All Guns Blazing — July 2016

1 All Guns Blazing! Newsletter of the Naval Wargames Society No. 261 – JULY 2016 EDITORIAL After a week-long artillery bombardment of German positions, the infantry began their advance at 07:30 hrs on a clear midsummer’s morning of 1st July 1916. Many thought that a walk across no-man’s land to take possession of the enemy trenches was all that would be happening. Then the machine guns opened up. By the end of that first day, some 57,000 Commonwealth and 2,000 French soldiers had become casualties – more than 19,000 of whom had been killed. When the Somme offensive was halted in November, more than 1,000,000 Commonwealth, French and German soldiers had been wounded, captured or killed. So let’s remember that the lifestyles and freedoms that we take for granted came at a price. For information on the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the Thiepval Memorial visit: www.cwgc.org Some 150,000 Commonwealth servicemen lie buried in 250 military and 150 civilian cemeteries on the Somme. More than 100,000 more were never found or identified. All are remembered by name on six memorials to the missing. Happier times on 1st July 1952. The Daring class destroyer HMAS VAMPIRE was laid down in Cockatoo Island Dockyard Sydney, on 1 July 1952, and launched on 27 October 1956. Lady Slim, (Wife of the Governor-General Sir William Slim), performed the launching ceremony. (Editor’s note: was this Bill Slim of “the forgotten Army” in Burma fame?) The destroyer HMAS VAMPIRE, (CAPT E. J. Peel, DSC, RAN), was commissioned at Sydney 23 June 1959. VAMPIRE was decommissioned on 13 August 1986, and transferred to the Australian National Maritime Museum in 1991, as a permanent exhibit. Perhaps a NWS member in Australia has photographs from the ANMM which could be included in a future edition of AGB or in the next edition of “Battlefleet”. Cheers Norman Bell

2 Gen Con returns to Indianapolis from August 4-7, 2016. Last year, the convention set records with a unique attendance of 61,423 and a turnstile attendance of 197,695, creating a six-year span of record growth. OOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo Gen Con 2015 - a new world record of most players in a Sails of Glory game was set, with 79 people playing together, overcoming the 53 players mark at Gen Con 2014. Will the record be beaten again in 2016?

3 SEA QUIZ 54. ‘Another round of naval ‘whizz-bangs’ this month’ As ‘The Navy’s’ original compiler used to say…… 1. In WWII, what was known as a ‘Winkle Barge’? 2. Who and what were the ‘Uriahites’ in 1917? 3. HMS Timber Town? Where and what was it? 4. HMS’s Pembroke, Vernon, Excellent and St. Vincent, are all…? 5. What was known as ‘Stodger’? ************************************ Navcon is part of What Khan Game Convention for 2016. October 21st - 23rd, 2016 Location: Wedgbury Indoor Sports Center 8800 East Riverside Blvd., Rockford, Illinois 61111 Answers to Sea Quiz 53.

4 Picture from “Broadside” 2016. Nice models are so much more visually impressive than cardboard ship counters. Which is not to say that I am not a fan of hex boards and cardboard ships. In addition to many boxed games available on the market, I suggest you check out Topside Minis with their top class ship counters. Top down views of ships are slightly different for ships of the same class. Therefore your HMS King George V will be different from your HMS Prince of Wales .The website includes free to download naval war game rules. The company produce a growing number of high quality ship and aircraft counters for the Great War and WW2 at a reasonable price. These can be used with your choice of rules. Whether you have models or not, the object of wargames surely is to have fun and perhaps learn something of history, tactics and strategy.

5 It is easy to forget the land bases and facilities that are needed to support and maintain the dreadnought fleets that countries had 100 years ago. The following details are from Drew Jarman. Floating Docks The following docks were available in 1914: Britain [measurements in feet L/W/D] (Any dock less than 520 cannot take a Dreadnought) Plymouth – Devonport, 730 x 95 x 44 745 x 95 x 32 741 x 95 x 44 659 x 95 x 32 Portsmouth 680 x 112 x 36 Floating 33000 tons 563 x 94 x 33 563 x 82 x 33 [enlarging to 700 x 100] 560 x 82 x 33 485 x 80 x 33 Plus four other smaller ones which could not take Dreadnoughts Chatham 800 x 100 x 33 plus four smaller which could not take Dreadnoughts Queenstown – Ireland 720 x 94 x 32 608 x 94 x 32 Malta By doubling up the short docks they have 520 x 94 x 35 468 x 80 x 34 536 x 73 x 25 550 x 95 x 35 770 x 95 x 33 Gibraltar 850 x 90 x 35 550 x 90 x 35 450 x 90 x 35 Pembroke – Wales 404 x 75 x 24 Bombay 500 x 65 x 28 Colombo 708 x 85 x 32 Singapore 846 x 100 x 34 plus four 478 or smaller

6 Hong Kong 750 x 88 x 35 700 x 86 x 30 555 x 95 x 39 Canada Esquimalt 450 x 65 x 26 Halifax 572 x 89 x 29 St Johns 569 x 85 x 24 South Africa Simons Town 750 x 95 x 30 Cape Town 600 x 66 x 24 Bermuda 545 x 100 x 33 Floating [17500 tons - Dreadnought] Australia Sydney 638 x 84 x 32 675 x 83 x 28 477 x 59 x 21 Melbourne 470 x 80 x 27 New Zealand Auckland 521 x 80 x 33 There are 12 other commercial docks listed of various sizes [Dreadnought plus] but what ability they would have to repair a warship other than to make is safe to sail for repair is debatable. Example sizes are WL/B/D Dreadnought 520 x 82 x 31 Bellerophon 520 x 82 x 29 St Vincent 530 x 84 x ? Neptune 540 x 85 x 27 Colossus 540 x 86 x 27 Orion 544 x 85 x 28 KGV 596 x 89 x 27 Iron Duke 620 x 90 x 28 QE 650 x 94 x 28 Invincible 560 x 78 x ? Indefatigable 578 x 80 x 28 Lion 675 x 87 x 30 QM 720 x 87 x 30 Some of the old armoured cruisers are as large as the Dreadnoughts. For Germany there's plenty of docks in Germany of course. Kiao-Chau 420 x 98 x 30 Floating Scharnhorst and probably Blucher and VdT

7 There's nothing else listed but I guess the Germans could have a private floating dock at the main colony base in Raboul. Their battle cruisers are huge in the beam when compared to their British contemporaries. VdT 558 x 85 x 28 Moltke 590 x 97 x 28 Blucher 489 x 81 x 27 Scharnhorst 450 x 71 x 25 Outside continental USA Pearl Harbour 800 x 114 x 34 Philippines – Olongapo – Luzon Island Subic Bay 500 x 100 x 70 Floating 18500 tones Japan has a fair number of large docks in 1914 all of which are in Japan proper The dock in Ryojun [Port Arthur] is stated as too narrow for any battleship. France Outside mainland France, Algiers, Bizerte and Saigon 518 x 72 x 30 only Russia Vladivostok Two docks large enough to take any warship in the world – got to love those Russians 618 x 90 x 34 572 x 90 x 30 All in all a fascinating array of docks but indicates the problems some ships will have being fitted in to a nearby dock due to their length, beam or draught and of course none of this indicates the level of expertise those docks have repairing large warships or even the crane lifting capacity or spares in stock. Floating docks are only limited by their lifting capacity and the beam of the ship being lifted as it was very common for ships to poke our at each end as long as the main central keel before the propellers is fully supported. I remember seeing a huge cargo ship in Hamburg in one and it looked like 25% of the ship was hanging out of each end of the dock. Regards Drew http://drewjarman.blogspot.co.uk/ http://www.essexwarriors.org/ Historic Miniature Figure Gaming EBay Seller ID Dyson690 Early Days Part 3 below is the last Part from Phil Dunn.

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9 SIGNAL PAD! Welcome to new member Paul Ayers. I’m having more joy now with getting my scanner to work with Windows 10. It must have been me, it could not possibly be Windows 10 to blame. So Rob Morgan, if you are wondering where your articles are – they should be beginning to make an appearance from next month. Also people, any articles for the next edition of “Battlefleet” to Stuart Fieldhouse please. fintactica@googlemail.com

10 JOINING THE NAVAL WARGAMES SOCIETY If you have been lent this newsletter and would like to join the Naval Wargames Society, please follow this link to join our Society: www.navalwargamessociety.org. Membership secretary: simonjohnstokes@aol.com NWS Events and Regional Contacts, 2014 NWS Northern Fleet – Falkirk East Central Scotland Kenny Thomson, 12 Craigs Way, Rumford Grange, Rumford, Stirlingshire, FK2 0EU Tel: 01324 714248 e-mail: kenny.thomson@hotmail.com - Website: http://falkirkwargamesclub.org.uk/ Falkirk Wargames Club meets each Monday night at 7pm with a variety of games running each evening. Naval games are popular with 2 or 3 run each month. Campaign games sometimes feature in our monthly weekend sessions. Games tend to be organised week to week making a 3-month forecast here a waste of time. Please get in touch if you’d like to come along.  Popular periods – Modern (Shipwreck), WW1 and 2 (GQ), WW2 Coastal (Action Stations), and Pre-dreadnought (P Dunn’s rules) Devon and the West Country Naval Wargames afternoon/evening/all day on a regular basis. Contact Stuart Barnes Watson to arrange the details. stuart_barnes_watson@hotmail.com 3 Clovelly Apartments, Oxford Park, Ilfracombe, DEVON, EX34 9JS Tel: 01271 866637