Royal Navy Wargaming 1929 to 1945 and the Western Approaches Tactical Unit

 

John Curry and Alvaro Radigales

 

The technique of wargaming was just another item in the mental toolbox of Royal Navy officers of the early to mid-twentieth century. When they put their ship in harms way, a captain would have an idea of the probabilities of success and failure based on the operational analysis encapsulated in the wargaming rules. They would have practised the doctrine of the Royal Navy, summarised in the Fighting Instructions, in fleet exercises and on the wargames table.

In the period covered by this book, 1929-1945, the Royal Navy used a number of naval wargames for education, training and operational analysis. This meant when the demand for training escort commanders was drastically increased in the face of the U-Boat threat, wargames were inevitably seen as part of the answer. This book includes the rules for the Western Approaches Tactical Unit (WATU), and places the game in the wider context of a wargaming culture.

There is a wealth of material in the archives about the wargames of this period. This selection for this book includes:

The 1929 Royal Navy Rules.

The Atlantic Trade Defence Wargame run by the Admiralty in 1938.

The WATU rules and combat tables for 1944/45.

Find, Fix and Strike- a training game for operation officers on aircraft carriers.

Supporting this volume is an appendix with extracts of the doctrine for the Royal Navy, The Fighting Instructions (1939).

Also included is all the material found to date on naval weapon effectiveness in the national archives for this period.

This book is a source book for the Royal Navy’s understanding of ‘big gun’ naval warfare.

This book is published by the History of Wargaming Project as part of its research into the development of wargaming.  

 

New Book- Wargames from World War II: Examples of Axis and Allied Wargaming Rules and Umpire Guidelines

 

It has only taken me a decade to complete this book. It gives actual examples of games played during World War II, a war in which wargaming was just seen as another tool for training and operation planning.

The games played just before and during World War II mattered. As a result of those wargames, battles were fought, campaigns were launched; lives were lost, lives were saved. An overview of such games has been covered in the literature before. This book is different as it aims to examine the detail of these wargames by including primary material; extracts from source documents, wargaming rules and umpiring guides from the pre-war period until 1945.

Included are detailed guidelines on the German use of wargaming during the war based on post war analysis by the American military. This includes outlines of best practise and the value of these games.

Samples of the German map based tactical exercises set at platoon and company level.

An example of a British attack on a village.

British and American umpire manuals with rules for arbitrating field exercises, sand table and map wargames.

A Royal Navy carrier wargame: Find Fix and Strike (1944).

I did a talk and uploaded it to YouTube History Wargaming Book Channel