Cruel Seas – Royal Navy Flotilla

To counter the Kriegsmarine in Cruel Seas, we have a flotilla of the Royal Navy. This would be themed around the English Channel and North Sea, to cover the battles between the German and British vessels in those areas. Again, this is meant to be used as a stand-alone as well as combined with Blood Red Skies and Bolt Action, or other world war 2 systems for campaign games.

I am not even fixed on Cruel Seas for this one, I played Action Stations at CONflict and would be fine, using that as well.

For the names of the vessels, it is a bit different as it depends on the size or class of the ship, if it has just a number or a name. Wikipedia is quite helpful here, as they provide a proper overview.

The Vospers motor torpedo boats didn't have names but continous numbers. Essentially from P1 - P539. However, the numbers were assigned to the various manufacturers for a projected number of boats, some of which were processed in parallel, but some of which were never used. This is why the numbering does not provide a chronology. I have my eyes on the British War Department decals to make it a bit easier for me.

The Type I was introduced in 1943 and the Type II before the end of the Second World War. I have six of both, and would assign names in the ranges 3xx for the Type I and 4xx for Type II MTBs.

I have a single Flower Class Corvette, those carry names and there's a long list to choose from, if I went for a historical ship. Yet, I prefer a bit of flexibility, I could go with the name of a flower, like HMS Tigerlilly, HMS Desert Rose (Sting song), HMS Iris or HMS Tulip (after the character from Preacher). There are Flower Class Corvettes from movies, called  HMS Compass Rose and HMS Saltash Castle (in the 1953s Jack Hawkins film The Cruel Sea; using the ships HMS Coreopsis and HMS Portchester Castle. In Nicholas Monsarrat's original book, the "HMS Saltash" was a larger River-classfrigate).

And another set of two Fairmile D MGB/MTBs, nicknamed Dogboats, had a classification similar to the Vospers, with just numbers but gaps and different ranges for MTB and MGBs, overall they had 6xx and 7xx numbers. Here is a broad index of the given numbers.

My Royal Navy Flotilla for the North Sea and Channel looks like this, along with some not-listed Martlet Mk IV aircrafts. With 2.335 points it is a bit smaller than the Kriegsmarine collection, but this is just the whole fleet / collection, that I can choose from for regular sized battles of naval skirmishes.

• 1 Flower-Class Corvette (regular crew) 260 Pts
• 1 Fairmile D MTB 624 (regular crew) 190 Pts
• 1 Fairmile D MTB 624 (regular crew) 190 Pts
• 6 MTB Vospers Type I (regular crew) 750 Pts
• 3 MTB Vospers Type II (regular crew) 435 Pts
• 3 MTB Vospers Type II (veteran crew) 510 Pts

Warlord Games has some painting instructions their website, but I would like to go for some camouflage with the Royal Navy. I already have some Army Painter and Vallejo paints, Warlord suggests from their pre-packed paint list these:

• Vallejo Medium Sea Grey - hulls
• Vallejo Dark Blue Sea - decks
• Army Painter Dark Sky - crew uniforms
• Vallejo Off White - crew helmets, MTB prows
• Army Painter Gun Metal - guns
• Vallejo Yellow Ochre - crew lifejackets
• Army Painter Field Grey - crew helmets
• Vallejo Sky Grey - hulls

This is not high on my priority schedule, but it was important for me to have the project documented.