Taranto scenario

locarno24

Cosmic Mongoose
Was looking at this scenario..... Okay, I know it "shouldn't" have worked in real life, but I don't see, as written, how the RN can ever win this scenario.

The RN gets "5 Flights of Fairey Swordfish (each Flight armed with either Torpedoes or Bombs)."

The mission is "The Royal Navy gains a Major Victory if it manages to cripple or sink at least one battleship and at least one Flight moves off the table. If no Flights leave the table and a battleship is crippled or sunk, the Royal navy gains a Minor Victory. Anything else is a victory for the Regia Marina."

Assuming the Italian crews are all off having some vino and pasta, and no-one actually bothers shooting at the annoying Inglese:

All 5 flights line up on the Conte di Cavour from ahead or astern (so no torpedo belt gets in the way).

Torpedo-bombers need a 5+ to hit, so 1 2/3 land hits.

Swordfish have Damage Dice 4, so 6 2/3 devastating damage dice are rolled, netting an average of 23 damage and two criticals.

And.....that's it. Yes, you can roll above average, but rolling fifteen points above average on a 6 dice is rather unlikely, and that's just to cripple the most fragile battleship in the force, not kill it, and that's assuming no-one gets shot down en route.


Am I missing something here?
 
This is indeed one we are looking at revising - have a look at the new Pearl Harbour scenario if you can, and let me know if that approach works better for you...
 
Given that these ship were in port...and thus not buttoned up (no water tight doors closed, no damage repair parties on standby, no pumping stations ready to activate, etc. ) the simple answer is to includes the damage...or because this is very specific case with limited number of aircraft...treated each flight as a single aircraft each with its own torpedo which would increase the number of attacking aircraft by 4.

--- Rich
 
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