Part 3 of Naval Rules
So where are we? We're combining two sets of rules, Seekrieg 4 and Battle Stations. Actually we're combining more than that. Torpedoes have to be factored in, and those are always a pain.
What is the gunnery procedure?
First we measure the range from the bridge of the firing ship to the closest point of the target. We check table H-2 of the Seekrieg 4 rules. Cross-reference that with table I-1 to get the number of shells hitting the target.
Second we go to the hit table in Battle Stations. We have the starting value of the ship from its type (Old Pre-dreadnought, for example, is 01). We throw one pair of decimal dice to see where the shell lands. If there's another hit, we throw 1d10 and add the value to the first for that hit.
Third, we go to table R2 of Seekrieg for penetration, but check armor type on table Q1.
Fourth, we read off the value of the hit and mark off the appropriate damage.
What is the torpedo procedure?
This comes from a set of rules I pulled out of a magazine. First, we throw 3d6 and score a hit on an 18 or 19 after applying modifiers. Second, we throw 1d100 and it is a dud on a score of 1-21. We then throw 1d6 to see where the torpedo hit on the ship. We then go to the ship chart determined for Battle Stations and mark off the appropriate places. Remember, these rules are for 1895-1912.
On each turn after the torpedo hit we check for progressive flooding. It could get worse, it might not. This should really be a function of crew training (anyone who has ever read in The Shattered Sword about the Japanese damage control procedures would cry).
What Then?
Some ships sink, others limp away with damage. Our surviving ships then shoot at each other again. Repeat as often as needed.
What of Movement?
Let's keep it simple. Use General Quarters 2. And that includes the turning rules. Or, if you want real simple, let's use Avalon Hill's Jutland turn and move indicators.
Will it work?
I don't see any insuperable obstacles. And this can all be done on a tabletop so nobody has to grub around on their hands and knees and use poor eyesight.
Back to story writing.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Friday, December 08, 2006
Naval Rules...Part 2
What follows presumes you don't want to use a computer to do all of this.
What are the fundamental issues of naval combat. The simplest is that if you let the water in the ship will sink. What can do this? Holes in the hull, they decrease the reserve buoyancy of a ship. Reduce it to less than zero and the ship becomes one with the bottom of the ocean. This is such a simple concept that everyone except the State of Washington EPA can understand it (they were ruled negligent in making a bridge sink, but that's another story).
So we need to calculate the reserve buoyancy of a ship. This is a long and laborious process for a set of wargaming rules. So instead we pick a value that is easily calculable, say the volume of the hull or of a box the hull would fit in. Everyone should be able to calculate length x width x depth (from waterline to keel). If you can't, you're hopeless. Go pay good money to learn what your school should have taught you, hire a lawyer, and sue the school district for misfeasance or something.
How does the water get in? Obviously, holes in the hull, but also captain's will let in water to keep the ship on an even keel. What causes those holes? Torpedoes, shells, and rams. We'll rule out the latter, these aren't galleys.
But what about shells? What about fire, the most dreaded ship killer around? KMS Bismarck sank, in large part, because the Germans scuttled a wreck (by the way, what does it say about the self-confidence of a Navy that designs ships with scuttling charges?). The British had shot the German battleship to pieces with their 14" and 16" guns (though the 8" guns also employed helped, too). The IJN Akagi, Kaga, and Soryu were gutted by fires from bomb hits, but all three carriers had to be sunk by torpedoes from other Japanese ships? The German battlecruiser Lutzow at Jutland sank, in large part, because two 12" hits from HMS Invincible let some 600 tons of water into the hull, initiating bulkhead collapse and progressive flooding that doomed the German ship. But 22 other hits had an impact, too. At the same battle the SMS Seydlitz took 21 major caliber hits, and a torpedo, and was still (barely) afloat at the end of the battle.
It is customary in naval rules to assign shells a point value. What is interesting is that this is generally by weight, as handy a number as any. It can't be by explosive effect. A 15" shell contains less than 200 pounds of explosives, making them, in effect, smaller than a 200 pound general purpose bomb. But when you explode it inside a ship you knock down bulkheads, and if the shell goes off close enough to the waterline (as happened with the Lutzow) you get water flooding into the ship.
So, for quick references, shells are worth their weight in poundage. Ships are worth their weight in hull volume. But, and this is a big but, a shell hit, say, on the searchlight platform, while bad for the crew manning the searchlights, doesn't effect the watertight integrity of the ship. Thus we need a modification factor of some kind to account for this. We need to see where the shell hits, and go from there.
Now 30 years ago there was a set of rules called Battle Stations that did just that. It was written by somebody who, I believe, had damage control experience. It was ideal for actions where a player ran 2-4 ships. You had all the things you needed for a superior naval gaming experience (as we found out in the dozen or so Battles of Bunghole Strait). The authors even had the modifiers so you didn't have to worry about a hit on the steam whistle causing the ship to flood.
The only thing I had a quibble with (after a lot of experience with the rules) was the gunnery. It was range estimation, and that is an acquirable skill. Of course there are tricks you can do to improve your accuracy. A friend, playing Fletcher Pratt, used to bring a camera to 'take pictures' of the fighting. It also had a range finder good to less than 1". Another guy I knew was a Master Carpenter, and could accurately guesstimate ranges out to 50', and usually be off by no more than 1-2". And there are people I know who are like me, with one or more eye unable to acquire that accuracy, and not about to crawl around on the floor (our knees can't take it). So we need something else.
A side note - professionals had 9', 11' and 15' rangefinders, why should we rely upon our own eyesight? I know, it's more "fun". But let's look for an option.
Enter Seekrieg, I forget which edition. You factor in all sorts of things, and kabango, a table tells you how many hits. You throw the dice, see how many hits you managed, and then roll dice to see what got hit.
Gee, we've gone full circle. Instead of developing a set of rules, we now have the rudiments of a combination of two sets of rules for gaming.
Now for the alternate idea. You go buy a copy of Fire When Ready, and you let the computer do everything. A bit abstract, and you don't know what each shell does, but fun. And did I ever tell you what happened when we reduced the training levels to 1-2? It seems an 18,000 ton pre-dreadnought battleship makes a dandy ram, especially when you run it into a light cruiser.
That's a story for another time. In Part 3 we'll look at exactly how to merge the two rules to produce something playable.
What follows presumes you don't want to use a computer to do all of this.
What are the fundamental issues of naval combat. The simplest is that if you let the water in the ship will sink. What can do this? Holes in the hull, they decrease the reserve buoyancy of a ship. Reduce it to less than zero and the ship becomes one with the bottom of the ocean. This is such a simple concept that everyone except the State of Washington EPA can understand it (they were ruled negligent in making a bridge sink, but that's another story).
So we need to calculate the reserve buoyancy of a ship. This is a long and laborious process for a set of wargaming rules. So instead we pick a value that is easily calculable, say the volume of the hull or of a box the hull would fit in. Everyone should be able to calculate length x width x depth (from waterline to keel). If you can't, you're hopeless. Go pay good money to learn what your school should have taught you, hire a lawyer, and sue the school district for misfeasance or something.
How does the water get in? Obviously, holes in the hull, but also captain's will let in water to keep the ship on an even keel. What causes those holes? Torpedoes, shells, and rams. We'll rule out the latter, these aren't galleys.
But what about shells? What about fire, the most dreaded ship killer around? KMS Bismarck sank, in large part, because the Germans scuttled a wreck (by the way, what does it say about the self-confidence of a Navy that designs ships with scuttling charges?). The British had shot the German battleship to pieces with their 14" and 16" guns (though the 8" guns also employed helped, too). The IJN Akagi, Kaga, and Soryu were gutted by fires from bomb hits, but all three carriers had to be sunk by torpedoes from other Japanese ships? The German battlecruiser Lutzow at Jutland sank, in large part, because two 12" hits from HMS Invincible let some 600 tons of water into the hull, initiating bulkhead collapse and progressive flooding that doomed the German ship. But 22 other hits had an impact, too. At the same battle the SMS Seydlitz took 21 major caliber hits, and a torpedo, and was still (barely) afloat at the end of the battle.
It is customary in naval rules to assign shells a point value. What is interesting is that this is generally by weight, as handy a number as any. It can't be by explosive effect. A 15" shell contains less than 200 pounds of explosives, making them, in effect, smaller than a 200 pound general purpose bomb. But when you explode it inside a ship you knock down bulkheads, and if the shell goes off close enough to the waterline (as happened with the Lutzow) you get water flooding into the ship.
So, for quick references, shells are worth their weight in poundage. Ships are worth their weight in hull volume. But, and this is a big but, a shell hit, say, on the searchlight platform, while bad for the crew manning the searchlights, doesn't effect the watertight integrity of the ship. Thus we need a modification factor of some kind to account for this. We need to see where the shell hits, and go from there.
Now 30 years ago there was a set of rules called Battle Stations that did just that. It was written by somebody who, I believe, had damage control experience. It was ideal for actions where a player ran 2-4 ships. You had all the things you needed for a superior naval gaming experience (as we found out in the dozen or so Battles of Bunghole Strait). The authors even had the modifiers so you didn't have to worry about a hit on the steam whistle causing the ship to flood.
The only thing I had a quibble with (after a lot of experience with the rules) was the gunnery. It was range estimation, and that is an acquirable skill. Of course there are tricks you can do to improve your accuracy. A friend, playing Fletcher Pratt, used to bring a camera to 'take pictures' of the fighting. It also had a range finder good to less than 1". Another guy I knew was a Master Carpenter, and could accurately guesstimate ranges out to 50', and usually be off by no more than 1-2". And there are people I know who are like me, with one or more eye unable to acquire that accuracy, and not about to crawl around on the floor (our knees can't take it). So we need something else.
A side note - professionals had 9', 11' and 15' rangefinders, why should we rely upon our own eyesight? I know, it's more "fun". But let's look for an option.
Enter Seekrieg, I forget which edition. You factor in all sorts of things, and kabango, a table tells you how many hits. You throw the dice, see how many hits you managed, and then roll dice to see what got hit.
Gee, we've gone full circle. Instead of developing a set of rules, we now have the rudiments of a combination of two sets of rules for gaming.
Now for the alternate idea. You go buy a copy of Fire When Ready, and you let the computer do everything. A bit abstract, and you don't know what each shell does, but fun. And did I ever tell you what happened when we reduced the training levels to 1-2? It seems an 18,000 ton pre-dreadnought battleship makes a dandy ram, especially when you run it into a light cruiser.
That's a story for another time. In Part 3 we'll look at exactly how to merge the two rules to produce something playable.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Just What We Need Is...
...another set of naval rules (Part 1).
I've long been dissatisfied with most naval rules I've tried. I'm torn between the duties of an Admiral, in which case I don't care about specific damage to a ship, or I revel in specifics of each round fired that hits. It isn't helped by John Campbell's book: Jutland, an Analysis of the Fighting. Mr. Campbell utilizes gunnery logs and dockyard reports to track the damage to each ship as it occurrs. It's stuff like this that makes me want to revel in the messy details.
On the other hand, when you're Sir John Jellicoe and you're handling the entire Grand Fleet, you don't care that HMS Superb took a hit on the compass platform, unless it causes a disruption in the line or forces Superb's speed to fall off. For that sort of thing the rules General Quarters are idea.
Now friends know I have a fascination for World War 1 (some have called it a sick fascination). But this war spelled the end of the old way of doing things, and ushered in a completely new era, complete with a new religion (socialism/bolshevism) whose basic tenets must be taken on faith (because the evidence does not support them). In 2006 we are still dealing with the repercusions from some of the decisions made between July 28th, 1914 and November 11, 1918.
One of the outgrowths of this fascination is a close study of naval operations in that period. And in particular, what happened on the late afternoon and evening of May 31, 1916 (the Battle of Jutland). Hasty decisions, or non-decisions influenced naval operations in December of 1942 (Battle of the Barents Sea), and the autumn of 1982 (the Falklands War). And one of the most interesting aspects is what made three British battlecruisers explode and sink?
I've dug into this, following what I could. The Internet has helped, especially the reports of diving expeditions on the wrecks. What follows is what I've been able to piece together and represents my conclusions:
Examination of testimony and the damage to the wreck of HMS Indefatigable suggests the following:
...another set of naval rules (Part 1).
I've long been dissatisfied with most naval rules I've tried. I'm torn between the duties of an Admiral, in which case I don't care about specific damage to a ship, or I revel in specifics of each round fired that hits. It isn't helped by John Campbell's book: Jutland, an Analysis of the Fighting. Mr. Campbell utilizes gunnery logs and dockyard reports to track the damage to each ship as it occurrs. It's stuff like this that makes me want to revel in the messy details.
On the other hand, when you're Sir John Jellicoe and you're handling the entire Grand Fleet, you don't care that HMS Superb took a hit on the compass platform, unless it causes a disruption in the line or forces Superb's speed to fall off. For that sort of thing the rules General Quarters are idea.
Now friends know I have a fascination for World War 1 (some have called it a sick fascination). But this war spelled the end of the old way of doing things, and ushered in a completely new era, complete with a new religion (socialism/bolshevism) whose basic tenets must be taken on faith (because the evidence does not support them). In 2006 we are still dealing with the repercusions from some of the decisions made between July 28th, 1914 and November 11, 1918.
One of the outgrowths of this fascination is a close study of naval operations in that period. And in particular, what happened on the late afternoon and evening of May 31, 1916 (the Battle of Jutland). Hasty decisions, or non-decisions influenced naval operations in December of 1942 (Battle of the Barents Sea), and the autumn of 1982 (the Falklands War). And one of the most interesting aspects is what made three British battlecruisers explode and sink?
I've dug into this, following what I could. The Internet has helped, especially the reports of diving expeditions on the wrecks. What follows is what I've been able to piece together and represents my conclusions:
Examination of testimony and the damage to the wreck of HMS Indefatigable suggests the following:
- one or more hits on the Indefatigable that cause some damage. This is conjecture, but evidence from SMS von der Tann appears to indicate several hits.
- a hit aft below the waterline that caused catastrophic flooding. Captain Sowerby, Captain of HMS Indefatigable, survived briefly, being supported in the water by two survivors from the spotting top. He told them he thought the ship had been torpedoed. There were no submarines in the area, and the run time of torpedoes from the inception of the action would not support a torpedo attack from the von der Tann or any other German vessel. Examination of the remains of the wreck suggests that there is no bottom aft part of the ship.
- the Indefatigable was seen (and photographed) sinking by the stern and heeling sharply to port. At the time the picture was taken the water was up to the third funnel and the bow was sharply in the air.
- a final pair of hits on the fore part of the ship, possibly including A Turret, which set off a catastrophic explosion (which is what everyone focuses on).
Examination of testimony and the damage to the wreck of HMS Queen Mary suggests the following:
- · a hit on the left barrel (at the muzzle!) of Q Turret. This put the gun out of action. The right gun fired 17 more rounds before the ship was sunk.
- · a hit aft near the 4" gun battery (confirmed by testimony from gun turret PO).
- · a hit on the 4" gun battery near the bridge, that appears to have flashed down to the 4" gun magazine, setting that off, and setting off the 13.5" magazines just forward of them (for A and B turrets). This destroyed the ship forward of the second funnel. This comes from an analysis of the pattern of damage visible around the wreck on the bottom of the North Sea. At the range the fatal shells were fired there appears to be little chance for a penetration of the armor for A and B Turrets.
- · a final hit as the aft part of the ship was sinking that penetrated the magazine for Q Turret. Unless there was an unknown fire raging amidships, this would explain the final explosion.
Examination of testimony and the damage to the wreck of HMS Invincible suggests the following:
- · a hit penetrated Q Turret, setting fire to the ready-use ammunition. There was a survivor from Q Turret, and this hit was observed from the spotting top.
- · red hot fragments from this hit may have penetrated the magazine for P Turret, setting off the final explosion.
- · Alternatively, several people thought the same salvo that hit Q Turret also penetrated the 6" armor over the trunk to P Turret and caused the fatal explosion. Post WW1 analysis has supported this theory, though examination of the wreck is inconclusive, other than that it was P Turret's magazine that exploded.
Examination of the official ship orders highlights the emphasis in the BCF on rate-of-fire. One gunnery officer (HMS Princess Royal) said that it was well-known that their shooting was "execrable", but they would overwhelm the Germans by a deluge of shells. There were two schools of thought in the Royal Navy (and other navies): the "big blow", and the "deluge of fire". The former led to larger and larger calibers, and the effects of a few 15" hits certainly bore out the ideas. Director control was absolutely necessary for this to work. Those who believed in the "deluge of fire" wanted all guns manned and ready at all times, and as the range closed you would get your hits by sheer volume. The Germans on SMS Seydlitz were proponents of this as they fired their main battery as fast as they could, and even manned their 5.9" guns and had those engage the British line whenever possible, leading to unnecessary casualties in those crews.
HMS Lion had a new Fleet Gunnery Officer assigned in March, and he insisted on the proper handling of shells on that hsip despite a diminution in the rate-of-fire. It is tragic that he did not have this influence on the rest of the Battlecruiser Force. His views probably had a lot to do with the survival of HMS Lion. The flash fire that reached the magazine happened several minutes after the hit on Q Turret (they had time to flood the magazine). It appeared to come from electrical cables that had their own (unguarded) path to the magazine. A further complication is that to speed up the handling of the powder bags, the crews of the handling rooms took the bags out of their protective containers before passing them up the trunk to the turret. This was observed in B Turret on Lion and A Turret of New Zealand. These bags leaked, producing a thin matting of cordite grains on the floors of the turret and the handling room. The image of a powder train leading to the magazine is inescapable.
Hood's Third Battlecruiser Squadron, fresh from Scapa Flow, did not have that rate-of-fire madness, apparently in part due to the views of the Senior Gunnery Officers at Scapa, and in part to Commander Danreuther, whose experience at the Battle of the Falklands had convinced him that accuracy was more important than volume (that December afternoon HMS Invincible had fired 65% of their 12" ammunition, and Danreuther came under severe criticism from Jackie Fisher and others over how few hits he obtained - it should be noted that in December of 1914 HMS Invincible did not have director fire). Commander Danreuther was known as a convert to the "big blow" school, and was assiduous at practicing his gunnery, and with his third salvo landed two hits on Lutzow! There is evidence from the Germans that the gunnery teams on HMS Invincible put at least three more hits into the Lutzow in the next two minutes before the ship was lost (that works out as five hits in six salvos fired in less than eight minutes, impressive shooting).
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