Simulating gunfire in naval wargames (2016)

Reading this, and looking at the pictures and discussions about range reminded me of a time years ago (when I was a kid) reading the journal of a WWII combat vessel captain.

He was captain of a large battleship (akin to the Bismarck or Tirpitz) and I guess these ships were mainly used in long range stand off attacks, because he would talk about seeing the muzzle flashes of enemy ships through his telescope, then waiting 30 to 90 seconds to see where the shells would land near/on his ship.

I was always enthralled by the fact that you knew shells were heading your way bringing death and destruction, but you had to wait around a minute to see if they missed you or they impacted your vessel, and in that time, you had to plot an evasive manoeuvre as well as return fire solutions.

The distance and isolation of sea combat somehow makes it more haunting than the land warfare equivalent of an artillery barrage.

I remember reading about a model boating society that, instead of wargaming, would create scale models of famous warships and fight them - the hulls would be thin wood, and the turrets had motorised mounts and compressed air guns capable of firing a metal pellet through the wooden hulls. The ships would have less internal bulkheads (to account for the damage explosive shells would cause) but would otherwise try to be as true to life as was possible given the limits of technology (I don't think anyone was building gyro-stabilised gun platforms, for example, as it was too hard to minituarize).

There was even a proposal to build larger scale ships that used small-calibre handgun ammunition and sheetmetal hulls, but it was shot down (if you'll forgive my pun) for being wildly unsafe and probably illegal (as I understand civilians are generally discouraged from owning remote-controllable firing mechanisms).

Unless you've seen one up close it's hard to wrap your head around how big naval guns are.

I work in a converted naval gun factory, built in WWII. They used to take the main guns off battleships and reline them every hundred shots or so, and my building was a huge machine shop set up to replace the linings.

The gantry crane used to take the guns off the railroad cars they were shipped on is still in place. The hook of the crane is a solid piece of steel. It is larger than my Honda.

I remember being at Gen-Con in the 90's and seeing a game of Harpoon[1] going on. It was pretty amazing seeing all of the ships they were using. Maybe not as impressive as some of the Warhammer setups, but still pretty cool. I remember talking to a few of the folks and they believed it was the best game of this type. Larry Bond was also an author of some note.

1) http://www.larry-bond.com/games.htm

Interesting how in these early wargames (see also H.G. Wells' "Little Wars" from 1913) firing was simulated by a physical action while in modern games this is generally settled by dice or other random number generator.

Post is from 2016