North Cape:
Chapter Three: Summer/Autumn 1942
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
January 2025

The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 touched off a titanic war whose description defies human languages’ supply of adjectives. For both short-term strategic reasons and long-term power politics, the Western Allies (the United States and Britain) found it important to supply the Soviet Union with the means to continue fighting the invaders. Except when they didn’t, and cut off the flow to pursue other priorities. But in the summer of 1942, the Murmansk Convoy run had their full attention. The German Operation Blue offensive rolled across the southern portion of the front, threatening to reach the Volga and the Caucasus.

Yet even as the flow of weapons and other materiel went from a political point to a necessity, the Western Allies found other pressing needs. The Americans defeated the Japanese at Midway in June 1942, cracking the door to a counter-offensive, one that Chief of Naval Operations Ernest J. King wished to kick wide open immediately if not sooner. That would divert ships and planes to the Pacific. In the Mediterranean, Malta had come under heavy German and Italian air attack, and the island desperately needed reinforcements of fighter planes (which could only be delivered by aircraft carrier) as well as food and ammunition.

That’s the theme of Second World War at Sea: North Cape, at this writing the newest game in the Second World War series. It's a crucial theater of the war, one tightly interlocked with the rest of the naval war, despite the distance separating the various zones of conflict.

The Battle of Midway, Operations Harpoon and Vigorous in the Mediterranean, and Convoy PQ.17 to Murmansk all took place within three weeks of one another. All were major fleet operations, and conducting them all simultaneously in widely separated corners of the globe stretched Allied naval resources to and beyond their limit, in spite of their superiority on paper. That stress also goes far to explain some questionable decision-making in the Arctic theater.

The Germans had shuttled a powerful surface force to the Arctic theater, and this presence provoked a deadly unforced error from First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound. Contrary to some versions of the story, Sir Dudley had combat experience, having commanded the dreadnought Colossus at Jutland. But when the German battleship Tirpitz disappeared from her moorings, he had to face the distinct possibility that she had gone to sea with the other warships present in Norwegian ports. Calculating that Tirpitz could reach the convoy faster than the distance escort (including the American Washington and British Duke of York), he ordered Convoy PQ.17 to scatter.

Convoy PQ.17 would become famous for its disastrous end, so we chronicle its voyage with a full-length scenario, another scenario picking up the action at the moment of the fateful order, and battle scenarios based on possible encounters with the Germans - who never actually went to sea. The four heavy cruisers of the close escort withdrew as ordered, along with the mix of American and British destroyers. Lt. Commander Roger Hill of Ledbury at first believed a surface action with Tirpitz to be imminent, and he told his bridge crew that he intended to make a point-blank torpedo attack and then ram the enemy battleship. His 1,050-ton Hunt-class escort destroyer would do little more than scratch the paint of the 40,000-ton Tirpitz, but his orders reflect the attitude of the Allied warship crews. American sailors, particularly from the heavy cruiser Wichita, labeled them “yellow Limey bastards” in the bar-room brawls that followed. The American-manned freighter Bellingham flashed “go to Hell” at the departing anti-aircraft ship Pozarica.

Though mis-directed, the rage had real cause. Of the 33 merchant ships left on their own by the scatter order, nine would make it to port. The rest fell victim to German submarines and aircraft, but not to surface ships. The greatly-feared battleship and armored cruisers in fact never went to sea.

In terms of game design, how should such a blunder be portrayed on the game table? Should the player be forced to repeat the errors of his or her historical counterpart?

I compromised, and went with two operational scenarios. In the full-length PQ.17 scenario, the Allied player is never required to scatter the convoy. It can continue onward toward Murmansk, allowing the player to decide the level of danger, and the appropriate response. The German warships are much faster than the lumbering merchants, and if they catch the convoy without a heavy escort present, they will shoot it to pieces.

But separately, the merchants have little defense against German aircraft, and are much more vulnerable to submarine attack without those seemingly-meek little corvettes and destroyer escorts. Scattering the convoy only makes sense in the face of a surface attack that can’t be avoided. So perhaps the Allied player might want to keep Washington - which would shatter a Japanese battleship off Guadalcanal four months later (firing 75 16-inch shells over a span of seven minutes and obtaining at least 20 hits) - between Tirpitz and the convoy.

In the other operational scenario, the Allied player is presented with the aftermath of Pound’s blunder. The convoy is scattering, the warships must move away, and now the defenseless merchant ships have to make their way to Murmansk or Arkhangel’sk (most of them chose the latter option, which was not their original destination but was a seemingly safer destination).

The Allies would not try again until September 1942, with another large convoy and what Winston Churchill promised would be a much more powerful escort. That’s what Rear Admiral “Bullshit Bob” Burnett passed on to the destroyer crews of the convoy’s close escort. This was not true; the distant cover again had two battleships, but swapped the British fast battleship Anson, a King George V-class ship with unreliable main armament mountings, for the proto-Death-Star Washington.

Once again, the German surface ships did not sortie against Convoy PQ.18, but German planes sank thirteen of the convoy’s 44 merchant ships. Needing their warships for the upcoming Operation Torch landings in North Africa, the Allies suspended convoys until the end of the year, and Churchill ordered merchant ships to be sent individually without escorts, promising that the crews would all be British, and all be volunteers. Neither of the latter was true, and about half of the ships fell prey to Grman submarines and planes. We have a scenario for it, a tricky problem for the Allied player who has to sneak the ships across the map in the face of deadly German searchers.

Finally in December, Convoy JW51.B headed out with fifteen merchant ships. This time the Germans finally sent out their surface ships and found the convoy; the long-awaited success came up short thanks to the feckless behavior of Capt. Rudolf Stange of the armored cruiser Lützow, who failed to press his attack against the defenseless convoy and contented himself with lobbing heavy shells at long range rather than face the angry destroyermen of the close escort - even though Bullshit Bob had already withdrawn rather than fight. Hitler responded by ordering all of his heavy surface ships scrapped.

The Battle of the Barents Sea closes out North Cape’s third chapter, the second-longest in the game with a dozen scenarios. That’s a full game from most publishers; it’s what we call a single chapter.

Mechanically speaking, Second World War at Sea is quite straightforward, with most game functions built around rolling a 6 on the die. It’s easy to play, as wargames go (that’s an important caveat); both halves of the game (operational and tactical) work intuitively. It’s the most popular naval game series in the known universe for a reason.

But what truly sets it apart is its ability to tell a story. North Cape is yet another example of this; all six chapters show this same rich depth and immersive play experience.

You will be glad you played this game.

You can order North Cape right here.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife and three children. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

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