Sydney Battle Squadron Meeting
Sunday, April 7th, 2002
| The 2nd "Combat Circle" meeting was held in Sydney on the 7th of April. This was intended to be a Sydney / Canberra / Newcastle combined meeting but turned out to be a Sydney / Armidale meeting instead as no one from Canberra or Newcastle made it. Instead we hosted Michael Raue from Armidale with HMS Lion and two convoy ships (Wollongbar and Attilio Regolo). As Sydney had only a single armed vessel in commission (2 more commissioning in May, but too late for this battle), Michael's presence turned what would have been a rather low key meeting into a major battle for the dozen visitors who came to see what we do. Members attending:
SS Wollongbar (Tramp Steamer - Convoy Ship) RMS Attilio Regolo (Light Cruiser - Convoy Ship) Steven & Katherine Cowan - Sydney
SS Meg (Liberty Ship - Convoy) SS Millie (Liberty Ship - Convoy) Richard Simpson - Sydney
USS Ashtabula (Tanker - Convoy Ship) David Smith - Sydney Richard Lane - Sydney Sydney took on Armidale in three one hour battles with our visitors pitching in to help sail the convoy ships. Attilio Regolo (the 40 knot Light Cruiser sailing as a fast transport) being the crowd's favorite. Each time we battle in Sydney the conditions are different. This time was no exception. Extensive floating weed had taken over the pond and we set up the coarse in a "weed free" area only to find weed arrive on the breeze a few minutes later. Despite an hour of wading chest deep through the water collecting weed the course was still a fair challenge. Thankfully the floating clumps were quite visible. Convoy runs were reduced to 2 laps and vessels were allowed to return to shore to remove weed, but to discourage taking to the weed deliberately to avoid being shot, a vessel that could not make it to shore by itself was obliged to survive 5 minutes before being recovered, cleaned of weed and returned (though such a vessel was not counted lost). Battle 1 Now for Attilio Regolo. .... Well maybe not. Attilio ran rings around USS Alabama as Alabama shot off the entire contents of her forward magazines without a single penetrating hit. 300 rounds fired at ranges between 10 to 30 feet yielded a number of satisfying thuds of rounds hitting home. At least two dozen hits, but all in the superstructure or on the cap rail. Attilio made it home in a flash. Mean while, HMS Lion was tanker hunting. With the speed of a snail and the maneuverability of a brick, with her balsa skin shredded and held together with tissue after 6 days of battling, USS Astabula is an easy target - except for one thing - she has a huge pump. At 25,433 tons, USS Astabula qualifies for a class 5 pump (3 litres per minute) - the equal of a large WWI battleship - and it takes a lot of work to put her under. This time she was pumping when she came home with dozens of holes but she made it and her cargo was secure. Reloaded with ammo, Alabama amused herself Lion hunting till her favorite target, the pesky light cruiser Attilio Regolo, ventured out again. Immediately Lion was dumped as Alabama abandoned her, seduced by the lure of the 40 knot light cruiser flashing past. Her persistence paid off as Attilio did not watch where she was going and ran directly over a patch of weed. Attilio dived into shore, her speed cut to a mere 30 knots or so (Alabama tops out at 27.5) and Alabama was waiting for her when she came out again. Attilio shot out from the shore, accelerating so hard that her stern was almost awash but she failed to turn away from the waiting Alabama and ran directly into 6 1/4" rounds. A large section of her starboard hull plating caved in right on the waterline, she rolled into such a hard turn that her superstructure fell off and then she went down by the stern in a flurry of bubbles 10 feet from shore. Just lovely. All the enemy merchants sunk, Alabama focused on defending her own convoy ships from Lion as the Royal Navy sought revenge for their losses. Many rounds were exchanged and both ships were pumping a steady stream, but the battle ended before either ship was able to sink the other. With Alabama their shield, Millie and Ashtabula completed more convoy runs than we could count. Thus ended the 1st battle. After a lunch of sausage sandwiches and a burst of feverish repairs, the 2nd round of battle started an hour later. Wollongbar's power control servo was down and so she only had full speed forward available. She would require careful skippering to make it through the floating weed without the ability to back away from any clump she collided with. At the same time, USS Alabama was handed over to the new members, Richard Lane and David Smith to sail while I manned the video. Battle 2 Sailing into his first serious battle in an unfamiliar ship (Alabama), David Smith should have been about as threatening as a wet paper towel. You can imagine my surprise when Attilio overtook Alabama and David blew her side plating in with a single shot. Attilio took on an alarming list and raced in to beach herself. Instead, within 2 boat lengths her stern was underwater and she was doomed. Still she would not give up the fight and struggled on with water lapping around the base of her smokestack and her bow entirely out of the water. Before she made it in though, the steadily increasing angle of her hull robbed her of forward thrust, when water covered her bridge and her hull came to hang vertically in the water. All forward progress stopped. There she hung till recovered, with a few inches of bow projecting above the water as the air trapped in her fore-section slowly leaked away. Recovered a few minutes later from 4 foot deep water, she was soon back on the bench and subject to feverish attention as her skipper worked to got get her seaworthy again. In the mean time Lion was doing her best to put Ashtabula under and Ashtabula's ability to take damage and just keep going was being sorely tested. Not a pleasure to sail like Attilio, Ashtabula is a battle winning merchant. Her huge cargo capacity (1500 points per run, vs 200 for Attilio), low silhouette and powerful (3 litres per minute) pump combining to make her a serious threat that only the most persistent attack will defeat. Lion was persistent, but Ashtabula's skipper was determined and she made her two laps with her plating holed a dozen times but her flag still flying and her cargo delivered safely. At the other end of the scale for size and maneuverability, Wollongbar skipped around the course with Alabama dogging her heels. A badly secured battery gave Wollongbar a most impressive list but, dodging this way and that she continued to avoid Alabama's fire and made it home safely as well. The two merchants patched and Attilio repaired, all three set sail again and again Attilio was in trouble. Passing to close to Alabama she collected yet another salvo and the race against time to get home before sinking was on again. Once again water flooded across her fantail but this time she was in port when that happened and eager hands hauled her to safety before she could go to the bottom. This time she did not return and Wollongbar was left as the only British merchant. Small, slow and with a single hit from a single round in the right place capable of putting her under, Wollongbar should not have lasted long, but her skipper threw her all over the pond as Alabama came calling and she got home time and time again. Her skipper at the time, Mark Nettle, showing that with skillful handling even the smallest vessel can make it though. Tiring of this game, Alabama and Lion took each other on in a blazing contest all across the pond. Both were pumping hard when the time for the battle expired and a quick round of repairs were undertaken before the 'no patching' death-match got underway. Battle 3 As Wollongbar, Attilio and Meg were all rather under-the-weather and that left the British without merchants, we lent Millie with Katherine Cowan at the helm to sail with Lion while Astabula sailed for the Americans. Battle was joined at 3pm and Millie shot off across the pond, trying to put as much distance as possible between her and Alabama. Eventually, she was ran out of places to run and her white hull showed clearly the impact of Alabama's salvos as Lion struggled to defend her charge. The battle swirled closer and closer to shore when Millie suddenly went out of control and beached herself. Steven had equipped both his Liberties with PCV internal armour rather than polycarbonate and the 1/4" rounds were passing straight through, shattering the PVC and spraying the vessel's interior with fragments on the way. With Millie declared sunk and pulled out it was discovered that one such round had hit the plug for the rudder servo and smashed it, disconnecting the rudder, and sheer luck had brought Millie straight back into the bank. (You really need to use polycarbonate internal armour Steve !) The British merchant accounted for, Alabama threw herself at Lion. Both had the same armour and guns, but Lion was faster and Alabama more maneuverable. Lion excelled at the high speed pass, while Alabama was the master of the turning duel. In an identical battle at the end of the January 2002 meeting in Armidale, Alabama had sucked Lion into a turning contest and put her under, Alabama and Ashtabula both surviving. This time Lion was too canny for that and the battle swept from one side of the pond to the other as Lion and Alabama focused on each other and Ashtabula was largely ignored. (Not entirely ignored though, Ashtabula had 68 1/4" rounds recovered from her bilges at the end of the days) Lion struggled to keep her speed advantage while Alabama laboured to get her turning. In a turn Lion would bleed off her speed very quickly and Alabama would then be both faster and turn better. If Lion slowed down she would be in real trouble. Several times Alabama got Lion to try and out turn her, but each time Lion realised what was happening and disengaged to come back in on a course of her own choosing. Several times Lion got in a good firing pass and all Alabama could do was turn away and hope for the best. Both vessels started pumping early and as the battle went on their pump streams increased steadily, but no critical hits were scored. Time and again the vessels returned to port for more ammunition and gas, to set sail again moments later. They were evenly matched and it was anyone's guess as to who would prevail. Then suddenly it was over, Lion had returned to port for ammo but when she relaunched she had no power. Her 7aH 12v battery was exhausted from the day of battling and she could not sail. The battle had been hard fought with both warships giving as good as they got, but with no spare battery the hard fought battle was at an end. A great big "thank you" to Michael Raue who's trip from Armidale had really made the April meet of the Sydney Squadron a great success and a big "thank you" as well to all those who came to have a look and helped so much with running the merchant fleets and video. See you all next time. Richard Simpson |