The Games of War

08/20/2026

08/20/2026

08/20/2026

There are often comments about the supposed weaknesses of various battleships so far as their anti-aircraft firepower is concerned. The problem with many of these comments is that they are typically directed towards battleships at the start of World War 2 while comparing them to battleships at the end.

A lack of appreciation for the power of aircraft was shared by all navies at the start of the war. Just about all of them did not consider them viable in poor conditions such as storms or at night. It was also thought that most air attacks would be scattered, carried out by a few individual aircraft. For this reason, anti-aircraft firepower was of lesser importance and it shows on most battleships.

Here is a breakdown of most of the newer battleships that entered service in the years leading up to and during World War 2.

Bismarck:
16x 10.5cm (4.1") heavy anti-aircraft guns
16x 3.7cm anti-aircraft guns
12x 2cm anti-aircraft guns

Yamato:
12x 12.7cm (5") heavy anti-aircraft guns
24x 25mm anti-aircraft guns
4x 13.2mm anti-aircraft guns

Richelieu:
12x 100mm (3.9") heavy anti-aircraft guns
8x 37mm anti-aircraft guns
24x 13.2mm anti-aircraft guns

Littorio:
12x 90mm (3.5") heavy anti-aircraft guns
20x 37mm anti-aircraft guns
16x 20mm anti-aircraft guns

North Carolina:
20x 127mm (5") heavy anti-aircraft guns
16x 28mm (1.1") anti-aircraft guns
12x .50cal machine guns

King George V:
16x 133mm (5.25") heavy anti-aircraft guns
32x 2-pdr anti-aircraft guns
16x .50cal machine guns

It turns out that just about every battleship at the time was very lightly armed so far as anti-aircraft firepower goes.

It goes to show how quickly aircraft evolved into a threat over the course of the Second World War. They went from minor threats that were seen as being able to harass warships at best, to the preeminent weapon to destroy warships. As this threat became more apparent, navies began to plaster as many anti-aircraft weapons onto their warships as space would allow.

08/20/2026

08/20/2026

USS Vandalia, built in the 1870s, was officially and quite implausibly a rebuilding of a sailing sloop built in the 1820s. She had gone into the "repair" as a sail-only ship of maybe 700 tons. She emerged as a steamer closer to 2000 tons. This would have been almost like the Navy claiming that the Enterprises CV-6 and CV-65 were actually the same vessel, just spruced up a bit.

Why was this done? The Secretary of the Navy's report to Congress for 1873 states that "we have been engaged in completely repairing six of our cruising ships." The Navy took ships of six different designs and rebuilt them into a matching class of a more modern design. The only thing that the six shared in common was that they were worn out or rotten and not worth repairing. It was a bureaucratic slight of hand to get around congressional reluctance to build new ships. Congress did not understand that new ships were needed when so many had been built just a few years before during the Civil War, and quite a few of those ships had never even been completed and commissioned. Some were still on the stocks. The difficulty was that nearly all of the war-built ships had been been constructed quickly out of unseasoned timber. By the early 1870s the war built ships were rotting away, and the Navy was forced to rely on the live oak-built ships which dated from the 1850s or even before.

The rebuildings of the 1870s diverted money intended to repair many ships toward completely "repairing" a few, but the new ships were more useful than a fleet of patched and repatched vessels - many of which were beyond repair anyway. Congress eventually caught wind of the subterfuge... though the Congressmen must not have been reading the annual reports too closely as those reports occasionally mention some of the minor components being replaced - like the entire frame. In reality, little was carried over from one ship to the next.

Amusingly if you look up the entry for "Vandalia" in the Official Records - Navies, you will find her listed as a steamer despite the original being no such thing.

Vandalia was a good ship - though she was lost at Samoa in 1889 with forty-three of her crew.

08/19/2026

So proud of Kin Kin! He's on The Elf on the Shelf ad. Check him out on Instagram!

08/19/2026

Build rails deliver goods, issue shares, brutal auctions and more fun in every game! If you enjoy brain burners, this is for you!

FlatCon 25 is October 9-11, 2026 at the Interstate Center in Bloomington, IL. For more info or to reserve your spot, visit us here https://tabletop.events/conventions/flatcon-25th-anniversary

08/16/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/19AiHqC8eT/

08/15/2026

So I reached out to the guys over at The Tabletop Workshop and they...