OK, Fatal Choices is out

With this project almost completed I should be able to start posting here much more regularly.

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.

Kickstarter for Fatal Choices launched!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1867183808/fatal-choiceshttps://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1867183808/fatal-choices

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

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.

Death at Sea -- book review

Death at Sea is  a privately published "novelistic history" of the saga of the German East Asiatic Naval Squadron of World War I -- the ships of the famous Graf Maximilian von Spee. Written by Eric Dorn Brose, a professor of history at Drexel University in Philadelphia, it's an odd book in many ways, but, I think, of unusual interest to wargamers and students of "what-if" history in general.

With the centennial of the First World War approaching rapidly, I think there will be heightened interest in the topic. Most of the interesting naval action happened early in the war, especially in the summer and winter of 1914 and 1915. Perhaps the most dramatic saga was that of Von Spee's squadron, which resulted ion two bloody naval battles that resulted in several ships being lost with all hands.

Professional and academic historians generally have a strong aversion to "what-ifs" and speculative history. They often note, correctly, that once you go down the rabbit hole of speculation there's little to guide you in the maze. The worst sorts of speculative history will set out to "prove" some wild-ass pet theory about what could have happened or should have happened. A year or so ago I reviewed Tom Carhart's Lost Triumph: :Lee's Rea;l Plan at Gettysburg and Why It Failed which argued, unpersuasively in my view, that Lee's real plan at Gettysburg on the third day was to coordinate Pickett's Charge with an attack on the rear of the federal army by JEB Stuart's cavalry corps.  Incredibly Carhart argues that the plan would have worked had it not been for Custer and some other federal cavalry commanders who foiled the plan. As I pointed out, a look at a wargame map shows that Carhart's theory runs aground on the realities of time, space and forces present. He got carried away, which is easy to do when you are an author and have complete control over the narrative. Wargamers, on the other hand, know that the opponent has  a vote and  neat plans are unlikely to survive contact with the enemy.

Yet speculative history is the life-blood of wargaming, and all wargames are, to a certain degree, speculative histories. Death at Sea is unusual because Brose freely engages in speculation about how things may have turned out if certain key decisions had been made differently. As it turns out the Spee saga is rich in those kinds of decision points. Standard histories of the events in question tend to emphasize the foregone nature of the two major battles.  At Coronel an outclassed British squadron had no chance against Spee's powerful ships and was quickly dispatched. And a month later Spee's squadron was equally outclassed by  a powerful British battlecruiser force that leisurely annihilated the Germans.

Brose raises interesting questions about both battles, and explains how they might not have been as lopsided as they appeared, particularly if the losing commanders had made better decisions. Both Spee and the British commander at Coronel, Rear Adm. Sir Christopher Cradock, perished in battle and were martyred heroes to their respective publics, so there was long a reluctance to second-guess their performance. Likewise, the British victor at the Falklands, Adm. Frederick Sturdee and the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, made questionable decisions that could easily have led to disaster. Yet things turned out OK and the rush of later events swept away most questions.

Brose also points out any number of alternative engagements that might also have occurred had deployments been just a little different.

Brose's approach to thew whole story is an unconventional one, especially for an academic historian, which probably explains why this is self-published. It bears the hallmarks of something written for the pleasure of writing it, not to burnish some academic reputation. It is, however, a serious work, for all that, and Brose explains his souring quite clearly and lays out the rationale for his fictionalizing.  Some degree of fictionalizing is almost inevitable in  a work about this battle because so many of the key witnesses died. As I alluded to above, three of the armored cruisers involved were lost with all hands and a fourth was sunk with barely a hundred survivors. Several of the light cruisers were also sunk with very heavy loss of life. Most of the senior officers of the two defeated squadrons were among those lost, so we cannot know what they thought or why they made their decisions.

He calls it a "novelized history" because it's a sort of hybrid work. It's not a full scale novelization in the mode of Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels. I'm not sure Brose has the proper touch to pull off something quite like that. His fictional story line vignettes seem a bit contrived and conventional to me. He is more successful at fleshing out actual events with conversations that at least advance the narrative efficiently. I think readers expecting something as literary as The Killer Angels will be disappointed. Brose is still at heart a historian , not a novelist. On the other hand, the book is much more free-wheeling a read than most histories, especially histories that deal in depth with technical and tactical topics like naval warfare at the ship-to-ship level. While I think some readers, therefore, will find it neither fish nor fowl and be turned off, I think the book makes an excellent resource for the wargamer and the counterfactualist.

For example, Brose spends a considerable amount of time discussing the choices available to Cradock at Coronel, suggesting that the British admiral was far more aggressive than wise and made a challenging tactical situation far worse by accepting battle immediately and letting himself be outmaneuvered on top of it. In particular Brose suggests that Cradock ought to have considered avoiding a decisive commitment as evening fell on Nov. 1, 1914, and try to lead Spee's squadron south until Cradcok could rendezvous with the battleship Canopus. Brose rightly points out that Canopus was hardly the "citadel" that Churchill imagined. And indeed,  the "battleship" was hardly better armored than the armored cruisers Good Hope and Monmouth that Cradock already had. But it did have four 12-inch guns, which would have tripled the long-range firepower of Cradock's force. And Canopus' later marksmanship at the Falklands strongly suggests that it would have been a more dangerous opponent than the reservist-manned Good Hope and Monmouth, which barely managed to hit Spee's fleet at all. And this was the key point, of course, because any damage to Spee's cruisers was a critical danger to their survival. They were thousands of miles from any shipyards for repair or replenishment of ammunition. With three capital ships to shoot at, the two German cruisers would have necessarily used up more of their ammunition even in victory, and they were just one lucky hit away from disaster at all times. It's probable that Spee would still have defeated Cradock's squadron -- I've seen it happen when wargamed out -- but he may have had one or more ships crippled in the bargain.

Cradock's main reason for leaving the Canopus behind was that its slow speed meant that Spee could merely run away, and this was a valid concern. Yet Brose makes the case that Spee would have attacked in any case, whether or not Canopus was in the line.

Later I'll look at Brose's take on the Battle of the Falklands, where he also makes a case for a closer-run affair than commonly believed.

Battle of the River Plate -- 70 years ago today

The Battle of the River Plate figures prominently in the public memory of World War II. Partly this is because there was a certain amount of inherent drama about the whole affair -- the gallant German captain who managed to ravage British shipping without killing merchantmen, and who took his own life in defeat. The apparently even nature of the fight. The fact that it's final stages played out in the glare of the international media, among other reasons.

But I think it also played an outside role in the public perception of the war because it happened to be the first major battle involving the Western powers in the war, so it got an extra amount of attention. Few had any inkling that the world was about to see nearly five years of the most intensive naval combat in the history of the world -- combat so intense that many larger, bloodier and more important battles from the war are nearly forgotten today. In the end the Battle of the River Plate was merely a cruiser action between an overgunned German heavy cruiser, an undergunned British heavy cruiser and two light cruisers of average power.

The "pocket battleships" of the pre-war German Navy got a lot of attention in the press, and had a certain amount of glamor in the public eye, but naval professionals were well aware of the type's weaknesses. It's no accident that the British hunting groups formed to find and neutralize the Graf Spee contained two cruisers each -- it being judged that two cruisers should be a match for a German raider that was far from home -- it wasn't necessary to sink or even badly damage the Graf Spee. It was only necessary to force it to use up most of its ammunition and cause an irreparable hit or two that would compromise her ability to continue.

In his ground-breaking set of naval miniatures rules The Naval War Game (1942), Fletcher Pratt remarks that "The battle off Montevideo was not too much of a surprise to some of the players who had participated in a floor game in which the Admiral Graf Spee was pulled down by lighter ships -- though at the time the result of the floor game was discounted."

In the Axis & Allies Naval Miniatures War at Sea game the Graf Spee is awarded a point value of 21, which is pretty good for a cruiser -- but the HMS Exeter at 12 and the HMS Ajax at 13 already match it -- and that's before adding in the Ajax's sister ship Achilles which is not in the game yet, but we can assume would also be worth 12 or 13 points.

In the slightly more detailed Avalanche Press Second World War at Sea series game Bismarck we see a similar disparity. While the Graf Spee is not in the game, her sister ships Lutzow and Adm. Scheer are, and they're worth 37 points each. The HMS Exeter is credited with 23 points. Neither the Ajax nor the Achilles in the game, but their sister ship the HMS Neptune is, rated at 20 points.

More detailed games don't normally try to assign point values for ships, but the same rough calculation holds, the Graf Spee is dangerously overmatched when faced by three cruisers.

I had my introduction to that state of affairs nearly 40 years ago when, as a teen attending my first wargame convention, I got to play a then-new set of rules called Victory at Sea (not to be confused with the later Mongoose Publishing game of the same same). I had the good fortune to command the British cruiser force in the second round of a 3-round tournament using the rules. My opponent was probably more experienced than I was (as I had no experience at all) but there was little he could do as I merely had to sensibly continue to close the range and roll the dice in order to win. (I had won my first round game, a refight of Denmark Straits, by repeating the Bismarck's good fortune by getting a magazine hit on the Hood! My luck ran out in the final round as I drew the luckless British side at the Battle of Coronel).

So to commemorate this battle on its 70th anniversary and relive a bit of my youth, I drafted my Stepson to help me refight this scenario from Victory at Sea.

The initial set up has the Ajax and Achilles in line ahead 24,000 yards off the port bow of the Graf Spee, while the Exeter (oddly enough mispelled 'Execter' ) in this game was 22,000 yards off the Graf Spee's starboard bow.




On turn 1 the Graf Spee turned to starboard to unmask its batteries. I decided to try to get early hits on each British ship and see if I could get a speed advantage to allow an escape. In Victory at Sea non-penetrating hits cause NO damage, which actually seems inaccurate to me. Many armored ships took important hits that didn't penetrate the armor and a more modern set of rules would take this into account. But in this 1973 rule set the British light cruiser 6-inch guns had no chance of doing damage to the Graf Spee unless they closed the range to less than 12,000 yards.

Graf Spee fired at the Ajax with two turrets at 21,00o yards, which provided "12 chances in 36" of a hit. Victory at Sea uses a very unusual system to determine hits. In the early 1970s the only sort of dice available were 6-sided. Dungeons and Dragons and the invention of polyhedral dice was a few years in the future. A modern set would use percentile dice. Victory at Sea approximates the effect of percentile dice by using a table that breaks out the "chances per 36" of achieveing a hit. In this case 12 chances per 36, doubled to 20 chances per 36 because the Graf Spee is "crossing the T" of the Ajax, about a 55.5% chance. 20 chances per 36 translates int0 die rolls of 5 through 8 being hits when rolling a pair of D6.

The German ship's results were as expected, 1 hit on the Ajax. Taking into account rate of fire, number of guns firing and the armor of the target, all computations normally done by the game scenario designer ahead of time, but in this case published for us in the rules, the Graf Spee normally would do 6,120 points of damage. to the Ajax. Due to the range, however, only 50% of that damage is inflicted, so the Ajxa takes 3,060 points of damage. This is enough to knock out one 6-inch turret and reduce its speed to 24 knots, slower than the Graf Spee. The Graf Spee's 11-inch gun was also entitled to draw a card from a standard deck of cards to see if it inflicted a critical hit - needing a spade. None was drawn this time and, as a matter of fact, the Graf Spee didn't cause any critical hits in this battle at all.

Meanwhile the Exeter fired her two front turrets on the Graf Spee at 16,000 yards and managed to land a hit on the Spee's deck armor. For the Graf Spee's shots on the British ships the armor hit was of no import because all the British ships had identical 2-inch thick armor on decks and belts. But the Graf Spee's belt armor was much thicker at 4 inches than its deck at 2.5 inches, so it was fortunate for Exeter to hit the deck, a 50/50 shot at 16.000 yards. This did 1,935 points of damage to the Graf Spee, which wasn't enough to affect the ship's fighting ability. All damage is cumulative, however, so this hit was important.

On Turn 2 the British ships continued to close as best they could, although they angled away to bring guns to bear and avoid the "Crossing the T" penalty. Graf Spee changed targets for its main guns to the Achilles and got one hit on the Achilles, reducing that ship by the same 3,060 points as its sister for the same loss of speed and destroyed turret. The Graf Spee's 5.9-inch guns fired on the Exeter, getting three hits for 1,620 points. This also had no effect on the Exeter fighting power. Unfortunately for the British, the Exeter rolled very poorly, much to the frustration of my young commodore., getting no hits despite having a 47% chance per turret. The battle would undoubtedly have unfolded differently if the Exeter had even average luck this turn.

On Turn 3 the Graf Spee turned its attention to the Exeter, now that it had achieved a speed advantage ouver the two light cruisers. This time it was the German ship's turn to shoot badly., missing with both 11" turrets, although three of the 5.9-inch turrets scored. The Exeter's return fire again landed a penetrating shell on the Graf Spee's deck. This brought the Graf Spee's cumulative damage to 4,837, reducing the German ship's speed to just 20 knots and knocking out two 5.9-inch guns. The British light cruisers could again catch the Graf Spee and would have to be dealt with! The German 5.9-inch hits did reduce the Exeter a bit, though. The British cruiser's cumulative damage dropped its speed to 24 knots and it lost one turret.

Turn 4 was a brutal turn as the Exeter and Graf Spee slugged it out at 12,000 yards. The Graf Spee landed another 11-inch hit on the Exeter and both remaining 5.9-inch guns also hit, bringing Exeter's cumulative damage over 8,000 and leaving the heavy cruiser dead in the water and weaponless. The Exeter's two remaining turrets also fired true, slamming into the Graf Spee's belt and causing another 5,130 points of damage, bringing the pocket battleship's total to 9,967. This was a serious level of damage, disabling the rear 11-inch turret and reducing speed to 14 knots. The Graf Spee would have no choice but to turn about and face the light cruisers.

The next three turns saw the British lights try to get close enough to penetrate the Graf Spee's armor. They were too close to run away from the Graf Spee's 11-inch guns and had little choice. Both ended up being sunk, with their only hit bouncing off the Graf Spee's belt armor.

So the battle ended with the Graf Spee afloat and all three British ships sunk or dead in the water, so at first glance that might appear to be a German victory. As was pretty common in 1970s rules sets, there was no attempt to define victory provided by the scenario. You were supposed to argue about it afterward, just like real admirals!. Still, knowing the Graf Spee's strategic situation, losing a main gun turret and, especially, half the ship's speed would have to be considered fatal damage. While the Graf Spee succeeded in mauling the British, she didn't succeed in escaping.

Still, the outcome suggest that there's at least some chance for the Graf Spee under these set of rules, so long as the German has decent luck while rolling dice and the British don't.