Question:
(Rules 20F3, 22B, and 34E) The minelaying rules seem to make mines excessively effective; in particular, the lack of breakdowns for the big Allied TFs seems to make sweeping mines ridiculously expensive. The rules seem to prohibit naval units firing AA at mine-laying aircraft in their hex — is this correct?
Answer:
One slick trick would be to wait for the invasion armada to end a movement step, then do a night mine-laying air operation in the hex (the rules do not seem to prohibit this, even if the Allies are not sailing at night). There would be no AA, and only night fighters to contend with. If successful, even one mine point could inflict very heavy losses, far more than seem to have occurred historically.
Naval units don’t fire AA at air units on aerial minelaying missions, as the air units do not lay the mines in the part of the hex where the ships currently are. (The hexes represent a huge expanse of area, with it being impractical to impossible for ships to cover the whole extent.)
Air units dropping mines in a hex containing enemy naval units at sea, thereby doing all sorts of harm to the ships at the start of their next naval movement step, can be abusive. However, it requires numerous sorties over the course of a turn to lay enough mines to qualify for a mine point, so the enemy can’t catch the ships by surprise through a single overnight mine laying. The game’s sequencing of activities attempted to show this:
- A player may aerially lay mines by flying a transport mission, which can be done only in the movement and exploitation phases of his own player turn (Rule 20F).
- Enemy naval units in the hex are unaffected at this time, since per Rule 34E1 they check for mine damage if they enter or put to sea in the hex (they are already in the hex, so this doesn’t count) or if they start a friendly naval movement step in the hex (since it is not their player turn, this can’t occur at this time).
- After the mine-laying player is finished his turn, the enemy player turn begins. The enemy naval units now can be affected by the mines, but before they do check for damage, automatic mine clearing occurs if the mines are in various coastal hexes or beyond the range of certain ports (Rule 34E3).
I had thought the above sequencing would take care of things in most typical cases. However, reexamining the point leads me to believe that when automatic mine clearing does not occur, the naval units in the hex have a big problem in the game, whereas in reality this would not occur in such a fashion.
The best way to handle this situation is: When a player aerially lays mines in a hex containing enemy naval units at sea, then during the immediately following player turn those naval units (only) ignore the presence of those mines (only) during the naval unit’s first naval movement step (only) of the turn.
Source:
Errata published at http://www.hmsgrd.com/Files/Europa/Second Front/Second Front.pdf
