Phil Dunn's Sea Battles, Naval Wargaming 1650-1945
Sample Pages
Chapter 12: Monster Guns
Although the ironclad and pre-dreadnought eras have always been popular with naval gamers, the period between the two appears to have been neglected, which is somewhat strange, because this is a very interesting time when ships were slowly evolving from the massed broadside ironclad towards the standard 12,000 ton 4-12 inch gunned battleships of the 1895-1907 era, but at that time, no one yet knew what definite form the capital ship should take, and so here you have a really weird and wonderful mixed bag of types. And this was the age of the monster gun! Fitting ships with huge, slow firing guns was not the right way forward, but they were not aware of that, and anyway, if one white elephant fights another, both are equal. While the pre-dreadnought as we know it could shoot up to 6,000 yards or so, it is doubtful if their earlier counterparts could have hit anything much beyond 1,500 yards. Gunnery was not yet a science and still involved shooting through open sights. When shooting once in three or five minutes, the chances of scoring a hit on anything a bit far away were remote.
During the period in question, there were only three great naval powers of note, all of whom equipped their most important ships with colossal guns. Britain, France, and Italy thus feature in the rules, with nearly all the most important vessels appearing on the list. The formula for calculating others that are not has been included. The rules cover this transitional period of 1875-90, and are fairly basic and simple, but do give quite realistic results in that ship fighting capabilities of this time have been simulated. Many admirals of the era had serious misgivings about the monster gun concept, believing that they could be beaten by ships firing smaller calibres at a much higher rate of fire, and they were probably right. The rules do reflect this up to a point. A ship mounting two 16.5 inch guns, although seeming impressive, will probably lose against an opponent that has four smaller weapons. A 12 inch gun for example can usually fire 4-5 times faster than the monsters.
The period was unsettled in many ways. Some designers put their guns in turrets, but others were open mounted on barbettes or sited singly around the ship, protected only by thin shields or half-turrets. The huge Italian ships are particularly freakish. They are good fun to fight, but not very effective, with two of them having a disastrous rate of fire of four rounds per hour! Even the French gunboats can shoot up these giants with their single 9.2 inch or 10.8 inch guns.
These rules were originally compiled for multi-player games, utilising home built 1/600 scale model ships to fight hypothetical actions at a variety of halls. The use of such a large scale gave a very good visual effect, and was also quite practical, as it is doubtful if ships of the period could have hit anything beyond 1,500 yards.
The system gave good results, especially when forts were featured, protected by an inferior French naval force. The British had to knock out these Mediterranean forts, scattered around the hall, to win. In this hypothetical action, the Italians were allied with the French side, and a force of their ships was liable to turn up whenever a 6 was rolled at the start of each turn to assist in fort protection. Initial deployment can be done on maps to determine how rival groups of ships make contact, or where on the battle area the models will appear. Naturally, any war situation has to be imaginary, since the period was a relatively peaceful one. It could of course, have been otherwise, which is what your scenario will represent. For tabletop warfare, quite a few of the ships of this period are available in 1/3000 scale at very low cost.