I didn’t go to Colours today, which is the first time that I’ve missed the show in years. It’s only forty five minutes up the road but, now that I’m working part time and have far less money to spend, it just isn’t a good idea. I’d just buy loads of stuff that I don’t really need, can’t afford and end up shoving it on top of the lead pile. Instead, I decided to have a good rummage in the aforementioned lead mountain of wargaming ‚gubbins‘ to find something that I could tackle later on this year. 

It didn’t take me long to dig out some Navwar 1/3000th scale Cold War era Soviet and British ships, which I had bought a few months ago, popped in a box and completely forgotten about. These were for a ‚What If?‘ naval clash during the Indonesian Confrontation of the mid-1960’s. The Soviet ships represent a fair bit of the Indonesian navy including an ex-Soviet Sverdlov class light cruiser with accompanying destroyer escort. There’s some corvettes, submarines and landing craft too.

Extensive Research

The Royal Navy task force includes all the warships you could possibly want for a 1960’s East of Suez operation. I have fixed wing and commando carriers with an ASW/AD frigate escort, a helicopter cruiser, a couple of destroyers, an amphibious landing element and some submarines, all supported by the RFA. I based this lot on what I’d read about the Indonesian Confrontation but also on what I just fancied adding on, specifically some Leander class frigates (my favourites) and HMS Blake, even though the latter was being converted at the time.

I also planned to use the 1/600th scale Tumbling Dice FAA aircraft that I’ve already got for the air element of the task force and for the Indonesian opposition, which was very well equipped with all sorts of Soviet aircraft including Tu-16 Badgers (blimey!). This would give me lots of options for potential games using Naval Command or possibly Shipwreck! I like the look of both of these sets of rules, which are well supported by the respective authors and would be ideal for just this sort of thing.

I may well have a crack at this as a project over the half term holidays at the end of October?