Denmark Strait; straight on once more

I headed to Julian's on Wednesday for our long-awaited second go at Denmark Strait and, more importantly, our first test of "Seekrieg 5".

Hood leading followed by Prince of Wales

As with the first re-fight of this action, the floor of Julian's wargames room transformed into the Denmark Strait and we set the Prinz Eugen/Bismarck and Hood/Prince of Wales at the appropriate distance, at 1:6000 scale, to represent the situation at 0537. Once again, we moved the ships, at 28 knots (1 cm per knot), according to their tracks in the historic engagement, with turns conducted according to the mechanics in the Seekrieg 5 rules.

Map of action "The Battleship Bismarck" by Ulrich Elfrath and Bodo Herzog, from Don Hollway's Pursuit of Bismarck website.

Hood turned, slightly less than 45º to starboard on the first turn. The Prince of Wales following her two minutes later. The two continued on this new course for a further  eight minutes (four turns), then, at 0549, they turned a further 10º to starboard so as to better intersect the expected tracks of the German ships.

HMS Hood began the action with a salvo from her A and B turrets.

At 0551, Hood opened fire with her A and B turrets, targeting the lead German ship (which, unknown to the British Admiral was the Prinz Eugen, rather than Bismarck, the two having change position during the previous night). The rules produced a credible 7% chance of a hit, with four rounds of fire (four rolls of percentage dice) in the two minutes of a turn. No hits were scored (as was the case in the historic action).

From k.bismarck.com: "Two 15-inch shells from the Hood land close to the Prinz Eugen during the initial phase of the battle of the Denmark Strait. This photo was taken by war reporter Josef Lagemann from the after 10.5-cm Flak position on the starboard side."

0553: Prince of Wales now opened up as well, targeting the rear ship (Bismarck) while Hood still fired at Prinz Eugen. Slightly better chance (around 17% from memory), but again, all misses.

Both British ships firing their forward turrets, while closing the range.

0555: Another salvo from each of the British battleships missed once more. Prinz Eugen opened fire on Hood (lead British ship), scoring one hit that did not penetrate the British battlecruiser's armour. 

I did not take any photos during this part of the game as I was enjoying the game, the rules, our discussions and laughing at my inability to roll anything lower than a 40 or so with percentage dice!

The critical point of the action: the British ships make a 20º turn to port so as to open up their broadside and hence enable their rear turrets to fire. This was the moment that sealed Hood's fate in the historic action, when a lucky shot from Bismarck pierced her deck and caused an explosion.

0559: Hood and Prince of Wales turned to port 20 degrees. Prinz Eugen fired on Hood once more, scoring two, non-penetrating hits, one to the deck, the other to a barbette; 80 points of damage. Bismarck opened fire... and missed. A divergence from history—as occurred in our previous re-fight of this battle. The British ships continued to fire on their German foes with the additional batteries (turrets) yielding immediate benefits. Hood scored two hits on Prinz Eugen, on the superstructure (110 points of damage) and knocking out a secondary turret (along with a further 100 points of damage). The Prince of Wales hit Bismarck, twice; on the belt and engine room. The latter hit started a fire and reduced the speed of the German battleship by 1 knot.

0601: The ships, now running parallel, exchanged broadsides. Prinz Eugen scored two hits on Hood, to belt and a turret. Once again neither was able to penetrate her armour; 40 points of damage. Bismarck also hit Hood—twice. The first on the belt failed to penetrate and detonate. The second penetrated and detonated in X turret, knocking it out. 

For her part, Hood, now firing on Bismarck, failed to hit the new target. However, the gun crews on the Prince of Wales had their mark, scoring four hits on Bismarck. A penetrating and detonating hit to the belt end, pass-through hit on the superstructure, a penetrating and detonating hit on a barbette and a second, penetrating and detonating hit on the belt end. A total of 400 points of damage but, more importantly, another fire, the loss of a secondary barbette and the hits to the belt caused her to list and left her, in the short-term at least, unable to fire her guns.

Hood and Prince of Wales both fired broadsides at Bismarck, the latter scoring four hits, starting another fire on board the great German battleship (just visible through the morning mist at top, slightly left of centre) and, temporarily at least, silencing her guns.

A zoomed view, showing the smoke from fires on Bismarck, Prinz Eugen ahead of her.

That ended the game/action for us. There was a little more to play out but I needed to get home and it was clear that Bismarck was 'gawn'. She was down to 27 knots and her guns were silenced for the immediate period. The British ships would close in again. Now, both having their mark, the likelihood of at least two hits each was extremely high. This would devastate Bismarck further, with no reply possible. If it did not sink her or force her surrender or, more likely, to be scuttled, then the British ships, aware of her plight, could slow, focus on their target and pound her to Davy Jones' locker. If, remarkably, the action continued long enough, the cruisers Suffolk and Norfolk would come into the action too. We assumed that, as per the later phases of the historic action, Lütjens would order Prinz Eugen to disengage and head to safety.

Observations

The battle
Holland's brave and dangerous tactic to 'charge' the German ships so as to close the range and the extreme luck/bad luck associated with Bismarck's catastrophic hit on Hood in the historic battle stand in stark relief. We have now played out the battle twice and each time Bismarck has missed. This would not only have changed the result of the battle, but the careers/memory of the respective admirals, not to mention the lives of those on board the respective ships.

The rules

Once again the game was superb; even more so this time as the rules suit us far, far better. Seekrieg have a 'reputation' for being complex. They are not. One could say 'involved', but they flow beautifully. Neither of us had used them before, save for an attempt to work out the process of firing last time that we re-fought Denmark Strait. This had not been easy as we were switching between various pdf files (Julian had purchased the electronic version of the rules), which made it really difficult as we were fumbling around in a most unsystematic manner, trying to get from one step to another. This time it was different.

Julian had printed the rules. We took a bit of time to calculate measurements of movement and ranges in metric and it took us a while to work through the steps in firing/assessment of damage (chiefly to find the relevant tables to look up), but once we had that worked out the turns and the firing just flowed.

Many people assess a set of rules based on achieving the 'right' or at least a credible result. This is a key, but as important, or I would say more important, is the path to achieving the results.

With Seekrieg you determine chance to hit, location of hit, whether each shell that hits is capable of penetrating the armour at the location of the hit and, if it is, whether it detonates or passes through. This causes various levels of damage and, most importantly, 'damage effects' (what is commonly referred to as 'critical hits' in other sets of rules).

This sounds involved, but is not. Firstly, with Second World War naval one is dealing with a few or a handful of ships and each only fires a shot or three, so one can afford to be more detailed and still get through an action in a reasonable time (for us), to get the ‘right’ result, but also have a pathway to it that tells us more about how and why that result occurred. Secondly, the authors of Seekrieg have gone to a lot of trouble to make this process a series of simple steps, with simple addition and subtraction mathematics and a handful of tables to look up. The last of the steps in determining hits/damage is one of the best examples of this. The authors have devised Table M1. It took us a while to find it as it was not in with the other charts. Then Julian recalled and found it, in a separate file. This is because it is 17 pages long with 149 tables. The tables are grouped so that a set of them refer to hits at different locations on different classes of vessel. In fact, thinking more about the game and the rules I began to wonder, are Seekrieg too simple?

I went from answering "yes" to answering "no" to coming to an interim conclusion of "most likely not"! I was originally thinking "yes" as I thought, hang on, for the ‘key’ table H1 (determination of hits) one merely puts a few, simple modifiers on the most important factor of the ‘fire control solution’. How superior is this to the base 12%-type mechanic of "General Quarters"? Then I considered it more and thought, of course it is. The fire control solution is all about the firing ship, guns, range, speed of target, then the ’tweaking around the edges’ provides the rest of the modifiers to produce a factor which, with the number of shells (barrels) fired each round, produce the chance of any of them hitting. So I am at "no". Ah, but then the niggle came in. Hit determination is still a fairly crude ‘it’s raining shells’ do any of them hit the target? Could this be done per shell? Is that feasible or desirable? Hang on, once a hit is achieved then it *is* determined by each shell/hit. Big tick (and that was a beaut part)! So it is likely that they are detailed enough. Of course, the rules have also been better thought through than by me who has played one game and not read this version yet! 😳 So, my answer for now is "most likely not" (too simple). I shall be interested to see whether, with actually reading the rules and then using them a few more times, it moves to a firm "no" or shifts to "not, in the main, but I’d like some more detail regarding determining whether and where each shell from each round hits". We shall see and it is gonna be fun finding out!!

Details

Rules

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

Ships

1/6000 scale Figurehead Ships.

Information about the action

Don Hollway's Pursuit of Bismarck website.

José M. Rico's brilliant The Battleship Bismarck website

The HMS Hood Association.

Fleet expansion

I have not got out to my wargaming shed much these past couple of weeks. Not had as much time during the day, many of the nights have been freezing—so too cold to venture out there—and I have been having a bit of a 'block' regarding constructing models and painting. I have though, managed quite a bit of planning and some purchases—always easy to click that 'add to cart' button isn't it?!

A bit like my aim for 'battles of the revolutionary-Napoleonic wars', I want to recreate 'all’ of the naval battles of the Pacific War, especially those involving carriers. For each action, my plan is that we will play out an historic scenario, an alternative scenario and a campaign scenario. The ‘campaign’ scenario will be based on the result/accumulated results of the previous historic one(s), taking account of other events that occurred historically, to come to a new, ‘campaign' version of the action. Perhaps some actions will not occur at all in this realm?

Julian and I have been discussing those for the first action, Pearl Harbor, and I have begun to put down notes for each of the scenarios for it. The historic scenario will have the Japanese attacks as they occurred, with American reactions once the first wave has gone in. The alt-scenario will have the Japanese attacks as planned, but the Yanks will be a bit more prepared (but not overly) and will not dismiss the ‘contact’ on their radar as ‘merely a flock of birds’. I do not expect this alt-scenario to be dramatically different from the historic one, save perhaps for fewer American ships sunk and more Japanese planes lost. Naturally, there will not be a campaign scenario for Pearl Harbor, but I may add in a ‘let’s say’ scenario. This would occur on 8th December, where, let's say, the Japanese fleet remains to attack again and combats what escapes from Pearl Harbor which may be joined by the Enterprise group, probably unknown to the Japanese initially, and perhaps the Lexington group. We’ll see.

Once we get there, Pearl Harbor will be our first real ’test’ of the rules-approach that we are planning. Then it will be all about ’42. That gives us heaps and heaps to attempt. There were mobs of actions and it was when the Japanese were at their most ‘competitive’. This also focusses purchases.

3D printed ships, front to back: New Orleans class heavy cruiser, Brooklyn class (St Louis subclass) light cruiser, Porter class destroyer and Farragut class destroyer. There is a little bit of 3D print 'flashing' to remove.

I purchased some 3D printed ships to see what they looked like and am really happy with them, so will be getting more for the ships that I cannot get as kits and some of the destroyers for which I ’need’ several individual ships. They are Allan’s Models c/- Dobbies Hobbies in Canada and are priced at wargame prices. I have seen some that go for US$50–60, or more, plus postage. They are lovely models, but, surely, they cannot be serious?! Clearly priced for collectors, not wargamers.

I have also bought in some ‘reinforcements’ in the form of further kits, with a few more on their way.

A haul of additional ship kits, courtesy of a sale on Tamiya sets at Hearns Hobbies in Melbourne!

As you can see, I am still very much in the mode of 'capacity building'. I think that I have got through my minor 'block' and, with a clearer calendar, some warmer weather later in the week, I should make some tangible progress towards painting for that test game of the attack on Shokaku.

In the meantime, I have Denmark Strait re-dux at Julian's on Wednesday. This time we'll be using Seekrieg fifth edition rules, which we both expect will be the duck's nuts for what we are looking to represent in a surface action.

314

Earlier this week I finished the rest of the plane stands. Thanks heaps to everyone who left a comment last time.

Not the most exciting thing to post about, as with my previous, but it's good to have them all up and ready to go. It was a matter of perseverance, as Peter said. I knew that if I stopped making them I would find it harder to get going again.

Woulda been more exciting or impressive if I was showing 314 painted figs, but I appreciated the encouragement Stew, Jon and Mark, thanks.

Richard, I watched/listened to lots of shows or podcasts, as I commonly do. This week it has been the first of the Tour de France.

I also finished making the 12 paper TBD Devastators that I wanted to make.

We had some desired and necessary rain late last week—it has been a particularly dry season so far. We'd like lots more, but it was beaut to get more than bugger all. It provide a few lovely snaps too.

Cloud building up prior to the rain provided a beautiful sunrise.

A gorgeous, male mouse spider (Missulena sp.) that I spotted on the path when I was walking the dogs after the rain. From what I have read they get on the move when looking for a mate.

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.