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The Storybook Battle

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The Storybook Battle

Old 06-02-2009, 03:26 AM
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kotori
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Default The Storybook Battle

Saturday and Sunday, May 30th and 31st, was a weekend to remember. It was the second time the Western Warship Combat Club had hosted a battle at the Bay Area Maker Faire in San Mateo, California. While the event was graced with many amazing feats, from the smallest fully-functional transport ship to the first known sinking of an armed warship by an unarmed convoy vessel, our crowning achievement must have been the Storybook Battle, at 3:00 PM on Sunday. We had a total of 14 engines of war on the water for that battle: 5 Capital Ships, 5 Light Cruisers and Destroyers, 3 Transports, and 1 Shore Battery. On the Allied side were USSIowa, HMSRodney, USS Juneau, RM Luigi Cadorna, USS Crosley, and SS Arizona Maru. Sailing for the Axis were the Dutch Battlecruiser, DKM Kreuzer P, SMSPrinz Eugen, DKMSpahkreuzer, RM Giussano, SS Willie Maykitt, and the Coastal Defense Gun.

Like last year, our show was incredibly popular, and there was limited seating in the audience. On Sunday, tickets for both of our battles were sold out before noon. Half an hour before the battle began, the usual crowd of curious onlookers started to swell and fill up the arena. While the crowd was growing, Iwas furiously racing to reload the battleship Prinz Eugen's magazines and install fresh batteries, while preparing my own ship SS Willie Maykitt for her maiden voyage. Yes, that's right, battleship Prinz Eugen, not the more famous heavy cruiser. At 3:25, the emcee surged onto the stage and began to work the crowd, building up excitement before the battle began. He introduced the teams and identified the ships, and then with a mighty roar the whole crowd called "Commence FIRE!" and the two fleets collided in the chaos and mayhem of a massive battle.

Willie Maykitt and Prinz Eugen, unfortunately, did not immediately join the fight. I had forgotten to turn on the bilge pump ESC, and my brother Eric didn't know how. I got the issue resolved, and sailed into battle less than a minute later. Just in time to find my tiny, 14" coastal tramp steamer squarely between two lines of battleships. HMS Rodney sent one full broadside my way, and the nine-gun blast tore off both my smokestack and my team IDflag. Iowa took a shot at me too, but only soaked the ship with the splash. Alas, something inside the ship gave way, and Ilost propulsion. I drifted with the wind, and soon my ship was off in the far corner, out of sight and out of mind from the rest of the battle. Unable to do anything more, Iturned my attention to the rest of the battle.

The audience was cheering wildly and all of the battleships were pumping, some more heavily than others. Things weren't going well for the Axis. We'd sunk USS Crosley, the DDE-turned-APD, but our own Dutch Battlecruiser was down by the bow and its pump was pouring out a piddling stream of water. Rodney and Iowa closed for the kill, and Iwas nearly deafened by the roar of thecrowd as the sleek battlecruiser rolled over and sank, five minutes into the battle. There were ten minutes left in the battle, and the Axis still had a lot of fight left in them. The torpedo-cruisers concentrated their fire on USS Iowa while the surviving Axis battlewagons lured the Allied capital ships close to the Coastal Defense Gun. Then, two minutes later, the impossible happened.

USS Iowa is a well-regarded ship in all Big Gun clubs as a fast, powerful, and well-armed battleship. This particular Iowa was legendary in the club, having the most experienced and highest ranked skipper in the club. It wasn't just a battleship, it was THE battleship. The biggest, baddest, meanest battleship on the pond, and it was unsinkable. It hadn't been sunk since its maiden voyage, long before most current club members joined the hobby. Its near-mythical status formed an armor all on its own, with skippers considering the potential of a possible engagement with the Iowa and, as often as not, choosing to sail the other way. This ship had fought the entire club on several occasions, and come out with hardly a scratch on its paint. It couldn't sink. Not the Iowa! And yet...

Iowa sailed up right along the Captains' Wall, heading for the Coastal Defense Gun. They exchanged several volleys of solid shot, then the Iowa was past it and on to the Axis dock targets. I heard a gleeful cackle from Iowa's skipper, then its engines stopped and its guns trained on target. One broadside was all it got. Then the battleship's inertia carried it into the wall of the pond, and it rocked. Something changed in that moment: it never fully recovered from that rock. The ship shuddered and settled a little lower in the water, then the pumps came on. Atrickle at first, then a massive cascade of water. The sight and sound of pumps going full-bore was like blood in the water for the sink-hungry crowds. I thought they were loud when the Dutch Battlecruiser went down, but this reached a whole new level of thrill-factor. It took about 30 seconds for the Iowa to drop from full health to decks awash. The whole time, Iwas riveted in shock and disbelief. Here was the unsinkable Iowa, sinking rapidly, no more than 6 feet away from me! Then the stern dropped out from the ship, and it fell suddenly to the bottom. A field of flotsam came to the surface, including several deck pieces and the recovery float. Only then did I regain my senses, and reach for my camera. The pictures Itook then were crude, but their images will call forth my memories of that awesome and terrible moment when the USS Iowa sank.



But the battle didn't end there. We were only halfway into the show, and there was still plenty more excitement to go around. With the loss of the Iowa, the Allies withdrew from the Axis side of the pond to regroup and recover from their shock. Axis forces pursued them, eager to finish off HMS Rodney and the rest of the Allied fleet. Their hopes of a battle of annihilation might actually come true! Rodney wasn't a difficult ship to sink, if they could get in on her aft quarter and stay there. Prinz Eugen's guns jammed, and it had to leave the fight, leaving Kreuzer P and the torpedo-boats to tackle Rodney and her escorts. But it was not to be, as one of the Axis cruisers crashed into the sunken wreck of the Dutch Battlecruiser at high speed, and got trapped with its stern high and dry out of the water. This put several holes in the bow under water, and raised the Giussano's pump too high to drain the water. Rodney closed to avenge the loss of Iowa, and the Axis began the difficult task of rescuing the stranded ship.

SMS Prinz Eugen, with her disabled guns, was the designated rescuer, while Kreuzer P tried to chase off Rodney, and Spahkreuzer kept the Allied torpedo-cruisers distracted. The minutes ticked by as Prinz Eugen tried knocking the stranded ship free, and Giussano's bow settled lower and lower in the water. With about a minute to go, Rodney broke past Kreuzer P's screening to fire on the Giussano, but Prinz Eugen was already wheeling about for another attempt at freeing the trapped vessel. Rodney opened fire, and water began crashing over Giussano's bow. The situation looked grim, but Giussano wasn't sunk yet, and Prinz Eugen was charging in at full speed and right on course. Prinz Eugen kicked on its pumps to gain a rocket boost from spraying water, then slammed into the Giussano's trapped stern at more than 25 knots. The Giussano rocked, and slid, and its bow finally dropped underwater, but its stern popped free from the wreck of the Dutch Battlecruiser and the ship began racing for home just as the emcee began a 10-second countdown to the end of the sortie. Would the Giussano make it back to port in time, or would it sink just short of its target? The audience joined in the countdown, some cheering for the ship to make it and others cheering for it to sink. With its stern no longer high and dry, Giussano's bilge pump kicked on, keeping it afloat just long enough to make it back to port and into the safety of its skipper's arms as the sortie ended. The other ships turned for home, spent. They were out of gas, low on ammo, and their batteries drained. It had been a roller-coaster of a battle, with ups and downs and thrills and spills for both sides. It would be up to the audience to decide the victor. But they could not make up their minds, and our crowd-o-meter declared the match a draw.

Several minutes later, Iremembered that my transport was still out there somewhere. I had completely forgotten it in the excitement of the battle. Iwaded out into the pond, past skippers recovering their sunken ships, or searching for shattered bits of superstructure blown all across the pond. One of the nice things about a shallow man-made pond is that the water is clear enough and shallow enough that you can recover most blasted bits of detailing that get blown off, which are usually lost forever to Davey Jones. I picked up my smokestack and team flag, then spotted my Willie Maykitt in a corner. The ship was still bobbing about on the waves, still afloat. There were one or two dents on the sub-deck, but no major damage. Little Willie Maykitt had actually made it.



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