The following article originally appeared in the December 1932 issue of Proceedings; copyright @ 1932 U.S. Naval Institute, and is reprinted with permission of the U.S.N.I. There are several interesting and significant features of the essay. First, many naval miniatures buffs may not have realized that Pratt evolved and "playtested" his naval wargaming concepts over a period of eleven years before publishing his rules in 1940 (Fletcher Pratt's Naval War Came, Harrison-Hilton Books, Inc.). Second, in this article we find that his "formula" was originally devised for evaluating a relative point value for ships and not for assessing damage. The equation appears in the same form in his rules eight years later, but is then used as a means for prorating the effects of damage. Pratt's one step backwards was to homogenize the effects of damage by causing all ship characteristics (i.e., speed, gunnery, flotation, etc.) to degrade uniformly as hits accumulated. Third, at the time of this article, Pratt was using a target-shooting procedure in order to introduce the element of skill into the game (which procedure was eventually replaced by his range estimation method, a system which is still popular today). Some features of Pratt's rules, such as his armor penetration graph, are more elegant, more utilitarian and just as I I realistic" as the sets of tables or complex mathematical formulas which have been developed in attempts to improve upon his original techniques. I believe that this article is an important milestone in the evolution of the hobby of naval wargaming. The article is reprinted in full, except for the omission of some tabulated calculated results which simply illustrate the values obtained from the formula. -Cliff Sayre Kriegspiel, the war game, in some form, is the most universal of all pastimes. There is hardly a boy who has not paraded his regiments of tin soldiers or, fearfully and wonderfully decked out, who has not organized an Indian raid on the feminine members of his community; and from that age until the time when the boy bends a graying head over the combinations of the chessboard, he can scarcely amuse himself at all without engaging in some form of mimic warfare. Four commanders make ready to fire torpedoes in a close-range action between six warships during heated session of war gamers. But it is only very rarely that any of these outlets for the universal spirit of contest is in any way a naval war game. Most naval kriegspiels are the result of an effort on the part of some staff college to supply laboratory equipment for the solution of tactical problems. They tend to become highly formalized (for instance the effect of the gunfire of two similar ships, in distinction to the actual facts of the case, is assumed to be exactly the same); the question to be solved and not the amusement of the players is the object in view. It was for this reason that a group of New Yorkers who, inspired by a certain interest in naval affairs and the possession of some model ships, wished to have a naval war game, had to invent or rather adapt one for themselves. The resultant game was a huge success because it kept the amusement of the players in the foreground, but it also provided that singular effect of hurry, unexpectedness, and vigorous action that occurs in actual naval war. And in the course of the game's progress, the players found it necessary to invent a formula for the measurement of warship values which, if not perfectly accurate, at least yielded a fair approximation. It is for these last two reasons that a game invented for and by civilians is submitted to the judgement of professional naval men. The playability of the game rested largely on four features: (1) the fact that every ship's gunfire and torpedo practice depended upon the skill of the player, its accuracy and effect not being regulated either by rule or chance. (2) The elimination of the referee. (3) The strict limitation on the time permitted for a move. (4) The formula mentioned above, which permitted the players to form their fleets of the sizes and types of ships they considered best suited to their requirements. The description of these points and how they were brought about is a description of the game. (1) Each player was captain of a ship represented by a model (scale 1:800). At the beginning of a "naval war" he received with his ship a mimeographed sheet on which the various characteristics of his ship were listed, with blanks for recording damage. He also received a "target" made of tissue paper clipped onto a frame. This target held stern, bow, broadside, and deck outline views of the ship. When ships were firing at each other these targets were stood up in a room separate from that where the moving was being done (it could have been done in the same room, had space permitted) and at the angle of bearing of the firing ships. The two players posted themselves beside their targets and blazed away. The firing was done by a type of pistol purchasable in stores, actuated by a powerful rubber band and firing a No. 6 shot with considerable accuracy up to ranges of about 50 feet. The scale of distances for firing at the targets was 1.5 inches to 100 yards; that is, ships 12,000 yards apart (on full scale) would fire from a distance of 180 inches = 15 feet. It seems so simple that one would expect hardly any misses at all. Actually, the time limit just permitted getting off the prescribed number of shots without time for accurate aiming; the targets were quite small; and the psychological factor of having the other fellow shooting at your target simultaneously, made accurate practice extremely difficult, even for one of the players who is a well-known pistol expert. Each shot fired with the pistol was assumed to be a salvo of all the guns on the firing ship. "Salvo patterns"- pieces of cardboard punched with small holes-were provided; after a shot a previously determined one of these holes was fitted over the puncture in the target and penci I marks made through the others to determine the fall of the remaining shells of the salvo. Torpedo firing was handled in quite another manner. Each torpedo was represented by a pair of narrow, carefully squared pieces of veneer, in length equal to the distance a torpedo would travel during a move. The two pieces of veneer were bored at each end and provided with pins. in firing a torpedo, the player simply laid these two pieces of veneer down and pinned them to the floor, beginning at the side of his ship. On the next move, he picked up the rear pin, pivoted one of the pieces of veneer on the front pin and laid it parallel to the other, repeating the process to the limit of the torpedo's range. If one of these pieces of veneer arrived at the side of an enemy ship, that ship was naturally torpedoed. (2) In a game played for amusement the presence of a referee, who must decide on how much damage a given hit does, is intolerable. In the game under discussion the referee was eliminated by a process of formalization. Every hit above a certain line on a ship (the line being indicated on the target) was supposed to cause an amount of damage which, for lack of a better name, was called a "fire"; every hit below this line was assumed to cause damage similarly designated a "leak." On the mimeographed sheet giving the characteristics of his ship, each player found an arrangement of numbers something like this: Damage Forward Amidships Aft Fires 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 Leaks 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 Corresponding to this was a series of charts hung on the wall of the playing-room. These charts gave two pieces of information-the damage to each type of ship (expressed in "fires" and "leaks") caused by each caliber of shell; and the effect on each type of ship of a given number of "fires" and "leaks." Thus, suppose that the above series of figures appears on the sheet of a destroyer, in action with another ship of the same class. It receives a hit amidships from a 4.7-inch shell. Referring to the wall chart, the captain of the ship hit finds that a hit on a destroyer from a 4.7-inch shell causes one "fire." He must then mark out the figure 1 in the section "fires amidships." Similarly a hit on the waterline aft causes one "leak," and he draws a line through this figure, and so on. Now suppose he has received 5 hits causing "fires amidships." The wall chart tells him that the effect of 5 "fires amidships" is the following: All guns amidships are out of action; one funnel is down, his ship has lost 5 knots of her speed and the wireless is temporarily out. The differences in the effect of various calibers of shell was indicated by the same charts. Thus, while a 4.7inch shell striking a destroyer causes damage equal to one "fire," an 8-inch shell striking the same ship would damage it to the extent of 2 "fires," and a torpedo hit would cause 6 or 7 "leaks" and a couple of "fires." Hits on gun positions were charted separately, and hits that did not penetrate armor did not count. Obviously, the system is very elastic. It permits indicating the different powers of resistance, even in ships of the same nominal class by making longer or shorter the list of numbers. Thus, a 4.7-inch shell was assumed to cause the same amount of damage (one "fire") on a gunboat that it did on a destroyer, but instead of having numbers from 1 to 7 under the section "amidships" on their mimeographed sheets, gunboats carried the series only from 3 to 7; and flotilla leaders (being larger and more resistant ships) had a zero and double zero before the figure 1. But the best part of the arrangement was that, once the charts were made up, there was neither dispute nor question about the amount of damage done. The referee was totally unnecessary and the players kept check on each other. (3) The time limitation, with the division of moves, was the core of the whole game. Each "move" was divided into sections, as follows: It began with a "consideration period" of 4 minutes, during which all signals had to be written and transmitted (players were not permitted to communicate with regard to the game except by written signal) and all preparations for the move made. Then came a period one minute in length, during which ships were moved half the distance they would cover in the course of the -move" and all torpedoes were laid and moved, then one minute for gunfiring, and (after the determination of damages) another half-minute for the completion of the moves of the ships. The provision for firing the guns halfway through the move was adopted to discourage freak evolutions. As a result of this time limitation the whole game moved with slap and dash; there were any number of little like incidents; signals being misunderstood or badly coded; ships shooting at the wrong targetsthe whole chapter of minor accidents. (4) Quite early in the history of the game, our admirals began showing preferences for certain types of ships in a manner not unfamiliar among real naval men. Arguments arose on the order of, "Look here, I don't want another light cruiser. You go ahead and take one, but give me three destroyers and a submarine to square up." The only way of cutting the knot of this difficulty as well as of arriving at a definite decision in the several games where both parties, impressed by the tale of their own damages, broke off action, was the invention of some kind of formula or point system for reducing the value of ships to figures. After several more or less arbitrary formulas had demonstrated their effectiveness, the following was gradually worked out: Value = S [gn (gc2) + gn' (gc'2) + gn" (gc"2) + 10tt + M + 1OA2 + A'2 + 25ae] + T In this formula, S = speed of the ship in knots, gn the number of guns in the main battery, gc = the caliber in inches of guns in the main battery, gn' and gn" the numbers of guns of minor calibers, gc' and gc" the calibers, in inches, of secondary armament, tt = the number of torpedo tubes, M = the number of mines carried, A = the thickness of belt or deck armor in inches, A' = the thickness in inches of armor on gun positions, ae = the number of airplanes carried. J = standard displacement, tons, ed.) Now it is easy to see that this formula represents a wild melange of discordant elements. So it does; and whether it represents the actual military value of a warship is a question. The only justification for it is that it was the result of experience with the naval war game and produced very good results there. It is easy enough, for instance, to demonstrate that the value of guns can be measured on the square of their calibers multiplied by their number, and on Napoleon's famous dictum "Force is mass multiplied by velocity" you have good reason for multiplying the result by the speed of the ship carrying the guns, but some of the other figures need justification. The value for torpedo tubes was worked out after experiment showed that measuring them on the same basis as guns (caliber) gave them a value so unreasonably high that destroyers came out almost as valuable as battleships. Running to the other extreme an effort was made to count torpedo tubes by their number only. Now each admiral of our miniature fleets was allowed a certain number of points, with full liberty to make up his squadron as he chose. When torpedo tubes were priced so low both sides went in heavily for torpedo craft and the resulting "battle" was a sanguinary conflict in which torpedoes filled the water. The final figure was adopted because it encouraged players to make up fleets with something like a normal naval distribution of ships. The other questionable figures in the formula had the same origin. In the beginning the thickness of armor in inches alone was added into the formula. With armor so cheap (in points) everybody went in for heavily armored, slow craft, and a ponderous and dragging conflict between two fleets of monitors resulted. Tonnage, finally, was added in to check a tendency on the part of our diminutive admirals to compose their fleets of numbers of armed liners, which because of their small guns and comparatively low speed, came cheap. Of course, it can be objected that under this formula a ship with a lot of armor and high speed would show a big figure, even if she had no guns at all; but the answer to this is that the formula was intended for practical and not theoretical use, and there are no such ships. In practice it offered the additional advantage of permitting the calculation of just how much damage had been done to any given ship or collection of ships, on a mathematical basis. A ship that had one turret knocked out, for instance, was calculated with the points for that turret not counted in. Minor Details There remain two or three minor details to be described. Airplanes were handled by mounting them on long dowel rods fixed in a base so they would stand up. The model airplane (on the same scale as the ships-very tiny) was furnished with a pin, and this pin was inserted in the dowel rod to indicate the height at which the plane was flying. The rods were also bored with a series of small holes and a peg, inserted in the top hole at the beginning of the aircraft's flight, was moved down one hole at each move. When it reached the bottom, the airplane had to descend. The positions of mines were indicated on a chart (on a sheet of cross-section paper) and handed to a spectator. When either party sent a ship through one of these mine fields the spectator showed the chart as evidence that the ship had been mined, and mined it was unless the player of the ship could show (on the evidence of his own mimeographed sheet) that he had taken time to install paravanes. As for repairing damages; the formula took care of this, too. The normal procedure in the game was for two sides to start from different points representing base ports, and being permitted to choose their squadrons as they wished within a certain maximum of points. At the end of each day, each side received an accretion of points based on the number of ships it had kept at sea and out of protection of the home port during the day. This accretion could be invested in new ships or used in repairing damaged ships, as the admiral pleased. Smoke screens were tissue paper, mounted on f rames. Firing by airplane observation from behind such a screen was done by placing the screen between the shooter and the target, with one of his own side having the target clearly in view and reporting the fall of the shot. As for the tactics and strategy displayed, they were amateur in the widest sense of the word. But then, strategy and tactics were not the objects for which the game was developed. Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. IV #1 To Courier List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1982 by The Courier Publishing Company. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. 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