Duel near Hampton Roads, New Jersey vs. Richelieu, September 1943.

Duel near Hampton Roads, New Jersey vs. Richelieu, September 1943.

A Harpoon Commander's Edition scenario for the EC2003 Battle for the Atlantic Ocean Battleset and the HCWW-101110 World Wars I&II Platform Database.

This is a tiny scenario designed for play testing battleships and main guns, and playable both by the US/Blue or the Vichy France/Red side, to avoid spoilers is better to play the first time the Vichy France/Red side.

Image: oficial USN photo contributed by Joe Radingan at navysource.org. New Jersey and Richelieu on 7 September 1943 near Old Point Comfort, Hampton Roads.

The history of the French warships fleed to the exotic French Colonies and elsewhere after the debacle and the Nazi German takeover in May 1940 can compose a great epic saga, few times reflected in the mainstream narrative (perhaps only in a few movies, as "Casablanca" or "To Have and Have Not", with the opening titles showing the old aircraft carrier Bearn historically anchored in Martinique) or even in the military history books probably because opposed perceptions about too many actions (Mers-el-Kebir, Dakar, Casablanca, Operation Torch, Madagascar ...).

That of the battleship Richelieu history was one of those very interesting careers.

At the time of the German invasion she was 95% completed, escaped from Brest to Dakar (now in Senegal), and survived attacks by fast motor boats and Swordfish torpedo planes from the HMS Hermes on 7 July 1940, the day after the attacks on Mers-el-Kebir. After, from 23 September 1940, fight by two days against the British and Free French elements of Force M, including the old battleships HMS Barham and HMS Resolution, and the carrier HMS Ark Royal, succeeding on her defence of Dakar and preventing the capture of his strategic port.

On December 1942, after Operation Torch, the French forces in West Africa joined the Allies, under the authority of Admiral Darlan in Algiers. As consequence, Richelieu sailed to New York, to be refitted in the Navy Yard from February 1943 for benefit of the Allied side.

Later she was employed monitoring the German warships in Norwegian waters, on the Normandy landing and with the British Eastern Fleet in the Far East. Post-War participate with gun support in the Indochina War, and employed as artillery training ship to end as accommodation ship from 1956.

After both fitted, the battleships New Jersey and Richelieu sometimes anchored side-by-side in Old Point Comfort at the mouth of Hampton Roads, Virginia Peninsula, on fall 1943. And the Richelieu configuration of the DB reflects correctly her August 1943-early 1944 fitting.

On this alternate history scenario the ambiguous Vichy General Henri Giraud keeps loyal to the Axis in one of his many political doubts and don't rejoined the Allies, Vichy France persist after the assassination of both co-presidents of the Comite Francais de la Liberation Nationale, Darlan and De Gaulle. On this climate, officers and ranks of the Richelieu decide to escape with his now almost new warship to the old France, and don't combat his apparently victorious northern neighbours, under the cover of the night and of a strong gale, with the weather precluding the use of shore-based aircrafts neither warships smaller than capital ships ...

Enrique Mas, November 2013.