Background
The Battle of Cape Matapan (Greek: Ναυμαχία του Ταινάρου) was a Second World War naval engagement between British and Axis forces, fought from 27–29 March 1941. The cape is on the south-west coast of the Peloponnesian peninsula of Greece. Following the interception of Italian signals by the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, ships of the Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy, under the command of Admiral Andrew Cunningham, intercepted and sank or severely damaged several ships of the Italian Regia Marina under Squadron-Vice-Admiral Angelo Iachino. The opening actions of the battle are also known in Italy as the Battle of Gaudo.
In late March 1941, as British ships of the Mediterranean Fleet covered troop movements to Greece, Mavis Batey, a cryptographer at Bletchley Park, made a breakthrough, reading the Italian naval Enigma for the first time. The first message, the cryptic “Today’s the day minus three,”[2] was followed three days later by a second message reporting the sailing of an Italian battle fleet comprising one battleship, six heavy and two light cruisers, plus destroyers to attack the merchant convoys supplying British forces. As always with Enigma, the intelligence breakthrough was concealed from the Italians by ensuring there was a plausible reason for the Allies to have detected and intercepted their fleet. In this case, it was a carefully directed reconnaissance plane.
As a further deception, Admiral Cunningham made a surreptitious exit after dark from a golf club in Alexandria to avoid being seen boarding his flagship, the battleship HMS Warspite. He had made a point of arriving at the club the same afternoon with his suitcase as if for an overnight stay, and spent time on the golf course within sight of the Japanese consul. An evening party on his flagship was advertised for that night but was never meant to take place.
At the same time, there was a failure of intelligence on the Axis side. The Italians had been wrongly informed by the Germans that the Mediterranean Fleet had only one operational battleship and no aircraft carriers. In fact the Royal Navy had three battleships, while the damaged British aircraft carrier Illustrious had been replaced by HMS Formidable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cape_Matapan
The Game
We decided to take one of the scenarios out of the Victory at Sea core rules and opted for the cruiser action. This pared off two roughly equal forces against one another. However, as we did not have all the correct forces, we replaced some of the ships with other options. The most notable was replacing the Arethea class cruisers with Diana and Edinburgh class.
The Italians moved to engage the British at close range, while trying to pick off their destroyers, so they could decide the even with torpedoes. The Italian gunner seems to have the better day (unlike historically) and they were able to get the advantage. The British tried to concentrate on the cruisers, but without much luck. The game came down to a knife fight with torpedoes as the Italian players wished. It was bloody, but the Italians were able to achieve victory.
– Manteuffel