USN 1943-1973
Commander John H. Bothwell USN 1943-1973 enlisted in the USN with a supporting letter from the President of the United States. He took part in the first submarine trials of ballistic missiles with firing of the V1s from the deck. He held a variety of submarine commands including being the project manager for the first submarine to aircraft missile project. Unusually for a sailor, he attended the American Army War College. His last posting was Tactical Development Officer for the USN submarine force.
He played the in the original Fletcher Pratt naval games between 1938 and 1943 as the youngest player.
He is now retired and currently lives in Devon, England and France.
My thanks go to Robert Bothwell for taking the time to put me in touch with his extraordinary father.
Fletcher Pratt Game
At 13, John Bothwell was the youngest person in the Fletcher Pratt group by some 10 years. The rest of the group were between 20-40 years old. He had been building ship models since he was young and playing simple naval wargames. When his mother saw the advert in the Philadelphia Bulletin (a major state newspaper) for a naval wargame group forming she suggested he go along. He was 'interviewed' by the regular umpire, Doc Clarke (the local chemist) who recognised that young Bothwell could add something to the group.
There were 30+ regulars who used to meet on a Friday, reguarly starting at 7.00 p.m. and finishing at 10.00 p.m.
The Fletcher Pratt Naval Wargame was known at the time as 'Pratt's Kriegspiel' by some of the players of German descent.
Modifications to the Fletcher Pratt Game
Formula for Ship Values The tonnage used for calculating ship strengths was based on their standard tonnage. The value for armour was based on the strongest for that section (not the average). The ship's details were straight out of Jane's Fighting Ships, even where they knew some of the 'facts' were not accurate. In particular some of the data for German and Japanese ships was a political statement, rather than nautically accurate. The ship cards were created, very neatly on standard library index cards.
The Models were 1" to 50 feet with a floor scale of 1" to 100 yards. The mismatch of ship to sea scale was necessary as if the built ships to the sea scale, the ships would have been tiny, and if they sea scale was set to the ship model scale, the game would need a football stadium to play in.
They were fortunate that they had a very large room over a bar/ chemist to play the games on; not quite a ball room, but large enough.
If a waterline model was to scale and they were a reasonable replica of the original they were allowed into the game. John remembered building three Swedish coastal defence battleships and Finnish coastal defence monitors. The latter had 10" guns, but could only do 9 kns so the enemy needed to come to them.
Moving: Modern gamers have the habit of making 'S' shaped manoeuvres when under torpedeo attack. In the original game ships turned by turning up to 45 degrees at the start of the move, then they moved, then they could turn up to 45 degrees at the end of their move.
Firing: The game was always being developed as Fletcher Pratt was always keen to experiment. The normal method of firing was estimating the range. He never heard of anyone using darts to represent shooting (perhaps this is an 'urban myth'). They tried dice for gunnery a few times, but did not like it. Players were allowed 30 seconds to move, and 1 minute for firing (not 30 seconds). This made it just about possible to fire with two ships (which was considered the normal maximum for a single player to effectively command). 5 seconds before the end of the minute, Doc Clarke used to say " 5 seconds to go" and so a desperate player would write down anything. If a player did not fire, his guns were not 'jammed' in the next turn.
Ship's gunnery was always measured from the bow of the ship (not the middle as I have suggested).
Getting the correct direction for the firing arrows was a crucial part of the game, hence at the end of the game, players had smudges on their right cheek from placing their faces against the floor.
As senior umpire, 'Doc' decided if a particular shot was a hit and no-one was allowed to challenge his decision. Players agreed if the Doc made a mistake and a decision was against them, the next turn it could be in their favour. Experience showed that 2 people were needed to hold the tape (one at each end) due to the ranges.
Players were allowed to watch the shooting from the end of the room and did not have to move to another room.
At the end of the room was a simple scoreboard that showed the results of the shooting. Keeping the outcome uncertain from the firer might add realism, but it was fun watching the hits pile up.
Optional Rules although they recognised the influence of winds/ tides/ mines/ radar etc… they never got into these. They never tried night battles and submarines were too hard to represent with Pratt's Kriegspiel.
They were aware that the ship strengths did not reflect national characteristics. For example, the Germans put more effort into damage control than say the Italians, so if the Scharnhorst was hypothetically in Italian hands it would take less damage than if it had a German crew. They decided it was not worth adjusting the formula to allow for national characteristics.
They experimented with representing smokescreens by putting a 3 foot high curtain across the playing area to screen ships from each other. The length of the curtain was determined by how far the destroyers laying the smoke screen had moved. However, it was considered an oddity and not really successful.
The tried aircraft, but the experiments were never very successful. The aircraft were mounted on dowels approximately 2 feet high on a wooden base. The aircraft models represented a flight of 10 aircraft, not single planes as modern wargamers have presumed. Aircraft were not moved up and down the dowel, as this was simply too hard. The aircraft height could be shown by a rubber band, with ½ inch for every 100 feet of altitude or they ruled that ships could calculate the height of aircraft for gunnery. Another rubber band was moved down the dowel every turn to keep track of fuel.
The Games were played before the idea of political correctness, so any ship could be on any side. They had the Japanese and Italians fighting the Swedes on one occasion. They were interested in evaluating the effectiveness of different ships in a naval battle.
The best games were played with ships with a maximum of 11 or 12" guns. The problem with using bigger ships was a lucky hit with large calibre guns could put someone's light ship out of the game very quickly. Games focussed on destroyers and cruisers were more interesting than gunnery duels with battleships.
The players had a league table based on performance. J.H. Bothwell slowly made his way to 'admiral', but then lost all in his first command as admiral in the next game.
Women and the Fletcher Pratt Game despite references to women in the rules and a sketch of a woman playing the game, there were never any women playing the game. They were not barred from playing, it was merely inconceivable at the time.
The Basis of the Rules Fletcher Pratt based them on Jutland and to lesser extent the battle of Battle of Tsushima (1905) fought between the Russians and Japanese.
The rules were used at the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island. However, rather than being used as competitive game, they were used as a demonstration tool, with the controllers arbitrating a probable outcome.
Upon reflection, John Bothwell, with 30 years of naval command experience could not fault the rules as straightforward simulation of big gun naval warfare.