Back to the River Plate: Reevaluating the Battle

Recently I did several posts here describing my new interest in WW2 naval wargaming, and how I picked the 1939 Battle of the River Plate as my entry point.

I was quite interested today to read this evaluation of the British performance in the battle, which naval historian Alan Zimm argues was much less impressive than the myth making and propaganda that arose after the battle.  Much of the propaganda told the story of an inferior force defeating a German monster, when in fact the RN ships had a significant advantage due to their much higher rates of fire.

Zimm finds several faults with Commodore Harwood's conduct of the fight, including:

1) sending in Exeter for a one on one fight with Graf Spee, leaving her unsupported by the light cruisers Achilles and Ajax, pursuant to an RN doctrine called flank marking, which assumed that one ship could observe and correct the fire of friendly ships attacking from a different angle; 

2) over reliance on pre-war simulations which assumed a much higher RN accuracy of fire than Harwood's light cruisers actually achieved;

3) general mishandling of information, particularly a decision to abort when he was told that he only had 20% ammunition remaining.  In fact, this report was only for one of Ajax's turrets, whereas Ajax and Achilles still had more than enough shells remaining to finish the fight.   By the time Harwood broke off, his light cruisers were at 8000 yards and closing, and were finally achieving multiple hits, which seriously degraded Graf Spee's gunnery.   Zimm believes that Harwood could have won the fight had he remained.

It's all a bit academic, as Graf Spee of course scuttled herself in Montevideo and the British got a huge boost, making up for the RN's poor showing thus far in the war.  Whether you agree or disagree with Zimm, his point about how wargaming led the RN to develop faulty gunnery doctrines, based on false assumptions about accuracy at long range, is interesting.

Cheers,  MP+

Prussian Musketeer Regiment Mustered Into Service

 I'm very happy that this large Prussian regiment for my SYW project is complete and now mustered into service.   These are Foundry 28mm figures, and since they are sculpted wearing jackets without lapels, I painted them as Musketeer Regiment No 3, Anhalt Dessau.  This regiment had a mixed war record, but redeemed some earlier fumbles and won back Frederick's regard for its performance at the Battle of Liegnitz.

Here we see the entire regiment drawn up and practicing its musketry drill, under the watchful eye of Der Alte Fritz.  That parade ground looks quite idyllic!

The uniform for this regiment was fairly utilitarian:  dark blue coat with red collar, cuffs and turn backs, white waistcoat and breeches, and black gaiters.   As usual, I used Foundry tritone paints over a black undercoat.  There are 36 figures in this unit, so I developed a kind of zen-like detachment to the painting.  It helped that the core of the unit is in two poses, so that broke the monotony a bit.  I think I started this project in September, or possible earlier this summer.  It's been a while.

I'm of two minds about firing poses.  They add some variety to the army, and look good in game photos (the thin blue line making an heroic stand) but the bases look a bit strange when in march column formation.   I wanted the second rank to look like they were ready to step forward and fire once the order was given.

Command stand,  the poor drummer getting that fife right in the ear!  The flags are by Adolfo Ramos in Spain,  I think he's the best in the business.

Two hard bitten NCOs.

A closeup of the firing line.  The entire unit is 6 stands of six figures each, plus the two single mounted NCOs.   I wanted to see what a smaller unit of only two or three stands would look like for larger scale games such as Sam Mustafa's Might and Empire, and it doesn't look too bad at all!  Of course, not every two base regiment can  have it's own standards, but the command stand would perhaps serve as the centre regiment of a brigade in the larger scale battles.

Hard bitten NCO training his troops to fire three rounds to the Austrian's one.  His can will be liberally applied.

Rear view.  I like the look of six figures to a base, it conveys the closely packed formations of the period, but I sometimes wish if they were four to a base, it would be easier to play SYW Sharpe Practice games, as the SP size for a group is eight figures.   I have tried playing Sharpe Practice with six figure groups and it works, but troops are more fragile.

Well, thanks for looking.  Next in the SYW queue is a regiment of Foundry Russians in their distinctive red vests, which is a good look.  Prussian reinforcements in 2025 will include a grenadier regiment (I should make it a colourful one), von Kleist's Freikorps lancers, and some Friekorps or garrison infantry.  Hopefully I can master the same zen like detachment to paint more of these large units.

Cheers and blessings to your brushes,

MP+

Take That You Beast Part Two! River Plate Project Progress

 Back in September I said that I was going to experiment with WW2 naval gaming, using the Battle of the River Plate as a test project.  Working relatively quickly, I've been able to get my initial order of 1/2400 ships from GHQ painted.  Here is "the Beast", the Graf Spee, sailing serenely on a Geek Villain mat.

Leander-class light cruiser:

HMS Exeter:

Commodore Harwood's squadron in search of the Graf Spee:

"I say, sir, I do believe we've found her!"  Litko splash markers.

I had a very positive experience with the Naval Thunder: Battleship Row rules by Harry Pratt, which I found for purchase as a download from Wargames Vault.  I'm grateful to Keith who runs the excellent Across the Table blog for putting me on to these rules.    Since NTBR uses a written orders and simultaneous movement system (seems to be a hallmark of naval rules!), it is not ideal for solo play, but I suspect with some more thought I could write some general battle plans for both sides with some die rolls for the commander's likely reaction as the situation evolves.  An even better solution would be an opponent!

I was only using the basic NTBR rules and found them easy enough to learn.  The d10 system provides for some unpredictability, and shooting is not easy at the larger ranges.  When a shell does hit, there is a step to assess penetration vs armour (each ship has a data card which can be printed before the game and which provides this information readily).  Penetrating hits cause damage (different shells have different damage ratings, and each hit reduces a ship's hit points) but also cause critical hits, which can be quite dramatic.   There are advanced rules for crew quality, torpedoes, aircraft, etc, but I kept the first game simple.

The RN player has to put his head down and run at the Spee to get within effective range, and this means the Spee has several turns to inflict damage, as happened in the actual fight with the crippling of Exeter.   In my game, Achilles in the lead followed by Ajax attacked on one side, while Exeter tried to get on the other side of Spee.  This gave the Germans time to hammer Achilles with 11" shells, crippling her gunnery and causing a fire.   Here we see Achilles turning away from the fight and on fire, making smoke to hide her escape.   Her brave New Zealand crew never did get the fire under control and she soon sank (more Litko markers).

However, Ajax was relatively unharmed and struck a blow, causing a fire amidships.   Spee's crew could not extinguish the fire, and it spread, detonating a secondary magazine and causing significant damage.  Captain Langsdorf was now seeking to withdraw and fight another day.  By this time, Exeter was adding her fire, though reduced because her aft turret had been knocked out.  Her first salvo missed, but a second landed two fatal hits.  The first caused flooding damage, but the second hit the main magazine (two "O"s on 2d10) and the mighty pocket battleship blew up with few survivors.

At least in this encounter, German propaganda can say that she died fighting, rather than being ignominiously scuttled!

I'm  now debating whether to mount my ships on bases, which would minimize wear and tear on the models from handling, vs leaving them as they are.  The Geek Villain seascape map is quite nice and I like the look of the models sans bases.   This requires a good ponder.   In the meantime, another order from GHQ will soon allow me to fight the Battle of the Denmark Strait, although that order is currently in limbo due to a Canada Post strike.

Thanks for reading.  Cheers, and blessings to your die rolls!

Perry Brothers ACW Union Cavalry Muster Into Service

"Around her neck, she wore a yellow ribbon ...and if you asked her, why it was she wore it, she said it was for her lover who was in the cavalry."

I might have been whistling that tune as I finished flocking these troopers the other day.   They represent the contents of a Perry Brothers box of plastic 28mm American Civil War cavalry, assembled and painted as Union cavalry.  I could have assembled the figures with carbines or pistols in hand, but the look of the sabres is iconic, even though probably not very common in the later war period.  At any rate, I'm very happy to muster this new unit into service.

Not a huge complaint, but after painting the three mounted Roman gents I showed here recently, these Perry figures felt like a slight step down in quality.   To be fair, the Perry brothers were fairly early adopters of injection plastics, a decade or so ago now, whereas Victrix is probably benefiting from newer design and production technologies.  the Victrix human faces are sharper, and the horses have much more texture in muscles, manes and tails.     However, when you paint a dozen of the Perry figures, the overall impression is still impressive.

This batch was mostly painted using Foundry paints.  The tri-tone system gives good results for the horses, and the Union blue for the tunics and kepis looks especially good.  I free-handed the yellow piping, and some came out better than others, especially the tunic collars.  The flag is by Adolfo Ramos.

These gallant lads, together with what's already in my collection, gives me two brigades of Union cavalry, or three groups of eight, depending on the rules and game scale.   There are many mounted actions that would make great games, such as the cavalry encounters before Gettysburg or actions in the Valley, so we may some rebel riders in the painting queue at some point.

Thanks for looking.  Blessings to your brushes!

MP+

A Second Look at Mark Herman's Rebel Yell: Chancellorsville

Back in July, I posted here on my first thoughts about Mark Herman's much discussed ACW game, Rebel Fury, published earlier this year by GMT.  It's a fairly simple, divisional level game that covers six battles:  Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, The Wilderness and Spotsylvania.  The mechanics are very similar to Dan Fournie's ancients game, Baetis Campaign, published in C3i magazine earlier this year and reviewed here.

Chancellorsville (henceforth referred to as Cville) uses the same map as the solo introductory game, Fredericksburg, which frankly was not a lot of fun.   Cville promises more sport for the Union as half the federal forces begin on the south side of the map, at Fredericksburg,  under Sedgewick, while the other half enter from the north map edge under Hooker.   The Union has the initiative for two turns, as per the game's Turning Movement rules, but after that the Confederates inevitably get to move first because of their superior generals, Lee and Jackson. 

Playing solo, I found it posed an interesting challenge for the rebs:  how many divisions should I pull out of the entrenchments across the Rappahannock from Fredericksburg to send north to try and stop Hooker?   In my solo game, the answer was just enough to slow the Union forces on either end of the map.   As you can see below, the Union came close to their victory conditions, establishing a road route from south to north that is entirely more than two hexes removed form any Confederate unit, while likewise clearing the rail line south from Fredericksburg from Confederate influence.    I got close, but not close enough.

However, if you look at the little red cross "Casualty" markers in the photo below, that is history repeating itself with a vengeance, as both Jackson and Lee became casualties, or at least enough of their HQ staffs to render them hors de combat.  Herman has a clever rule whereby one can use a commander's combat rating, called "battle stars", to influence a fight, but there is a good chance that the commander will become a casualty.   As the Confederate player, one has to resist the temptation to use the commanders in combat roles.   For the Union player, at least in this scenario, Sedgewick and Hooker have less ability to influence a combat outcome, so it's best leaving them in maneuver mode so they can enable their units to cover more ground, and for the Union, maneuver, as I learned, is the key to success.  

Judging by this podcast, not everyone is sold on this system, but I like what I've played of it so far, and I would be interested to retry this scenario to see if I could manage a Union victory.  

Rebel Fury offers beautiful maps, well produced components, and an intriguing variant on the IGO / UGO movement mechanic.  Definitely worth a look for ACW boardgame fans.

Blessings to your die rolls,

MP+

Three Victrix Imperial Roman Generals

I continue to be pleased with the quality of Victrix figures and by how well they take paint.  Here are three 28mm Early Imperial big cheeses to lead my numerically tiny Roman forces.  I like the fellow on the left because he's old and cranky and it probably hurts to climb on his horse in the morning.    I feel a certain kinship with him.

Mostly I used Foundry tri-tone paints, especially on the horses, which I think turned out quite well.

The iconic red cloaks that you see in all the films.  For these I used Foundry British Redcoat, which looked fine to me.

Thanks for looking.  Ave, vale, salve!

MP+

"Take That, You Beast!": Getting Ready to Chase the Graf Spee

Fans of old British war films may remember that line, uttered by Anthony Quayle playing Commodore Harwood in the 1956 film, Battle of the River Plate.  It's a terrific Technicolour film and an intelligent account of a naval battle.  I have a hard time thinking of a better naval film made since, except (possibly) Greyhound.  The film is here if you want to watch it online.

Faithful readers of this intermittent blog (bless you!) may recall that I've said before that I don't need to take on any new periods, especially as I turn 62 soon and "Time's winged chariot" seems somehow nearer.   However, naval games have always intrigued me and after reading a terrific blog account of a WW2 naval battle in the Med, I felt I had to scratch this itch.

River Plate seemed like a good place to start, seeing as it only requires four ships and is an interesting contest between numbers and hitting power.   I was considering NavWar in the UK as my source for the models, but they only take postal orders and I've been thoroughly spoiled by online shopping.  Besides, I have lived through the era of sending money orders to the UK and (hopefully) receiving the models two months later, so i've paid my dues.

I selected GHQ in the US as my source, and while the white metal models are pricey, the 1:2400 scale seemed small enough to be manageable but large enough to be satisfying on the tabletop.   I was very pleased when this package arrived shortly after I placed the order online, with lots of  paper goodies stuffed inside the mailer, including an intriguing and old school glossy paper catalogue.

A sharp Olfa knife, a metal file, tweezers (mine were barely adequate) and super glue were all employed to assemble the models.  Each ship took about an hour, including breaks to keep an eye on whatever Toronto Blue Jays baseball game was on.  I present HMS Exeter, which soaked up fearful damage during the battle.

Leander class light cruiser, representing Ajax (Harwood's flagship) and the NZ crewed Achilles (which stars as itself in the 1956 film):

Force H assembled!

The dreaded Beast, the Graf Spee.   Some of the barrels on those turrets look a bit wiggly!

The next step is to paint these guys and try out the rules I've chosen, Naval Thunder.  There's also a naval fleece on order from Geek Villain and some markers from Litko.

More to follow!

Cheers and blessings to your super glue!

MP+