"Highly Recommend Sam Willis' "Fighting at Sea"" Topic

And this problem of maintaining a line has never gone away. During WW1 and WW2 the navies of all nations had problems maintaining formation which is why the ship captains that had initiative could often be the ones to win the day or the smarts to know when it was time to make smoke for the fleet and get away.

Check out Eric Hammel's book on the Naval Battles of Guadalcanal for a good idea of how difficult it was for the US Navy to keep formation once the Japanese launched their "Long Lance" torpedoes.

huevans,
No I don't mind your linking me to the A/M group at all. Feel free. Sorry for the late response, but have not checked this thread of late.
BWW

From the United Service Magazine 1829 Part I:

Naval Tactics
On Shifts of Wind in a Fleet

link

I finished reading "Fighting at Sea" and enjoyed it.

Dr. Willis did get a little 'wordy' in places but he was certainly informative.

I thought his chapters on communication & command were a little weak, although he had a basic book understanding of the principles. Dr. Willis showed me he has never been a military leader himself. Today's military, even with all the technilogical advances, have the same challenges. The military leader, or any official not-military leader that matter, cannot be in every place at the same time and has to trust his subordinate leaders to follow his/her intended goals and directives. And, human nature hasn't changed. Some leaders are more democratic, other more autocratic; some subordinates more trustworthy, others less. Principles of leadership have not changed.

However, overall I'd rate the book as B+ or A-. It's a good read.

Thanks for listening to my thoughts.

God bless,
John T.

Great stuff, lots of helpful posts and opinions everyone.

Does anyone have Blutarski's contact info or the name of his rules??

Interested in trying them out.

Hi Stalkey,
I can be reached at -
"byronangel [at] verizon [dot] net"

Where are you located?

B

Perhaps for fleet games a simple post move adjustment phase would be the easiest.
A roll against crew quality and if failed the ship is moved a bit (or a lot) downwind (or maybe even up wind if they overcompensated). Something along those lines so better crews can sail in formation and untrained fleets are very slow or risk being all over the place with high collision risks.

Players always like collisions in their opponents fleet.

Hi Stalkey,
The name of my rule set is "Steer to Glory". It is officially unpublished, but available free of charge to people interested to try them out. I have been running games among club friends since the '90s and at HMGS conventions since 2005.

As mentioned above, I'm directly reachable at -
"byronangel [at] verizon [dot] net"

B