#S5 HMS Southampton now Gloucester - Done

Desperate is more evocative and thus my preference.

I am happy with the 12 mark

Cant think of any

Harassing Fire is basically a flavor/emergency/nice if you can get a hit SA. The main attraction is Desperate which is the only way to get 9 AA on a UK ship except for Vanguard or Early Warning Radar.

6 dice sixes only vs.

3 armor 26%
4 armor 26%
5 armor 6%
6 armor 6%
7 armor 1%
8 armor 1%

Whatever the second SA, that D. AA is strong, especially considering mnnorthstars point about it being the only one and on a 39 date. That to me should keep the cost from the lower quoted.

I was thinking previous about a rescue type SA or stand by cripple or whatever but not sure it would add much.

Like weeds says, she was already short of AA ammunition when sent and sunk attempting to go to the rescue of Greyhound. The latter had been detached to check a possible sighting of German sea borne landing barges around the small islands north west of Crete, whilst the fleet generally withdrew south, out of air attack range. As it was, it would have only been able to rescue Greyhounds survivors had it got to the scene, as that ship was already in the process of being overwhelmed. Fiji, then attempting a similar rescue of Gloucester saw she herself was beyond help and turned back. She nearly made it out of danger but was unluckily spotted and sunk.

I also remember reference being made in the book on Gloucester (untold story, the authors father was lost on it as chief yeoman), that the crew were considered experienced and well tested gunners in either general gunnery or AA gunnery (can't remember which now). They also should have been on their way home, as they had been in commission since a few months before the war started but were committed to this last operation. The casualties were very high on Greyhound & Gloucester. Plenty went into the water and were just about in sight of land but an effective allied rescue couldn't be made that close to enemy shores. Pitifully few were eventually picked up a few days later (Heels In Line, the only survivor memoir written) by the very German seaborne traffic between Crete, they had attempted to intercept. What a waste of that experienced pre-war regular manpower but sadly only one example of many.

Which substitution?

I can see why harassing fire was suggested for that action.

For what its worth I wouldn't go against the original suggestion, its just the cost of 12 I don't see on it.

We have an AA SA that may be a little too high, and a gunnery SA that is close to worthless.

I just went through Hap's spreadsheet and every ship that has Desperate AA has AA 6 or less. Most are AA 4 or 5. So gaz01 is correct that this is a big bump for a 1939 ship. In fact, I question that any light cruiser should have a native AA7 that early. So we have a typical problem of RB being a little too generous with the Sheffield with AA and low cost, and that makes it difficult to slide in a sister ship. Similar to the Haguro problem with IJA heavy cruisers!

Since AA7 appears to be generous in its own right we should probably stay away from an AA boost even though the name of the SA seems to fit, in actuality she was unable to put up such a fight. IN the after-action the analysis was that she would have been overwhelmed even if she had a full ammo load.

Sheffield may be one point "generous" on cost as well. But we have to work with that or we will create a bookmark. So we need to be aiming for a cost 12 or 13. At cost 12 we need equivalency, but a different flavor. For 13 we need to be sure it is actually a little better than Sheffield in some tangible way.

For a cost of 12 I would suggest one really good SA that would be the equivalent of Sheffield's two pretty darn good SAs.

For a cost of 13 we would need one equivalent SA and one that is noticably better.