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.