Half standing

Half-way there. At 16 per day, I have completed all of the 500 mm, 400 mm and 300 mm stands.

156 stands of 500, 400 & 300 mm completed.

Six TBDs lead them on. A bit of an angle to these early sea-level stands. I could straighten them, but will probably leave 'em—all part of the fun.

These have occupied most of my hobby time; a sizeable chunk of time at that. I also managed to assemble four more paper planes, glued the wings and floats on the last of the float planes that I have from the ship kits and done some undercoating and basing of figures. I haven't done any other painting, not quite had the inclination. That will change.

I can't stand it

Attaching thin, acrylic rods to stands and keeping them vertical has been a challenge for me this past couple of weeks, but I have finally hit on a 'system'.

The six lengths/heights of stand that I am making: 500, 400, 300, 200, 100 and 33.3 mm (box purely as a 'backdrop' for the photo).

It began with a calculation.

Two posts ago, I was seeing how high I could go. I had put together a stand or two for each length and found that I can go up to 500 mm long/tall—600 mm was too unsteady. That’s good enough, I reckon. I wanted to know how many of each length that I could produce, so calculated lengths x number and came to this distribution for the 80 x 1 m lengths of rod that I have.

Lengths (mm)	Number	Total (mm)	1:20 000 (m)	1:20 000 (ft) approx.	Represents
500.0	50	25000	10000	33000	Very high altitude
400.0	50	20000	8000	26000	High altitude
300.0	56	16800	6000	20000	Medium-high altitude
200.0	56	11200	4000	13000	Medium altitude
100.0	54	5400	2000	7000	Low altitude
33.3	48	1600	23*	75*	Wave-top
		80000

* 1:20 000 is a nominal vertical scale so that these stands relate to sensible altitudes, but the 33.3 mm ones I consider to represent 20–30 m (at 1:700).

This should be enough stands for each altitude.

I was pleased that I did the calculation as not only did it work out how to divide up the 1 m lengths, but it has awoken me to the size of the ‘challenge’. Making those thin, rods stick to a horizontal base is quite fiddly and tricky. I thought that I’d try to do a few at a time, two or four, but if you divide 314 by 'a few’, you get a big number. I'll be making them for months. I will need to construct at least ten a day, every day, so that, hopefully, I have them done in a month.

It had been 'fun and games' to get the d@mned things to remain vertical and at 90º while the glue set. Leaning them against boxes, other boxes or things to wedge them vertical. "This is gonna be a nightmare", I thought. I threaded one through a hole in a steel square (carpentry) that I have, which lead me to a sudden epiphany. What if I make small holes in a piece of wood and use it to hold the tops of the rods straight?

Using empty cardboard boxes, lengths of plastic, and a carpentry square to try to keep the b@stard things upright and vertical.

I got a piece of scrap wood from the garage, drilled 2.5 mm holes, supported it in the middle with some of those empty boxes from the clean-up of my table and then was able to hold the plane stands vertically.

Solution inspired by using the hole in the carpentry square. I drilled holes in a piece of soft pine, initially 2.5 mm, later increased to 3 mm as the former were too tight, spaced at 60 mm intervals since the bases that I have made are ~50–40 mm square-ish. The result reminds me of a test tube rack.

Now I am in business and am able to do 16 stands at a time. That number ‘built’ each day should mean that I can reach the target of 314 within three weeks.

Keeping 'em straight and steady and also much, much easier to 'construct'.

I can stand it after all. Just have to work out now where & how I am gonna store the stands when not in use.

With a production line started, I am able to do some painting of the 1/700 ships and my long-neglected figures in addition to construction of stands. Did a bit of each on Friday and yesterday and will do some more today.

21 Hearts

Like most democracies in '24–'25, we had an election this year. Two in fact, state and federal. In the federal election, the more recent of the two, we found ourselves in a new seat. This happens from time to time because of changes in population. First time for a seat that I live in. In this case we, in the west of the wheatbelt, were combined with some suburbs of the eastern Perth hills to form the new electorate of Bullwinkel. Not an obvious agglomeration in terms of lives and lifestyle, but you get that with boundaries in anything. Not to go into any of that, I want to focus on that interesting name of the seat, 'Bullwinkel'.

When I saw it, I wondered from whence it came: an amazing and wonderful woman named Vivian Bullwinkel. Turns out that I was not alone in being ignorant of her and her story, but no more.

I was intending to look it up then, on the ANZAC Day weekend, I heard an item about the naming of the seat on 'Sunday Extra' on Radio National. This lead me to search for more and I found a moving biography on the Virtual War Memorial website.

Statue of Vivian Bullwinkel unveiled in August 2023

We went to the play "21 Hearts" last night. It is about "Vivian Bullwinkel and the Nurses of the Vyner Brooke" and is on a tour of regional WA. It is moving, uplifting and well acted. It was written by WA author and playwright, Jenny Davis, produced and performed by a small theatre company, Theatre 180, and performed entirely by five wonderful actresses who take the roles of numerous characters. Brilliant and powerful.

21 Hearts is the centrepiece of the Australian War Memorial’s commemorative program marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. (Australian War Memorial)

This is wonderful for a small company, for a play largely about nurses in the Second World War and for one from WA to get such prominence. 

Highly recommended to readers who are 'over east', or international visitors, who are going to be in Canberra in July or early August.

Findin' me table, paper planes & entertainment, information or inspiration?

Findin' my table

We postponed our game last Sunday, Julian not wishing to bring the 'flu from his place to mine, which was thoughtful of him. I will admit now that, when we first made the plan, I was a little worried about being ready, especially when it involved clearing my table, getting and constructing another two ships, painting the three ships required, painting the planes and making stands for them, but I took the bravado approach, rather than the sensible one. I won’t do that again. No more planning games unless the necessary figures and/or models are already in place. Never too old to learn the bleeding obvious, hey? (Cue image at end of post).

Before: a mix of work bench and storage area.

I used the ‘stay of execution’ to take my time clearing my table and finding sensible places to put the boxes of figures that are ‘in progress’. I now have a clear table (save for the ships yet to construct and my 'basing station'), emptied a drawer to receive constructed ships and rationalised, organised and labelled boxes of the figures that are in progress to safe and accessible places under the table and around the edge of the room. Yippee!

During: most of those boxes in the foreground are empty, many went to the recycling bin.

After: a table! New resolution, only 'stuff' being actively worked on and easily removed can go on top. The tabletop is old doors, hence the female toilet symbol :).

Cleared drawer to store ships. Looks like I'll get about 14 in there. 

For July the plan is to do what is ready to go, a ‘Denmark Strait’ re-dux using Seekrieg. A carrier action using same to follow, likely in August. We can assess in July to make sure that it can be ready to go long before the event!

Paper planes

I need nine TBD Devastators from Yorktown and then 12 from Lexington for the attack on Shokaku at Coral Sea. I have four TBDs from the kit of Yorktown. Tamiya and Trumpeter produce stand-alone sets of 1/700 planes, but there are no TBDs available at the shops or on-line currently. What to do? Make my own.

The basis: a painting guide for a model kit of a TBD from all angles

Reduced to size, printed and constructed. The first two test models at left beside one of the four from the Yorktown kit.

Flying high, with added plastic 'propeller spin'.

I am pleased that the small pieces of fridge magnet worked to 'stick' plane to base.

I have begun construction of stands for the planes. Julian has cleverly used wild oat stems for his. They tick many boxes for me: cheap, using easily available material, light and strong. The only, slight negative is the golden colour. I wanted something less visible and as thin as possible, so purchased some clear, acrylic rods, 2 mm in diameter. It's amazing. Once more nature wins. Lignin and cellulose is far lighter and stronger than man-made acrylic, but I have decided to persist.

I bought 1 m lengths and wondered whether I could go that long (high). Nuh-uh. The best I can do is 600 mm. I have settled on seven heights (lengths): 600, 500, 400, 300, 200, 100 and 33.3 mm. While the intention is to use a ground (sea) scale of 1:700, this does not work for the vertical; 10 000 m altitude translates to some 14 m! I decided that if we use an arbitrary 1:20 000 vertical scale the first six lengths can represent 12 000, 10 000, 8 000, 6 000, 4 000 and 2 000 m, respectively. The last is for 'wave-top' height, at the ground/sea scale of 1:700 it is 23.3 m, so okay for the 10–30 m in reality, the weird length is simply to get three per 100 mm.

Paper planes on the first of the 600 mm and 500 mm length rods. Note the lean.

View of the planes.

Bases ready for lengths of rods to be added. A 500 mm, 400 mm and 300 mm glued in place. The washers are to add ballast.

It has taken a while to get a system, but I now have one. The first challenge was glue. I tried Selleys all-plastics glue (essentially super-glue with primer), but it was not good enough. I have previously had good success glueing bits and conversions to figures with a strong PVA (Bondcrete), particularly if used like a 'contact' cement. That trick did not work for this purpose. In the end, it was good old Tarzan's Grip that has done the job. Interestingly, the same cement that I settled on for the 1/3000 Navwar ships.

(Several years ago, a friend's son who was studying engineering mentioned that there are two types of adhesives: those that bond to the surface and those that bond to themselves. I'd not thought of this previously, but recall this conversation often and have come to realise that more glue is a 'contact cement' than I had previously considered.)

The first 600 mm and 500 mm lengths that I glued are extremely wobbly. I may need to concede, use the 2 mm diam. rod for the shorter heights/lengths and purchase some thicker rod for higher altitudes. Or use wild oat stems for these! We'll see.

Entertainment, information or inspiration?

Jonathan Freitag over at Palouse Wargaming Journal recently posted another of his wonderful analyses from the Great Wargaming Survey. This one to do with sources of inspiration for games. Yoo-toobe and other online media came in tops at 25.41%, with books and magazines a close second at 20.84%. The data suggest that we over 50's prefer the books, while those 'whipper snippers' of 40-and-under like them vids. There's plenty more in Jon's analysis, plus mobs of comments, so check it out if you have not already.

This was interesting timing for me. In a related musing, I have been thinking about what I 'know'. Unlike Napoleonics, Great Northern War, American Civil War and, in recent years, much of the First World War, I find that I am still able to be educated by videos about the Second World War. I am wondering if it is because I am still very much on the trajectory of accumulation of the basic ‘facts’ and not yet at the stage of ‘the more I know the more that I realise I do not know’, or perhaps there are more, better quality and in-depth vids about that terrible conflict?

The Second World War was 'everywhere' when I was a boy. I likely have a better than average knowledge than the 'person in the street', but it is superficial in the extreme when compared with this eras for which I have read and invested time to try to get a deeper understanding. I have recently watch "Victory at Sea" (re-watched in this case), "Apocalypse D:Day", "Liberation: D-Day to Berlin" and "Clash of Titans".

“Victory at Sea”, circa 1950s, was bloody well done and holds up really well. Sensational archival footage, a compelling narrative, great use of music. All 26 episodes. The latter half of episode 16, for example, about the u-boat war is edge-of-the-seat stuff. Like watching "Das Boot" (the film), only it was real footage and events. The other three that I watched are modern series. I was worried that “Clash of Titans" would be "World of Warships" pap, but it was actually very good, I thought. Had far more contemporary footage and only a little bit of "World of Warships" vid. The other two docos are bloody well done, hard hitting with some amazing colourised footage, much with added audio.

Having watched these, some of the information ‘missing’ from my knowledge is:

- 866 Axis submarines sunk over the course of the Atlantic/Med. war. I would not have considered it to be so large a number;

- FD Roosevelt died while in office. I knew that Truman came in during the war, but had assumed it was a vote. I’ll excuse myself for this one on the basis that it was political and not military;

- there was a Maryland bomber. When I heard/saw it I was trying to work out if they meant a Boston or a Hampden, but looked it up…;

- the primary objective of Market Garden was the capture/destruction of the V1 rocket sites (true?);

- the deadly and near-abortive exercise 'Operation Tiger' (Slapton Sands) in April '44, only made public in 1984.

We’ll see whether videos hold up as a source of information as I read more, in particular with respect to carrier actions and the Pacific War. Already I am ‘coming along’ and am finding limitations, errors or simplifications in some that I am viewing (and reading).

Moving from the shipyard, it's back to painting: ships, planes and figs.

Loved this one, c/- Tony, Good Soldier Svjek's 'Tin Soldiering On'. I remain in denial. (Cue beginning of post).

Sense of motion

I have seen examples where clever modellers have created an illusion of rotation of planes' propellers by using perspex circles, photo-etched discs or blurred circles printed on sheets of acetate.

Trouble is, the material that they use is far too thick for 1/700 planes. Then I stumbled on one where a fellow had used discs cut from 'crinkly' plastic. This could work, but what to use? I considered cutting discs with a hole punch from some book covering plastic that I have, but I reckon it will be too floppy.

Then, a eureka moment.

My wife has a new lego kit with several plastic bags containing the pieces for each step. The plastic is thin enough to use on the small planes, but stiff enough to remain rigid and has a bit of 'crinkle', which should add to the illusion of motion.

Worth a go.

Ready for take-off: an undercoated Aichi E13A 'Jake' floatplane beside the undercoated Shokaku. Three streaks of diluted Payne's grey paint sufficed to create blurred propellers.

The disc is a bit wobbly from the front, when zoomed in by the camera, but it's not detectable by the naked eye.

I am happy enough with this n=1 example and will try it on some more planes soon. The disc is perhaps a bit big, so I could trim it by hand, since an imperfect circle shouldn't be noticeable at the scale. I won't bother for planes of this size or bigger, but may be need to for smaller planes like the Zeros.

Micro Ships

Space may be big, but what about them oceans?!

There is a lot of water out there, as the Gall Peters projection shows so well. (https://map-projections.net/single-view/gall-peters)

I am a land-lubber. I have been known to sail, as a young fella, but that was brogging around on a little cata-meringue (catamaran). This helps me to 'get' sailing ships, but in the miniature world, terrestrial or nautical, I have rarely progressed past the early 19th century. Considering modern (20thC) nautical stuff in detail is all new money.

Man. The ships are BIG. The distances enormous. In round terms, you have a 200–250 m long capital ship brogging around at 30-odd knots (nearly 60 km per hour) with battles commonly waged over tens of degrees of latitude. The relatively small Battle of the Coral Sea (Battle for Australia) occurred over an area roughly 10 degrees square. That's 60 x 60 nmi, or 1 000 000 km^2. No wonder I am having trouble working out how I might try to fit it on my 4 x 2 m^2 table!

This was rammed home to me with our recent re-fight of the Battle of Denmark Strait. This occurred over a relatively small area; 'only' around 14 x 14 mmi (625 km^2). No wonder that, with 1/6000 scale ships, we required the entire floor space of Julian's wargame room and still had to use the 'organ-grinder' method; moving the ships back to the 'start' side of the room, a couple of times.

Of course, with such huge distances, a full battle needs to include movement on a map. I am happy to do that, but we wargamers like the visual. It's the biggest part of the hobby, representing actions in miniature. So I'd really like to have a scale that enables me to put ships on the table as soon as possible. I'm seeking a 2 mm equivalent for second world war naval actions.

What I want, I think, is some 1/10 000 scale ships. Trouble is, as far as I can tell, no-one makes such a thing. No worries. I love home-made stuff for wargames, so I have had a go at making some of my own.

Fortunately, there are loads of diagrams of these ships. I saved a few, put them in EazyDraw, my drawing program, scaled them. That was pretty straight forward. What about 'building' them? I printed Shokaku, Furutaka and Kinugasa, cut them out and took them over to my shed to have a go at constructing them. I printed the ships on paper for this preliminary test.I expected that I'll need to use light card, but you never know.

I don't want light, paper models, so thought that I'd add a small nail as ballast. I was going to add some putty and attach the paper sides to the resulting 'hull', but then thought that the nail might be enough. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

1/10000 Shokaku from above. Not too bad.

She looks a bit beaten up in the profile view! I should have removed the head of the nail and added the putty as planned.

Despite my mistakes, I was happy enough with this little test, limited to Shokaku. As expected, paper is too flimsy, so I'll print the 'outline' of the ships on light card. I'll take the head off the nail (😊), or dispense with it entirely and will fill the hull space, sans or avec nail, with putty.

What about planes?

I considered making them as well, then calculated the size. A wingspan of around a millimetre and fuselage of less than a millimetre. Perhaps not. Instead I'll settle for a 2-D version.

Three versions of a Shōtai of Vals on three test backgrounds. They will be around 5 mm square.

Which background? I think I prefer the cloud photo. What do you people reckon?

I am happy with the potential of these ships and planes. At 1/7 000 my table represents a mere 2.8 x 1.4 km^2. At 1/6000 this becomes 24 x 12 km^2. With 1/10 000 I am up to 40 x 20 km^2. If I allow a single ship, or perhaps three placed in base to base contact, to represent a task force, this area could be five to ten times the size.

So, we can move from map to these small models once fleets are detected (or if known in a straight re-fight), to larger, 1/6000 models for surface actions, to the 'giant' (1/700) for the detailed attacks on a carrier. Noice.

Sink the Bismarck! Or, Denmark Strait, straight

Bismarck fires 'those shells as big as trees' from a broadside of her 'guns as big as steers'.

On Sunday, Julian and I got together chez lui for a refight of the Battle of Denmark Strait (24th May 1941). He wanted to use the game as a first, direct test of "General Quarters", "Seekrieg" and "Stations Manned and Ready". A big aim for the day, especially since we'd not been able to do sufficient 'homework' beforehand; he had been diverted by real life and I only had "Stations Manned and Ready" and summary documents of the other two to look at beforehand. Nevertheless, we got through about half of it, sorta, had a marvellous time, learned a lot about the rules, with regards to our specifications, and the historic action.

We used the excellent, detailed map from The Battleship Bismarck by Ulrich Elfrath and Bodo Herzog on Don Hollway's Pursuit of Bismarck website. Other information came from José M. Rico's brilliant The Battleship Bismarck website and the HMS Hood Association.

General Quarters Third Edition

"General Quarters" were first. We used the more detailed version with each turn representing three minutes. We disposed of the nominal sea scale that is in the rules in favour of a natural scale of 1:6000 to match Julian's ships.

0535: Bismarck (right) following behind the cruiser Prinz Eugen.

0535: HMS Hood (right) leading HMS Prince of Wales. Those with good eyesight and even better knowledge will notice the stand-in for Prince of Wales.

Didn't Julian do a marvellous job of painting these tiny models?👍

0538: Hood and Prince of Wales have turned to starboard to steam towards the Germans ships. 

Prinz Eugen and Bismarck continued their course.

0541: The British ships, only able to fire with A & B turrets, missed (Hood shown here). The two distant German ships are at the top of photo, honestly, trust me, 😀; this is what 25-odd kilometres looks like.

0544: Hood (in photo) and Prince of Wales missed again.

0547: The British continued to try to reduce the range, blazing away as they went, all misses. In this photo the light blue of the bases of the German ships are just visible.

0553: Bismarck fired a broadside, damaging Hood's hull.

The British have closed to a little over 18 000 yards (~16.6 km). Now the German ships are visible at the top of the photo. No hits.

0556 Closer again, but no hits.

0559: THE Moment. The British ships have made their turn to port.... Bismarck fired and missed. The British ships were able to fire with all turrets, but missed again!

0602: Prince of Wales scored a hit! Damage to Bismarck's hull. Bismarck missed again.

0605: Final broadsides of the action; Hood hit Bismarck's hull (JF note: slowing Hood's speed did not impact this, despite my expectations). Bismarck scored two hits on Hood; to her hull and a critical hit on her rudder limiting her to moving straight ahead.

That was the end of turn 11 and we called it there, the Germans slipping off to the west. It had been a really enjoyable re-fight.

"General Quarters" are a good set of rules. They would be excellent for a club night, but lack the detail and nuance that we are seeking. The stylised ship's charts look good, are really clever and easy to use. The riskiness of the decision to 'charge' at the Bismarck, limiting the firepower of the British ships, was clearly evident. In this version, they were able to turn without the disastrous shot on Hood as she presented her broadside to the German battleship. Unfortunately though, the reason for this was all down to the roll of a D12.

Key to us in a wargame is not simply getting the 'right' result, but achieving it through a sensible, reasonable and, hopefully, edifying path. This aspect was lacking for us. There is no nuance. The barest of modifiers, which change the row of a table and the number of rolls and/or results leading to a hit. The several salvoes that would be fired over a three-minute period from a turret are reduced to the roll of a die. No impact of the number of shells, angle of guns, speed of ship, sea conditions, skill of the crew, fire control systems, location of the hit, duds, shells passing through without exploding... Simply how the die falls. If a hit is scored, damage is simply a roll on the D12. Most limited of all is the over-simplification of armour. Ordnance has a penetration 'level', expressed in terms of the highest class of ship that it will penetrate (e.g. BB, battleship) and this is compared with the target. If that of the ordnance is equal or higher, you are 'in'! This is not adjusted at all for the location of impact of the shot, so a ship is a ship, same armour all over.

Seekrieg 5

Next we turned to "Seekrieg". These seemed more up our street.

The modifiers are there, greater nuance and specificity. Much more detail, more involved, more cumbersome, slower. Reasons why they would not appeal to many had us really excited. This means that they are not something to use after a quick skim, especially going back and forth through the pdf version of the rules from Wargame Vault.

We went through a 'thought' exercise, to see how the first shots in the game we had just played would have gone. It seemed likely that there was a better chance of hitting—although in our 'jumping around', we could not determine how sea state, a key modifier, was converted into a factor. The sea state at Denmark Strait was 'challenging', since the battle occurred in rough seas. Our interest was piqued, excitement generated, but we need to read through them carefully and in their entirety before attempting an outing with them. Confident that such time invested will reward in spades, we put them aside.

Stations Manned and Ready 2nd Edition

We expected that attempting to play out an action with three sets of rules was an ocean too far. We underestimated this by about 50%. It was too late to try the action with "Stations Manned and Ready".

These rules are deliberately intended to enable people to play a large action in a reasonable amount of time. Alan Butler and Andrew Finch state that the rules place game over a simulation. Too much is simplified to this end, for my taste; six-minutes per turn, initiative for movement, command radius determined by command value, planes treated as air groups, firing by ‘battery’, saving throws, an impact power of hits that is applied to the ship’s structure and test for critical damage. All seem to be clever, well thought through and no doubt interesting mechanics, but not the level of detail that I am seeking. Second World War naval is one of the few periods for which I am after a skirmish style, each ship is a cherished individual, each turret accounted for, each shell, each plane launched from a carrier, each torpedo tracked as the enemy carrier (or perhaps other ship) tries desperately to manoeuvre to avoid being hit....

So, I have already ruled these out these. Julian is of the same bias, but still wants to put them to a test, for completion and to do them justice. He will re-fight the action solo, using "Stations Manned and Ready", at a later date.

Some details

Rules

General Quarters Third Edition (2006). Old Dominion GameWorks. https://www.odgw.com/products/generalquarters3/gq3.html

Seekrieg 5 (2004). Seekrieg https://www.seekrieg.com/Seekrieg5IntroPage.htm

Stations Manned and Ready 2nd Edition (2013). A and A Game Engineering. Out of Print. Summary on Board Game Geek 

Ships

1/6000 scale Figurehead Ships.

Meanwhile, in the shipyards...

My construction of 1/700 ships is going along steadily.

Four Japanese carriers constructed. L to R Shokaku, Junyo, Taiho and Shinano.

HMAS Australia, first base coat applied, in front of the carriers

I have now completed four carriers, two light cruisers and the heavy cruiser 'stralia. This week I plan/hope to complete the remaining three Japanese carriers that I have and the three US ones the week after. After that, painting (and paint some figures 😁).

I'm not a scale modeller (as you can tell) so don't want the same detail with the ships as I do with the rules (haha). These 1/700 scale models provide more than enough as far as I am concerned. Putting them together, along with checking information about each is a wonderful, edifying process in itself. Shinano is a classic case in point. The gorgeous lines of the hull showing her intended construction as a sister to Yamato. The 'tacked on' nature of the modifications to make her a carrier, particularly the mounts for the anti-aircraft guns. The resulting absolute beast of a vessel, yet only capable of carrying 47 aircraft!

Between us we have, built or to build, all of the early US carriers and a mix of some of the early, mid and late Japanese ones. I am targeting the rest of the early Japanese carriers (Kaga, Horyu, Soryu; Julian has Akagi), plus Zuiho (or Shoho), Ryuho, Unryu, Chitose and Clamidya, I mean, Chiyoda—a little joke that I keep having with myself. Cracks me up every time. Later we'll determine how many of the US Essex class and light carriers, plus escort/support vessels (for both sides) that we'll 'need'.

In the meantime, we'll be trying out sections of battles to continue testing rules, which will help guide us in what is needed when we try an entire, historic battle. To this end we have decided to make our next the attack on Shokaku at the Battle of the Coral Sea on 8th May 1942...

I may need to clear some space on my table before the game.