All the naval rules that I have played attempt to address the issue of larger caliber shells hitting smaller ships and its reverse, smaller caliber shells hitting larger ships. These rule sets have mixed results. In this post I will discuss two questions:
1. Does the historical record support the need for such rules?
2. Does the Equivalent Damage roll actually address the question at hand?
Wargamers certainly think that such rules are needed. After all, a bigger shell should cause more damage and a smaller shell less. Logical right? In this particular case, the historical record is limited but in the main doesn’t support this assumption. There are four actions to examine: Battle of the River Plate, 2nd Battle of Narvik, 1st Guadalcanal, and the Battle off Samar. I will briefly discuss frequency of hits and actual damage.
Battle of the River Plate was the only one of the three fought at ‘normal’ battle ranges. The 11” guns of the Spee were handier against small ships than the 14” and 15” guns used in the other three battles. In an action lasting a little over an hour (11 game turns) Spee scored nine 11” hits, seven on Exeter and two on Ajax. In almost all cases, the 11”rounds did localized damage as if hit by any size round (putting the object hit out of action), but nothing more. The hit on Exeter’s B Turret didn’t put A Turret out of action, cause engine damage, etc. Using the Equivalent Damage rolls, those seven hits would be 14 hits with those extra hits causing more damage over the length of the ship.
2nd Battle of Narvik. Warspite is credited with hitting three German destroyers during the battle with 15” rounds. In all three cases the ships were either barely moving or stationary. Two of the destroyers were already badly damaged from the 1st battle. Again damage was limited to what was hit and the ships were sunk due to the combined hits of Warspite and her accompanying destroyers. The 15” hits alone did not pulverize the destroyers.
1st Guadalcanal. San Francisco was hit by two/three 14” rounds from Hiei. It is stated that these hits were using the bombardment rounds and not AP, hence limited damage. The comment made in the official damage report was that it was the 6" rounds that did the most damage. These two/three 14" hits would be six/nine using the Equivalent Damage Rolls.
Battle off Samar. The destroyer Johnston was hit simultaneously by three 18” rounds, followed by three 6” rounds from Yamato. Equivalent damage would make these a total of 20 hits. Yet the destroyer survived, executed damage control, was able to remain in action for another 2+ hours, remaining combat effective while returning to the attack twice, and finally taking more 6” hits before she was sunk.
The ships hit by larger rounds in these four cases survived because these hits only damaged what was hit, it didn’t cause other damage all over the ship. That’s another issue I have with the Equivalent Damage Rolls; the extra hits cause damage anywhere on the ship regardless of the location of the first damage roll hit. Another point that is mentioned in all these cases that should limit damage by larger rounds is that AP rounds tend to pass through (over penetrate) lightly armored/unarmored targets without exploding. HE rounds carried by battleships were still a SAP type of round and suffered the same problem. In all, the historical record doesn’t truly support the idea that a larger shell against a smaller ship should create more damage.
Now one can rationalize these results in many ways and still feel comfortable that the Equivalent Damage roll is justified. It is the reverse of the situations above that finally forced me to recognize that Equivalent Damage Rolls don’t work. What about smaller shells hitting larger targets?
In our last battle, my 8” cruisers were firing at PoW (BA armor). The 8” can’t penetrate BA. The Equivalent Damage states 1/2 C-S-T. So only half my hits count and can only caused critical (if the round penetrates), and damage secondaries and tertiaries. Okay so I can at least take out those weapons that threaten my destroyers. Instead of getting a damage roll for each 8” hit, I only get 1/2 a roll for each 8” hit. So four hits is only two rolls. Why? I hit the ship four times, the rounds can’t penetrate, so why the extra penalty when hoping for hits on the unarmored areas? Why doesn’t a smaller round get a chance of damaging those systems which are vulnerable to those smaller rounds? It was this part of the Equivalent Damage Rolls that pushed me into the ‘it doesn’t work’ camp.
Note in the background of this discussion is that it is easier for a larger caliber armed ship to hit a smaller target in GQ3 than historical. The nature of the CRT always allows a roll of '1' to hit and the adjustment for firing at a smaller ship is only up 1 row on the CRT. Once at 15k range, a battleship with 15" (UK CRT) has a 1+ - 2 to hit a destroyer with 3-4 dice. Each hit is x4. This skews the impact of larger caliber guns against small targets due simply to more hits and the Equivalent Damage Rolls modifier.
I feel that the Equivalent Damage Rolls isn’t needed as it doesn’t reflect the historical record. Even if others believe that it is still justified, it doesn’t work as it needs to work. It penalizes smaller guns against larger ships in a unhistoric manner and spreads damage across the target ship instead of concentrating it at the area of impact (assuming that the first damage roll defines where the actual hit was located). If one truly believes that a larger round should create more damage, the game needs a mechanism to reflect structural damage that impacts survivability absent a specific ship system. GQ3 currently lacks such a damage mechanism.
Comments?
v/r Jeff
