I’ve been doing some work on sea state probabilities at work recently and by chance I had the H 4 data annex open, and looking at the figures for sea state there I felt it was bit of a discrepancy from the numbers I had at work and those in the annex. The following values are from Hogden & Lumb*, a seminal work on the issue, which recorded for a large number of years observation from ship’s masters. North Atlantic is effectively the NATO operating area, Northern NA is north of Ireland. Note The Beaufort scale provides more levels of gradation than the Sea State scale. Also, some chances of Sea State are less than 1%. Use the following notes to resolve wind speeds at sea states 0-2 and 6 and the chance of sea State 8: Note 1: Roll 2D6: 2-3: Sea State/Beaufort 0, 4-6: Sea Sate/Beaufort 1, 7-12: Sea State/Beaufort 2. Note 2: Roll 2D6: 2-7: Beaufort 7, 8-10: Beaufort 8, 11-12: Beaufort 9. Note 3: If the Sea State rolled is seven for all areas except NNA Winter, Roll D10. The chance of Sea State 8 is 1 in World Average, 1-2 in North Atlantic, and 1-3 in Northern North Atlantic. Source: Ocean Wave Statistics, Hogden, N. & Lumb, F. E., HMSO, 1967. BT Back to The Naval Sitrep #22 Table of Contents Back to Naval Sitrep List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by Larry Bond and Clash of Arms. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history and related articles are available at http://www.magweb.com