The Glorious Italian Navy -- An Inept Noob's AAR

[Bullethead]

This is the tale of my 1st RTW game.  I really have no idea yet what I'm doing in terms of the strategic side of things, but I've been playing (and making) naval wargames since Christ was a corporal so I should be able to drive the ships when the enemy is in sight.  This game is being played with historical budgets, large fleets, and Admiral difficulty.  I'd have also added varied tech but didn't realized the game purchased just a few days ago wasn't the latest version.  Anyway, on with the show.

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The Protagonist: il Commendatore, Grande Ammiraglio Don Giovanni Bulletini, a rake with a heart of stone and a brain of curdled marble.  He is rumored to have fought at Lepanto.

The Legacy Fleet of the Glorious Italian Navy:  Somebody seems to have slipped a decimal point somewhere because ships cost MUCH more of the national treasure than their pricetags on the ship design worksheet would lead one to believe.  As a result of not realizing this, the Glorious Italian Navy began the year 1900 with a considerably smaller fleet than anticipated and far below what it had in real life at this time.  Many ships desired and designed could not be built at all.




Everything except the CL has short range because Bulletini saw no reason for any of that stuff to ever leave the Mediterranean.  The CL has medium range.  The Glorious Italian Navy immediately laid down a 3rd BB, realized it couldn't afford it, halted construction, and laid down a colonial gunboat (big MS) instead to go live in Glorious Italian Somalia.  This choice posting, upholding the very foundation of the Glorious Italian Empire, proved surprisingly unappealing to junior officers and the ratings.  The pressgangs were sent out to round up the crew.

NOTE:  There were gaps between various parts of the hull so Bulletini ordered them filled up with deck sections.




Was it Something I Said?  Naturally, with tensions highest with our next-door neighbor, the decadent and effete Habsburg Empire already rather high, all espionage was directed thither.  Pretty soon a spy got caught, so naturally Bulletini made him a national hero.  This did not improve relations.  The next month, November 1900, Bulletini addressed the Navy League and, after having taken aboard a great quantity of ouzo, announced that old and perpetual enemy, Austria-Hungary, was the greatest threat to the Glorious Italian Empire.  That afternoon, the KuK ambassador left in a huff after announcing that Franz-Joseph had declared war.

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WAR WITH THE HABSBURGS

Before Bulletini could recover from his hangover, the KuK was shooting up the coast around Ancona.  The enemy had brought most of his fleet:  several small and weak armored cruisers, a light cruiser, and a swarm of destroyers.  At that time, the only forces immediately available to the Glorious Italian Navy was its single light cruiser and 4 destroyers, conducting a routine cruise in the area.  This force came running at flank speed upon receipt of frantic cries for help from Ancona.  Despite being heavily outnumbered, the Glorious Italian Navy so harassed the enemy that the Austro-Hungarians  broke off their bombardment and ran away.  They did cowardly sink an unarmed and unprepared merchantman on their way out, but failed in their mission to inflict significant damage and the battle was scored as a draw.

Bulletini decided 2 could play that game so the following month, he send the CL and DDs across the Adriatic to hunt a convoy.  They found the convoy escorted by only a single KuK DD, and made short work of the merchants, although the DD escaped.




After this Glorious Success, the Habsburg ambassador telephoned Rome to ask if they could give up.  Rome asked Bulletini for his opinion no this, and he answered, "The Glorious Italian Navy is prepared to fight on if need be."  Rome took this as an excuse to reject the peace overtures and the war went on.

A few days later, while making another raid on Austro-Hungarian shipping, a destroyer hit a mine in the vicinity of Cattaro.  Originally thought to be sinking, the DD's crew managed to patch the fragile hull up enough to limp home escorted by the rest of the squadron.  It was a Pyrrhic victory with only 2 merchants sunk, but at least the Glorious Italian Navy suffered no losses.




Skirmishing along the Adriatic's eastern shore continued for the first few months of 1901.  The Glorious Italian Navy kept up offensive patrols and continued to have success, destroying several KuK merchants each sortie.  In all these operations, the single CL of the Glorious Italian Navy and the same few DDs were the only part of the Glorious Italian Fleet engaged.  What were those expensive battleships up to all this time?  Bulletini's telegrams to their base got the response that it took a long time, months even, nearly a year, for battleships to raise steam.  But at last, in May 1901, the battleships had finally raised steam and headed across the Adriatic to seek a decisive battle with the KuK fleet.  And the decadent, effete, and cowardly Austro-Hungarians refused to fight.  So the battleships decided to go on a training cruise outside the Adriatic.  And thus it was that, while cruising off the eastern coast of Sicily, they fell in with a large KuK cruiser force making a run on Syracuse.  The decadent, effete, and cowardly Austro-Hungarians again turned tail and the battleships weren't fast enough to catch them.  Still the battlefleet had totally foiled the enemy's mission, resulting in another major victory for the Glorious Italian Navy without a shot fired.

Finally, in June 1901, Bulletini learned of another weakly protected KuK convoy trying to slip by from Pola to Cattaro, and again dispatched the by-now veteran CL and DDs.  This resulted in another massacre, including the destruction of an escorting AMC.  The Glorious Italian Navy returned to port in triumph once again.  Bulletini began to wonder if he should regard the skipper of CL95 as a threat to his own job, given the many praises and accolades heaped upon him.  CL95 was seemingly winning the war by herself, at least according to the newspapers.




Of course, popular opinion ignored the fact that the minesweeper flotilla and the battleships weren't exactly idle, either, despite not having been seen.  Their unsung work was finally starting to pay off.  By June 1901, the Habsburg Empire was blockaded.




Bulletini thought that this war was going rather well so far.  No warships had been lost on either side, it was all trade warfare, but the Glorious Italian Navy was definitely winning.  So far.

[Bullethead]

EPISODE 2:  Victory over the Habsburgs!

In June 1901, the pressure applied by the Glorious Italian Navy was beginning to force the decadent and effete Habsburgs to attempt desperate measures.  They had apparently learned of a major convoy heading to Sicily and gambled their battlefleet on trying to intercept it off the Calabrian coast.  Fortunately, Bulletini had in turn learned of the Austro-Hungarian plans and assembled the entire strength of the Glorious Italian Navy to protect the convoy:  both battleships, the light cruiser, and all 4 destroyers, including the one that had been mined earlier.

It wasn't much of a battle.  The Glorious Italian Fleet interposed itself between the convoy and the decandent and effete KuK force and the Austro-Hungarians refused to close.  Their Zrinyi-class "battleships" were really just slow armored cruisers, lightly armored and mounting only 9" guns.  They were totally outclassed by B12-95 class of the Glorious Italian Navy, which were the equals of anything in the navies of the Great Powers.  However, the KuK ships did have a speed of 19 knots, and they used this to run away in their usual cowardly fashion.  So why had they bothered coming out?




With this, the focus of operations returned to the Adriatic where the Glorious Italian battleships now began joining the light cruiser and destroyers in ravaging Austro-Hungarian coastal shipping.  Every few weeks, Bulletini sent the Glorious Italian Battlefleet out to bag hopeless blockade-runners, cowardly crews of which usually abandoned ship at the mere appearance of the raiders.  The sight of the Glorious Italian Battlefleet continually steaming unopposed up and down the Dalmatian coast must have further demoralized the decandent and effete Habsburgs.

Apart from their attack on Ancona at the beginning of the war, the armored cruisers of the decadent and effete Habsburg navy had been plying the wider Mediterranean picking off a few luckless merchants each month.  This is why Bulletini had kept his battleships out there as well, trying to track them down, before giving up on this strategy (nothing intentional, this is just rationalizing how the scenarios were created).  But finally in September 1901, with the Glorious Italian Blockade preventing their return, these mildly annoying ships finally ran out of fuel and scuttled themselves.  Bulletini was perplexed.  How was it possible to come to this fate in such a narrow sea totally surrounded by ports?  Surely they could have at least interned?  In the end, Bulletini decided that as well as being decadent and effete, the Habsburg navy must also be incompetent.




There was one final clash near Ragusa as the Glorious Italian Light Forces smashed one last convoy and pinned its single escorting destroyer against the coast.  Everybody knew the war was winding down and was desperate to bag an actual warship before the end.  The light forces gave it their best but the despite taking heavy damage, the pathetic Habsburg destroyer made it into Ragusa.  And that was it.  As the Glorious Italian Light Forces steamed for home, an ambassador of the decadent and effete Habsburg Empire arrived with a new peace offer.  It entailed handing over the single Austro-Hungarian overseas colony, some poor, benighted fishing village on the African coast, a place so insignificant that only the legendary Otto Prohaska had ever heard of it.  It didn't show on the map so was effectively meaningless.  There were also some some disputed border areas thrown in, no doubt moving the frontier a few miles closer to Pola.  Bulletini by now had found that the war was taking too much time away from his passion of driving sportscars, so decided to vote in favor of the deal.  And with that, the War of 1900 was finally over.




With the coming of peace, the naval budget was immediately slashed to the bone, and Bulletini had to decide what to do in the future.  So far, the Glorious Italian Boffins, despite their skill with sportscars, had been finding it difficult to do anything worthwhile with ships.  All through the war, they had been reporting one failure after another in their research, only recently reporting, just before the end of hostilities, to have developed the coincidence rangefinder.  There was thus no real reason to build new or even upgrade existing ships, and there was even going to be difficulty in keeping all of the Glorious Italian Navy in commission.

The hulk of the 3rd battleship, which had only just been laid at the start of the war and then left to rust ever since, certainly could no longer be justified, so what small amount of work had been done was dismantled.  There were still 2 light cruisers on the stocks, one of them within a month of completion and the other about half done.  These would continue.  All through the war, the single existing light cruiser had been the most effective unit of the Glorious Italian Navy and Bulletini had lived in constant fear of her hitting a mine.  It would be nice to have a couple more of those.  And a few more destroyers, but those would have to wait.

With the decadent and effete Habsburgs beaten down for a while, Bulletini's attention turned to Italy's other roommate in the Mediterranean:  France.  Surely they would have to fight someday.  That would be a much more difficult prospect, but it would have to be done if the Glorious Italian Navy was to carry out the national objective of recreating Mare Nostrum.  Maybe Bulletini could persuade the UK to help?

[theotherguy3]

I like your style, mate! Please continue!

[gato]

I've been playing (and making) naval wargames

Distant Guns or Jutland, probably?

[Bullethead]

theotherguy3: Thanks

gato: Yup, that's me.

[Roumba]

I never considered that playing on smaller fleet sizes would make battles so much more dangerous and exciting. When you only have 12 ships, losing one to a lucky torpedo or mine would be devastating.

[Bullethead]

Aug 30, 2016 20:35:45 GMT -6 Roumba said:

I never considered that playing on smaller fleet sizes would make battles so much more dangerous and exciting. When you only have 12 ships, losing one to a lucky torpedo or mine would be devastating.

Yup, that's definitely a looming spectre.  There is no safety net.  But OTOH, this is mostly a training exercise for me, and the sooner I have bad luck, the sooner I can start another game

[Bullethead]

EPISODE 3:  Peacetime Muddles

Bulletini's mind was in chaos.  Why hadn't the Pope excommunicated the decadent and effete Habsburg Empire for starting a war without a valid causus belli?  Why couldn't he order his chancellor to fabricate a claim on French North Africa?  Then he remembered.  He was just drunk out of his gourd and was confusing reality with his secret vice of playing Crusader Kings.  But while still enjoying the party after the Glorious Italian Navy's Glorious Victory over the decadent and effete Habsburgs, Bulletini was interrupted by some news.  The good news was getting to talk to his spymistress, who agreed to stay for the rest of the victory party, and after.....  The bad news was, the Glorious Italian Boffins had given up on trying to figure out how to make a pendulum, despite this having been a major feature of clocks in the rest of Europe for centuries.  No wonder it was so hard to maintain production schedules!  Things were running on the vague and imprecise Glorious Italian Time!



In the immediate post-war years, the spymistress and the Boffins both continued to accumulate low-priority breakthroughs.  But hey, maybe it would be useful later.



In fact, Bulletini was already having to put half his fleet in reserve due to the "Glorious Peace Dividend".  This was not appreciated at a time when he was trying to match the decadent and effete French fleet.  So maybe he should consider building up a fleet of cheap submarines?  Unfortunately, despite a number unasked-for breakthroughs in that previously undesired field, the Glorious Italian Shipyards refused to consider the subject.  So Bulletini was left with trying to figure out how to build up his conventional fleet, despite not being able to afford what he already had.

Well, maybe a carefully orchestrated rising of international tensions would free up some more money.  Bulletini decided to stir the pot a little.



This enabled Bulletini to commission 2 more DDs.  But otherwise, the news was mixed and on the balance not so great.  For some reason, tensions with the decadent and effete Tsarist regime had been rising dangerously, despite the Glorious Italian Navy's recent trouncing of the traditional Russian enemy, the decadent and effete Habsburgs, and there being no competing geopolitical interests between Russia and Italy.  This would never do at a time when Bulletini wanted to aggravate only the decadent and effete French.  So when the decadent and effete Russian Empire offered an alliance with the Glorious Italian State, so Bulletini held his nose and accepted it.  But that was the extent of the good news.

First, the Glorious Italian Prime Minister wanted to build a palace at the expense of the Glorious Italian Navy, and there was no way out that didn't reduce the budget.  However, Bulletini at lest managed to maneuver out of the situation with his reputation intact.  There was also a minor tiff with the decadent and effete British Empire over the results of a regatta, which the Glorious Italian Yacht Club easily won, thereby embarrassing the RN team in front of their monarch.  And it proved hard for Bulletini to keep his jingoistic tongue under control, even on the subject of his nominal allies.  There was also a game glitch.  So all in all, things weren't particularly good, other than tensions were rising most with the decadent and effete French as Bulletini desired.





But after a couple more years, the Glorious Italian Boffins were finally beginning to make progress in things Bulletini actually cared about.  This, plus the escalating tensions with the decadent and effete French, plus Bulletini's frugality in managing his fleet, finally allowed Bulletini to lay down the first armored cruiser of the Glorious Italian Navy.  She was heavily armed and rather fast, but naturally somewhat weakly protected.  Still, she should do well against the armored cruisers and older battleships of the decadent and effete French.

And then a miracle happened.  A group of concerned citizens from Sicily appeared with a check for $50,000,000 which they'd give to Bulletini provided he used it to build a battleship.  But they darkly hinted this was an offer Bulletini could not refuse.  So Bulletini didn't refuse.  He quickly designed a battleship costing $45M and named it after his generous patron.  This was a light, fast battleship, more of a heavy armored cruiser, again intended to annoy the decadent and effete French.  Unfortunately, the Glorious Italian Finance Minister decided Bulletini was hoarding money and kept confiscating 10% of the naval bank account every month, so Bulletini quickly became worried about paying for this ship.  it would have been better if The Godfather had been more discrete.  But alea iecta est!



Despite their obvious weaknesses, these ships had some fairly decent tech in them for this point in time.



Tune in next time for the further misadventures of the Glorious Italian Navy.

[Bullethead]

EPISODE 4:  If the Prime Minister Could See my Cabbages


With tensions rising and war with France seeming imminent, Bulletini hastily designed a new and better CL and laid down the 1st of that class.




This put a further strain on finances but Bulletini was confident that when war inevitably broke out, the coffers of the Glorious Italian State would flow in his direction.  He fully expected war immediately when this happened, and mobilized his reserve fleet.




Sadly, that did not happen and soon Bulletiini's naval spending was called into question.  The Godfather's gift was indeed 2-edged sword, thanks to the Glorious Impecunious Finance Minister.



There was really nothing for it but to send the reservists back home and wait for better times.  Bulletini was trapped between The Godfather's demands on one side and the Prime Minister's on the other.  Appeals to The Godfather to have the finance minister "disappeared" proved fruitless.  But no sooner had Bulletini been dragged into a politically biased parliamentary investigation than both the decadent and effete British and Habsburg Empires declared war.  Where did that come from?



While Bulletini stormed out of the courtroom and hastily recalled his reservists, the decadent, effete, and cowardly Habsburgs declined 2 engagments in the Adriatic.  Then the new armored cruiser reported hostile contact between Calabria and Corfu.  The decadent, effete, and cowardly Habsburgs fled the field with hardly a shot fired, saved only by the coming of night.  This was scored as a draw, even though the Glorious Italian Navy was only robbed of decisive victory by the characteristic undignified retreat of the decadent and effete Austro-Hungarians.




Immediately thereafter occurred a battle between the Glorious Italian Navy and the decadent and effete but respectably brave Royal Navy.  The Glorious Italian Navy was seriously outnumbered and outgunned but, in a confused night action against heavy odds, with the RN incessantly attacking from all directions and with ships of both sides often going hither and yon due to communications failures, the Glorious Italian Navy sunk 3 RN DDs and escaped with no significant damage to its own forces.  Despite this triumph, the confounded international court scored this as only a minor victory.




Immediately after this good news came news that the Glorious Italian State was being blockaded.  "By whom?" stormed Bulletini.  So far he had maintained complete mastery of his shores and the war was going totally in his favor.  Except for bad news from the colony, without the assigned gunboat putting up even a token fight.



But at home, all enemy encroachments had been driven off.  It was only the confounded international court who decided otherwise.  Bulletini swore eternal vengeance on that body and again made discrete overtures to The Godfather to "disappear" a list of idiotic politicians.

But before anything fruitful could come from his Sicilian patronage, Bulletini was unceremoniously sacked.



Bulletini drew his not-so-ceremonial sword and defied the Glorious Italian Carabinieri who converged around him.  "On what grounds are you here?", he cried.   "I have never lost a ship, nor a battle, nor a war.  Even faced with the combined might of the decadent and effete British and Habsburg Empires, I still rule the Mediterranean.  The only reason the naval budget is in the red is because the 'Glorious' Italian Prime Minister would rather build a palace than a navy, and the 'Glorious' Italian Finance Minister confiscates my funds to build said palace out of the contributions of ordinary citizens towards keeping the Glorious Italian Navy strong.  You all can go to Hell and I shall go to Monaco!"

Shamed, the Glorious Italian Carabinieri made way as Bulletini swept out of the Naval Ministry building.  He jumped into his Bugatti, drove to his spymistress' flat, picked her up, and headed north up the Tuscan coast road, never to be seen again.  The reckoning of Bulletini's tenure was not deemed fit for public consumption as it showed the Glorious Italian State to be totally the slave of Mammon.  Bulletini wasn't sacked for his performance in naval matters but for taking funds away from the Prime Minister's palace.



But there was one more battle.  Before the Glorious Italian Navy at sea learned of Bulletini's ouster, his erstwhile subordinates carried on.  And once again it was a superior force of the decadent, effete, and cowardly Habsburgs fleeing before minor elements of the Glorious Italian Navy in the Adriatic.




Once, at the roulette wheel in a Monaco casino, as the masterless Glorious Italian Navy was pummeled into submission by a remorseless combination of foes, an agent of the "Glorious" Italian Prime Minister attempted to woo Bulletini back home.  Bulletini quoted the Emperor Diocletian and returned to his game.

[axe99]

It looks like it didn't take you too much longer to have bad luck! Nice writing, best of luck with game #2 .

[director]

Ah, the Admiral is guilty only of placing the needs of his country - and his Glorious Navy - above his own insatiable thirst for prestige. The lesson we should learn is that true victory depends on our ability to remain in power and thus increasing our prestige is worth any expenditure of blood and treasure.

General Rosecrans said, "I beg in behalf of this army that the War Department may not overlook so great an event because it is not written in letters of blood." But the War Department - and the general public - did overlook his magnificent and relatively bloodless campaign to Chattanooga and celebrated the bloody (but decisive) struggles at Vicksburg and Gettysburg instead.

[bcoopactual]

Bullethead, I can't tell from the screen shots if you already do this but some of the more experienced players suggested on the forum a while ago, and I've adopted this myself, that you put as many ships as you can in Reserve status when the tension is low. Especially right after the end of a war. It halves your maintenance costs for each ship you can put there and can really free up some cash to continue building ships when your budget has been slashed. Some players put a lot of their ships in mothballs as well. Recent changes were made to the game to limit the total tonnage you can put in mothballs but it is an option as well.

If you already knew about this I apologize and please disregard. Also, I thoroughly enjoyed reading you AAR. Very Entertaining.

[fredsanford]

2nd on the entertaining. As I'm sure you're now aware, Prestige is the only score that counts. FYI, playing as the USN is probably the easiest.

[srndacful]

Sept 1, 2016 16:12:11 GMT -6 fredsanford said:

2nd on the entertaining. As I'm sure you're now aware, Prestige is the only score that counts. FYI, playing as the USN is probably the easiest.

IMHO, playing as Great Britain on non-historical setting gives just the right mix of high budget and high maintenance (i.e.lots of overseas territories = not a lot of ships in Reserve) for a Campaign just below A-H / on par with Italy in difficulty.

[Bullethead]

Thanks to all who found this fiasco entertaining.  I'll try to keep that up in the future.  I've spent the last few years mostly playing Kerbal Space Program instead of wargames so currently have a bit more sense of humor than normal  .

director:

Ah, the Admiral is guilty only of placing the needs of his country - and his Glorious Navy - above his own insatiable thirst for prestige. The lesson we should learn is that true victory depends on our ability to remain in power and thus increasing our prestige is worth any expenditure of blood and treasure.

Hehehe, that's a good way of putting it. I'll keep that in mind in the future.