More Midway and the Fixed Wargame Hypothesis

What I like about the legend of the Japanese gaming of the midway campaign is that there is always more rubbish available to comment on. Here we have an extract from something written by Matthew Caffrey, on the Strategy Page website [1].

The Japanese war game in preparation for the Battle of Midway was easily the most notorious war game ever played. During the game the American side's airpower sank two Japanese carriers. Rear Admiral Ukagi Matome, Yamamoto's chief of staff and commander of their carrier force for the operation, unilaterally reversed the umpires' ruling on the loss of the carriers. The carriers were restored to the game, and the Japanese side went on to capture Midway. Weeks later, during the actual battle, the Americans sank the same two carriers, plus two more. This time Admiral Ukagi was not able to reach into the "dead pile" and replace his ships.

This morality play is arguably the most often told incident from the history of wargaming. While the above is true, it makes the argument against the Admiral more "open and shut" then was actually the case. Most authors fail to mention that the American aircraft that sank the carriers during the wargame were B-17s. In the actual battle the B-17 proved completely ineffective (they never hit an enemy ship), so, in a narrow sense, Ukagi was right. Still, Admiral Ukagi failed to address the issue the loss of his carriers in the wargame should have brought up - what if the American's get in the first hit? Would we have enough strength to win anyway?

As far as I can tell from the sources used in earlier posts [2][3][4]Ugaki was the senior umpire for the games in question. The sources indicate that either Nagumo or representatives of his staff commanded the Nagumo force in the games. We have also seen that in the conditions of the game Ugaki's actions were arguably correct, as in a rather half harted way Caffrey concedes. The following remark about not addressing the issues that the loss of the carriers might have suggested is plainly false, a result of the gaming was that Nagumo was ordered to keep half of his torpedo bombers armed for anti-shipping strike in case the American carriers appeared unexpectedly. The issue of attack by Midway based aircraft had been addressed, they were a minor threat, as they proved to be in the battle. Also, any such issues were primarily the responsibility of Yamamoto and Nagumo. Ugaki's responsibility was that of Yamamoto's chief of staff and as far as can be told within the constraints of shite planning he discharged them as expected. The responsibility for the planning was collective and cannot be laid solely at the feet of Ugaki, as some of Yamomoto's admirers seem to have tried to do.


What is particularly amusing about this piece is the credentials of the author [5], we might expect better scholarship from a "Professor of Wargaming and Campaign Planning". It also confirms that an argument from authority is invalid, so the quote from Rubel in [4] must stand on the reason he gives for his opinion and not his position in the professional community.

References
1. Caffrey M., History of Wargames:Toward a History Based Doctrine for Wargaming , Jan 2000, http://www.strategypage.com/articles/default.asp?target=WARGHIS2.htm&reader=long,
2. http://navalwargames.blogspot.com/2011/12/original-japanese-gaming-of-midway-pt-1.html
3. http://navalwargames.blogspot.com/2011/12/original-japanese-gaming-of-midway-pt-2.html
4. http://navalwargames.blogspot.com/2011/12/original-japanese-gaming-of-midway-pt-3.html
5. http://web.me.com/mgkkmk/Connections/Bio_Caffrey,_M.html

Original Japanese Gaming of Midway, Pt 3 Just Applying the Rules

Statement of Thesis
The case that I will attempt to make in this section is that there is no evidence that what transpired in the wargames before Midway was anything other than a standard application of the rules to the problem being studied. Though I don't have access to the IJN wargaming manual or rules I will present what the RN 1921 rules [9] say, and make the case that these were at least one possible influence on the IJN rules. I will also present an argument justifying Ugaki's actions describes in  Fuchida & Okumiya with support of a quote from Rubel [10]. Finally I will claim that the results of the gaming on the 25th of May ([7] and previous post) are consistent with what might be expected if the US carriers sortied and and there were an exchange of strikes, so there is no evidence no "cheating" at this point.

The Royal Navy Wargame, 1921
I don't have access to the rules/manuals that the IJN would have been using in 1942, does anyone? However a case can be made that they may well have been influenced by the RN's rules from 1921 [9]. The Anglo Japanese naval treaty (1902-23) expired shortly after the production of the RN's 1921 game, and so may have been available to Japan, or at least discussed between the two navies.

In these rules there is no random element, the results of an attack with a particular weapon system is deterministic, a fixed percentage of bombs/shell etc are deemed hits, but according to the instructions even such results might be adjusted if the result would be unrealistic. This is consistent with what is said, in those sections dealing with  Tactical Exercises  (but not confined to). The following quoted paragraphs give a taste of the relevant instructions:

4. Object of the Tactical Exercises
(i) To practice and test the results obtained in tactical investigations in the most practical manner possible as a preliminary to tests at sea.
(ii) To afford opportunity for practicing decentralisation of command and the full initiative of subordinate commanders in accordance with common doctrine and a particular plan of battle.

Items (iii) through (vi) snipped

5. Conduct of a Tactical Exercise- it is considered that no hard and fast method of assessing damages should be drawn up or adhered to, but that the value of an exercise lies chiefly in drawing attention to, and, where possible, in summing up the main points of the various tactical situations presented during an exercise at the time the occur,. With consequent opportunities for short discussion.

It is of little value to allow an exercise to continue or reach a conclusion if this is not done. Otherwise the situations are forgotten, and if obvious mistakes made by one or more officers taking part are allowed to pass, the results obtained may be entirely false.

A mistake that would obviously not occur in actual practice, but made owing to lack of time for preparation and dissemination of the C in C's tactical ideas, or to the unreal conditions of the tactical table, should at once be pointed out and the move put back and re-moved. This, however, does not apply to mistakes which may obviously occur in actual practice due to the practical difficulties which may obviously occur in actual practice due to the practical difficulties in co-operation on account of visibility etc.

Snip... 

Emphasis above the present author's

Clearly in the RN 1921 rules the redoing of events thought to be unreasonable (such as a fleet deploying before any relevant intelligence was available) would be the norm. Also, the adjustment of a unrealistic number of hits would be adjusted, and if a ship was sunk that on second thoughts should not have been this might well reappear.

The main point here, which is independent of whether the Japanese had access to the RN 1921 rules or not, is that the idea that such games were not competitive, and were to indicate the expected outcome of the operations represented was not a novelty at the time.

Rubel Quote
Rubel who may be considered as something of an authority on professional wargames writes [10]:

  The subjective nature of game-produced knowledge is nowhere clearer than in games that generate information that is bureaucratically or politically threatening to players or sponsors. It is all too easy either to ignore or put a favorable spin on game events or results that do not fit comfortably into existing doctrines or accepted theories. A notable historical example of this phenomenon was a war game conducted by the Japanese Combined Fleet staff prior to the Midway operation. Historians have made much of the fact that the umpires resurrected a Japanese carrier that had been sunk by American aircraft operating out of Midway, citing it as evidence of “victory disease.” In fact, however, the Japanese umpires were perfectly justified—a dice roll had given a highly improbable hit to level-flying bombers (that is, as opposed to dive-bombers), which had proven generally ineffective in attacking ships. They were properly attempting to prevent a capabilities game from becoming a dice game. However, at another point during the game it was asked what would happen if an American carrier task force ambushed Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo’s carrier force while it was raiding Midway, and that uncomfortable question seems to have been ignored. The existing plan was based on deception and surprise, tenets and war-fighting values dear to the Imperial Japanese Navy. To acknowledge the existence of an American task force northeast of Midway in a position to ambush Nagumo’s carriers would have been to discount the possibility of surprise. The Japanese planners simply did not want to admit that—it would have negated their plans, and there was no time to start again from scratch.At the very least the game should have suggested more extensive searches in that sector, but the plan was not modified even to that extent. It was easier to ignore this particular game outcome. 

Emphasis above the present author's

Results of the Actual Attacks that were "Adjusted" in the IJN games
If we allow reality to intrude we can look at what actually happened when the Nagumo force was attacked by Midway based aircraft in the battle (which is the gamed incident about which the controversy wages).

The airforces on Midway were significantly stronger than those expected by the Japanese, though possibly not greater than what they would expect had the Americans had sufficient warning of their intentions. From the Nagumo force battle report [11] we know that their estimate of the air strength on Midway was 2 squadrons of reconnaissance flying boats (Catalinas), 1 squadron of Army bombers (B17?), and 1 squadron of fighters. Compared to an actual strength of 32 Catalinas, 6 Avenger Torpedo Bombers, 27 fighters (20 Buffalos, and 7 Wildcats), 27 scout/dive bombers (11 Vindicators, 16 Dauntless), 23 army bombers (4 B26s, 19 B17s) (Prange [4] order of battle).

Soryu under B17 Attack at Midway (Photo# USAF ID 4884)

When attacked piecemeal by the Midway airgroup the Nagumo Force suffered no significant damage, CAP and evasive manoeuvres sufficed to keep them undamaged. This compares with nine, or three hits from high level bombers (which were known to be ineffective against ships free to manoeuvre) in the games. So reality does not contradict the umpires judgement that 9 hits were too many, and second thoughts that even 3 hits were too many.

Concluding remark
One of the surprising things about the Japanese gaming before Midway is that numbers of hits were determined by dice at all, but given that they were it is reasonable to correct for "lucky dice" in the context of the type of exercise in which they were engaged.

We may presume that both F&O knew how the games on Yamato were supposed to be organised (indeed one of them was an umpire in these games) since they were staff officers (at that time or later, but before publication of their book) who had been involved in earlier games of this nature. So we have to ask why they reported these games in the way they did? It is again folklore about the pacific war, but it may have some element of truth in it, that Yamamoto's followers sought to protect his reputation. So the reports of the games could have been an attempt to unload more than his own share of responsibility for the failure of the Midway operation onto Ugaki. It also possibly serves to deflect criticism from F&O for their part in the planning/gaming of the campaign.

References
1. Willson A., War gaming, Pelican Books 1970
2. Curry J. (Ed), Thomas Allen's War Games, Professional Wargaming 1945-1985, History of Wargaming Project 2009.
3. Fuchida M., Okumiya M,, Midway, The Battle that Doomed Japan, Naval Institute Press, 1955
4. Prange G.W., Miracle at Midway, McGraw-Hill, 1982
5. Moulé V.A., A Comparison of Operational Leadership in the Battle of Midway, A paper submitted to the Naval War College as part of the requirements of the Department of Joint Military Operations, 1995
6.Willmott H.P., The Sword and the Javelin, Naval Institute Press, 1983.
7. Parshall, J.B., Tully A.P, Shattered Sword, Potomac Books 2005
8. Goldstein D., Dillon K., The Pearl Harbor Papers, Potomac Books, 1999
9. Curry J. (Ed), The Fred Jane Naval War Game (1906) Including the Royal Navy's Wargaming Rules (1921), The History of the Wargame Project, 2008
10. Rubel R.C., The Epistemology of War Gaming, Naval War College Review, Spring 2006
11.Nagumo force staff, CinC First Air Fleet Detailed Battle Report No. 6, in The Japanese Story of the battle of Midway, ONI Review, May 1947, http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Japan/IJN/rep/Midway/Nagumo/

Original Japanese Gaming of Midway, Pt 2 The Fixed Wargame Theory

In many accounts of the history of Wargaming [1][2] and the Midway Campaign [3][4] we find the story of how the umpires cheated by not allowing hits that the dice dictated on the Japanese carriers. This occurs not just in history books but is repeated by serving officers in their academic work, an example from 1995 is the following from Moulé [5], she writes:

Yamamoto called together his subordinate commanders at the Battleship Yamato on May 1, 1942 for a briefing. This was the first time that Nagumo and Kondo were exposed to the plan and each saw serious problems with it. Nagumo did not argue since he felt he was already on negative terms with Yamamoto who heavily criticized him for not conducting a follow-on strike at Pearl Harbor. Kondo on the other hand, was more outspoken and voiced his concerns, but Yamamoto was not open to discussion. He told Kondo that the plan was credible since it was written by senior staff officers and he had no intentions of changing it. Kondo asked how the Midway occupation forces would be resupplied; If they could not be, they would have to be withdrawn, thus making the occupation pointless. Yamamoto's Chief of Staff admitted that it might be impossible to resupply Midway, which left some question as to its purpose. That same day, a major war game began during which several other flaws in the plan came to light. Yamamoto overlooked these flaws since officially his plan won, but only because the umpires  fixed all the rulings in its favor

This is apparently a quote from Willmott[6], this appears to be a para-phrase of Willmott, on page 111 he repeats Fuchida and Okumiya's story (the index does not reference war game/s or wargame/s so this is a pig to find! To find the wargame discussion you have to follow the Ugaki entries in the index). Also there is no separate mention of the second set of games.

All of these accounts seem to go back to Fuchida and Okumiya's apparently first hand account reported in [3], the best contain direct quotes, but many others contain half baked précis versions that look partially like the result of a game of Chinese whispers. Since Fuchida and Okumiya seem to be a primary source for this story I will quote them at length:

   Except for the staff of Combined Fleet Headquarters, all those taking part in the war games were amazed at this at this formidable program (present author's note: Not only the Midway and Aleutian operations but subsequent operations to occupy positions in New Caledonia and the Fiji Islands, strikes against Australia and finally occupation of Johnston Island and Hawaii), which seemed to have been dreamed up with a great deal more imagination than regard for reality. Still more amazing,however, was the manner in which every operation from the invasion of Midway and the Aleutians down to the assault on Johnson and Hawaii was carried out in the games without the slightest difficulty. This was due in no small measure to the highhanded conduct of Read Admiral Ugaki, the presiding officer, who frequently intervened to set aside rulings made by the umpires.
   In the tabletop manoeuvres, for example, a situation developed in which the Nagumo Force underwent a bombing attack by enemy land-based aircraft while its own planes were off attacking Midway. In accordance with the rules, Lieutenant Commander Okumiya, Carrier Division 4 staff officer who was acting as an umpire, cast dice to determine the bombing results and ruled that there had been nine enemy hits on the Japanese carriers, Both AKAGI and KAGA were listed as sunk. Admiral Ugaki, however, arbitrarily reduced the number of hits to only three which resulted in KAGA still being ruled sunk but AKAGI only slightly damaged. To Okumiya's surprise, even this revised ruling was subsequently cancelled, and KAGA reappeared as a participant in the next part of the games covering the New Caledonia and Fiji Islands invasions. The verdicts of the umpires regarding the results of air fighting were similarly juggled, always in favor of the Japanese forces.

Prange [4] mentions the table top games at three points the first is to the games that we are considering here of May 1st, in chapter 4; where on page 31 we have a brief summary of what is in [3], then again on page 35 where we learn that Ugaki was concerned about the Nagumo forces plans to deal with the American carriers if they should sortie, which seem to have been dismissed with a content free expression of confidence (one touch of an armoured sleeve) by Genda, air staff officer of the Nagumo force. The naming of Genda here is an amplification of what is in [3] and is attributed to Genda himself. Also on page 35 we have the story about the hits on the AKAGI and KAGA from [3] repeated but with some ambiguity about what the nature of the strike was. On page 36 we learn that in the games the American fleet did not sortie, and this uncharacteristic behaviour was of concern to Genda. The second mention is in chapter 8, but refers only in passing to additional games on May 24th of which there is no real detail (which again mirrors [3]). The final mention is in chapter 40 where the games are referred to as rigged. So in conclusion we find Prange adds very little to Fuchida and Okumiya's account other than the name and exact words of  the staff officer who was off hand about how the Nagumo force would cope if the American Carriers appeared on the battle field (the account in Fuchida and Okumiya is not reproduced in the quote above).

Yamamoto (Centre) Ugaki (left) and staff Early 1940's on Nagato

I could go on quoting books on this but there are more books on Midway that I can shake a stick at, so I will conclude with one more relatively modern tome by Parshall and Tully [7].  Parshall and Tully begin the narrative on the wargames with a description of an initial run, in the series that started on May 1st, where the American carriers sortied early and hit three of the Japanese Carriers. This initial round was ruled impossible (presumably because the Americans sortied before they could have on the basis of reconnaissance from Midway) see note 1.

They then proceed to give the Fuchida and Okumiya[3] story with additional detail from Prange[4].  Finally we learn some detail of the second set of games that took place on the 25th of May (the day before the Nagumo force was due to sail). In these the Americans do sortie and the result of the encounter is the loss of both US carriers and one Japanese carrier sunk and two damaged. In this second set of games the Nagumo force presumably contained only the four available carriers rather than all six of the initial set). They do not suggest any fixing in this second set of games, and again Yamamoto was reassured by Nagumo's staff that they could handle such eventualities. Also the question of the positioning of the main body were it could not effectively support the Nagumo force was raised by some present but not acted upon. This outcome of this final set of games does not look like the result of fixing, they were not what the Japanese wanted to see, since the casualties would invalidate the time table and plans for the subsequent operations that were the intention for the remainder of 1942. These results may not have been taken to heart but the warnings were there.

Note 1
I have checked the source which according to the notes is [8] page 348. This is a reprint of a pamphlet by Masataka Chihaya which is an under researched emotional tirade written in 1946 by an ex IJN officer against everything that the IJN did in the war. The anecdote itself is reported second hand without attribution. There is no information in the story that would allow it to be placed at a particular point in the time line of the games. It is such good material for their case that the games were fixed it is surprising that Fuchida and Okumiya (who were present at least at the first set of games) do not mention it. That this event took place in the second set of games seems possible, it may refer to the second scenario describes in the description of the second set of games.  I think we should discount it, and certainly without further support Parshall and Tully should not have just made stuff up so that this would fit into their story. This sort of thing make it necessary to check everything that Parshall and Tully write.


References
1. Willson A., War gaming, Pelican Books 1970
2. Curry J. (Ed), Thomas Allen's War Games, Professional Wargaming 1945-1985, History of Wargaming Project 2009.
3. Fuchida M., Okumiya M,, Midway, The Battle that Doomed Japan, Naval Institute Press, 1955
4. Prange G.W., Miracle at Midway, McGraw-Hill, 1982
5. Moulé V.A., A Comparison of Operational Leadership in the Battle of Midway, A paper submitted to the Naval War College as part of the requirements of the Department of Joint Military Operations, 1995
6.Willmott H.P., The Sword and the Javelin, Naval Institute Press, 1983.
7. Parshall, J.B., Tully A.P, Shattered Sword, Potomac Books 2005
8. Goldstein D., Dillon K., The Pearl Harbor Papers, Potomac Books, 1999

Original Japanese Gaming of Midway, Pt 1 Introduction

It is almost folkloric that the table top manoeuvres/war games conducted by the Japanese navy as a part of the planning and briefing process in preparation for the Midway operations in the spring of 1942 were rigged so that everything went according to the Combined Fleet's plans.

In the next post I will describe the sources for this belief and its wide spread appearance in the literature on the Midway campaign. I will also indicate the inconsistency of this belief with some contemporary accounts.

In the third post I will indicate that the so called fixing was in fact the umpires correcting extreme dice results that in themselves would have invalidated the exercise, and how in the under reported second round of games results that were unfavourable to the plan were not over ruled and orders given to mitigate the unfavourable outcomes (which for one reason or another were  ignored). In this post I also marshal the only published support for the present thesis that I have found.

Final Comments on Murfett's "Naval Warfare 1919-45"

In the last two posts I have been critical of some aspects of Murfett's book [1]. Well I have finally finished it and can say that it is redeemed by the extensive discussion in the conclusions (pages 462-499). These discuss who did and did not perform well, who was lucky and/or unlucky the importance of logistics and many other things that should be of interest to naval wargames and those interested in the history of naval operations.

This chapter on its own transforms my recommendation about this work to a "should read" from an "interesting but annoying"

May be I should also record that Murfett's account of Soviet/Eastern Front naval operations covers material unfamiliar to me, and so is another plus in the books favour.

References:

1. Murfett, M., Naval Warfare 1919-45; An operational history of the war at sea, Routlege, 2009

More Comments on Murfett's "Naval Warfare 1919-45"

I am still struggling on with this [1], nearing the end now, but have to report this gem:

"Strangely, the Japanese submarine fleet with unquestionably the best torpedo amongst the active combatants - the Type 93 or 'Long Lance', and the even faster, longer range Type 95 - did not make as big a mark on the Pacific Campaign as they ought to have done."

I won't quibble about the use to the name 'Long Lance', but note it is not a contemporary Japanese name for these weapons.

Type 93: 24" surface ship oxygen torpedo, not a submarine torpedo

Type 95: 21" submarine oxygen torpedo (and I'm not sure that Morrison applied the term 'Long Lance' to this).

Of these the Type 93 is very much the longer range weapon (as would be expected given its greater size - other things being equal). Also there is no significant difference between their top speeds.

What galls me about this is that these things are common knowledge among those with an interest in (relatively) modern naval warfare and if you do not know about such things they can be looked up on-line without any trouble. So why does Murfett not know these things? One slip is excusable, we all make mistakes, but Murfett does this again and again. Another example is his overselling of MAD, which could be useful in conjunction with sonobuoys and Fido but on its own of very little value.

References:

1. Murfett, M., Naval Warfare 1919-45; An operational history of the war at sea, Routlege, 2009

Some Comments on Malcolm Murfett's book "Naval Warfare 1919-45"

I have been struggling with this book [1] now for some time, continuing to read it because the approach and topic are interesting but always on the verge of throwing it across the room because of oddities which make me doubt the authors qualifications as an author and a naval historian.

I don't want to go through this page by page listing the things that have annoyed me, but I will describe those that I encountered this morning reading pages 402-408.

1. Page 407. Introduction of the Tallboy bomb: Mass of bomb given in both pounds and kg. Nothing wrong with that but it would have been nice to see a bit more about this bomb, mention of Barnes Wallis and 617 squadron at this point.

2. Page 407. "Despite the impenetrable gloom that settled over the fjord as a result of the smokescreen, one of these 'Tallboy' bombs managed to find the quarry striking her about fifty feet (15.2m) from the forward stem of the ship." (my emphasis) I don't like the language of this sentence in general, but that is just a stylistic preference but the part in bold indicates either poor proof reading or a significant lack of familiarity with marine terminology. The latter is a significant warning sign in a work on naval history.

3. Page 407. We have reference to 5.4 ton bombs, leaving us to do some arithmetic and cross referencing to establish that this is a reference to Tallboy (which we have been told is 12,000 pounds or 5,443 kilo previously).

I suppose these are not very serious annoyances in themselves and limited to two pages out of the six I read, but they are just things that I note in passing. Similar annoyances occur every few pages when I am reading stuff I am familiar with, this leaves the suspicion that there are comparable problems in material that I am not particularly familiar with.

References:

1. Murfett, M., Naval Warfare 1919-45; An operational history of the war at sea, Routlege, 2009

Comparison of Models of Cruiser Staying Power Against Torpedo Hits

In an earlier post I mentioned the SpringSharp measure of staying power for Derfflinger and Barham. In addition to the quantity of gunnery hits SpringSharp [1] gives a number of torpedo hits (presumably mean or median number to sink). Now I don't know what model underlies this number, but I do have another model where the probability of sinking is given for RN cruisers against the TPBE (thousand pound bomb equivalent) of torpedo hits. So if we set SpringSharp up to represent a particular RN cruiser we could compare the number of torpedo hits given by SpringSharp with that given by the model in [2].


Choosing Leander as the reference ship and setting up SpingSharp with its particulars we find the SS rates it at 1.2 torpedoes (presumably for 50% probability of sinking). Now looking up a 9000 ton full load cruiser on figure 4 of [2] we find that the TPBE for 50% chance of sinking is ~1.6, which is about ~1.3 equivalent 21" torpedo hits. This seems pretty good agreement, repeating the same for Edinburgh SpringSharp gives 1.9 and [2] gives ~2.2 TPBE which is ~1.8 equivalent 21" torpedo hits.


References
1. SpringSharp warship rough design software, http://www.springsharp.com/
2. Larham R., Historical Data in Modelling Warship Battle Damage Survival Probability, 2nd IMA Conference on Mathematics in Defence, October 2011, link to copy on Academia.edu

Prime Minister's Excellent Grasp of Naval Metaphor

I think it is nice to know that the Prime Minister has a good grasp of nautical metaphor as shown by this quote for the Telegraph web site:

“I think it is important that you try to go on holiday, but if you need to come back, you drop everything,” he said. “The captain of the ship should be at the helm.”

If the Captain is at the helm who the hell is in command? I think he probably means that the captain should be on the bridge, but what would I know?

To quote Wikipedia:

"In the merchant marine, the person at the helm is usually an able seaman, particularly during ship arrivals, departures, and while maneuvering in restricted waters or other conditions requiring precise steering. An ordinary seaman is commonly restricted to steering in open waters. Moreover, military ships may have a seaman or quartermaster at the helm."

Or perhaps he has a better grasp of the metaphor involved than I give him credit for and the British "Ship of State" has shrunk to a mere "Boat of State" where we may expect the captain to take the helm?  ...or he may have a classical education and be thinking of an ancient Greek warship where I am informed that the captain did take the steering oar.

Either way he seems eminently qualified to be the "Ruler of the Queen's Navy"

Dunnigan on Fire Control, Comments on Chapter 10 of The Fletcher Pratt Book, Pt III

The next major section in chapter 10 of [1] is a quote from Dunnigan [2] on fire control.

Dunnigan points out that the FPWR employ a form of ladder about the estimated range to model the dispersion in the fall of shot, which is uncontentious enough. He then goes on to tell us that with a ladder the shells would almost certainly bracket the target on the first broadside. Now my memory may be starting to fail but I seem to recall that finding and keeping the range in the Fletcher-Pratt game was not easy, which is confirmed by the accounts of players in earlier chapters of the book [1]. This in my case at least with ship models over-scale compared to the floor scale. From this we can probably conclude that Dunnigan never played the FPWR.

Dunnigan then moves on to observe that a ladder system was used only by the Germans at Jutland, the RN employed a slower method to find the range but employed better fire control systems so would be potentially more accurate in the long run [3](the inherent statistical errors of range finder range, and systematic differences between geometric, gun and rangefinder ranges even after calibration mean that the rangefinder range is/was not sufficiently accurate to allow their use without modification from observation of fall of shot [3]). The lack of adequate facilities at Rosyth for gunnery practice ensured that the main body of the Battlecruiser Fleet's gunnery was crap despite having superior gunnery control systems. The criticism of the gunnery system of the FPWR on the grounds that it is only (a bit) like that of one of the protagonists at Jutland is absurd. First because it is even less like the systems employed by the cruisers and destroyers at Jutland, and by anyone at any later date. The gunnery system is a game mechanism not a model of the systems on a particular day, which should be represented by special mods for the particular game for that day (by modifying the ladder size depending on the number of salvos fired at a particular target and/or adding random ranging errors to one or both sides opening salvos at a target, or ...).

Throughout Dunnigan criticises FPWR essentially for being general rather than specific to Jutland, which to some extent is understandable since at the time he was preoccupied with the SPI Jutland game. However exactly the same sort of criticisms could be made if we focus on a particular naval engagement, and are irrelevant to a general set of rules, it is the gamers responsibility to introduce day specific features.

Dunnigan's comments about fire control at night go off at half cock because he confounds factoids related to Jutland with factoids from later in WW1 and from WW2. These can safely be ignored.

John Curry comments after the quoted text from [2] that Dunnigan whet on to criticise FPWR for not representing the fog of war adequately, which he points out was a misconception due to Dunnigan not having access to all of the FPWR as documented in the earlier chapters of [1].

Summary: The quoted text criticises FPWR for not being a detailed and/or accurate model of battleship and battlecruiser gunnery at the end of May 1916. This is a fair criticism in the sense that you can criticise an apple for not being a banana.



References
1. Curry, J., Fletcher Pratt Naval Wargame, the history of wargames project 2011
2. Dunnigan, J., Article in Strategy and Tactics, Vol1, 1967
3. Brooks, J., Dreadnought Gunnery at the Battle of Jutland: The Question of Fire Control, Routledge, 2005

Dunnigan on Protection, Comments on Chapter 10 of The Fletcher Pratt Book, Pt II

The next major section of chapter 10 of [1] is a quote from James Dunnigan from [2], the gist of this is that the points value of ships in the FPWR do not reflect the true staying power of the ships involved. Now I have no disagreement with this, as I have indicated elsewhere [3]. However it is his argument for this conclusion that is unjustified. Dunnigan claims that the discrepancy is due to the FPWR not accounting for differences in quantity and quality of ship protection. For instance he quotes the average percentage of displacement given over to armour in British and German battleships and battle cruisers in WW1 (he gives these as 35% vs 30% and 30% vs 26% which may be arguable I may come back to this). He also claims that the German armour was better arranged than that of the RN, I will not comment on this, it needs more justification than I have time for at present.

Dunnigan presents as examples Derfflinger, Barham and Lion which he claims have points values under the FPWR of 131,000, 142,000 and 104,000 points respectively. His comment on these is that we might conclude that the Derfflinger was less capable of taking damage than Barham with Lion not far behind. First lets dispose of the last remark; Lion is 27,000 points behind Derfflinger, or Lion is only capable of absorbing 79% of the damage that Derfflinger is capable of absorbing, this is not "not far behind" in these rules Lion has significantly less staying power than Derfflinger (and I may argue later that this difference is in fact excessive for exactly the same reason that I believe that FPWR over rate Barham with respect to Derfflinger). We may as well note here that the percentage of normal displacement devoted to armour in Derfflinger and Barham are about 33-34% and 32% respectively, which given the difference in other characteristics (like area to be armoured per unit displacement) and the uncertainty in what is counted as armour when different people calculate such percentages, are very closely comparable.

Under the FPWR Derfflinger has slightly less staying power (ability to absorb penetrating hit damage for a given loss of capability) than Barham (about 8%). In this Derfflinger is disadvantaged by thinner maximum armour thickness and smaller caliber armament and advantaged by greater speed. None of these should be influencing the ships staying power. I will discuss armour in particular (the arguments against the others are more obvious). As I have defined staying power the armour is obviously irrelevant since the definition refers to penetrating hits. Armour will have already have contributed to the ships survivability by preventing penetration of certain hits at certain ranges (and also accounting for other factors if we so wish) so has no place here (or at least no significant place). This leaves displacement as the only relevant factor in the FPWR ship formula. On ship displacement alone we find that Derfflinger has about 5% less staying power than Barham (and Lion is more or less equivalent to Derfflinger on this measure). I would probably favour a model where staying power were a monotonic function of the displacement devoted to the ship hull plus that devoted to auxiliary machinery but this data is difficult, but not impossible to come by, so I wont pursue this.

On displacement all three of the ships discussed by Dunnigan are closely comparable and this is what we should take as a baseline which we may modify if we feel strongly that one nationality build intrinsically more survivable ships than another. However caution is called for here since in the time frame of Dunnigan’s article Bismark was thought to be disproportionately well protected but current opinion is that its armour was poorly disposed and the Germans had not kept up with armour developments in the US and UK which resulted in inch for inch superior belt amour in US and RN ships (don't know about deck armour as this tended to be a different type from vertical armour).

As an aside we might look at the staying power calculations from a ship modelling tool like SpringSharp. This gives the mass of penetrating non-critical hits to sink for Derfflinger and Barham as 41,100 and 39,600 pounds respectively. Which reverses the order of the displacement ranking, but still leaves them closely comparable. The problem here is that I do not know how SpringSharp models staying power.

In conclusion we may say that if we ignore the poor quality of RN armour piercing shells and the instability of RN cordite and poor propellant handling hygiene the staying power of these three ships is comparable. But in battle Barham would be expected to prevail against Derfflinger because of its' heavier armament and thicker armour.  The result of a Lion/Derfflinger encounter is less clear, the weaker armour of Lion is countered by the weaker armament of Derfflinger (but my money would go on Derfflinger). In reality the outcome of encounters between these ships would depend on factors not accounted for here, specifically the poor explosive hygiene  and fire control on/in British battle cruisers at Jutland, and the poor quality of British shells (both of these were at least partially corrected after Jutland).


References

1. Curry, J., Fletcher Pratt Naval Wargame, the history of wargames project 2011
2. Dunnigan, J., Article in Strategy and Tactics, Vol1, 1967
3. Larham R. Fletcher Pratt Pt 4 (what I think is wrong with the FP Gunnery/Damage models), blog post on this blog:  http://navalwargames.blogspot.com/2011/07/fletcher-pratt-pt-4-what-i-think-is.html, 2011

Comments on Chapter 10 of The Fletcher Pratt Book, Pt I

Preamble
There are many points in Chapter 10 "The Fletcher Pratt Rules and Reality" of [1] where questionable claims are made. Before I start dissecting the chapter I should say that I am in general agreement with the thesis of the chapter that the Fletcher Pratt wargame Rules (FPWGR) are not a valid model of naval warfare for the 1914-1945 period, not even when restricted to surface actions. Some of my reasons for claiming this are reported in other posts in this blog, and other will be reported in future. However I also believe that there are ideas in the FPWGRs that are intrinsically interesting and potentially educational, these are reported (or will be) elsewhere. I should also state that Michael Vlahos's book Blue Sword [2] might clear up most of the questions about the influence of the FPWGRs on US Naval doctrine as it covers the history of wagaming at the Naval War College over the relevant period, however I have not yet located a copy at an affordable price so its analysis must wait for another occasion (if the History of Wargames Project could re-publish it I would be the first in the queue to buy a copy).

Phil Barker's Remarks and John Curry's Comments on Them
I wish to start in this post by discussing the very opening paragraphs. We start with a quote from an article by Phil Barker published in The Nugget in 2006:

This is one of thoe legendary systems that everyone has heard of but very few played with. Since the author is long dead, there is no chance of hurting his feelings and I can mention his rule set is credited in some USN circles with being responsible for many of the initial defeats in the Pacific in WW2. It would not have been a bad set for refighting Jutland (though in fine weather and unrestricted visibility), but its concentration on gunnery of the fighting line at extreme range and downplaying of the surface ship torpedo led to tactical mistakes made fatal by the Long Lance torpedo.

John Curry then observers that Phil is not a Naval expert but claims his anecdotal report carries weight because he is an older guy who has been involved in wargaming for a long time. This is an argument from authority (by proxy), that is hearsay carries weight because of the indirect authority of the reported. We can therefore discard this as evidence without further consideration. However I am not going to do that because John in the next paragraph points out the apparent value place on the game just before and during WW2 by the Naval War College and this is a documented report (Time Magazine 1939, but I think I would like to see the item myself).

Analysis of Removal of TT from US Heavy Cruisers
The doctrinal problem that we are discussing is the belief that cruisers (other than those intended to work with destroyers) would not engage in surface combat at ranges where torpedoes could be used, and therefore were more a liability than an asset on heavy (and large light) cruisers. The story told at [3] is that this belief was a result of wargaming studies conducted at the Naval War College. This may also have been because due to the low rate of fire of the 8" gun these cruisers were vulnerable at night and poor visibility to fast moving targets such as destroyers [4] (and also to the high rate of fire of 6" gun cruisers). Also, as [4] also claims, that during construction (of the Pensacola and Salt Lake City) it became evident that they would be able to accommodate director fire control. This presumably pushed the expected effective range up from ca 10000m to possibly in excess of 20000m (the range of their guns was in excess of 28000m). Looking at the photo of Pensacola as complete in[4] it is evident that she was completed with spotting tops but no DCT.

We can establish an indicative timescale for the wargaming that lead to these decisions by looking at the completion dates of the first four groups of US treaty cruisers. The Pensacolas were designed and completed with torpedo tubes, as was the succeeding Northampton class. The next class (Portland) had the torpedo tubes deleted in the course of design (I find this an ambiguous term, what we can say with certainty is that they completed without tubes), so presumably this is some time between the freezing of the design of the previous class and the completion of Indianapolis, the first of the Portlands to complete. This puts the date of the decision somewhere between 1929 and early 1932. Thus we can probably date the wargames to no later than 1931 and possibly as early as 1929.

Comparison of the Time Line of Removal of Cruise TT and that of the FPWRG
As we have seen NWC studies had concluded that US treaty cruisers would be vulnerable at night and in poor visibility to light forces and so as they would outrage them in better conditions they would not be used under these circumstances and so did not need torpedo tubes (may be a bit of interpretation on my part here, and it still sounds ludicrous to me but I have seen similar behaviour in modern times so.. ). These conclusions were drawn before 1933.

In [1] we discover that Fletcher Pratt claims to have written the first version of his rules in 1928, but not shared them with his friends until 1933. If this is accurate then I rest my case the FPWGR could not have been the rules used in the NWC games supporting the removal of TT from US heavy cruisers, and so the doctrinal errors were probably in place before the NWC ever saw the FPWGRs.

(The reader will note that unlike Phil Barker I have no qualms about possibly hurting peoples feelings, though will be upset when mine are hurt be someone pointing out the faults in my arguments, but that is war(gaming) for you :).

References
1. Curry, J., Fletcher Pratt Naval Wargame, the history of wargames project 2011
2. Vlahos, M., Blue Sword, Naval War College 1980.
3. CA-32 New Orleans, http://globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/ca-32.htm
4. Conway's, All the World's Fighting Ships 1922-1946, Conway Maritime Press 1980.

Test page for using MathJax for LaTeX on Blogger

There is a javascriptb block containing:

<script src="http://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/latest/MathJax.js?config=TeX-AMS-MML_HTMLorMML" type="text/javascript">
</script>

in the HTML source on this page which causes the rendering of LaTeX using MathJax the delimiters are slash( and slash) for inline maths and slash[ and slash] for display maths. (the slash is the \ character which if I used it would lead to confusion)

This is inline with tex \tex in square brackets delimiters [tex] 4\times \sin(x^2) [/tex] these are set up as alternate delimiters using the guidance on the MathJax site.

Some continuous text with inline maths \( \sin(x)^2 \) some more text. Now a display equation (in a bigger font!):

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Now display maths between Tex \Tex delimiters:

[Tex]\int_1^2 g(x)\; dx =17 [/Tex]

The JavaScript block can be placed in the template html rather than at the top of each post.

(Looks like the Tex delimiters only display correctly on chrome! Better switch any posts over to delimiters that will work on any browser. Other sources indicate that the problem may well be with Internet Exploder rather than anything else)

Fletcher Pratt Pt 4 (what I think is wrong with the FP Gunnery/Damage models)

The basic model of damage from gunfire is attritional. Each hit contributes a number of points of damage (which is modulated by armour penetration ..) and the loss of fire power and speed of the ship is proportional to the fractional damage (the points damage received divided by the ships points value). This is a perfectly acceptable model if that is how you want to represent accumulated damage in the game (in my opinion it is not the most suitable model for gaming but that is another story)

In addition to the attritional damage if in the measuring up in the gunnery round a shell is deemed to have fallen on a gun position (assuming the ability to penetrate the local armour) that gun position is deemed knocked out. There are at least two problems with this, the first is that this means that the conditional probability of a gun position hit is the ratio of gun house plan area to deck area of the ship which may be OK-ish at long range but will be wrong at shorter ranges. Secondly it is inconsistent with the attritional model of ship damage effectivly double counting the guns when it comes to taking damage. In addition we could ask why we do not apply the same method to machinery spaces.

Fletcher Pratt Pt 3 (what I think is wrong with the FP ship points)

In the previous post we saw the rather complicated looking formula for the ship points value. This is essentially the (standard) displacement in tons plus a term containing all the factors that I presume Fletcher Pratt thought contributed to ship staying power multiplied by the ship speed factor (10 plus half the speed in knots). My main complaint about this formula is that it has factors contributing to staying power that do not so contribute and other terms contributing which are accounted for elsewhere in the FP system.

Contribution of Speed to Staying Power
I will begin by considering the ship points value dependence on speed, I will conduct a sort of though experiment setting up a pair of hypothetical ships that differ only in maximum speed. These we would expect to have the same staying power since maximum speed contributes to a ships value in terms of its ability to choose the terms of engagement and possibly being more difficult to hit both of which are represented elsewhere in the FP system. Let us use LaArgentina as the subject of our thought experiment (since the ship data and calculations for its' points value can be found in both [1][2]. The points value for la Argentina may be written: \[{\rm{PV}}=668 \times \left( \frac{V}{2}+10\right)+6000\] where the \(668\) is the first bracketed term in the formula given in the earlier post [3],  \(V\) is the speed in knots and the \(6000\) is the standard displacement in tons. We suppose we have a pair of variants of this design which differ only in the efficiency of their main machinery which consumes the same fraction of displacement for both. We suppose that the first with the more efficient machinery can make a maximum speed of 32kts and the second with the less efficient machinery can only make a maximum speed of 29kts. This results in a difference in points values of \(668\times 1.5\) or about \(1000 \). Which is about 1/23rd of the actual points value of the 31kt La Argentina given in the references. The point is these ships are identical in all respects that effect the consequences of hits, but one is able to survive two more 6" gun hits than the other.

This speed dependence in points value may seem trivial but it is a matter of principle, we are making the ship points value formula more complicated to reflect a factor that should not be there in the first place. But you might say John Fisher said that speed is armour! Well he may have, and he may have had a point (though that is arguable when it is bought at the expense of other military features) but the contribution of high speed to survival is via the greater difficulty of hitting a fast ship (speed and so turn rate makes a ship a more difficult target for the opposition fire control systems). This difficulty is already represented in the range estimation in the gunnery system so is in effect being double counted.

Contribution of armour and armament to Staying Power
The first bracketed term in the points value formula contains a number of terms (all with positive coefficients) that depend on the number and size of the weapons that comprise the main and secondary batteries, and the numbers of other weapons and on the thickness of any protective armour in the belt, deck and on the main gun emplacements.

What is strange here is that the weapons if anything detract from a ships staying power, effectively adding extra vulnerabilities in the form of magazines and other ammunition storage and fueling systems. An argument could be made that the signs with which all the factors appear is wrong they should be negative factors rather than positive.

That armour contributes to staying power might be though a no-brainer, why provide it if it does not help a ship survive combat? However we again have a case of double counting the contribution of a feature. The armour thickness already modulates the effect of a hit, a hit does more damage if it penetrates the relevant armour than if it does not, and does yet more damage if the target is unarmoured. In rule design we should try to avoid this type of double accounting. the effects of a feature should if possible only appear at one place in a set of rules.

Summary
Every part of the FP points value formula other than the displacement term  is at best questionable if not obviously wrong. What the formula might represent is some form of cost or value of the ship, but not its' staying power.

References
1. Curry J., Fletcher Pratt's Naval Wargame, History of Wargaming Project, 2011
2. Featherstone D. Naval War Games, Stanley Paul, London, 1965, ISBN 0-09-076581-8
3. Larham R., Fletcher Pratt Wargame Pt 2, http://navalwargames.blogspot.com/2011/06/fletcher-pratt-wargame-pt-2.html

The Fletcher Pratt Wargame Pt 2

I could describe the FP rules in some detail but since these are covered in the references [1][2]. What I will discuss is the FP surface gunnery system and the ship points value.

The FP system uses a range estimation paradigm for gunnery. On the firing phase of a move a player places a firing arrow at the bow of their ship with one or more estimates of the target range. The umpire or one of their assistants then measures the firing distance along the direction indicated by the firing arrow and hits are determined using some rule giving where the shots fall with respect to the nominal aim-point. Once again I am not to concerned with the detail of how the splash points are distributed, just that they are set up to give an acceptable level of playability. The splash points of the shells which do not hit are indicated with some suitable marker as are those which do hit thus providing some feedback to the firing player on the accuracy of their gunnery.

Damage done by a hit is basically the weight of the projectile with modifications for hits that are unable to penetrate any armour (belt thickness is used for near broadside hits and deck armour thickness for near endon hits). Also commercial shipping and other vessels built to commercial standards sustain double damage.

Torpedoes operate in a similar manner with the placing of markers, but in this case indicating the spread of the torpedoes. Hits are determined by measuring out the weapon tracks on each move on which they are running and if these pass through a ship that is deemed a hit. The number of moves for which a torpedo runs is determined from its rand for the speed setting indicated on the firing arrow.

That is the outline of the gunnery system, which I give because it one of (if not the) main focus of the game.

Damage accrues incrementally and a ship loses capability proportionately with damage as a proportion of the ship points value (other than for hits specifically on turrets which may knock the turret out independently of the accrued damage - this is a whole other topic for discussion, but won't be pursued here). A warship's points value is given by the formula:

PV=[C_M²N_M+C_S²N_S+10N_TT+10T_B²+10T_T²+10T_D²+25N_AC+N_M][(V/2)+10]+D

Where:

C_M: Calibre of main armament in inches
N_M: Number of barrels of main armament
C_S: Calibre of secondary armament
N_S: Number of barrels of secondary armament
N_TT: Number of torpedo tubes
T_B: Thickness (max) of armoured belt in inches
T_T: Thickness (max) of main turret armour in inches
T_D: Thickness (Max/total?) of deck armour in inches
N_AC: Number of aircraft carried
N_M: Number of mines carried
V: Maximum speed in knots
D: Displacement (standard) in tons

That is all for this article, I will have more to say about both the gunnery system and the ship points value in future articles.

References
1. Curry J., Fletcher Pratt's Naval Wargame, History of Wargaming Project, 2011
2. Featherstone D. Naval War Games, Stanley Paul, London, 1965, ISBN 0-09-076581-8

EndNote: The difficulty of getting Blogger to represent simple mathematics is seriously tempting me to move this blog back to WordPress where there is built-in LaTeX.

Staying Power Models and Naval Wargames

First let me define what I mean by staying power in the context of warship survivability. Staying Power is the ability of a ship to absorb hits and continue operating effectively (or sometimes just surviving). Thus we may measure staying power as the mean number of hits of some standard weapon needed to render the ship mission killed or more drastically sunk.

In many sets of naval wargame rules at least some aspect of staying power increases linearly with displacement. The question that I want to discuss here is how well is this assumption supported by historical data?

One of the main sponsors of the analysis of staying power on the basis of historical data is Captain Wayne Hughes of the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey. His book [1] contains a summary of some of the results of investigations of historical data on staying power. These results may be summarised as: Staying power is proportional to the cube root of displacement. I have spent some time investigating the assumptions behind these results [2] and find them at least partially flawed, but even with the flaws corrected staying power still appears to vary as the 2/3rd power of displacement (at least for a number of significant forms of attack). There are limitations on the reliability of this modelling but the broad conclusion that staying power grows more slowly than displacement appears to be robust, and we are left with the conclusion that a force of two 20,000 ton ships has greater staying power than a force comprised of a single 40,000 ton ship, even when allowance is made for greater protection that may be built into the larger vessel.

References
1. Hughes W.P., Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat, Naval Inst Press, 2000.
2. Larham R., Historical Data in Modelling Warship Battle Damage Survival Probability, 2nd IMA Conference on Mathematics in Defence, October 2011, link to copy on Academia.edu

The Fletcher Pratt Naval Wargame Pt1

In this first post I want to talk a bit about why I am interested in the Fletcher Pratt wargame/rules.

First some history. As children my brother and I always played with toy soldiers and eventually I bought a copy of Don Featherstone's Naval Wargames [1] and we moved on to playing naval wargames with scratch built (very rough) sailing men-of-war. After a while I devised a method of making reasonable models of WW2 warships out of card to a scale of 175 ft to the inch (about 1:2100) and we started using these in games using the version of the Fletcher Pratt rules in Feathersone's book. The problem was that I was more interested in naval wargames than my brother so eventually I mentioned the game to some friends at school. One in particular was interested and we started a small group with one or two others playing, but now using Triang minic ships at 1:1200 scale which were soon supplemented with scratch built models to this scale (using Ainsworth's plans from Model Boats). Anyway we continued with these arrangements for a while but eventually found a bigger group to join in the small adds of some model magazine. Unfortunately the group we found was the 1200 model ship society (unfortunately because we would have been better off with the Naval Wargames Soc) and moved away from the Fletcher Pratt rules.

The reason why I am writing about these rules today is the revival of interest in them with the publication of a couple of volumes in John Curry's History of Wargames Project [2][3].

References:
1. Featherstone D. Naval War Games,  Stanley Paul, London, 1965, ISBN 0-09-076581-8

2. Curry J., The Fletcher Pratt Naval Wargame, 1933, for Fighting Naval Battles 1900-1945, as Updated by John Curry et al (2006), 2006

3. Curry J., Fletcher Pratt's Naval Wargame, The History of Wargaming Project, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4475-1855-6

First Post

This blog is intended as an initial destination for thoughts on naval wargaming. I don't suppose there will be frequent posts but they will occur.

The header picture is HMS Vanguard in ~1917 shortly before her loss from an internal explosion.