will change the map. He has taken to lingering in that room often in recent weeks as he and his subordinates endure the hours as battles unfold and fate tips in one direction or the other. The balance has not been kind to the Royal Navy.

It is March 18, 1941, and Winston Churchill is momentarily quiet as he ponders that wall. He is dictating a radio address to the nation, struggling to find the words. He must acknowledge that twenty-two British merchant ships, nearly 120,000 tons of materiel, have just been sent to the bottom by two German battlecruisers. Those raiders are now represented as a pin on that map, refitting in a French port for their next campaign, a coordinated action intended to link forces with another ship, the mighty Bismarck. Churchill fears that ship above all others, and dreads the day he will see her represented on the chart before him. 

The Prime Minister takes another puff of his cigar and clears his throat, prompting the secretary to ready his fingers at the typewriter. After another puff, he continues: "We must regard the Battle of the Atlantic as one of the most momentous ever fought in all the annals of the war."

Atlantic Chase simulates the naval campaigns fought in the North Atlantic between the surface fleets of the Royal Navy and the Kriegsmarine between 1939 and 1942. It utilizes a system of trajectories to model the fog of war that bedeviled the commands during this period. Just as the pins and strings adorning Churchill’s wall represented the course of the ships underway, players arrange trajectory lines across the shared game board, each line representing a task force’s path of travel. Without resorting to dummy blocks, hidden movement, or a double-blind system requiring a referee or computer, players experience the uncertainty endemic to this period of naval warfare. This system also has the benefit of allowing the game to be played solitaire, and to be played quickly.

The German player’s task is clear: sever Britain’s lifeline to its overseas colonies and allies.  All hangs on the fate of convoys. Ultimately, success or failure in Atlantic Chase will hinge on the Kriegsmarine’s ability to breakout into the Atlantic and find convoys while frustrating British attempts to catch his raiders. The game chronicles the development of the Royal Navy’s strategy to contain the German fleet by pitting players against each other in five successive operations that comprise a Campaign Game. Seven additional scenarios treat specific historical actions, including a Sink the Bismarck scenario, a PQ17 scenario, and the Channel Dash. The game features battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, convoys, and pocket battleships, while U-boats, elusive armed merchant raiders, and air assets play an important role too. Operations during the Campaign Game and stand-alone historical scenarios each take 1-2 hours to play.

Will the German player do what the Kriegsmarine never managed, execute a large-scale coordinated operation knocking Churchill to his knees? Or will the Admiralty catch and destroy Germany’s great battleships before they become an unanswerable force?

Some images (c) 2021 Scott Mansfield. All rights reserved.