GHQ Models Forums

Glad to have you back to Hotel Micro Armor.

Whew!! He's back....

Winnie's back, and the RN sounded alarm in celebration of his return....

Okay, I get carried away.
Chris

The young peace loving democracy of Balzac welcomes cama.

However!

The Balzac Self Defence Force (Henceforth known as the "BS Defence Force") will monitor this Military build up on its Northern boarder with some concern.

No doubt there will be renewed calls for an increase in defence spending (running at an all time low right now) to add to the limited, mostly ageing ex South African equipment that makes up the BSDF.

Welcome back cama,
7.62

"RED" Deer.
As Jeff Foxworthy would say "There's your sign".

cama wrote:As my pal Winnie might say, "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender!"

Yeah, well what he should have said (or what we should have mis-remembered him saying), was: "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never sell off our tanks and soldiers!"



Nice to have you back, cama. Now paint something up and post some pictures already!

The Graf Spee action makes an interesting scenario. Way back in the early '70s, when we were still using naval rules that gave all guns an equal chance of hitting, I read the Sea Battles in Close-up book on the Spee action, with its detailed breakdown of number of rounds fired by different classes of gun and percentage hits obtained. From that, and a little more research, I developed the hit and penetration table used in the current Supremacy at Sea rules to tie all those factors together.

We have run the Graf Spee action for fun and demonstration purposes well over 100 times (it is included with a downloadable basic set of the rules on the Supremacy at Sea website). In all that time, the Spee has won only once - and that by very careful splitting of main armament fire and more than a little luck (good on the German side and bad on the British side).

One of the recent books on the action quotes Commodore Harwood as saying the British always figured two heavy cruisers or a heavy and a couple light would be more than a match for a pocket battleship.

ed*b wrote:One of the recent books on the action quotes Commodore Harwood as saying the British always figured two heavy cruisers or a heavy and a couple light would be more than a match for a pocket battleship.

According to Citoyen Napoleon: "God favors the side with big battalions."
And as Tovarish Stalina used to say: "Quantity has a quality all it's own."
The US Army likes the doctrine of establishing "Firepower Superiority."

I think we amature military historians are often impressed by "big and scary" stuff. But in truth, if you do more shooting than the other guy, you are likely to win. The results become dis-proportionate to what you might have expected from the prowess of the two sides as described by statistical capabilities.

For example if you pit two sides against each other:

Side A: Weapons have 3X the lethality of Side B's weapons.
Side B: Has 3X more weapons than Side A.

Who wins? Side B. Every time. And by a substantial margin. Even if you give Side A weapons that have 4X the lethality, and still give Side B only 3X the number of weapons, Side B wins by a substantial margin.

It is an odd effect, that seems counter-intuitive. But in almost any approach you take to modelling a conflict, the results become disproportionate in favor of the larger number of shooters once you get past about 2-to-1.

Hence the old saw about the US Army in the ETO: "It takes 5 Shermans to kill a Tiger." Well yeah, maybe it did. But the exchange rate was about 1.2 to 1. And at the end, 0% of the Tigers remained in action, while there was still a very substantial force of Shermans at work.

Didn't Exeter get the crap beaten out of it?

Yup. And?

I played that battle in Seekrieg a year or so ago. The guys with the RN ships pecked away turn after turn, landing hit after hit. They went pale every time the German player rolled the dice for their main battery. But he didn't win.

Quote MkI...
Hence the old saw about the US Army in the ETO: "It takes 5 Shermans to kill a Tiger." Well yeah, maybe it did. But the exchange rate was about 1.2 to 1. And at the end, 0% of the Tigers remained in action, while there was still a very substantial force of Shermans at work.

Wasn't that 5 shermans to kill a Panther?

Same result tho, just thought it was the PzV, not the PzVI

Troy

The Exeter was knocked out of action, but still mobile. The British had another 8" gun cruiser (HMS Cumberland?) to take it's place. The Graf Spee was all alone to deal with strangers, low on ammunition, and a long way from home. Even if it had been able to fight past the British squadron, the damage to it's fuel system would have made it's return to Germany, or even the Northern Hemisphere , highly doubtful. It's least bad option would have been to steam to Argentinian waters and be interned. THen the politicians would start negotiating, begging, and threatening to decide the fate of the ship.
Groundlber

Referring again to the Sea Battles book, the hits on Exeter were as follows:
1. Third salvo, short, temporarily knocked out starboard torps
2. Passed through ship near B turret without significant damage
3. Direct hit on B turret, knocked out turret and decimated bridge officers, knocked out central fire control
4 & 5. Hits forward, minor damage
6. Hit forward, knocked out A turret
7. Hit amidships, started major fire and reduced speed to 18 knots, knocked out steering

Exeter was able to fire torps from both port and starboard banks, so the first hit did not seriously damage the torpedo tubes. She was able to make it to the Falklands under her own power for initial repairs.

In game terms, under the Supremacy at Sea rules, Exeter has 1815 sink points. One of the Graf Spee hits seems to have been on the deck armour, and would be counted as half-penetrating and worth 45 points damage. The other Graf Spee hits were on turret or belt and would be penetrating, and worth 90 points. There would be three critical hits, two of which knock out turrets and one knocks out speed. One of the turret hits put the guns in local control. The specials in the rules to produce such damage would add another 9 times the Graf Spee damage, giving a total damage of 45+ 6*90 + 9*90 = 1395 points, or 77% sunk under those rules.