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+

Command and Colours Napoleonics and the Battle of Wertingen: A Test Fight

So now that I’ve resurrected my French and Austrian 6mm miniatures and am frantically painting more while the mini-mojo courses through my bloodstream, what to do with them?   I could just fight some more random battles using points or whatever forces catch my fancy, but that seems somewhat below the noble historical calling of Napoleonic wargaming (said slightly tongue in cheek).  I invested in GMT’s Command and Colours Napoleonics for precisely this reason, as a simple wargaming guide to the campaigns and battles of the era.

I had spent a long evening putting stickers on the blocks for the CCN Austrian expansion (I have every CCN set and have gotten quite good at it), so I started at the beginning of the scenarios in this set with Wertingen.   The Battle of Wertingen, a town in Bavaria south of Augsburg, was the opening of the 1805 Ulm campaign.  It looks like a modestly sized fight ideal to recreate in 6mm.   

Here’s the initial setup, mirroring the historical situation.  Murat and Lannes arrived with several divisions of light and heavy cavalry, and Oudinot’s grenadier division was coming up on the right.    This was bad news for the Austrian commander, von Auffenberg, who had been told to take his infantry division, with two small battalions of horse, and go scouting.   Given the rock/paper/scissors nature of the horse and musket period, running into a cavalry heavy opponent when all your guys are on foot is not a strong omen of success.  Here the Austrian infantry is divided into three wings - most are the large, five-block Austrian foot, which are one of the Austrian advantages in CCN, along with several unit of grenadiers.  The Austrians have a light cavalry regiment on their right, and a heavy (cuirassier) regiment in their rear centre.  Historically the Austrian guns were lighter than the French and so were outmatched in range by Murat’s horse artillery, but in CCN terms Foot Artillery is Foot Artillery so that unit is one of the stronger cards in the Austrian hand.

Speaking of cards, I was using the Tactician cards and the new Command deck which are in the CCN 5th edition.  This was my first outing with hem, and I found that they add much more period flavour and choice to the game.  There is a video on YouTube showing how the system for card-driven games devised by Stuka Joe can be used to make solo play in CCN more interesting, and I shall try that next time I play CCN.

The opening went as the battle started, with the French horse getting stuck into the Austrians and causing some grief.  However, the Austrian line infantry in CCN can form Battalion Mass, which ineffectively a square but does not require the Austrian player to sacrifice a command card for each unit in square.   The rule reflects the Austrian tactics’ favouring of the defensive, and requires the French player to use horse, horse artillery and infantry in Combined Arms attacks.

Mid game.  The Austrian light horse have caught the French horse artillery and obliterated it.   Also, the French have lost a general (two sabres came up on the casualty dice when his unit lost a block) so at mid game the Austrians are up 3-1.

 

 By the end game the tide was turning French as Oudinot’s grenadiers came up on the right.   The Austrian foot was in a protective crouch, using the defence advantages of the terrain, but a terrible run of cards left the defenders unable to answer the French weight moving to the right wing, and a series of persistent attacks, always with the terrible weight of French horse in reserve, took their toll.  Result, 5-4 French win, much closer than the actual battle, which augurs well for a more interesting miniatures game, perhaps. 

Next steps, do some background reading (I’m currently going through F.N. Maude’s book The Ulm Campaign 1805: Napoleon and the Defeat of the Austrian Army, which is an old chestnut but very readable and dead cheap as a Kindle version.   There’s also a very helpful entry on Wertingen in the invaluable Obscure Battles website which gives a detailed OOB for both sides that will be invaluable when I try to translate the battle to either General d’Armee (battalion level) or Blucher (brigade level).   One thing I noticed immediately in the OOB is how CCN fudges the numbers to create a more even contest:  the Austrians have a LOT of blocks for their 5500 men whereas the French should, one would think, have more blocks for their 20,000 men. It may look much more one-sided as a miniature battle.   

However, CCN proved its worth as a useful overview of a battle and an incentive to learn the wider context (I am still very much a newbie at Napoleonic history), so hopefully by the end of April I’ll have tried Wertingen as a tabletop battle.

Blessings to your die rolls!

MP+

 

 

 

Military Quotation of the Day: Horace on Force and Wisdom

Another in a semi-regular quotation that came from an email list run by an Army friend of mine.  This particular quote below seems like a good pairing with a photo of Battlefront 15mm WW2 HQ group that my friend James Manto painted over ten years ago. 

Cheers,

Mike

"Brute force bereft of wisdom falls to ruin by its own weight."

- Horace. 

As quoted in “Bitter Victory:  The Battle for Sicily, 1943,” by Carlo D’Este.

Military Quote of the Day - John Monash on the Proper Use of Infanty

Hello friends!

Just blowing the dust off this blog to see if it works.  

I get a semi-regular quotation from an an email list run by an officer in the Royal Canadian Regiment, and this particular quote below seems like a good pairing with a photo of minis I painted over ten years ago. I learned quite a bit on Monash when I toured the museum at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra last year.  A great soldier.

Cheers,

Mike

"The true role of infantry is not to expend itself upon heroic physical effort, not to wither away under merciless machine-guns fire, not to impale itself on hostile bayonets, but on the contrary, to advance under the maximum possible protection of the maximum possible array of mechanical resources, in the form of guns, machine-guns, tanks, mortars and aeroplanes; to advance with as little impediment as possible; to be relieved as far as possible of the obligation to fight their way forward."

- General John Monash, Australian Corps Commander on the Western Front during The Great War (1914-1918). 

He put his writings into practice in his combined arms approach during the battle of Le Hamel, France on 04 July 1918 (101 years ago today).  All of his objectives were achieved in 93 minutes, only three minutes longer than he had calculated in his planning. 

A Visit to the Australian War Memorial

A belated Happy New Year to you!    I hope you all had a pleasant holidays.  For my part, getting back from a month in Australia just before Christmas, and catching up with church and family, meant that I was a bit pooped for a while, but I've had some time to sort through my travel photos and thought that those of you who have never been there would appreciate these images from my trip to the Australian War Memorial.  There are far better pictures on the website, but here are a few.

My partner Joy and I spent December 7, our last day in Canberra, touring the Memorial, which is both a monument and a museum.    I was warned that a day would not be enough time to see it all, and they were right, but we saw enough of it to be deeply moved and impressed.

We arrived early enough in the day that we had the Commemorative Courtyard almost to ourselves.   It is both somber and peaceful, as this photo of the Pool of Reflection under a flawless summer sky suggests.  The domed structure is the Hall of Memory.

The gallery of names, mostly from the Great War, lines one long wall.  A second gallery takes up from the Second World War to the present.  People have placed crepe poppies beside the names of relatives.  Over 102,000 names from all of Australia's wars are preserved here on the bronze walls.

The view from inside the Hall of Memory looking across the courtyard.

From the front steps, looking down the length of Anzac Parade with the Australian Parliament buildings (old and new) visible in the far centre.   One of my enduring memories of Canberra will be its elegant design and these long, sweeping views.

I loved this statue depicting one of the iconic figures of the Gallipoli, John Simpson Kirkpatrick, who landed with a Field Ambulance unit at Anzac Cove and spent the last four weeks of his life evacuating the wounded until he was killed in May 1915.   He was widely known at Anzac as "The Man With the Donkey".

This statue, honouring Australia's war dogs and their handlers, was incredibly moving and reduced Joy, a dog lover with a huge heart, to quiet sobs.

The star of Anzac Hall is this Lancaster bomber, surrounded by large multimedia panels that tell the story of the Australian contribution to Bomber Command.  

Of course I patted the Lanc as I walked underneath it.

There are some lovely Great War aircraft preserved here, including this German Albatross.  Like Canada, Australia's aviation industry has its roots in the aircrew who returned from the Great War, including the founders of Quantas Airlines.

There are some skillful dioramas, including his portrayal of the fighting above and below ground at Lone Pine at Gallipoli.

Australians on the Western Front.  Note the tank in the centre background.

If I am ever fortunate enough to go back to Australia, I will make another pilgrimage here.  There were many exhibits that I barely had time to see, such as the moving account of the Diggers in the Pacific War in places like the Kokoda Trail, which is as much an Australian Iliad as is Gallipoli.  

We ended our day observing the closing ceremony, when the Memorial honours one Australian service member who died in action.  The wreaths laid by the photo of this young lad are from family members, given a place of honour in the brief ceremony, and by members of the diplomatic staffs from the many embassies in Canberra.  Each day's event can be viewed online here.

Standing in the galleries, as a brilliant sun began to set, and listening to the unfamiliar but lovely words of Australia's national anthem, will be an abiding memory.  

"Advance Australia Fair".

MP+

A Bit More On Military Wargaming: Lessons Learned From MC'02

 

Apropos to my post last week on last week’s post about a disastrous and badly flawed US military war-game, here is another article from the same website, War on the Rocks, by two of the Red Team members in MC’02.  

Point Four is especially interesting.

Worst Range Day Ever

I’ve been dropping off library books as I prepare to leave university and go back to work, and one of them was Charles Esdaille’s The Penninsular War (Palgrave 2003), which is a grand and detailed reference that I’d love to have in my collection.

I couldn’t drop it off without re-reading my favourite paragraph, in which Esdaille describes the particularly bad quality of the troops that Napoleon had on hand when he first invaded Spain in 1808.   Max Foy described the army as being thrown together of inexperienced men and bits and pieces of units.  “Unacquainted with each other, unknown to their officers, whose names, even, they knew not, taken little care of, badly subsisted and irregularly paid, [the soldier’s] existence as fluctuating and precarious, like that of the ephemeral corps of which they formed a part”. 

It was a dangerous army to lead, as Blaze (Memoires d’un Apothecaire sur le Guerre dEspagne) described.

“On the fifteenth of March, we held exercises on a plain outside the town [of Valladolid], and General Malher was killed by a ramrod that a soldier had foolishly left in the barrel of his musket.  An immediate inspection was carried out to discover the … culprit: eighteen ramrods were missing from the section of the line the shot had been fired from."

The unfortunate General Malher.

This story is especially tragicomic because Jean Pierre Firmin Malher was, by all accounts, a distinguished soldier. Here’s his bio from the Arc de Triomphe website.

 Jean-Pierre-Firmin Malher first enlisted in the army in 1777, and then two years later he served on the ship La Couronne. After the Revolution began, in October of 1789 Malher joined the National Guard of Paris. In 1792 he joined the 14th Battalion of Light Infantry, served with them in the Army of the North, and was commissioned as a sous-lieutenant. The next year he was promoted to lieutenant and became an aide-de-camp to General Queyssat. Malher continued to serve with the Army of the North and in 1794 he was promoted to chef de brigade and became the chief of staff to General Bonnaud's division.

Malher's next major command came in September of 1799 when he became Vandamme's chief of staff in the Army of Holland. The next month he served at Castricum, was promoted to général de brigade, and joined Boudet's division. In 1800 General Malher joined the Army of the Reserve in Watrin's division, and that May he seized Aoste and fought at Montestrutto, Ivrée, and Chiusella. In June he fought at Montebello and then was wounded at Marengo. That November Malher returned to Paris.

During the years of peace that followed , Malher was employed in the 24th military division and he received a promotion to général de division in 1803. In 1804 he went to the camp of Montreuil and took command of the 3rd Infantry Division that would become part of Marshal Ney's VI Corps the next year. Malher led his division throughout the campaign of 1805 and fought at Gunzbourg in October. On Christmas Day of 1805, Malher was made a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor.

The next year, a few weeks into the campaign in Prussia, General Malher was replaced in his command by General Vandamme. In 1807 Malher was employed in the interior and then given command of the 13th military division at Rennes. That November he took command of the 3rd Division of Dupont's II Corps. Traveling with the army into Spain, Malher and his men were at Valladolid in March of 1808. Malher was participating in a training exercise when a soldier fired his gun but had left his ramrod in the barrel. The ramrod flew out of control and through Malher's skull, killing him.

 

Where’s your ramrod, son?  It’s in his head, innit?

 Poor man, he deserved better than a ramrod through the skull.   One wonders what happened to those eighteen soldats who had fired off their ramrods.

I might have caused a similar incident at a range day.  On my first field exercise as a padre to my first regiment, the troops were working in pairs firing live ammunition with the C7 (Canadian version of the M16 assault rifle) while working through a course with pop-up targets.  The Major in charge wanted me to take a rifle and go through the course with him.   As a chaplain, I am strictly required to be a non-combatant, and it had been many years since I had handled an FN rifle, the predecessor of the C7.   It would have been so easy for me to accidentally kill the Major or someone else, so I politely declined.  I also declined his suggestion that I serve as a Range Safety Officer, for similar reasons.   That Major was fortunate not to share the fate of poor General Malher!

A Scary Footnote From The Cold War

 

It’s the Cold War.  You’re a US Special Forces operative, parachuting into enemy territory (could be Eastern Europe, could be North Korea).  Besides your kit, you’ve got a 90 pound, half-kiloton nuke attached to your harness.  Your job is to backpack it to your assigned target, evade patrols and guards, and set it off.  And, since the timing mechanism is imprecise, you’re supposed to hang around nearby until if goes off. 

Sound like fun?

This story from Foreign Policy on the history of the SADM (Special Atomic Demolitions Munition) is a reminder of how weird the Cold War got.  The US Army felt that to keep pace with the other Services, it too needed a nuclear capability.  The backpack demolition nuke grew out of ideas for “nuclear landscaping”, using nukes to create obstacles against advancing enemy forces.  From there the SADM idea was claimed by the Special Forces types for offensive use.  Tom Clancy would have been hard-pressed to think this stuff up.The article is quite fascinating, in a rather horrific way, and would make an excellent scenario for those of you that do Cold War goes hot gaming.

Cheers,  MP+

Napoleon's Bathtub ... And Other Sights From Italy

 I am happy to say that I am back from Italy.  Madame Padre and I decided that Italy is a word meaning “Beautiful Land of Delicious Food” and we dearly want to go back … soon.  We had a brief week in Florence and only two full days to explore Rome from a small but lovely apartment in the Trastavere neighbourhood, only steps from the Tiber River and minutes from the ancient heart of Rome.  I don’t have any model soldiers in this post, but I do have some photos that are vaguely relevant to military history.

My  take on Florence is that it may be the loveliest city I have ever seen, gracious, elegant, beautifully located in the Arno Valley and so full of magic.  It’s easy to see why, for a while in the Renaissance, Florence was one of the richest and most important cities in the world.   It’s also a bit of a mecca for fans of Napoleon.   His sister in law Charlotte, is buried in the cathedral Cathedral Santa Croce in Florence.  Charlotte was the wife of Napoleon’s brother Joseph, King of Spain, and her sister Desiree married Marshall Bernadotte, King of Sweden.  I wish I had some photos of the Bonaparte chapel at Santa Croce but you can see some here.

 We encountered some other Napoleonic connections at Florence’s vast and gorgeous Palazzo Pitti in Florence. 

The Imperial bathtub that Napoleon had constructed at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, one of his residences when he was King of Italy.  From what I gathered, the Emperor may or may not have enjoyed many soaks here, as the bathroom was not finished until it was the property of Ferdinand III of Hapsburg-Lorraine.

A copy of Francois Gérard’s portrait of Napoleon, which is somewhat randomly positioned in the ceramics collection housed in a small building at the top of the Boboli Gardens, behind the Palazzo Pitti in Rome.

A copy of Antonio Canova’s bust of Napoleon, also at the Palazzo Pitti.  The original is, I think, at Chatsworth in Derbyshire, UK.

The next two photos show memorials to the 2nd Coldstream Guards and to the Welsh Guards, and to the men they lost during the Italian campaign of World War Two, on the walls of St. Mark’s (The English Church), Florence.   St. Mark’s is a charming Baroque building not far from the Arno and the Ponte Vecchio and is a functioning parish of the Church of England.   Many of the soldiers remembered here are buried in the Commonwealth cemetery at Girone, just south of Florence.  Sadly I never managed to visit this site during my all t0o brief stay in Florence.  Of the 1614 identified dead buried at Girono Cemetery, 33 are Canadian.

Going back in time just a  wee bit, here are Assyrian archers and a siege scene from a seventh century BC tablet at the Vatican Museum, Rome.

Scene of the Battle of Lepanto, fresco by Antonio Danti, in the Map Room at the Vatican Museum, Rome.

There may be some more military themed stuff among the other 600+ photos on Kay’s camera, which I may post later.   In the meantime, I suspect the next few photos will be of toys I’ve recently acquired or painted the last month or so.  I will now go back to work, while daydreaming of narrow streets, beautiful young daredevil women on motor scooters and bicycles, and sun drenched Tuscan landscapes.  Maybe a nice chianti for dinner ...

A Visit To Canada's Military Archives

I was in Ottawa last week pursuing research towards my MA thesis, and paid a visit to Canada’s military archives, which are maintained by the Department of History and Heritage.   DHH has a substantial website, which is interesting in its own right.

DHH itself is not very impressive to look at - a small two story building in a dingy industrial park in a rather unglamorous neighbourhood in Ottawa.  Regrettably there were no artifacts or items on display - one would need to go downtown to the National War Museum for that (highly recommended if you visit Ottawa).  However, on my way up to the reading room, I noticed this display, which unfortunately had the sun coming through it at the time.

The illustrations are unmistakably by Ron Volstad, who has done the colour plates for many an Osprey book.  I thought it would be fun to post some close ups.  Hopefully I’m not violating copyright in doing so.

Canadian peacekeeper circa 1970s/1980s.  My first uniform and webbing looked like this, though I wasn’t rocking the sexy moustache and glasses.

On the left I’m guessing is a member of the Queen’s Own Rifles at the time of the Fenian Raids in 1866 or as he might appear if I ever revisit that Trent Affair Goes Hot project I discussed here earlier this month.  On the right, an infantryman as he might have appeared at the defence of Hong Kong in 1941.

Naval officer from the Battle of the Atlantic/

Some kind of nursing sister, late-Victorian, I’m guessing?

Great War cavalryman as he would have looked at the Strathcona’s charge at Moreuil Wood.

 

Now to find a moment to organize 200 pages of photocopies and 50 digital pictures from that visit and start a paper.   The subject, if you’re interested, is the evolution of Canadian Forces chaplain cap and branch badges from a Christian to a multi-faith stage in the chaplaincy’s development.

 

What Was Britain's Greatest Battle? The Answer Will Surprise You

US journalist Tom Ricks put me on to this piece in last week's The Telegraph on a question asked by Britain's National Army Museum. One hundred paid guests heard five historians make their case for Britain's Greatest Battle. Over half of the attendees then voted in favour of the argument made by Dr Robert Lyman, an author and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, that Britain's greatest battle was actually two, the twin fights of Imphal and Kohima, fought in Burma in 1944.

Lyman had this reaction: "I had thought that one of the bigger names like D-Day or Waterloo would win so I am delighted that Imphal-Kohima has won. You have got to judge the greatness of a battle by its politcal, cultural and social impact, as much as its military impact. Imphal and Kohima were really significant for a number of reasons, not least that they showed that the Japanese were not invincible and that that they could be beaten, and beaten well. The victories demonstrate this more than the US in the Pacific, where they were taking them on garrison by garrison.”

I freely admit that I know next to nothing about these battles, and only a little bit about General Slim and the campaign in Burma. I need to fix that gap in my military knowledge this summer. Hammock reading suggestions, anyone? Any good paper wargames of these fights or of this campaign?