"The War that Never Was: The Greek-Ottoman War of 1914" Topic

So I tried asking about this in my other thread on pre-dreadnoughts rules, but I think it is worth its own thread.

Essentially me and my naval gaming buddy in Istanbul Onur, are really interested in wargaming a very plausible what if war, the conflict for which the Ottoman and Greek navies were gearing up and which was "averted" by the outbreak of WW1.

Essentially the Treaty of London did not resolve the Greek-Ottoman disputes over the Eastern Agean Islands. The CUP embarked on a massive naval modernization program ordering the Dreadnought battleships Resadiye ( later HMS Erin ) and Sultan Osman I ( later HMS Agincourt ) , plus two others that were never completed.

The Greeks freaked out bought as a stop-gag the two US pre-dreadnoughts USS Missisipi and USS Idaho, and ordered the Salamis, a unique battleship from German yards, and the Vasilefs Konstantinos, a Bretagne class ship.

In the end none of these ships saw actions as the outbreak of WW1 led to their impounding or scrapping by the building powers.

But what if WW1 had not happened. Then in all probability these ships would had met in battle in the Agean somewhere in the 1914-1917 period. We would like to wargame such a war.

Good news is that the Great War at Sea series of board-wargames has a campaign scenario for this war in its GWAS: Mediterranean product ( link ) .

The bad news is that the tactical rules in it are not that great. We probably will use the GWAS for a campaign, but would like to use minis rules for the battles.

So what we need is a set of rules that can deal with the mix of obsolete, pre-dreadnought and dreadnought ships that make up these fleets. These should be rules that can be play a battle in 2-3 hours and are not too much of headache ( see my Perfidious Albion posts for what I mean ) .

The rules should have stats for the following ships

Greece
Spetsai-Hydra-Psara ironclad battleships
Averoff Armored Cruiser
Kilkis and Lemons pre-dreadnought battleships
Salamis Dreadnought battleship
Bretagne Class Dreadnought battleship
Elli light cruiser

Ottomans
Resadiye( or HMS Erin ) class Dreadnought battleship
Sultan Osman ( or HMS Agincourt ) class Dreadnought battleship
Barbaros Hayderinn & Torgut Reis Brandenburg class pre-dreadnought battleship
Hamidieh & Medjidieh Class light cruisers

if they do not have the ships then a simple system for creating the ships.

We will be using 1/2400 scale ships ( due to our Balkan Wars collections )

So is there anything out there that can satisfy this madness? Shall their be fire in the Aegean?

General Quarters II has the formulae for creating your own ship stats easily and has no problem with pre-dreadnought vs dreadnought. For the size of action you intend they would seem ideal.

Nick

Stations Manned and Ready has stats for those ships and plays reasonably quickly. The down side is that you would need to purchase the British and French ship data PDF's as well as the other nations (which contains Greece and Turkey but not Erin etc).

Also Fleet Action Imminent has an WW1 navies supplement which contains logs for Greek and Turkish ships. I don't own this so I don't know if it contains all the ships you need. Their website says that " Also included are Ship Logs for those ships that had been ordered by the minor navies, but were purchased or confiscated by the Royal Navy and HochSeeFlotte"

Doomed thanks for that info

As Doomed mentioned, you could use Fleet Action Imminent (the WWI variant of GQ3.3). Easy to learn and play and the size of the actions you'd probably have is a perfect fit. Also, the Supplement for FAI has 5 additional navies, including the Turkish and Greek navies. All the ships you mentioned (and more, including confiscated/purchased DDs and CLs and small patrol ships) are included in the Supplement.

Charlie 12 do you know which supplement it is?

The 'WWI Navies Supplement' is available in ODGW's store as a digital download. The link to the page:

link

Its not a stand alone item, however, it does requires having Fleet Action Imminent.

They're in the "FAI WWI Supplement Complete".

I see Charlie 12 beat me to it. :-)

- Ix

Charlie 12 thanks. When I try to reach the ODGW site from google it takes me to a porn site.

So this working link is great.

Doruk got GWAS Med, for the operational level game.I am thinking about getting Fleet Action Imminent. I just cannot justify the 70$ I will need to spend for the pdf versions of Stations Manned and Ready and the supplements I need. 45$ for the Fleet Action Emminent pdfs is bad enough, but at least more justifiable.

I know a lot of work has gone into these rules, and I can respect that, but pdf prices are problematic when they rival a physical board-game like GWAS.

Yes, I was looking at the Stations Manned and Ready rules last night and just couldn't manage the price for PDF. Agree that it's fair for an author to want a return for the effort.That price puts them out of my league.

I got the Fleet Action Imminent Supplement just as a cheap way to get an idea of the system. They do have all the ships I want and the systems looks interesting. Waiting for Doruk's take. I have a feeling we will be going for it. The only problem is that they do not include the Vasilefs Konstantinos in the Greek line of Battle. There are of course rules for the Bretagne class dreads, but I am not quite clear at this point about how much editing will I have to do from the french to the greek list.

In talking with the author of the Supplement, I found out that the cutoff for the 'never built/finished' ships was whether they had reach a completed or near completed stage. Salamis had been launched and was fitting out when the war stopped further construction while Resadiye and Sultan Osman had either completed or near completion. The others (Vasilefs Konstantinos, Mahmud Resad V and Fatih Sultan Mehmed) had either never started construction (Fatih Sultan Mehmed), were canceled at an early stage (Mahmud Resad V after a payment dispute with Armstrongs) or were stopped because of the war (Vasilefs Konstantinos). Since construction on Vasilefs Konstantinos was stopped after only 2 months of work, she was not included.

As for the differences between the French Bretagne and the Greek Vasilefs Konstantinos, they differed in that Vasilefs Konstantinos carried an additional 12 3" deck mounted guns (that would work out to 3 additional small 3" gun boxes per side). In all other respects the ships were identical and would use the French CRT.

If you want, you can leave a message on the ODGW forum requesting a ship log for Vasilefs Konstantinos. The moderators are good at filling such requests.

Thanks Charlie 12

We decided to go full FAI, and I am now wrestling with the rules :p

Doruk ordered GWAS: Med. So in a couple of months time we might have our first runs at a Balkan War Operation game while we slowly collect the Greek and Ottoman fleets.

I created two ship logs for the Vasilefs Konstantinos. You can find them in the "Missing Ship Logs" PDF on my FAI pages. One is the Greek version (with 12x 3" guns added) and one is the French version, because in the right circumstances France might have completed it as a fourth Bretagne class dreadnought (Breyer's book says they considered it, and even planned to name it Savoie).

- Ix

WOW Ix

Thank you very very much.

If you get the campaign underway, please post reports! I'd love to hear how "The War That Never Was" develops.

Hmm is it me of is FAI missing the Mesudhie? That is a ship that could be used for the Balkan Wars and it did play a role in WWI

MESUDİYE wasn't included since her WWI service was as a stationary harbor guardship and her very limited utility. Her planned main armament (single 234mm/40 Vickers fore and aft) were never installed leaving her with a limited armament. Keep in mind, the FAI Supplement is limited to vessels that would/could have actively served in WWI. Unfortunately that would exclude MESUDİYE due to her very limited service.

I would also note that there may be no ship logs for ships built in the era before face-hardened steel (e.g. Krupp cemented, Harvey nickel, etc.). I haven't done an exhaustive examination of the ship logs to find out. I'm not sure how to re-rate the armor for something as old as the Mesudieh. If her armor was upgraded during the 1898-1903 rebuild, none of my paltry sources mention it.

- Ix

That's correct, the FAI system is optimized for ships built in the post Dreadnought/late pre-Dreadnought era. Consequently, assessing the correct values for earlier iron armored ships (such as Mesudiye) is difficult due the need to convert its armor values to the that used in FAI. Additionally, there's the problem of the ship construction doctrine. The increasing use of watertight division and general change in construction methods introduces another variable. Even after its 1898-1903 rebuild, Mesudiye still retained its 1875 structure and armor. To generate a usable log for such an ship can be done, but it requires a lot of compromises.

That maybe and I understand it, but they do have the old Greek ironclad battelships for the FAI WW1 supplement. And those are almos as old as the Mesudiye.

Looking up the Hydra class ironclads, they had a 12" armor belt (thinning to 4" at the ends), 12"-14" barbettes and turret armor, and 3" armored sides, of compound or Creusot steel (not sure which type of armor was where). The FAI ship logs rate the hull armor (belt) as CA, which is 4 full steps down for that thickness according to the chart on page 7-13, a huge drop. However, the type of steel may not be the whole story.

Conway's says the belt was fully submerged at full load and only 3" above water at normal load, so the CA hull rating may reflect this.

I also notice FAI rates the turret armor as CL, which makes no sense to me, since the turrets and barbettes are the thickest armor aboard. I don't know what this is supposed to reflect.

- Ix

Ix they were open turrets. I am not sure if they had closed them by 1914.

Can't speak for the author, but the Spetsai class coast defence ships were commissioned a full 17 years after the Mesudiye class ships. A lot had happened in ship design and construction and armor in that time. Granted, if it had been my call, I would left both ships out of the supplement (given their relative uselessness by WWI).

Its my understanding that FAI's armor basis is based on the face hardened armor that had become the norm by the late pre-dreadnought period on. So the values assigned to the Spetsai class would be correct, given that her armor was not on par with the later face hardened armor.

Still, if you want a log that is not in the Supplement, post a request on the ODGW FAI forum. The author is very good at responding to such requests. I've had several additional logs provided this way.

Hi Charlie. Thanks. That said I would had included them, no reason not to be able to fight the Balkan Wars with a WW1 rule-set.

The old Jane's fighting ships had a system for comparing different types of armor. It was quite useful for the Jane's wargame. Do not know how accurate the comparisons are.

Another 'What if?' war is a possible conflict between Argentina and Chile. At the turn of the century they were in the middle of a naval arms race. It was settled by negotiation, but it had real potential to turn nasty. At least two Argentine cruisers were sold to Japan, and fought at the Yellow Sea and Tsushima.

Well the fleets have been bought. We have FAI for the tactical rules, and GWAS: Med for the operational. We only need to get organised once the fleets arrive.