Wicked Sisters:
Design Notes
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
February 2024

I like to tell stories. That’s been true as long as I can remember, and it’s what I’ve done throughout my careers as journalist, historian, and game publisher/designer. Our little Campaign Study scenario books are an excuser to tell yet more stories based on our games, and that’s what I did with Java Sea: Wicked Sisters.

Wicked Sisters is built on a lie: the deception passed about by the German Navy in early 1942 to cover the pending “Channel Dash” of the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen from Brest in western Occupied France back home to Germany. The German Navy had no intention of sending almost half of its remaining surface fleet to the other side of the globe. On the other hand, it’s not like they were using the ships themselves, allowing them to wallow in Brest’s harbor while the Royal Air Force dropped bombs on them.

In Wicked Sisters, the deception becomes reality, or at least paper reality. It’s the story of a journey around the world, from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal, the South China Sea and then finally the New Georgia Sound, where it all ends. In all of the scenarios, the three German ship pieces, plus some oilers, come from Second World War at Sea: Bismarck.

Could the German squadron have made the journey? It’s possible; the two battle cruisers (the “Wicked Sisters” of the title) undertook a commerce-raiding voyage (Operation Berlin) about as long as the voyage around the Cape of Good Hope and into the Arabian Sea would have taken. The heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, like her sisters a triumph of overwrought design, would have been a different story. But for the sake of the story, all three ships arrive off the Horn of Africa in November 1941. This puts their departure a few weeks before the German put about the story that they would head east, but I wanted them already in the Indian Ocean when the Japanese offensive began.

The Horn of Africa interlude gets one operational scenario that takes place on the map from Horn of Africa, and a pair of battle scenarios. They try to intercept a British convoy headed from India to the Red Seas, and they fight a British cruiser-destroyer force and of course attack said convoy. The map, and all of the needed British pieces come from Second World War at Sea: Horn of Africa.

Next, it’s a trip across the Indian Ocean and into the Bay of Bengal, where the British have been alerted and are waiting with the recall of Force Z to help stop the German advance. This is the formula the Royal Navy had determined for dealing with an enemy heavy raider: a fast battleship, a rebuilt battle cruiser and an aircraft carrier (in this case two of them) so the enemy could first be slowed by air attack and then finished off by the surface ships. After all, that’s what sank the Bismarck (if one didn’t look at the details too closely). The formula directed Royal Navy planning before the loss of Force Z, and doubtlessly would have been in the forefront of any operations to deal with a German incursion into the Indian Ocean.

The Bay of Bengal chapter plays out on the map from Eastern Fleet, using pieces from both Eastern Fleet and Java Sea. This time the Germans are just trying to get across British waters to a port held by their Japanese allies, and the British are out to stop them. There’s one operational scenario on the Eastern Fleet map, this time a chase game, and two more battle scenarios: a daylight action with Force Z, and a nighttime British destroyer attack based on Sir James Somerville’s planned attack on the Japanese in April 1942.

German ship-handling was not always the very best.

That adventure winds up with the Germans in Penang on the western coast of Malaya, which also happens to be present on the Java Sea map. By this point, all three ships are badly fouled with weeds and barnacles, eating into their speed, and they all need work on their machinery. Singapore is still in British hands, but the Saigon Naval Shipyard can do much of the needed work, even without a drydock large enough to accommodate any of the German ships.

The task becomes sneaking down the Strait of Malacca and across the South China Sea to Saigon, with the Allies ready to pounce on them – and, thanks to the German presence, Force Z is still active, now supplemented by British and Dutch cruisers and destroyers, while the U.S. Asiatic Fleet (three cruisers and a flotilla of over-aged destroyers) is hunting the Germans, too. At least this time, the Germans have some help from the Japanese, who send out a powerful cruiser-destroyer force to help bring them to safety.

This chapter gets an operational scenario and three battle scenarios, with fights against the British-Dutch and the Americans, and then a potential four-player affair with German, Japanese, British-Dutch and American task forces all involved in a night-time brawl. There aren’t many opportunities for team play in Second World War at Sea, so this seemed like a good place to add one (the Axis players are very limited in their communications). To play them, you’ll need Java Sea for the maps and pieces.

The Admiralty IX floating drydock at Singapore.

The Germans successfully reach Saigon in our story, and then wobble back across the South China Sea to Singapore where the now Japanese-controlled naval base had not one but two drydocks capable of servicing the German ships. That work would take several months, but by July they had been re-provisioned with Japanese-made ammunition for their German weapons and sent to a relative backwater, the former German colonial port of Rabaul. The Japanese did not wish to integrate them into their own fleet, and from Rabaul the Combined Staff hoped the Germans could undertake raids against the convoy traffic between Australia and the United States.

This final chapter has one more operational scenario, and two battle scenarios, all of them somewhat larger than the previous scenarios and all taking place on the operational map from South Pacific or the special Ironbottom Sound Tactical Map, also from South Pacific, with pieces from South Pacific. The Germans get to fight the Americans at Savo Island, and then are match up with an American task force built around the fast battleship North Carolina with her nine radar-directed 16-inch guns, and that’s where the story ends for the German squadron.

It's a scenario set built for fun, since none of this ever actually happened, which means the scenarios can be structured to maximize play-value (by designing them backwards – build the scenarios, then craft the story around them). And you get to sink the Germans in Ironbottom Sound.

You can order Wicked Sisters 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 will never forget his Iron Dog, Leopold.

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