This is a re-count of miniatures battle I had in my basement from Dec 2020 until Jan 2021 using 1/1200 scale miniatures, with the Yaquinto Ironclads game system.
Fort Henry was an important fort in the Confederate Army's northern defenses at the beginning of the American Civil War. It guarded the Tennessee River, and its existence prevented Union forces from invading Tennessee. See
https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/fort-henry-fort-donelson-campaign.html
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Henry.
Fort Henry had an impressive number of guns: twelve 32 pdr smoothbores, two or three 42 pdr smoothbores (depending on who you want to believe. I used 3), one 5.8" banded rifle, and one 10" Columbiad smoothbore. Eight of these guns, including all the 42 pdrs, the 5.8", and 10" were aimed north down a long straight stretch of the Tennessee River, giving them the ability to rake any vessel approaching the fort for a considerable distance. The fort also had a "torpedo" field next to it. What we call mines today.
In the real battle the fort had considerable problems. It was built on low ground, and the Tennessee River level was at a 40-year high due to recent rains. This flooded the fort's two magazines, limiting the amount of ammunition available. The 42 pdrs had none available. I'm not sure if this was due to flooding or whether someone just forgot to order some. The low level of the fort also denied it the possible advantage of plunging fire, which was such an important feature of the subsequent Battle for Fort Donelson (my next naval adventure). The torpedoes were laid when the river was at its normal level, but because the river was so high during the battle, the shallow draft Union Ironclads would probably never have hit any. The torpedoes were all contact torpedoes and relied on the enemy vessel to actually hit one of the contacts on the mine to detonate them. In addition, it was later found that many of the mines had leaked, soaking the gunpowder inside and some of the contact detonators had corroded from being in the water too long.
Scenario 6 in the original Yaquinto Ironclads game seems to ignore all those issues for game balance purposes. Probably a good thing considering the result of my game.
This is the view from Fort Heny looking north at the approaching Union squadron (just visible in the far distance). The little red skulls in the water represent possible torpedo areas (3 real, 3 dummies). The brown beads represent the shoreline, the white one represent shoals.
Here's the Ironclads sheet I created for Fort Henry:
Most of the Union Ironclads ship sheets look similar to this:
Armor sections are divided into bow, foreship, midship, aftership, and stern. There are separate port and starboard armor sections, except for casemate ironclads, which only have one section for the bow casemate or stern casemate (no port and starboard sections). In this battle that turned out to be important because the Union ironclads had to face the fort head-on to attack it, which means the fort's guns would always be hitting the same bow casemate section every time.
The Union ironclads did not have fully armored casemates. Only the bow, midships, and stern sections were actually armored, leaving the foreship and aftership sections unarmored. One of the reasons the Union player (and the actual Union squadron commander, Flag Officer Foote) kept their ironclads facing the fort during the engagement rather than use their broadsides. Also, the ironclads generally had their heaviest guns pointing forward.
A view from the Union side looking at the fort a the top of the picture. Left to right in the distance: USS Cincinnati, Carondelet, Essex, St. Louis, all casemate ironclads. Near distance is USS Conestoga, Tyler, Lexington, all wooden vessels with no armor.
The ironclads have a maximum speed of 5, except for the St. Louis, which only has a 4, and they are steaming against a 1mp current, so they could only move 3 hexes a turn (really alternating squares. Much easier to make than hexagons) .
As they got closer to the fort, the St. Louis had to change course across the river because of encroaching shoals on the right side. This was unfortunate as it slowed up the already slower St. Louis from engaging.
St. Louis had to steam from the right side of the river to the left side to get back in the battle line. That forced the following wooden vessels to tread water for a few turns to make sure they didn't collide. That of course delayed the wooden vessels from engaging as soon as they would have otherwise too.
The Confederate commander decided to concentrate on one ironclad at a time, and chose the right-most ironclad, which was the Cincinnati.
Both sides soon opened up on each other, with the generally heavier Union guns (8" and 9" Dahlgren smoothbores) against the mostly Confederate 32 pdr guns. The Union guns started to chip away at the fort's armor, but within a few turns the concentrated fire started to have an effect on the Cincinnati.
Yaquinto Ironclads rates a ship's values with varying numbers of boxes to represent how big or well armored an area was. There are boxes for the different armor sections, speed, pilothouse, hull, flotation, stack, wheelhouse, and crew. Flotation is probably one of the most important, as there are usually only 10 of them, and when you run out of those, you sink.
The Ironclads gun hit chart generally represent incremental damage to a ship, usually armor, hull, or crew hits. Occasionally a special, penetrating, or critical hit can be obtained. Special and penetrating hits usually just inflict more incremental damage, but critical hits can catastrophic, with anything from a rudder jam, gun destroyed, boiler hit, or magazine hit.
Because of all the forts guns being concentrated on it, Cincinnati took several special and critical hits within just a couple of turns, which destroyed most of its bow casemate armor, its starboard bow waterline armor, and most significantly, half of its flotation boxes. The Union commander wisely decided to back the Cincinnati out of the battle line before it was sunk, and let the St. Louis take its place.
It took a little time for the Cincinnati to disengage, as these ironclads cannot change their speeds very quickly. Each ship is rated for its engine capacity, its ability to speed up or slow down, and these ironclads are only rated +1, -1. They do have an emergency engine capacity of +2, -2, but you risk engine damage and crew casualties in using it. Once it got into reverse the 1 mp current going in the right direction helped Cincinnati get away.
The Confederate commander switched his fire onto the Carondelet now, hoping the concentrated fire would cause enough damage on it to force another withdrawal. The Carondelet did receive some unlucky hits, with all but one box of its starboard waterline bow armor being destroyed, as well as much of its bow casemate armor.
The heavier Union guns were however starting to have their effect. The armor on the fort was crumbling, and the fort commander was losing one gun after another. The St. Louis eventually added its fire to the attack, and even the Cincinnati and the wooden vessels managed to get in some hits even from their longer range. The Conestoga was especially lucky, putting two guns out of action in rapid succession with its single bow 32 pdr, even though the odds of this happening were almost zero.
Around turn 8 accumulated damage caused the modifiers for the forts morale check to be impossible to pass. All guns but one were out of action, all armor sections but one destroyed, and it had considerable crew casualties. The Confederate commander surrendered the fort.
If I were to adjust the scenario to be more historically accurate I would eliminate the fort's 42 pdr guns, make the mines almost ineffective, and add rules for limited fort ammunition. This would make it almost impossible for the Confederate play to win, but in the actual battle they put the Essex, the best Union ironclad, out of action with a boiler hit.
If you have the Yaquinto Ironclads game, you can get ship and fort sheet similar to what I put in this article from the Board Game Geek website. Just search for Ironclads, or go to: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2800/ironclads-tactical-level-game-naval-combat-america/files
I plan to add the fort sheet for Fort Donalson soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment