Monday

The first day of battling people where at the pond early and the tables were filled up. Excitement was in the air for NATS to start. The Allies stated on the left near the ropeline. Early in the battle Leif’s Derflinger lost rudder control and he was shot up pretty bad by Bob & Andy’s NCs. Chris K got his VDT sidemounts into the Barham. Jeff & Tyler drove around creating havoc. They hit Chris’ NC and the Warspite pretty hard. John’s Crown Prince was out of control and made it of his five. Dave & Don took their ships into try and finish off Leif but he made in off his five and they got shot up by the VDTs. Dallas’ Baden sank near the right side campaign ports. The sortie wound down and captains got ready for sortie two.

The 2^nd sortie started with the same set up, Allies on the left, Axis on the right. Jeff & Tyler came along the far side of the pond to hit the Allies from the left side. There main target was the Iowa. She had four NCs in the area to help keep her on top of the water. Dirty’s Kongo got into some trouble as Tim’s S Carolina and Tom’s We Vee blasted away at her. Dirty got away from the furball. Ron’s NC was not so lucky and got too close to the Jeff & Tyler team. He rolled over and sank. Just as the drivers got the NC out of the water Tim’s South Carolina had also sunk. Tim had some pretty big holes in his ship. Turns out he had forgot to put silk span on the back side of the balsa wood. Shortly after battle started again DW’s VDT sank. He had turned off his pump during the man in the water and had not turned it back on. The We Vee got tangled up with the other two VDTs and took a pounding. Paul’s Kongo came in to help the VDTs finish off the We Vee. Tiger & Warspite tried to cover the US battleship but could not keep the sharks away and Tom sank. On the right side of the pond TMGBC had been grounded and was getting shot up by three NCs and an Iowa. Andy’s NC got close in and he ripped half the blades off of each prop. Good thing Jeff & Tyler were close to empty. Peter took a huge beating sank when he was pushed off the beach with his five over. A little time latter the Iowa sank, Brian reported some gunk in his pump. Paul ran his Kongo across the pond to help get Andy and almost sank himself when he got there. He had to sit and pump before he could try and put Andy down. Then He found out he was out of bbs too. Bob managed to push the grounded NC off the shore just in case some other Axis came by. Ty finished te sortie by chasing around Paul trying to get him to run himself under, but Paul made it off his five. The battle seamed to be going the Allies way but the Axis pulled out a victory with the 2^nd sortie damage and sinks they handed out.

Campain battle also started well for the Allies. Tim Becket was running is Gloire, painted light grey. Bob also had a light grey cruiser of the same class. Tim kept telling Rick the he was an Axis cruiser as they were shooting targets together. Rick saw Bob’s cruiser by the targets and let it line up and unload on his Adm Sheer. There were a couple very large holes that lead to Rick’s sink a short time latter. The Allies had launched two CVLs and two LSTs to start their convoy runs. The CVLs made the forward run, one was too damaged to continue and the other other made a return run. She just made it into port with a little freeboard left. John P also lost his Crown Price in the first half of the battle. The Axis launch two convoys, Peter’s Red Freighter and DW’s White Freighter. Peter’s convoy ship was sunk and DW made a forward run. The LSTs were running back and forth, as they would for the entire hour. By the Axis targets a few VDTs and Dirty’s Kongo were on guard duty. A couple Allied cruisers put some sterns into the Kongo. Andy brought his Baltimore’s trip sterns to the target board and dumped them into him. This desheeted about 3 sections of his bow just above the waterline. Steve’s freighter was sunk on a forward run and Nathaniel’s Prince Eugen was lost. Things were going well for the Allies so far. The Axis launched their heavy hitters at the halfway point. Derflinger (Tyler), Mutsu (Jeff) and Bismarck (Tim) all hit the water. What they found was an Iowa & NC sinking TMGBC. They took down the Iowa and had the taste of blood to feed their sinking frenzy. Next on the menu was Bob’s Washington. Andy & Bob had put their NC’s in and started to dump sidemounts into Dirty. But he made it off his 5 and limped into port. Bob had taken a couple of uncalled rams from a VDT and sank when he started to run from the Axis heavy hitters. Andy’s NC was next on the menu. Without his wingman Andy was another tasty meal. Meanwhile the Axis sank a small Allied tanker and Ron’s freighter. Ron’s St Louis, Ty’s Fyle & Chris’ Figi were also lost. The Allies were running short on warships. The only ship on the water was Bob’s Montcalm. It was losing battery power and could not get away from the Axis heavies. Bob was calling for any Allied cruiser to get back on the water or the Axis would get a 5,000 point strategic victory. Don & Tim put their cruisers out and took the pressure off. Though Tim’s Atlanta was pretty shot up and sank. The Axis took this shortage of warships to their advantage and ran three more convoy ships. After the Axis extension campaign ended and everyone thought the Allies had been crushed. But when the scores were totaled the Allies had won by 700 points. The victory was won by the number of convoy runs completed. The Allies even had one target left standing, the board was sticking out of the water making the target hard to hit.

The REAL excitement started latter back at the hotel. Around 9-10pm a storm blew in that took some of the roof off the hotel. Several guys on 1st floor had water leaking in. It was pouring out of Dirty & Gerald's smoke detector. I wonder what the 2nd floor looked like. We also had enough hail to cover the ground with a couple inches. It looked like snow. Several trees blew down around the lot. Power was out from then until about 4am. Turns out it was the first tornado in the area in 40 years. When Ron drove out to the pond to check on the tents that night hit ran over some roofing with nails sticking out of them and had to get 4 new tires.

Tuesday

Battle was delayed today because on of the power outage. We did not get started until 11am. The wind had picked up and made enough waves to push our ships around. When we finally did hit the water the Allies found themselves ahead in ships and units, mostly due to Dirty & Gerald not being at the pond. In the first sortie the Axis lost Steve’s Bismark, Peter’s TMGBC & Leif’s Derflinger while the Allies only lost Tom’s We Vee. Much like Monday they were winning after the first sortie. Today they would see if they could keep up in the 2^nd sortie. The 2^nd sortie saw more good news for the Allies. Flugel had a pump motor burn out very early in the sortie and sank. Peter’s Andria Doria and Steve’s Prince Whillem also sank. Paul’s Kirishima and Don’s NC went down too. Near the end of the battle The Allied NC & Iowa fleet was chasing Jeff to the far side of the pond. Jeff was able to get away but Tyler had been hiding on his five down there. Bob broke off from the group following Jeff and started after Tyler. He got a good angle on him and ran him into the campaign port. Tyler took a few sidemounts until the rest of the fleet arrived and finished him off. As Tyler was getting sunk Bob saw his pump not putting out any water and slowly sank next to shore. His wingman Andy came over to shoot Tyler and instead shot the Washington. How can your wingman with the same ship as yours misidentify a ship and shoot it. The class 4 for a class 6 sink was not a good trade but putting Tyler down at the end of the battle made the Allies feel good. This battle was a big win for the Allies, 10,000 points, it got them back into NATS quickly.

The afternoon battle evened up with the two missing Japs getting out to the pond. The sun was starting to get lower and made a really bad reflection on the water. It was hard to look across the pond at your ship. Battling with silhouettes was the way to go. Very early in the battle Eric Grossaint’s cruiser sunk. He did have two holes in the ship, from some long range shooting by Lou. Chris’ VDT went out of control and drifted down the shore. The other Axis slow ships surrounded it and he took very little damage, for a ship that could not move. Palmer tried to ring the West Virginia in a couple of times and was sunk for his effort. Steve’s pump motor died leading to the Bismarck’s lightly damaged sink. Durring Steve’s man in the water Leif turned off his pump, and forgot to turn it back on, this was a common thing to do during the week. When he remembered, just in time, Bob brought the Washington in for a few shots while the Derflinger pumped out. Bob empited one sidemount and spun around for the other side. Just as that one was empited the Cavalry arrived in the form of Jeff, Tyler & Paul. They started chasing Bob down the shore. He used TMGBC as a blocker and escaped. The Cavalry next found Chris’ NC chewing on TMGBC and sank it. In the 2^nd sortie the Cavarly found Dave’s ID all along by the campaign ports and put tons of sidemounts in his hull. Dave got away momentarily with a man in the water call. He would be tracked down and sank with a staggering 96-14-61. The waves finally got to Leif and his first sortie damage took him down. Just as the diver got Lief’s ship out of the water Dave’s sank. Foster got caught in the campaign targets and ports with The Bike. He managed to make an impressive spin and get out of the trap but not before he took enough damaged to put the cruiser down. Admiral Tim’s S. Carolina also found the bottom. At the very end of the sortie the Axis were chasing Ron’s NC. Trying to get into position to fire the last of their bbs Tyler ram sank the big ship. Despite this the Axis came back from the big defeat in the morning to win the afternoon battle by over 5,000 points.

Wednesday Cruiser Battle

Axis vs.Allied fleets

Axis started off with an already large advantage because the allies had the giant Baltimore with its large size making it a big target. While it’s good for shooting up convoy ships in campaign but not much for a cruiser battle.

First sortie Tom's Nashville was the first to get shot up by Bob and Tyler. Steve Dickow went out of control shortly into battle and was circling around at the far end of shore. Peter was the first to sink with a pump that was not working, followed by the Atlanta with a failed pump as well.

Second sorite Peter went back out with still no pump sat close to shore and called 5 made it pretty far in but sank before it was up. Palmer seemed to be the main target as his pump stream was working pretty hard from the first sortie finally sinking half way in with 70-4-3. Tyler was shooting up Andy for the last half of the sortie.

Third sortie starts off with Bob unloading on the Atlanta right as it looses rudder control. Bob and Tyler then chase after Tim, the Atlanta shortly takes to much damage and sinks with 58-0-2. Ty seemed to be the next target lots of shots being unloaded but Ty had a final score of 30-0-3 no sink. Towards the end everyone ran out of BB's so it became a ram battle. Ty was trying to ram with his pointy bow but his ship did not have enough mass to do much damage so everyone rammed him back and finally Randy drove right over the top of Ty and sent him under. It was pretty hilarious YouTube moment

1 on 1's

Clash of theTitans!

Ty vs Tyler class 1

We were going to have a huge class one battle, as huge as a class 1 battle can be. There should have been Dave's Sri Aruthia, which was not working, Peter’s destroyer, did not get finished, and Bob’s CVL. But he plugged his solenoids in backwards moving the radio from his Montcalm to his CVL and fried the TD switch. So that left only Tyler as a class 1 ship, but Ty being a small class 2 ship pinned one of his guns and it became the mighty Clash of the Titans. The battle was horribly boring though they just pecked shots at each other not causing much damage at all, final scores were Tyler 4-0-1 and Ty 3-1-0 in 2 sorties.

Tyler vs Ryan

They both went at it pretty fast and hard exchanging a lot of shots battle only lasted about 4 minutes and Tyler sank the VDT scores of Tyler 19-5-11 and Ryan 10-3-22.

Fuson vs So Carolina

The battle started with the two ships trading a few haymaker shots. Tyler encouraged this hoping to see more carnage. There was not a lot of carnage. Final score Tim 18-1-7 Brandon 10-3-12.

The 2^nd Annual Much Discussed (Ty vs Kessler)

This battle stared out with a hiss. Kessler must have forgot to load his stern gun as it was blowing air. Ty heard this and said “Great now if you’ll just go dead in the water.” Ty let Chris come in and fix his gun. The kind jester was for naught as Chris was not able to get it working. Latter in the battle Ty found that his bow sidemount would not work. After Chris emptied his two guns Ty chased him around the pond. Scores were: Ty 60-2-9 Chris 30-2-9

Harry Potter Sucks (Randy vs Tyler)

This battle was to see if Harry Potter sucks or not. Fighting for Harry was Randy and the Tiger. Fight against Harry was Tyler and the Derflinger. The two fast battlercruisers moved around the pond more then most 1on1s. Randy was trying to get Tyler to chase his stern guns. Tyler did so carefully looking for an opening for his deadly haymaker. Tyler found his spot and used the shore to catch Randy. Tyler chased and ate all of Randy’s stern guns but got his bow sidemount on target. Randy was pumping hard and called 5. Randy started to back up and Tyler chased him, Randy back too far and could not recover. Harry Potter does suck. Scores were: Tyler 28-2-0 Randy 11-2-21.

Night Battle

Allied Admiral Tim’s main goal for NATS was to win night battle. His fleet started battle with a 10-7 disadvantage in ships and a 46-37 disadvantage in units. Early in the battle some of the Axis captains were talking about a ship the was out of control. Andy & Bob went to go find, then sink it. They found Paul’s Kongo sitting alone down by the shore. Just as we closed in he started shooting us and running. Turns out it was part of a trap, pretty good work. Since Lief’s Derflinger is painted white it was easy to see. The Allies dumped a large amount of stern guns into it and Leif sank. The rest of night battle was dark without the big white ship reflecting our lights. No one really knows what happened after that. The End. Leif 100-12-15. Allies Own The Night!!!