Sorry for the long gap -- update

So the Fatal Choices Kickstarter was successful. I have been spending most of my time working on finishing up the book and the Rewards.

 

This is the final version of the countersheet that goes with the book. Kickstarter backers will get a copy of the countersheet with their copy of the eBook or physical book. I am getting the final proof version within the next day or so. Assuming no more changes need to be made I will order the first batch.

These will also be available for separate purchase once the Amazon edition of the book is published.

Also on their way are the sets of Topside Miniatures Fatal Choices wood-backed stickers that those who pledged at the higher levels will get.

I am still expecting to start fulfilling the Kickstarter pledges by the end of the month.

Up coming

Sparse posts

Sorry for the hiatus in posts and it's likely to continue a bit longer as I have been very busy with a big project.

More will follow, but as a teaser it involves World War I, Larry Bond and Graf Spee

Not good enough to win a Two on One yet

For our second game I wanted to play something quick (we had less than an hour) and still use some toys I hadn't played with yet so I set up a 2 on 1 fight with myself controlling a Fokker E.III and my opponents working together with a Morane-Saulnier Type N and an Airco DH-2. I erroneously told the French pilot his plane didn't have an Immelman T

Lining up a shot

urn card, which affected his play until he found, late int he the game, that he did have the card after all. Fat lot of good it did me.

My basic plan was to fient towards the DH-2, gte him to react and then swing around and deal with the French plane. Because I though he did not have the Immelman available I planned to use an Immelman myself to pull in behind him.

The plan sort of worked, but was basically mooted by the fact that one of the first hits on my plane by the Morane-Saulnier started a fire. This is always bad news, but the fragile Fokker was especially vulnerable. As it turned out, the damage cards I drew for the fire were not too damaging -- except for the last one. Meanwhile we traded shots. I almost caught a big break when the two Allied planes collided! But it turned out to be a mere brush by, as the French plane took no damage at all and the Britisher just a few points.

The inevitable happened on the final fire card draw which was a 5. I only had one point left so that was more than enough to end my flight and my fight. The DH-2 ended up with a half-dozen points of damage while the French plane was actually unscathed.

Everyone was ready for more action, so there will be more Wings of War/Wings of Glory this summer.

One afternoon over Italy in 1917 ... a Wings of War/Glory session report

Baracca's SPAD lines up for an early shot

At the local game shop played a couple of quick games of Wings of War/Glory. Turns out there are some interested players so i hope to get a few more sessions in over the summer.

The first game was an excuse to try out the big Bomber models and rules. I gave myself an Italian CA-3 heavy bomber with a SPAD XIII escort against a c

Wave!

ouple of Austro-Hungarian Albatros D.III fighters, each controlled by one other player..

This was my very first time even trying the bombing rules, so I considered the mission a success if I managed to get any hits at all on the bridge target near the map's center.

As the bomber my plan was pretty straightforward, I was going to head straight for the target, dropping down from altitude 4 to altitude 1 to increase accuracy. There was no anti-aircraft defense at the bridge and I figured the altitude change might throw off the inexperienced AH pilots a little as well. My SPAD was going to take a quick pass at the left hand enemy plane and then turn on the other one. The t

Close call

wo Austrian pilots closed, with the one on the right trying to swing wide around the bomber for a rear shot.

The SPAD got in an early shot and swept past the Albatros as planned and then the Allies got a break. The very first shot by the rear gunner exploded the Red Albatros! I had considered taking the explosion cards out of the deck, but I figured "what are the odds ..?" As a wargamer, I really should know better. The odds were virtually certain.

Bomb run

Well, in any case, this was not an acceptable outcome so early,
as it left me with two planes and one of the opponents with none, so he was reincarnated as the Italian SPAD pilot and we played on.

As it turned out, in my inexperience I misjudged the bombing approach and had to come around again, which gave the surviving Albatros a few opportunities for more shots. There was little damage to the CA-3, however, and it successfully dropped the bombs for half damage and few off. Meanwhile the SPAD and Albatros tangled a bit. No one was downed, but the Albatros was worse off at game end.

The ships of 1914 -- Spee's armored cruisers

Scharnhorst -- model by Navis

The central players in the drama of the 1914 affair were the sister ships KMS Scharnhorst and KMS Gneisenau. These two warships represented the heart of the military threat posed by Von Spee’s squadron.  The accompanying light cruisers had a role to play, but they were minor warships and could be countered by similarly minor combatants that would have negligible affects on the naval balance.

                The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, in contrast, were capital ships, albeit of an obsolescent type in 1914.  They were armored cruisers – a type of capital ship that had a relatively short heyday as such major warships go. The first “armored cruiser” were in the 1870s and the very last armored cruiser was the HMS Defense, completed in 1908, so the total length of time this type was in first-line service was barely four decades.

                Still, while they didn’t serve very long as first-line units, they did play prominent roles in the several of the battles that occurred during the pre-dreadnaught era, notably the Battle of Santiago in the Spanish-American War and the Battle of Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War. 

                The main reason why armored cruisers enjoyed their brief time in the sun was the undeveloped state of naval gunnery during the closing decades of the Nineteenth Century. Cannon technology grew by leaps and bounds during that era, resulting in naval artillery that could fire at unheard-of ranges with great accuracy. During the naval battles of the American Civil War and the Battle of Lissa, gunnery duels between ships were often still  measurable in hundreds of yards and it was practicable for ships to get close enough to use ramming tactics. This was despite the fact that the guns, themselves, could easily hurl projectiles for many miles.  The ranges the guns could fire increased even more over the ensuing decades but the problem of actually hitting the target remained. Long-range gunnery was inherently challenging, but naval gunnery added additional complexities as both the target and the firing ship were constantly changing position. At the Battle of Manila, Dewey’ fleet managed to achieve only 2-3% hits on the nearly immobile Spanish squadron. The destructive power of modern artillery was sufficient, however, that this was enough to annihilate the Spanish squadron. 

                Under the gunnery conditions of the late nineteenth century there seemed to be a lot to be said for volume of fire. The very largest naval guns, like those carried on battleships, were very destructive, but had such a slow rate of fire that there was little opportunity a gunner to successfully use the information from a miss to adjust  his fire to get closer on the next shot. Too much time would pass between shots and the relative positions of the ships would likely be so different that each shot was basically starting anew.  The higher rate of fire of smaller guns would not only throw a lot more metal in the vicinity of the target, but provided some chance for adjusting fire from misses.  Because of this, battleships of the ear commonly carried a mixed armament of some very heavy ship-smashing main guns, some medium caliber secondary guns and a tertiary battery of quick-firing guns for defense against light craft. 

                Armored cruisers essentially traded the large main battery guns for additional endurance and speed compared to battleship, but were often armored at similar levels and carried as their main battery guns equal in size to the secondary batteries of battleships.  As such they were generally able to stand in the line of battle alongside the battleships, as they did at Tsushima.

                By 1914, however, the situation had dramatically changed, and the armored cruiser was no longer able to stand in the line of battle. The Dreadnought concept of an all-big gun battleship and the similar Invincible class battle cruiser had changed the equation. Improvements in the large guns had increased their rate of fire and improvements in gunnery techniques were promising improvements in accuracy that suggested that having a uniform battery of large guns would be more effective than the mixed armament of earlier ships and that armored cruisers could no longer safely operate in the main battle line. 

                Still, the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were still powerful ships, especially on detached stations such as the Far East, where dreadnought-type warships were still uncommon. 

                The two German ships were conservative designs, very well-built as was usual for German naval construction and well-armed. They were identical sister ships, and therefore worked well together as unit. Their main battery was a total of eight 8.1-inch guns,. Four of the guns were mounted in twin turrets fore and aft, but the other four were mounted in casements on the side, which meant that the total broadside was only six heavy guns.  Also in casements were the secondary battery guns, eight 5.9-inch guns, for total broadside of four. 

                They were well-protected with belt armor of 6 inches and a 2-inch armored deck and, like most German warships, well compartmented. 

                They were not especially speedy for armored cruisers, with maximum rated speeds of around 22 knots. This was enough to outrun any pre-dreadnought battleship but markedly slower than many British armored cruisers and hopelessly insufficient to outrun one of the new battle cruisers. This speed deficiency would play a major role in the outcome of the campaign and was a major consideration a Spee weighted his options.

                A bare recital of stats is not the sum total of a warship’s effectiveness in any era, but its especially important to note the more intangible aspects when evaluating the ship in this campaign. 

                The nature of the German East Asia Squadron’s mission, as  a detached squadron on a distant foreign station, had a major impact on its efficiency. All the crew members were long-service regular navy men, without any of the conscripts that filled out the rosters of homeland-based vessels. It was an elite posting and the two ships were widely regarded as efficient and well-led.

                This manifested itself in at least two ways. First, both ships were noted for their proficiency in gunnery, being recent and multiple-year winners of the German Navy’s gunnery competition. This had obvious implications in the coming engagements, as the tow German ships could be counted on to be very dangerous adversaries.

                Less visibly, but also vital, is that the two ships were evidently very well-served by their engineering crews. In an era when large ship engineering plants were still relatively new and often temperamental, the exceptional reliability of the two ships played a key, if little noted roles in the campaign. Von Spee confidently set forth on a journey of extraordinary length and with little available support if something should go wrong with his systems. In the event both ships performed exceptional feats of steaming right up until their final moments.

Great admirals and Jackie Fisher

I've been doing a lot of research recently about the Dreadnought era for a project I'm working on, and if there's an unavoidable figure when you are talking about dreadnoughts, it's John Arbuthnot Fisher, known as "Jacky," twice First Sea Lord of the Admiralty and the father of the modern Royal Navy.

From midshipman ...

Fisher is a fascinating character study, of course, but there are a lot of fascinating characters who are disastrous leaders. Leaving aside his indelible personality, I'd like to consider the prejudice against non-"fighting" commanders among many when they consider the "greatness" of  a leader.

Now, undoubtedly, combat is the final arbiter, when it comes to a clash of arms. In the end, the man in the trench has to be given due consideration on the day of battle. But, especially in modern war, events at the trench level are usually the culmination of a long progression of events and forces that begin long before the trench was dug -- and sometimes even before the trench digger was born.

Because of this, its not uncommon for a leader to play an enormous role in the eventual victory of his side, while never being close enough to hear the sound of the guns, From World War II we have the example of George C. Marshall, who was sorely disappointed when Eisenhower was picked to be Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces. FDR was convinced that Marshall did much more for the war effort as Chief of Staff -- and few doubt that FDR was entirely correct. Marshall, himself, probably realized it.

... to First Sea Lord -- twice

 Admiral Chester Nimitz is another well-known example. Many accounts consider Yamamoto's opponents at Midway to be Fletcher and Spruance, the admirals in tactical command. But in many ways his real opposite number was Nimitz -- and in a real sense, the fact that Yamamoto was at sea and Nimitz was not is an irrelevant detail.

Likewise, Jackie Fisher was not at sea in 1916 when the Battle of Jutland was fought. Indeed, he wasn't even First Sea Lord any more, having been retired from the job for the second time the year before. But the British Grand Fleet at Jutland was Jackie Fisher's fleet -- as sure as it would have been if he had been on the bridge of the HMS Iron Duke himself. Admiral John Jellicoe, who was on that bridge, was Fisher's hand-picked man to lead the fleet. There was hardly a ship in the entire fleet that was more than a decade old. With the exception of a handful of older types, nearly all the ships were directly or indirectly his brainchild. The dreadnought battleships and battle cruisers were his conception. The fleets of destroyers, too. He coined the term "torpedo boat destroyer" for the new class of ships.


Circumstances prevented Fisher from ever leading a fleet into battle, but I'd rank him right along with Nelson, myself. 






Adm. Chester Nimitz is another  was a

Coronel aftermath -- a solitaire session

The victorious German East Asia Squadron in Chile after the battle of Coronel

As the Battle of Coronel was being fought in the early evening of Nov. 1, the old battleship HMS Canopus was struggling against heavy seas and a balky engineering plant to catch up to Cradock's out-gunned squadron.  Cradock had left the Canopus behind, believing it to be too slow to be useful. Churchill had expected the Canopus to be  a"citadel" that would protect Cradock's weaker armored cruisers should they run into Spee's entire fleet. Spee, for his part, indicated after the battle that he thought he might have lost had the battleship been present.

In the actual event, the British light cruiser Glasgow escaped the massacre and warned the Canopus of the disaster. The battleship promptly turned around and fled -- slowly -- back to the Falkland Islands, eventually being joined by the Glasgow on the way. 

There were innumerable ways that the Glasgow could have failed to get word to the Canopus about the battle's outcome, however, so it's not too much of  stretch to wonder what might have happened if the Canopus had continued north and run into Spee's squadron before he turned around to go to Valparaiso to recoal and reorganize. 

So it's dawn on Nov. 2, and lookouts on the HMS Canopus see smoke on the horizon to the north which soon reveals itself to be coming from the two German armored cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the light cruiser Nurnberg. (The Dresden and Liepzig had been detached to scout for the British survivors of the night battle.)

The tactical problem facing the captain of the Canopus is simple. He can't run away, the Germans ships are almost twice as fast. While his 12-inch guns slightly outrange the German 8-inch guns, his slow speed means he can't control the range as well. 

Spee's decision is much more complex. While he won the battle against the British cruisers at a trifling cost in damage and casualties, the battle did expend about half his ammunition. This alone was a very strong argument for avoiding combat worth any new force encountered. He probably only had enough ammunition for one more fight. Prudence would have dictated that Spee use his superior speed to steam away from the Canopus, possibly detaching the light cruiser to keep an eye on the battleship until the British decided whether to press on or withdraw. This is the most likely outcome. 

On the other hand, Spee was a very aggressive commander and it would have been tempting to run up the score, so long as he avoided taking serious damage or using too many of his remaining shells. 

So let's examine how it might have played out. This makes a good solitaire scenario. The Canopus has few decisions to make. It can't run, so it will turn broadside to the approaching Germans and fire as long as it is able.  I'm using the 1970 Victory at Sea rules for this fight. 

Spee, on the other hand, needs to execute his approach with care. The safest thing to do would be to stay at long range, allowing him to safely break off the battle at any point. But long-range gunnery uses up a lot of ammunition for relatively fewer hits. Closing the range will allow the Germans ships to bury the battleship in a deluge of damaging fire -- but risks disaster if a German ship gets badly hit. 

We will assume Spee decides to boldly close the range on the theory that he night as well decline to fight at all if he was to engage in an inconclusive long-range gunnery duel. 

The range is 15,000 yards as the two forces sight each other. The German column is comprised of the Scharnhorst, the Gneisenau and the Nurnburg in that order.

The action commences with HMS Canopus hauling hard to port to bring her broadside to bear, while the German squadron pours on the goal to close the range at 20 knots, angling to port so as to unmask batteries and heading in the opposite direction of the British ship in case it makes sense to disengage later. . The light cruiser turns so as to remain on the unengaged side of the battle line.

At 14,500 yards it's a tough shot for each side. The base "to-hit" chance at that range is "16 out of 36" which is halved to "8 out of 36" for World War I fire control. This translates to a 22.2% chance to hit, or a 3 or a 7 on two dice. All secondary guns are out of range. 

The Canopus rolls a 3 and a 6 for a hit! The 12-inch shell lands on the deck of the Scharnhorst, doing 900 points of damage. The shell does not do critical damage, but it definitely gives Spee pause. 

The return fire from the Scharnhorst is also effective, with one of the twin turrets landing a hit on the deck of the Canopus, doing 1,225 points of damage on the old battleship. While styled a "battleship," the Canopus belt and deck armor is no thicker than the armor on the armored cruisers. The Gneisenau is yet out of range.

At 12,500 yards the broadsides continue at "9 per 36" or a 4 or 7 to hit.  The Canopus lands again on Scharnhorst, this time hitting and penetrating the belt armor for 1,020 more points of damage for a total of  1,920.  More critically, this hit slows the Scharnhorst's speed by 10 knots.  This is the last straw for Spee and he decides it's time to call it a day, especially because none of his return shots from either armored cruiser scores that turn. 

The German armored cruisers start to turn away while the Nurnburg starts to lay down a smoke screen to cover the withdrawal.  A parting shot from the Canopus hits the Scharnhorst again for another 900 points of damage, total 2,820.  The draw for a critical hit, however, provides  a very dramatic end as the Scharnhorst's magazine explodes! 

The Scharnhorst finds the range on the Canopus in return, but the 8.2-inch shell bounces off the belt armor.

The surviving Germans ships withdraw out of range under cover of smoke  and the Canopus is far to slow to chase them.

Well, that little play-through suggests that there was little to be gained by messing with a battleship -- even an indifferent one such as the Canopus! Maybe Churchill was right after all ... 

Death at Sea - Part II, Battle of the Falklands

1:1250 scale SMS Scharnhorst by Navis

In Eric Dorn Brose's "novelistic history" Death at Sea, he engages in an extensive amount of speculation over how the Battle of the Falklands could have turned out differently.

The actual course of events is pretty straightforward and most histories treat the outcome as nearly pre-ordained:

On Dec. 7, 1914, a powerful British squadron comprised of two battle-cruisers, three armored cruisers and two light cruisers arrived at Port Stanley in the Falklands, where the pre-dreadnought battleship Canopus had already been grounded to act as a guard ship.The British began coaling their ships and conducting boiler maintenance in preparation for beginning operations to find the the German East Asiatic Squadron, under the command of Graf Maximilian von Spee, victor of Coronel.

The next morning , Spee approached the island, intent on a destructive raid, but was surprised by large caliber shots from the Canopus and drew off. Shortly most of the British force sortied and chased down Spee's doomed squadron, which was heavily outmatched. Only one light cruiser and one support vessel escaped the carnage.

And yet, was Spee doomed, really? Brose argues that Spee lost a golden opportunity to win a stunning victory in the Battle of the Falkands by aggressively closing in and attacking the British fleet in the harbor. There being little chance of outrunning the battle-cruisers anyway, due to their superior speed and longer-ranged guns, Spee could have accepted that battle was inevitable and tried to do as much damage as possible.

And a lot of damage was, indeed, possible. When the Germans approached the Briitsh squadron was in an embarrassing state. Most of the ships were in the midst of coaling, boilers were not lit and in the case of the light cruiser HMS Bristol, partially dismantled. Indeed, only the HMS Kent had steam up and was mobile,

A key limitation of steam-powered ships is the need to "raise steam" in order to get underway. In the technology of 1914 it could take one to two hours to fire up the boilers and raise enough steam to achieve full speed. When sighted Spee was within half an hour of being within effective gunnery range -- and as we saw at Coronel, German gunnery was highly effective. The Germans could have fired at the virtually immobile British force trapped in the harbor. Their main opposition at first would have been the Canopus, firing indirectly guided by a spotter on a nearby hill, and the one mobile British armored cruiser the Kent, which was  sister ship to the wholly inadequate Monmouth that Spee destroyed at Coronel. There's little reason to think the Kent would have fared better. Of the other armored cruisers, the Cornwall was yet another Monmouth sister ship while the Carnavan was similar in capability, with a handful of larger 7.5 inch guns instead of the all-6-inch battery of the Monmouths. None was a match for Spee's ships.

No, the main, really the only, threat to Spee was the battle-cruisers Invincible and Inflexible. In the open ocean, where they could use their superior speed and firepower, they definitely outmatched Spee's two armored cruisers. But under fire at close range in a harbor, not so much. Because the battle-cruisers sacrificed armored protection in order to purchase that high sped and heavy firepower and, in fact, they were not any more heavily armored than the German or British armored cruisers were. They all had the same 6-inch thick armored belt, which the German 8-inch gun could penetrate at battle ranges.

The awkward arrangement of turrets on the Invincibles was a factor as well,  with just one turret for and aft and the other two arranged as "wing" turrets en echelon. The bottom line was that the battle-cruisers, at best, had a broadside of six guns, and given the confines of the harbor might often have been reduced to two turrets. Altogether then, the entire British force would have had around a dozen or so heavy guns available to fire, and about as many 6-inchers. Spee's squadron would have had broadsides of 10 8-inchers and eight 5.9-inch guns, well-served. Given the demonstrated speed and accuracy of the German gunners, a very even fight. None of the British ships in the actual battle much distinguished themselves in the gunnery department, so there's little reason to think they'd have shot better under the duress of being caught in harbor.

So why didn't Spee attack? He had already demonstrated repeatedly that he was an aggressive, fighting admiral. Unfortunately, we can;t be sure, because he didn't survive the battle. No one the flagship did. And few did aboard the other German cruiser, either.

Here Brose proffers a reason I haven't seen mentioned in other accounts, and I can't tell from his notes on his sources whether he has a witness saying this, or whether it's another fictionalization. In any case, he blames  a case of miss-identification



According to Brose, the British battle-cruisers were spotted and correctly identified by the gunnery officer on the Gneisenau, but the captain of the Gneisenau refused to believe the report, passing on the Spee the erroneous report that the ships were Queen-class pre-dreadnoughts. Believing that the British force were slow, old battleships, Spee decided to simply slip away from shipos that could not chase him. This gave the British the chance to raise steam unmoloested and give chase and by the time Spee discovered thre truth, there was little he could do.

Yet even then the battle was not completely hopeless, Brose says. He points out that the battle-cruisers were, in fact, quite vulnerable to catastrophic loss. Indeed, the HMS Invincible herself, along with two other British battle-cruisers, would blow up during the Battle of Jutland a year-and-half later. According to Brose's account there was at least one close call from a German cruiser hit at the Falklands as well. A lucky German hit that destroyed one of the battle-cruiser might have changed the complexion of the battle immediately.

So, does Brose have a point? Could Spee have won at the Falklands?

It's the nature of counterfactuals that a definitive answer is not possible, but unlike the Carhart book on Gettysburg I criticized earlier, Brose seems to stick closely to the realities of time, space, tactics and weapons effects. Nearly all his speculative forays involve human decision and choices made between plausible alternatives.

It's my hope to take a look at the Brose's what-ifs in the future. I'm busy collecting the necessary ships to refight Coronel and the Falklands , including some of Brose's what-ifs.

Titanic tale of a troubled trio

First to go

The Titanic is getting a  lot of ink today on the centennial of the ship's tragic sinking in 1912, but it's worth noting that the Titanic was merely the unluckiest of a trio of ships that seemed to have a habit of running into things -- which generally resulted in something sinking.

The Titanic was a member of the Olympic class of luxury liners.

As is well known, the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage after running into an iceberg, but even at that point she wasn't the first of the class to have run into something. On the previous Sept. 20, 1911, the Olympic had collided with the British protected cruiser HMS Hawke, which got much the worse of the encounter., losing its bow. The subsequent inquiry blamed the Olympic for the accident. After being repaired the Hawke was later torpedoed on Oct.15, 1914, during World War I and blew up, with only 70 survivors from its 594-man crew.

No. 2 was Brittanic

After the sinking of the Titanic the Olympic was refitted with safety improvements, which were also incorporated in the last of the line, the RMS Brittanic. The Brittanic was converted into a hospital ship for World War I. The jinx afflicting the class was not long in coming and the ship ran into a mine on Nov. 21, 1916 (an alternative theory is that it was a torpedo, but there doesn't seem to be a claim). The resulting explosion did tremendous damage, exacerbated by portholes that had been left open and the ship sank in less than an hour. Loss of life was, however, relatively low at just 30 crew.

Olympic in dazzle camouflage

The Olympic was also pressed into wartime service, as a troop transport, and it was while seving in this role that it next ran into something -- although this time on purpose. On May 12, 1918, while ferrying American troops to France the Olympic spotted the German submarine U-103 trying to torpedo her and turned to ram. The U-boat was run down. There were 31 survivors from the U-boat crew, which was authorized to have 39 men. They were rescued later by another ship. There were no casualties on Olympic.

Sadly the Olympic class reign of running into things was not quite over. The Olympic returned to civilian service after the war and after more than a decade of runs, on May 15. 1934, the ship cut through the  Nantucket lightship, killing 7 of the 11 men aboard. The very next year the star-crossed liner was taken out of service for good and broken up for scrap a few years later.

Seamen are often seen as a superstitious lot, but when you consider the history of the Olympic-class ships you can begin to understand why.

Buckles and memory

A few days ago Frank Buckles. the last surviving doughboy, died, moving the First World War out of the era of living memory and irrevocably into History.

In a couple of more years we'll be marking the centennial of the war's beginning, which could be considered the official celebration of the war's passage into the ranks of History.

Now History. of course, starts to be written moments after events happen, but so long as there are living eyewitnesses to events there's at least some check on the tricks of time and some hope of new information and perspectives arising. After the last witnesses pass on there is the occasional emergence of new archeological or documentary evidence, but even these will necessarily be interpreted by scholars with no first-hand knowledge of the events in question. The end result, in my view. is that once an event passes into History the chance to shape the narrative permanently passes. It's subject to revisionism, of course, but revisionism inherently is subject to revision itself and so whatever "truth" can be known about an event almost always must be established within the lifetimes of the witnesses.

This is one reason why phenomena such as the Lost Cause myth and Holocaust denial are so troubling when they occur because I think they're almost impossible to stamp out. If they can get established even while there are living witnesses to refute them, then later historians stand little chance of overcoming them. such myths serve powerful interests or they wouldn't arise in the first place.

The First World War didn't generate anything quite so noxious, but we still lose something when there's no witnesses left. How much and what we've lost we'll find out when 2014 rolls around.