Reading, Reading over the Bounding Main

After the account of the Saratoga campaign, I'm on to The Coward of Minden, by Piers Mackesy:

An unflattering portrait.

A quite good volume that seeks to rehabilitate Sackville; the author has also written a book on his conduct of the American Revolution that I will read next. He describes the cavalry debacle of Minden very similarly to, say, the Charge of the Light Brigade; as a comedy of errors caused by confusing orders to someone who couldn't see where he was expected to go. Worse, there were multiple contradictory orders, and I feel sympathy for Sackville in that situation. Prince Ferdinand, who commanded at Minden, is depicted as the villain of the piece, in part because he gave little initiative to his subordinates.

Another British submarine memoir:

First read at university
over two decades ago...

A rare account of British submarining - U-boats and US subs get virtually all the WWII press. Quite good and suspenseful account of the North Sea and Mediterranean. I'd be interested to find one of the U and V class boats that sailed out of Malta.

Hastenbeck 1757, by Helion and Company. Still waiting for more of their wargames volumes to show up on Hoopla, or better, the Christopher Duffy books.

The campaign was over some of the same ground as that of Minden. The book is translated from French, and is entirely from the French perspective, but that's not the real problem for me; it's that like many books on the wars in the Low Countries and the Holy Roman Empire, I'm utterly lost by all the names of towns encountered on the march - except a few from the World Wars - I can orient myself a bit when, say, Ypres or Nijmegen turn up, and I've heard of major cities like Dusseldorf and Munster. The maps, however, are bare bones. In the Minden book there are at least arrows, if not major roads and terrain "hash marks." In this one, there are just rivers and dots-for-towns. There is a ton of potentially useful statistics about supplies, wagons, pontoons, etc, so this might be interesting for a gamer who likes campaigns, but without good maps you'd have to keep it in your head or make your own map! There's only one map with units and arrows on it, the battle of Hastenbeck itself, and that makes the account of the battle more comprehensible.

To be fair, I imagine Europeans reading about the American Civil War are equally as lost.

The battle itself is described pretty clearly, and it ultimately led to the convention of Klosterzeven in which Cumberland gave up Hanover and got in a lot of trouble. Unfortunately for the French commander, he had actually been recalled shortly before the battle, though he didn't learn this until after it, of course. The French were also criticized for not having forced a British surrender.

There are lots of eyewitness accounts, and the book is relatively short. I'm middling in my thoughts about it, but I have learned something about a battle I wasn't familiar with. I'm happy I borrowed it rather than bought it. There are a handful of nice uniform plates.

OK, that's it for this week. On to:

An excellent quote from the above, on Bennington: "Baum ... qualified for marching through a country of mixed friends and foes by speaking no English." His unit included, "... for secrecy, a German band; to speed the column, 170 dismounted German dragoons in search of horses, marching in their huge top boots and spurs and trailing their sabres."

Will I game? Well, maybe. Something solo tomorrow or Sunday. See you then, and thanks for reading.

Trundling Along

I'm tired, depressed and not in much of a mood to game real life history at present. I think I'll concentrate on Quar and VBCW for a while (which I need to anyway). Having nearly all Quar built (a cat stole one) and a clear day outside, I chose to undercoat them. I only have pure white to do it with, but it should be an OK base for Contrast-type paints.

As for what I've been reading...

Published in the '60s. Quite short, it's thus pretty superficial, concentrating on personality quirks and famous incidents rather than being true biography. It's written in chronological order, too, and in a style that makes me unsurprised the author specializes in fiction. It's not a bad introduction, though.

This one, on the other hand, is new, and quite scholarly. It focuses on the military side of things, primarily strategic and operational. The author's key concept that he uses to rank the main players (Howe, Burgoyne, Washington, Gates, Sackville, etc) is grip - a term I haven't heard before in reference to military competence. Basically, it means partly understanding and recognition of the many variables a general needs to make a decision, and partly the ability to control the units under his command to carry out his intention. He uses Montgomery in the Western Desert as a good example of a general with "grip." Washington and Gates had it, the British didn't. This was mostly because of distance and the fact that some of them didn't like each other (The Americans didn't either, but they still managed to work together).

To Weddle, the reason the British campaign failed was because it was managed from afar, in a strategic sense from London, and in an operational sense between commanders variously in Philadelphia, New York and Canada. Both sides had to spend weeks (months in the case of overseas) communicating, but one was operating on interior lines. Both Howe and Burgoyne focused on parts of their orders that said they could work independently and assume the other would support them, rather than the parts that said they could and should use their own initiative because their directors were too far away in space and time to have the "grip" they needed.

There was also the problem that the goal was to link up the armies at Albany and then, somehow, the British would profit - when instead supply would still be so strained that there would have to be penny-packet garrisons all along the line, and taking Albany wouldn't prevent the Americans linking up anyway. He doesn't mention the parallel, but I'm reminded of the Vicksburg campaign which really did cut the Confederacy in two.

All in all, an excellent and well-researched volume on the campaign, and the battle narratives aren't bad either.

Finally, I've started an account of HM/Submarine Trenchant:

Best known for sinking the cruiser
Ashigara.

Quite good so far, even in the first chapter on the construction and working up; I liked the description of a senior WRNS officer as "the Great Crested Wren!"

OK, just finished undercoating 27 Quar:

Ten Crusader "line squad" and four trench raiders.

Ten Coftyran line and three snipers.

I experimented with an undercoating method I found on Youtube - sticking the figures to a paint stick and wearing a glove. In theory, this makes it easier to aim the paint at all the undercuts; in practice I still missed a lot, and will have to use some white paint to neaten. Still, one step done, a dozen to go...!

Enjoy your week, folks. Two of my coworkers are off so I'll have a busy one. See you next time.

Across the Narrow Seas

 Not having been to the club for a bit, I was keen to try Cruel Seas again with John's scenario.

A mined French harbor, with rare Games Workshop
hills for terrain at the back. German defenders at
top, British attackers to lower right, Axis convoy
to come in at upper right.

Three Motor Gun Boats and three Vosper MTBs.
"Early War," so not a huge range of armament.

Two German "Kriegfishcutters," or picket boats.
Also two R-boats that doubled as minesweepers.

A convoy of Axis freighters was on the way in, and our goal was to sink as many ships as possible.

We only had six dud-prone torpedoes to do it with.

I took the MTBs (right), Mark the MGBs (left). The convoy started off board, so in Turn 1 we just moved forward with a little desultory shooting from 2-pounder and 37mm guns.

On Turn 2, though, the convoy showed up (random die roll for appearance). Another round of light gunfire, while I slowed to launch four torpedoes at the incoming big ships (they need 20cm of run to activate the exploders). The R-boats went for the mines in the entryway farthest from us. One set off a mine and took severe hit-point damage; the other also failed its roll but thankfully it was a dud. 

Closeup on the R-boats.

Germans dealing with the first row of mines.

Fish in the water!

Turn 3, the torpedoes ran 40cm, not quite enough to hit. We shot up the harbor craft some more.

John checks the range as the firing boat
turns to bring its broadside of three machine guns and
a 20mm Oerlikon to bear. Can they even hurt the target?

Turn 4: The torpedo salvo crippled the freighter even though only one went off. (One miss and two duds for the others.)

In exchange, an 88 (!) on the next ship scored a direct hit on my third MTB, which was a) on fire, b) took a rudder hit and c) took 32 points of damage - leaving 3!

Unhappy boat crew on a vinyl sea.

In what I expected to be the boat's last moments, I fired its torpedoes and plastered the tanker in the second line with MG fire, doing 13 points of damage and a bridge hit. Further fire did 24 more damage to the tanker which then (due to the bridge hit leaving it unable to steer) hit the island on its starboard bow. It was also now down to single hit points. Mark had a gunboat take half damage, but his return fire finished off one of the German harbor boats.

A view of the "second line" of the convoy, with the tanker
aiming for the island ahead of it.

K-k-k-k-krunch!!! The R-boats behind are heading
for the mines at upper right.

In Turn 5, my crippled MTB's torpedoes were duds. I spent the turn putting out the fire, but was down to slow movement which, given limited turning at that speed, aimed me either at an island or into point-blank range of enemy fire. The 88 on the following freighter took out another MTB with damage dice alone, with the two crits just icing on the cake. Two more large ships were getting away, but I polished off the stricken tanker by fire (Mark had to leave at this point, but we were down to four operational boats anyway...)

That bloody 88 can be seen amidships of the dazzle-camoed
freighter.

In Turn 6, I sank the third freighter by gunfire (good riddance to the 88) as the R-boats cleared the channel for the fourth to get away. In a characterful but not gamist move, I halted my nearest surviving boat to the cripple with the intention to offload its crew and then run. Unfortunately, this made it vulnerable and one firing phase later, it was in the same situation as the first boat - down to 4HP and with no return fire allowed next turn.

Well, that didn't help.

But at least only one of those convoy ships escaped.

In Turn 7, my surviving boats got off board. End result, the British had managed to interdict the convoy, including crucial oil, and only the smallest ship got into port. We also sank one of the harbor tug-types. In exchange, we lost one MGB sunk, one abandoned, and one which would not be able to escape the board before the vengeful R-boats got through the hole they'd finally made in the second row of mines. Surrender is probably in order. Still, a victory is a victory. 

It occured to me belatedly that smoke would have been really useful to shield my damaged boats, but it didn't matter as the rules for that aren't in the main book we were working from. Ah, well. Also, the torpedoes didn't help much - we had five hits out of six shots, but only one went off (early-war torps - coulda been even worse if these were American boats). Our two-pounders, 20mms and Vickers guns did most of the damage, which suggests the freighters were pretty darn thin-skinned! But in exchange, a mere 35 HP per British boat meant that a single round of fire could take one out of the game - as John pointed out, they are very much glass cannons.

I'm still a little disconcerted at the large scale of the game, but it still makes for a fun time and with lots of exploding dice to roll. A fine game and scenario by John. I'd happily play again, and with great opponents too. The weekend of the 15th we're planning a three-day series of games, so I should be able to make at least one; of course there is also the annual Limeys and Slimeys "regatta" coming up too for more nautical mayhem. See you around, and thanks for reading.