GWAS: Airships Preview
Part I: The Battle Scenarios
October 2013

When Ernie Wheeler sent in a very well researched Daily Content submission that included new variant rules for airships in Great War at Sea plus four new airship-centric operational scenarios, it looked like a good start for a ten-scenario supplement for GWAS much like our North Wind and Alaska’s War supplements for Panzer Grenadier. And so we have Great War at Sea: Airships with five airship-centric battle scenarios and five operational scenarios. Previews of the five battle scenarios follow:

Battle Scenario 1
DODECANESE
Summer, 1912
With the Turkish fleet unwilling to sortie, Italy faced no opposition in the Eastern Mediterranean and soon began grabbing Turkish island possessions in the Aegean Sea. This did not sit well with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which saw it as a dangerous precedent that could inspire land grabs by Greece and Serbia. Though Austria was allied to Italy, the Austrian navy had a long-term rivalry with its Italian counterpart and would not have balked at an order to rein them in. Furthermore, had Austria’s airship program produced better results, Austria’s navy would have had the scouting capability to spot an eastbound Italian invasion fleet and vector-in the battlefleet to deter or, if necessary, destroy Italian expansionist moves. But if the Regia Marina had gotten wind of such Austrian countermoves, they would have brought in their own airships to escort the invasion fleet and warn of any approaching trouble.

Note: This scenario uses pieces from Mediterranean and Zeppelins.

Comments: This is an interdiction mission with the Austrian battle fleet engaging the Italian occupation force and trying to destroy enough troop transports to keep them from taking the Dodecanese Islands. Each side gets two airships, which have only minimal offensive capability themselves, but both also have eight pre-dreadnought battleships and plenty of armored cruisers, so the player who uses his airships to best effect for gunnery spotting will likely come out on top.

Battle Scenario 2
BLAZE OF GLORY
November 1st, 1918
Designed to draw-out the Royal Navy for a final battle, the last gasp of the Imperial High Seas Fleet was to have been a suicide raid on the Thames Estuary. Had the German sailors obeyed orders, the first ships to reach the Thames would have been the Imperial battlecruiser squadron. Had zeppelins escorted them, they could have created an even bigger conflagration.

Note: This scenario uses pieces from Jutland and Zeppelins.

Comments: This is one of those elaborate battle scenarios, which I really enjoy designing. The tactical map approximates a section of the Thames estuary, with the central shaded hexes representing an island and the southwestern and northwestern board edges being land. There are shore batteries on the island and land edges, but the British player starts out with only three airships on the board. The German player gets five battlecruisers and seven late-model airships, though he has to roll for each one to see if it was destroyed on the way into the estuary by mines or local air patrols. The German battlecruisers and zeppelins must attack the shore batteries, trying to knock them out and escape before the British battlecruisers (which enter the board piecemeal during play) corner them and wipe them out.

Battle Scenario 3
SKY DREADNOUGHTS
Fall, 1923
At the end of World War I, the Treaty of Versailles required Germany to cease zeppelin production and hand-over her existing zeppelins to the victorious Allies. Having none of it, many zeppelin crews destroyed their airships before the Allies could get hold of them, but zeppelin L72 survived and went to France to be rechristened Dixmude. Just a few years later, France was invading German territory over missed war reparations payments, and if the Weimar Republic had taken a more militant stance against French aggression, she might have looked at the last great zeppelin designs of World War I as weapons to help her tiny navy get past French blockades.

Note: This scenario uses pieces from US Navy Plan Gold and Zeppelins.

Comments: In this scenario, a French blockading force led by two battlecruisers plus Airship Dixmude, is setup in the center of the tactical map while the Weimar German surface raiders enter from the northwest edge and must try to run the French blockade and exit the southeast edge. The Germans score the full VP value of each Weimar ship that exits the southeast edge, while the French score the full VP value of each Weimar ship that fails to exit the southeast edge for any reason (being sunk or otherwise). The French outgun the Germans, but the Germans get assistance from zeppelins L100, L101 and L102, which enter from the southeast edge. The zeppelins have plenty of bombs to attack the French ships directly and can also spot for gunnery to help weaken and slow French ships to help the blockade-runners slip by. But Dixmude has a few bombs of her own, so she’ll be able to chase-down ships that make it through and bomb them, unless one of the German Sky Dreadnoughts shoots her down.

Battle Scenario 4
FEEDING FRENZY
Summer, 1924
American airship designs favored performance and maneuverability over armament. But while the airships could not attack enemy ships directly, their high-altitude capability made them an unparalleled system for spotting enemy shipping, guiding American warships to the target, and providing gunnery spotting with little danger from enemy anti-aircraft fire. This could give American merchant raiders a fair chance, even against a powerfully escorted convoy.

Note: This scenario uses pieces from Sea of Troubles and Zeppelins.

Comments: This scenario puts airships as gunnery spotting systems to the test with four American armored cruisers raiding a large British convoy protected by a battleship and destroyers. To win, the American player must score 20 more victory points than the British player, so the fast but vulnerable cruisers must coordinate with the airships. They must dart in and out to do maximum hits to transports spotted from the air before the British battleship can destroy them.

Battle Scenario 5
A LATE SPRINT
Spring, 1918
By early 1918, tens of thousands of doughboys were unloading at French ports every week. This boded ill for German war prospects and the few long-range surface raiders, as the Imperial High Seas Fleet would be hard pressed to take-on an American troop convoy with a strong escort. But if those raiders were to rendezvous at sea with a squadron of the newest long-range zeppelins, together they would make a force that just might have a chance against the Americans.

Note: This scenario uses pieces from Jutland, Sea of Troubles and Zeppelins.

Comments: Here, the zeppelins take center stage as offensive weapons systems. Along with a state-of-the-art German battlecruiser and two light cruisers, six late-model, long-range zeppelins with substantial bomb capacities attack American troop transports. As escorts for thirty large transports, the Americans have two older battleships plus eight destroyers, giving the Germans a target-rich environment. The Germans have to act aggressively, because the Americans are running for port and get one victory point for each transport that exits the northeast board edge. The zeppelins will need to chase-down the transports that make it closest to port and bomb them; During this, the surface raiders pick-off stragglers while trying to avoid damage from the American battleships.

That does it for the battle scenarios. Tune in next time for a preview of the five operational scenarios in GWAS: Airships!

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