All Guns Blazing — February 2019

1 All Guns Blazing! Newsletter of the Naval Wargames Society No. 292 – FEBRUARY 2019 US Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer has named a future Arleigh Burke-class guided- missile destroyer in honor of U.S. Navy Vietnam veteran, Navy Cross recipient, and former U.S. Senator from Alabama, Admiral Jeremiah Denton. In 1947, Denton graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and served as a test pilot, flight instructor, and squadron leader, and developed operational tactics still in use, such as the Haystack Concept, which calls for the dispersing of carrier fleets to make it more difficult for the enemy to find the fleets on radar. On July 18, 1965, Denton was shot down over North Vietnam and spent nearly eight years as a POW, almost half in isolation. During an interview with a Japanese media outlet, Denton used Morse code to blink “torture,” confirming that American POWs were being tortured. He suffered severe harassment, intimidation and ruthless treatment, yet he refused to provide military information or be used by the enemy for propaganda purposes. Arleigh Burke-class destroyers conduct a variety of operations from peacetime presence and crisis response to sea control and power projection. The future USS Jeremiah Denton (DDG 129) will be capable of fighting air, surface and subsurface battles simultaneously, and will contain a combination of offensive and defensive weapon systems designed to support maritime warfare, including integrated air and missile defense and vertical launch capabilities. The ship will be constructed at Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Ingalls shipbuilding division in Pascagoula, Miss. The ship will be 509 feet long, have a beam length of 59 feet and be capable of operating at speeds in excess of 30 knots. oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo Events to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy and Portsmouth, have been announced by the Ministry of Defence, The Royal British Legion, and Portsmouth City Council. Events will be held in Normandy and around the UK this June. Portsmouth, where much of the landing force sailed from in 1944, will be the focal point of the UK commemorations and will host the UK national event on 5 June. The council is also planning a series of events over five days to reflect the area’s unique role in one of the largest and well-known military operations ever. The commemorative event will include a military parade along the seafront, music including performances by military bands and a flypast featuring period aircraft. The first 'Portsmouth Revival festival' celebrating the food, music, dancing, and vehicles of the time will also be held. Portsmouth’s activity will culminate in a Sunset Concert for Heroes, acts will include the Military Wives Choir and the D-Day Darlings. Before sunset on the 5 June, MV Boudicca, a specially-chartered ship for 300

2 Normandy veterans, procured by funds from The Royal British Legion and a LIBOR grant from HM Treasury, will then transport veterans across the channel to Normandy escorted by a Royal Navy vessel, representing their famous crossing 75 years before. The D-Day Story Museum in Portsmouth displays the Normandy Tapestry, vehicles, equipment etc and captures the human stories of those involved in that epic event. The D-Day Story re-opened last year after a £5m National Lottery-supported transformation and is the only museum in the UK dedicated to the Allied Invasion in June 1944. oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo Bruce Dawson supplied the following on the “The Hunters” following my question about it and similar games in AGB last month . Hi Norman,' I have the Hunters game and still enjoy the thrill, or apprehension, of an occasional patrol! Its basis is indeed rolling dice against probability tables, but the tables seem the result of much research, so include most of the issues of U boat warfare, from variables such as 7 different U-Boat marks to choose from (depending on date became operational), add -ins of technical advancements to 1943 etc....plus innumerable 'angles' to consider which are further increased from the talk-shop messages/ variants that appear in the boardgamegeek entry as well as on the company website. OK, the dice decides at the end of the day, but you still have to make realistic decisions, eg do I attack a convoy from close range, knowing it increases the chance of asdic contact from the escorts?; Do I hang on to the convoy after a couple of misses (especially if I am low on torps, or have already suffered some flooding?), or give up and move on to the next patrol area in the hope of finding a ship sailing independently? All decisions demanded of the average U-Boat skipper. My feeling?... don't knock simple game mechanics if they successfully reproduce the historic situation they try to portray. Oh! and another bonus is that, once you get experience, you can do a single patrol as a half an hour fill in, or go for a "several-months- of -world- war- two" session hoping for that promotion before you get sunk! Undoubtedly it is a roleplaying game rather than a boardgame, so if you are not the imaginative type who 'feels 'the boat and its crew are indeed your own, then it is probably not for you. On the other hand if your heart misses a beat when the escort dice 'pings' you, then Happy Hunting.!! Best wishes to you Norman and to all the Members for some very happy naval wargaming throughout 2019! Bruce

3 “Ancient Warfare Magazine”: Naval Issue? I picked up the new issue of a magazine I’ve rarely bought in the past as I was about to embark on a train journey and wanted a read, the banner ‘Naval Technology and Warfare in the Hellenistic era (323-31BC) caught my eye. This glossy, far from cheap at £5.95 for 58 pages, is published by Karwansary in The Netherlands, and this one seemed to have potential. In some ways it has, and interesting enough read to pass a journey, and a magazine worth a review note, but it falls rather short of the banner headline, unfortunately. Yet naval themed issues of any historical magazine are rare, so…. There are in all a dozen articles in “Ancient Warfare Vol XII Issue 4”. A ‘round up’ of news, finds and research opens. Then there’s a piece on swords and another on Ligurian mercenaries, followed by notes on the Battle of Zama. But the ‘naval’ content opens with a general, and decent introduction, to war at sea in Hellenistic times, and another on the Illyrian Lembos; which makes a sound introduction for someone who is unfamiliar with the oared fleets of Antiquity. Readable. Notes on trophy ships, and a good detailed description of the Roman boarding bridges, I particularly liked this piece, follow. The artist’s illustrations, paintings and line drawings are good, and there are odd notes slipped in, basic, but of interest. A four page historical article on the port of Piraeus, next, again interesting, but not in any sense wargamer oriented. The penultimate notes I found very useful, dealing with the construction of a full- scale Roman ‘Navis’ a river craft of the first-century AD, and certainly of interest to the wargamer. Plenty of detail and comment in this descriptive article. Reminiscent of the stuff which came out of Ole Crumlin-Pedersen’s work a decade or more back. The “Long Face” Game Company have added to their list of Games available as a PDF from Wargame Vault. A fast playing set of naval rules designed for use with models from 1/2400 to 1/6000, but adaptable to larger scales such as 1/1200. Book keeping is minimal, with damage recorded through a series of Levels rather than keeping track of damage points. Also included is a set of operational level campaign rules that provide a framework for linked battles, club campaigns etc. Data for over 200 classes and individual ships and over 60 aircraft types covering the navies of Great Britain, Germany, the United States, Japan, France, Italy, the Soviet Union, the Netherlands and Sweden are included. "Find, Fix and Strike" was the motto of the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm https://www.wargamevault.com/product/263954/Find-Fix-and- Strike?src=hottest_filtered

4 The final page deals, though in no serious detail, with the rise of the Trihemiola around the time of the siege of Rhodes in 305 BC. One of the few, it seems, classical warships to row into battle with sails set! A valuable point. All in all, I probably wouldn’t have bought this issue if I’d stood and pondered it for a while, but it did make for interesting reading overall, and in fact a few hours ago, I dug out my Xyston 1/600th scale galleys. Rob Morgan. January 2019. Sea Quiz 79………….. ‘The Navy’ often provided short quotes or intriguing remarks, which when I read them, makes me think of turning them into ‘free-standing’ quiz questions, like this one…. ‘Seldom has it been the fortune of one class of ship to be in the forefront in two great wars, and these five ships names will retain places in history.’ That was Robert Sheridan ending a piece on the ‘Queen Elizabeth’ Class of Battleships in 1959. On with this month’s quiz. By the way, ‘Octopus’ says that question 1 is worth 10 marks. Hm? 1. Of the five ‘R’ Class Battleships, two were distinguishable by their exceptionally deep bulges. Which two? 2. Name the last 3-funnelled British built destroyer to remain in service in the Royal Navy. 3. Which ‘old-fashioned amenity’ did HMS’s Kent, Dorsetshire and Norfolk possess in WWII? 4. How many Admirals of the Fleet are there at present? (Question set in Spring 1958). 5. What is the full angle of the flight deck of HMS Victorious? Well, I must say, I built my Airfix model of ‘Victorious’ in the late sixties, and frankly I didn’t notice! The answer to question 4 surprised me. Rob Morgan. BAE Systems has received a $78.8 million contract from the U.S. Navy for the maintenance and modernization of USS Shoup (DDG 86), an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer (DDG). The work is expected to begin in March 2019 and be completed in May 2020. The USS Shoup is the 36th ship in the Arleigh Burke class and was commissioned in June 2002. The ship is named after Medal of Honor recipient and former Commandant of the Marine Corps General David M. Shoup.

5 Here is a worrying thought: The special-purpose nuclear-powered submarine Khabarovsk currently being built at the Sevmash Shipyard will become one of the organic carriers of the Poseidon nuclear-capable underwater drone. The Poseidon, also known under Ocean Multipurpose System Status-6 or “Kanyon” by the U.S. intelligence community, is a new Russian strategic drone propelled by a miniaturized nuclear reactor. It is suspected that the maximum speed of the Poseidon drone will be more than 107 kt (200 km/h), the maximum depth at which it can move is more than one kilometre. For comparison, the maximum speed of modern nuclear submarines is 32 kt and torpedoes – 48 kt. The Poseidon is designed to create a tidal wave up to 500 metres (1,600 ft) tall, which would contaminate a wide area of an enemy’s coast with radioactive isotopes, as well as being immune to anti-missile defence systems such as anti-ballistic missiles, laser weapons and railguns that might disable an ICBM or a SLBM. Naval Guns in the ‘Journal of the Ordnance Society’ Volume 24 of the Journal has just arrived and is very much a naval issue, with something substantial to offer the sailing era naval wargamer. I found the short article ‘Overgunning the Mary Rose: The King was Warned’, (Hmm???) by C.S.Knighton and A. Hildred very interesting. The problem of such a big warship being overloaded is one long discussed in many publications, but this note suggests that Henry was prepared to send his ships into battle carrying heavier guns than was safe to carry. The Tudor fleet has of course become a subject of greater interest to naval wargamers since the publication of the Geoffrey Moorhouse volume “Great Harry’s Navy” in 2005, and this well illustrated note does add something to the concept of naval command at the highest level, as well as problems for Master Gunners! I also enjoyed the account of ‘The bronze guns of Louis XIV’s Navy (1661-1715) by Christian Cholet. It’s a readable short note, again with plenty of illustrations and is a good account in general terms, again with much for the wargamer. The third article I enjoyed is Ramon Orrite’s ‘Supplying Guns to the Spanish Navy’ another readable account of guns in war at sea in the era of fighting sail. In this case Orrite focusses on 1622-1835, it’s a broad sweep. I don’t know of many libraries which subscribe to OSJ, but issues of the Journal are available, I understand. I’ll provide more details if I can find them. Rob Morgan. January 2019.

6 US Navy Weeks are scheduled for the following cities in 2019: - Mobile, Ala., Feb. 27-March 5 - Charleston, S.C., March 11-17 - Miami, Fla., March 25-31 - Wilmington, N.C., April 1-7 - Puerto Rico, April 8-14 - Oklahoma City, Okla., May 27-June 2 - Nashville, Tenn., June 3-9 - Quad Cities, Iowa, June 24-30 - Duluth, Minn., July 15-21 - Grand Junction, Colo., July 22-28 - Boise, Idaho, Aug. 19-25 - St. Louis, Mo., Sept. 2-8 - Wichita, Kan., Sept. 9-15 - Charleston, W.V., Oct. 14-20 Navy Weeks bring a variety of events, equipment, and personnel to a single city for a weeklong series of engagements with the public, key influencers, and organizations representing all sectors of the community. The Battle of Narvik provides plenty of Destroyer action for table-top replays The US Navy's newest fast-attack submarine, USS South Dakota (SSN 790), will be commissioned at Naval Submarine Base New London in Groton, Connecticut, Feb. 2, 2019, as the seventeenth Virginia- class submarine to join the fleet.

7 The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) transits past USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) as she departs Naval Station Norfolk, Jan. 25, 2019. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Joseph A.D. Phillips (Released) 190125-N-GY475-0135

8 SEA QUIZ 79….answers. A fairly straightforward set, at least apart from number 4! I had no idea there were as many then, or that the senior Admiral of the Fleet was Sir Henry Oliver KCB, etc, etc. I actually left out the second part of Octopus’ question which asked who was senior at the time, and I’ve shortened Sir Henry’s postnominals too. Probably everyone got the right answer in 1958. How many are Admirals of the Fleet there now I wonder? Anyone know?

9 1. The two were HMS Royal Oak, and HMS Ramillies. 2. She was HMS Skate, served most of the war as a North Atlantic escort. 3. It was a sternwalk, I wonder why Octopus described it as an amenity? 4. 15, yes 15! 5. Well, I suppose someone in the Fleet got this one, but not me. It was an angle of 8 and ¾ degrees. Ho hum. I’ve just looked up my ‘Conway’s’ and I find myself wondering about the sternwalks on these three Cruisers. Unless you had a habit of having Royal visitors aboard, inclusion in the design does seem a little unnecessary. Rob Morgan. SIGNAL PAD! A New Year brings with it the new round of annual wargames conventions. If you attend one or even put on a show or participation game, then perhaps you could supply a few words for inclusion in AGB or Battlefleet. Beachhead, now in its 4th Year, is an exciting table-top games event, and will be once again held at the Bournemouth International Centre on Saturday 16th February 2019. “SALUTE” at London’s Excel Centre is on 6th April. The NWS will be running David Manley’s “Stingray” Participation Game. Lots of fun as anyone who has played it will tell you. Will those Aquaphibians in their Terrorfish send Stingray to the bottom? “Marineville, I am calling Battle Stations”. (Cue dramatic music). 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM Location: Excel London, Royal Victoria Dock, 1 Western Gateway, LONDON E16 1XL

10 Pictures from a previous “Salute”. ChimeraCon. Venue: The Teachers Club, 36 Parnell Square West, Dublin 1, Date: Saturday May 11th, 2019 (10am - 9pm) Entry cost: 10 euro The venue is well known to Irish gamers as centrally located in Dublin with a full bar in a well maintained historic building. October 5th/6th Naval Wargames Weekend, Fleet Air Arm Museum, Yeovilton. Organised by Dave Sharp, Naval Wargames Society. Coming in March’s AGB: Sailing Ships through the ages. A Note on Anti-Submarine Weapons in WWII. Both from Rob Morgan. Plus lots more (he says confidently).

11 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, 2019 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 Uruguay, SCOW: Southern Cone Orientales Wargamers • Games erupt, inquire to set one off: Bill Owen US telephone is 217-619-0202, Uruguay 099 834 544 WmOwen@aol.com • If Spanish speaking, email & I will get someone who speaks it better. • Soca, Canelones or in Montevideo we can arrange a "Graf Spee 3 Gun Salvo": see her 5.9” gun, anchor & rangefinder salvaged from the ship resting in the harbor, a Real English Tour conducted by British expat staff who were associated with the British Ambassador who won the post-battle diplomacy and subterfuge plus, of course, a GQ3 refight of the battle (fees for features like museum & tour). • Most of the Salvo can even be done during a cruise ship stop in MVD from a Round Cape Horn itinerary between Santiago<->Buenos Aires. • wargamecampaign.wordpress.com THE NAVAL WARGAMES SOCIETY http://www.navalwargamessociety.org (Victorian Division “Cerberus”) Email: nws.victoria.au@gmail.com Membership by e-Subscription to NWS BATTLEFLEET magazine.