As those of you who were there know, I brought my boys along to Nats this year. As a result of the extra time I spent helping them with their ships, I missed much of the battling, especially for the Allied A fleet. To my great annoyance, I found myself writing up accounts for the Allied A fleet battles that had absolutely no eyewitness accounts, great quotes, and other stuff that I liked to report. Mostly I was simply looking at the score sheets and wondering myself, "I wonder what happened there?"

Now, if this had just been a recounting of the battling of a regionals, I would have simply gone on as usual. This was not a regional, however, this was Nats. A Nats report deserved better. Therefore, I have gone out 'collecting' information. While I have used a few items from people's "Best and Worst" accounts in the past, I have decided to go much further this year. I have requested info from some folks on stories that were hinted at by the score sheets, and by other rumors I only partially heard while at Nats. In the places that I use this info, I feel it is only correct to give credit to the person providing the information. I hope it makes a better story for those that weren't there, and also for those of us who were. I know I wanted to know more, and I am sincerely thankful for those that helped out.

Therefore, to Bart Purvis, Kevin Bray, Bryan Finster, Alan Oster, Kevin Hovis, Chris Grossaint, and Rick King who all sent me accounts of their sinks and a few other happenings, I give my most humble thanks. To Curly, Chris Pearce, and Lee McKinzie, who all posted 'Bests and Worsts' that I 'borrowed' from, I thank also. And a special thanks to Lee McKinzie and Randy Stiponovich, who in response to my queries wrote such excellent articles that I refused to chunk them up for these chronicles and instead forwarded them to TF144 so you all can see them.

-- Lars

Preparing for this Nats was a nightmare of my own doing. All fall and winter long, I had known that this was the year I was to finally bring my two boys along with me to Nats. They had been running the ships for a few years, an old wooden hulled Inflexible, my venerable Tiger, and the Bellerophon. It didn't make for a very cohesive squadron however, a 28 second ship, a 26 second ship and a 24 second ship all trying to run together. To complicate matters, after Andy's success at the 99 Fall Regionals in Springfield, the Inflexible was referred to as 'the good boat' by the boys. Tiger was the preferred second ship, but was too heavy and long for easy handling by the boys. Tiger was also not as maneuverable and the boys had problems with it in tight spots. Bellerophon was looked upon with scorn, as it 'always sank.'

I had discussed the problem at Nats 99 with Chris Pearce, who suggested that I build a second I-boat. The I-boat had a good mix of hitting power, speed, and maneuverability. When the I-boat became the boys' favorite a few months later, that cinched the deal. An I-boat hull was ordered, as was some plywood for the deck and superstructure.

The nightmare part comes in how the I-boat fiberglass hull sat on the shelf in the workshop for over a year. Never having done a fiberglass hull, I was nervous about attempting it. As I had ordered just the hull, I didn't have the proper instructions for the attempt. With the Tiger to fall back on, and other items like being Secretary and doing rules packages and counting votes and researching the ship list, the second I-boat was easy to forget.

At the beginning of March, 2001, the refit work on Bellerophon was done for the winter and there was no more putting it off, as I was determined to have the two I-boats ready for Nats. Tiger was not an option. It helped that a new Port Polar Bear rookie, Mike Lindlof, shamed me by running off a copy of his Lutzow hull kit instructions. Thanks, Mike. With those in hand I plunged in.

Now, with a week to go, the new I-boat was being rushed to completion. The superstructure, which took three months on the first I-boat, took three days for the second. Of course, the first one was plywood, this new one was foam and balsa. The two sidemount guns, the main watertight box and the Swampworks pump were lifted from Tiger. The rudder watertight box, surprisingly, was a box that I had built for Paul Barrett's Posen that he returned to me that spring. The ship was shaping up, but the other two needed to be resheeted. I sat the boys down one night and had them strip off the old balsa on the Bell and the Inflexible. Later they helped out again by painting the silkspan onto the new sheeting, after which I glued it down and then had them paint on the outside coat of paint and silkspan.

Saturday

After packing up the mangy Ranger pickup (a name coined by my wife), we pushed off. Thus started the run of idiots. First we ran a few errands, the first of which was running down to the drive-up ATM for some additional cash and having to wait for a mentally-retarded pair of men that walked up to the teller just in front of us, and took ten minutes or more to get their cash and get it properly stuffed in their wallet and their card returned to its proper location. Only after the wallets were properly in place in their back pockets did they move away from the teller and allow me to drive up. After a quick stop for traveling snacks it was back to the house to get a forgotten item. This was a fortunate break, as the ladies of the house were off on a little vacation of their own, and I discovered that I had locked up the house incorrectly and had effectively locked them out of the house for their return, a few days before our expected return. I marked myself as idiot number two, corrected the error and we pushed off again.

Next was a run up to the hobby shop for some more silkspan and some more paint brushes. After watching how poor the boys were at cleaning their brushes after painting, I knew I'd need a lot more to last out the week. I was later to congratulate myself on the foresight. After grabbing a burger for everyone, we set off for Nats. Going to the hobby store had been a bit of backtracking, and as we reached the point on our route that was closest to our house, I slapped my forehead and said, "I forgot to pack the chairs."

The boys were in favor of forgetting them, but I liked my comfy camp chairs and decided to head back for them. I tossed them on top of the gear, and worried that eight hours of driving would surely send them sliding down on top of the ships. As we were battening down the endgate again, my neighbor drove by and hollered, "Haven't you left yet?"

"Yes," I hollered back. "I've left twice! We're hoping the third time is the charm!"

As we reached a point about forty five minutes out, I said to the boys. "Boys, we've reached the point of no return. We're on our way to Nats."

They smiled and cheered. We were only two hours behind our intended departure time.

About ten minutes later, Grant asked, "Dad, if Canada wanted to attack just Minnesota, how do you think they'd go about it?"

I said it would probably just be easiest to buy it.

The drive was long, and we took the breaks as they came. This part went smoothly until Dad missed the best exit in Des Moines for gas, and had to take one where he had to drive for five miles to find a station (yep, I was an idiot again).

We stopped at a Walmart in Bethany, Missouri that I have stopped at several times on previous trips through Missouri. On an earlier trip Grant had found a five dollar bill in the men's bathroom at this Walmart, but despite trying to reduplicate everything exactly as before we didn't have the same luck this time.

As an afterthought, I had brought along some 1/2400 scale wargaming ships that I had picked up a few years back. I had collected models of the ships then at Port Polar Bear. The boys spent a good deal of time playing with them. Andy set up several fleet actions on top of one of my Conways books. Then, when trying to close the book, he busted off the stern of a ship. Then an hour later, he dropped the Conways book and smashed my 1/2400 scale Tiger. "I think I better put these ships away," he said unhappily.

"I think you better put the Conways book away," I said, trying to cheer him up.

After we passed the stadiums in Kansas City, it was getting dark and I thought it best to double check to see that our rooms were being held. "Ah, Mr. Dahl," said the lady who answered the phone. "We have a room for you, but there is a little problem. You see, it is in Higgensville."

After I found out that Higgensville was fifteen miles closer, and it meant that I had a good excuse to take a night off and hit the hay with a clean conscience, I actually thanked the lady. She even said that they would pick up the cost.

At the Best Western in Higgensville, I walked into the lobby. The male clerk stood up and asked if he could help me.

"I understand you're holding a couple of rooms for the University Hotel in Warrensburg," I said.

"And you are..." he said, a bit effeminately.

"I'm part of the model boat club."

The clerk relaxed. "You said the key words. I'm holding three rooms for you guys, and you're the first to show up." Then he started to gripe about how he could have rented out those three rooms three times over. As he came over with the key cards, he asked, "Do you mind if I get an imprint of your credit card?"

Somewhat taken aback, I said, "I thought the University was paying for the room."

The clerk smiled again, and said his instructions were to ask for a card, but if refused he was to charge it to the University. "As far as I am concerned," he said, "you have clearly refused."

With that, we brought in our clothes bags. I let the boys play with the 1/2400 scale ships for a bit while I relaxed. Then it was lights out.

Sunday (The longest day)

We found the church, after following the instructions recorded for us by Mom. As we walked into the church, we were greeted by a most unexpected display. Inside the lobby was an igloo, a few penguins, and a large polar bear stuffed toy. They couldn't have known that three members of Port Polar Bear would show up for their early service. Apparently the Vacation Bible School was running an "Eskimo Days" theme for the coming week. We didn't follow the logic, but when it comes to religion there are just some things that one must take on faith alone and so we enjoyed what we took to be a strange but good omen.

After Church was over, it was still too early to waltz over to the motel, and so we went looking for a big breakfast. The Country Kitchen filled our bill, and as we finished up and started to leave, in walked Rick, Frank and John Whitsell, along with Bryan Finster, and maybe someone else that I can't remember now.

We drove over to the motel, and parked next to a friendly face. Andy Ray was talking with two folks I didn't know. One was Mark Roe, and the other turned out to be Alan Oster, who was supposed to have shared our room the night before but was left to fend for himself when we were shuffled off to Higgensville. "I slept on the floor," he said when I asked.

We headed for the lobby, and ran into Steve Reichenbach, who was getting into the SUV of someone I didn't know. "Meet Patrick Clarke and his boys," said Steve. They were headed out to church as well.

"Hey, you're the guy from Texas who sent me the Nats 97 tape," I said.

"Say 'Yeehaw' when you say Texas," said Patrick in mock gruff seriousness.

"Well, we're from Minnesota where you say, 'Yah, you betcha!'" That sent the Texans off to church with a smile.

The motel had a room ready for us, and so we unloaded and moved in for the week. The captains meeting was to be at two o'clock, and so there was time to work on the ships. Batteries were plugged in to top off charges, and we started to attend to the remaining details. Ron Horbul and Curly Barrett, the other two members of Port Polar Bear to come to Nats, stopped by, having just pulled in after driving all night. They were waiting for the maids to finish up their room so they could move in. Dave Au came in too, with the pressure gauge to test regulators. Every regulator in the PPB arsenal was a bit high, and so Dave and I showed Curly and Ron how to clean the regulators to get them back down to the proper pressure. Curly had a regulator that had been treated with loc-tite, and he had a devil of a time getting it apart. Then, with just one sanding block between three fellows, he took to sanding the tips of his springs on the sidewalk outside the room. One time he was so vicious in his efforts we thought we saw smoke. James Foster also drifted in to get his regulators tested. Finally we got them all down to 150 pounds pressure, and Dave moved on to find others to test.

After the others had left, we returned to the final details on the Indomitable. First off was filling the tub to test for leaks and also for battery positioning, and to get the actual waterline. She floated on an even keel with no ballast. Water channeling was added, but the installation of this was interrupted for the captains' meeting.

The captains meeting was held in a large meeting room just off the hotel lobby. We were among the first ones there, and as the other battlers came in, I pointed out the ones I knew to the boys. They were tickled to finally see, and in most cases meet the people that they'd only read about before.

Bart Purvis, bless his heart, took an immediate shine to the boys, and when he was told that they were driving I-boats, he leaned over and said, "Now boys, there's been a couple of Axis captains who have Austrian Viribus Unitases that are both armed with triple bow guns. They've been doing some talking about how much damage they're going to do to the Allies, but you guys have the kind of ships that can come in and sink them. And you don't have to worry about damage unless you sail in front of them, because all their guns are in the bow."

Now, I was just worried about getting all the boats out on the water and keeping them going. Hopefully the boys would get used to the large fleet battles and learn a few things. Picking out a single target before we even hit the water was about the farthest thing from my mind. Actually, I was hoping the boys would learn to double or triple team a target, but again, I was looking for targets of opportunity, and hopefully a target that was alone. There were two of those VUs, and they'd probably stick together and work as a team. Bart was probably thinking that if the boys were careful they could take on the VUs without taking too much damage in return, and despite my saying that we had to first learn how to attack as a team, the boys spent all week asking, "When are we going to go get the Austrian ships?"

Brian Eliassen called the meeting to order, and immediately passed control to Steve Milholland, who took care of the passing out of the T-shirts. Those that had pre-ordered came to get their shirts. The boys looked at me, the question obvious on their faces. "No," I said, "I didn't pre-order any shirts for you." Their faces fell, and it was obvious that I had made a grievous mistake. They both had their old blue Nats shirts that Steve Smith (another Port Polar Bear alumni) had printed up for Nats 91, and they liked to wear them whenever they went into battle. It was obvious that their morale had taken a severe hit, and so when Steve announced that there were a few 'extras', I silently said a quick prayer of thanks and turned to the boys, "Well, let's go get you two your shirts."

There was a long moment before what I said registered and then after a brief look of shock came big smiles and the laughter returned to their eyes. It was probably the best 26 bucks I spent all week. They proudly wore those shirts most of the rest of the week. Of course, being a somewhat experienced parent, I put an "A" mark and a "G" mark on the shirt tags when we got back to the room, so they could easily tell whose was whose.

After the shirts were distributed, the meeting resumed. Site Host Rick Whitsell took the floor and explained the setup and the driving and parking arrangements out at Gary White's pond. The other details for the Sunday Ship testing were given out. Bryan Finster then made a double check of the radio frequency setup. Just as he was about to review the list, his computer balked, and he muttered lowly, "This software sucks."

Even though the comment had been to himself, most of the room had heard it, and after the few chuckles died down, Curly said, in his best cheerleader fashion, "Once again! Come on now, everybody this time!"

This brought the house down, and the chuckles occupied our time until Bryan was once again ready.

The remaining items on the agenda were covered, and catering orders from a local restaurant were taken for the next day's noon meal. Then folks headed out to the lake for the speed and ship testing. Like the boys and I were to do all week, we were slow to get out to the lake because we still had some details to complete before the ships were ready. I had the boys check their radios and get the main batteries into the boats, and checked all the controls to see if they were working. Then we too headed out to the pond, after a short detour to Walmart for some bottled water and ice.

The drive out to the pond was nice, not too long, and we found the pond easily, the tents stood out easily. Finding the driveway was tougher, until we spotted the orange MWC signs. The farm road to the pond reminded me of home.

As we drove up to the Pit Area, Ron Horbul met us and pointed out Curly's Port Polar Bear tent. We drove up, unloaded, and then parked the truck.

I told the boys that we were going to run each boat once before we were to make any alterations. First, however, we took the ships over to get weighed. The Bellerophon was a half pound under, the new Indomitable had a pound or two to spare, but the wooden-hulled Inflexible, according to what I saw, was a bit overweight, by perhaps a quarter pound. Well, there's another reason to retire her, I thought. However, the official weight checker waved her through. Maybe I misread the scale.

Inflexible was chosen to run the speed trial first, but when we put her on the water her drive motors were squealing as if the bearings were going, and she was obviously slow. I had worried that I might have to replace one of the motors, having heard the beginnings of the squeal before Nats, but at her last PPB outing she'd seemed to run fine.

Indomitable was next out. She had larger props than the Inflexible, and ran a tad fast on her first run. Back on the bench I pulled out the old Johnson motors on the Inflexible while Andy watched. I pulled out the two of the three spare Mabuchi 540's that I'd prepared before Nats, and set Andy to trying to get them back in. Then we set the gears, and took her out for another run. This time she ran at about 24 seconds.

Next it was Indomitable's turn for a gear change, and Grant watched as I set his motors to run with the new gears. On her second run, the Indomitable refused to turn for Grant. We somehow got the ship back to shore, checked the rudder, and discovered a linkage had come loose. I cautioned Grant about the care he needed to take in not banging around the ship, and especially the parts sticking out of her stern. The Indomitable was given a quick lakeside fix, namely super glue. We were real careful the rest of the week to do a systems check on the rudders, props, and pump before we put the ships in the water each time, and it saved us a few embarrassments. After the fix the Indomitable came in at almost exactly 26 seconds. "That's one of three!" we cheered as we walked back to the bench. We were extremely happy because we thought the new ship would be the toughest to get to speed. We chattered on happily about how Grant's boat, with just it's gray hull and no red paint below the waterline reminded us of Jim Ewer's Invincible, who the boys remembered from their attendance at the Springfield Fall 99 Regionals.

With the one ship I was most worried about at speed, we set about finishing up the trio. Andy watched again as I changed the gears on Inflexible. The third run for Inflexible came in at about 25 seconds. Taking the ship back to the bench, I thought we were close enough for me to take the Bellerophon on a run while Andy started taking apart the Inflexible again. The job was not fun, as the way the old boat was set up the motors are rather difficult to get at and the stern sidemount has to come out to even get close to the buggers.

Bellerophon's first run had her running at about 26 seconds. I wasn't surprised, I had upped the size of her props over the winter, and had guessed at the gear settings. When I got back, Andy had the Inflexible ready to go. I was surprised, but gratefully considered it a small blessing, especially after I checked over his work. Inflexible this time, however, came in at about 28 seconds, which would have been good for the Bell but wasn't acceptable for the battlecruiser.

Wade Koehn kept popping by, wanting to drop-test the hulls, but I was more interested in making speed, but after the process began to drone on and the boys were getting bored, I stopped and let Wade make the tests, and had the boys patch the hulls afterwards. We only had one drop fail, of course it was on the new boat, but Wade said he thought that he'd hit a rib in that case.

While we were struggling with finding the proper gearing to make speed, it began to look like one of my biggest fears was going to take place. It looked like all three ships might need the gears with the same number of teeth. In most cases I had two sets, but in none did I have three complete sets of gears. So, as Chris Pearce and Tim Beckett were packing up to go home, I asked if they had any spare gears. Tim Beckett pulled out a neat little gizmo that had a series of shafts sticking out on which the various gear pairs were mounted. Little labels indicated how many teeth each pair had. "You just have to make one long enough for three sets of gears for your ships," said Chris. I thought it was a good idea.

By this time, Curly had made speed, but Ron Horbul was still making runs. We were commenting on how the ice must make the water faster back at home. Other folks, having finished up themselves, dropped by to offer their help. As I was content with swapping out gears, they drifted over to help Ron, who didn't have a gear system and was running a direct-drive on his Arizona. He tried a few offered motors, and maybe a few other things. He thought that he was close, when suddenly his wiring went up in smoke. "That's it, I'm done for today," he moaned, looking sadly over the damage. "Too much in a hurry, and I didn't take the proper precautions."

We had a similar mishap on the Inflexible but not quite as severe, as Andy noticed that the one prop was no longer turning. Pulling the hood off, we discovered a solder connection on one of the motors had given way. He was also done until repairs could be made. But one nice thing, while we were inspecting the problem, we also found the location of the intermittent power problems we'd been having with the boat the last few battles.

Somewhere in here, with Curly in a relaxed mood as he waited for Ron to make speed, he drawled, "Hey Lars, there hasn't been any sinks yet today. Don't you want to go sink Bellerophon and tie up that ol' speed trial sink tally?"

"Nah, I think Wade wants to hold on to it for awhile," I replied. After my Bellerophon had sunk during speed trials at Nats 1999, thus matching Wade's record from 1987, Wade had come back at Nats 2000 with another sink to take the lead. To me it was obvious that Wade liked having the record, and he wasn't going to allow any Johnny-come-lately to usurp his title. Besides, I had every confidence that ol' Wade could whup me solidly in any speed trial sink race that might spring up. I know some of you out there are thinking that this is a defeatist attitude but sometimes it is just wisest to pick and choose the battles one wants to fight. Plus I wanted to show that the Allies can be generous at times ourselves, and I was perfectly willing to remain a second fiddle and allow Wade to have the supreme boasting rights. One of these days I'll find my own niche and then I too can crow to my hearts content.

At this point, we were down to the Bellerophon. The last gear change on the Inflexible had been to speed her up, thus going to a gear with more teeth. The Bellerophon's next run was at about 27 seconds, just a second off. I was confident that the next run would have it nailed. The next run, however, came in at 25.5 seconds. Scratching my head, I surmised that perhaps the ship had been running very efficiently on those gears and had magically achieved that speed. Another gear change and this time the Bell came in at 24 seconds. It was fun watching her run the course, the stern deck dropped so far that water came up over the stern, but it was obvious the ship was too fast. As I walked back to the table wondering what magic had taken place this time, it suddenly occurred to me that I had confused the Inflexible and Bellerophon and that I should have been going to gears with less teeth to slow her down. "You idiot," I mumbled to myself, but I refrained at the last moment from the strongly desired Scandinavian self-inflicted head-slap because I would have dropped my ship.

It was now about 8:00PM, and the sun was getting low in the sky, and only the PPB crew was still at lakeside. We were all tired, and also hungry. "Time to go eat. We can finish this up easily tomorrow," I said. There was no argument from the boys. Curly and Ron were packing up too.

Ron and Curly followed us back in to town, and then we lost them. In the parking lot, as we were unloading, Bart and Austin Keels drove by and stopped to talk. Austin reported that he was having radio control problems on channel 77, and wanted to swap back to his regular channel on 76, which happened to be the channel Andy was using. With a load of work to do, I didn't like the idea of adding a channel swap to the list of things I had to do that evening, but Austin assured us that he didn't think he would be able to run at all if he stayed on channel 77. "Okay," I said reluctantly. "Let's switch."

After we'd unloaded, and I had quickly showered, and we'd returned Tim's set of gears (no longer needed) we went over to Ron and Curly's room to see if they wanted to go out to eat. They each had a bag from McDonald's, and Ron was already bent over his boat with a soldering iron. He did have time to complain about getting a real meal. We promised to bring him back a piece of pizza. We went out and after a bit found the Pizza Hut, which was naturally okay with the boys.

When we returned, Ron was out of the room, and Curly put the pizza slice we'd brought for Ron up on a shelf, where he'd discover it a day later. Back in our room and refueled ourselves now, we set about finishing up the boats. The boys were interested in helping, and so I set Andy to taking the 15-20 screws out of his watertight box lid so that we could do the channel swap. I'd wanted to do this back at home, but they'd been unable to help when I did it, due to school work demands. Now we had the conversation I'd wanted to hold before, about how to change crystals and how it allowed us to get more boats on the water.

Grant was also working and listening. I had set him to drawing out the outlines of the Inflexible's internal armor on some shower pan liner (as recommended by David Asman). Sometimes it helps to have templates from a duplicate ship.

At about 12:30, the boys had their jobs done, and were drooping badly, despite the baseball highlights that were playing on TV. I sent them to bed, and worked on. Included in all the soldering work, I had to wire up two new batteries for the I-boats, to replace two that had appeared to be slowly failing. The rest of the water channeling for the new I-boat was also cut out and siliconed into place. I taped the hull and painted up the red bottom, and then the black waterline. The internal armor I left for the morning. Curly dropped by around 2:30 or so to borrow my spare Traxxas gear boxes and a few gears for Ron, but dropped back a half hour later to return them. "I don't get it," said Curly, "the only rooms with the lights still on are the Minnesota guys." I finally hit the sheets at about 3:45A.M.

Monday

The night before I'd told the Allied Admiral, Chris Au, that our three boats weren't likely to make the first battle. With that in mind, I took the time to finish the remaining jobs up and do them to my satisfaction, while the boys helped where they could. Then we loaded up the boats into the truck.

We didn't head out to the lake right away, however, because another trip to Walmart was called for. I'd always gotten away with timing the five for the boys back home at PPB, but here at Nats I wanted them to have their own timers. We also needed a new turkey baster for de-watering the hull, the old one had given up the ghost the night before, as we had de-watered our leaky hulls (that was another thing I'd tried to fix the night before, as the speed trials were the first test for the resheeted hulls of Inflexible and Bellerophon, we already knew the Indomitable leaked from the tub test).

Well, we were ready, or so we thought. The Inflexible and Bellerophon needed speed tests, but we thought we were where we needed to be. Bellerophon came in at a little over 29 seconds, while the Inflexible came in at 24 seconds again. A disgruntled Andy set about stripping down the boat for another gear change, while Chris Au came by and said that he'd already gotten permission from Andy Ray to get any boats we had ready into the second sortie for the Allied B Fleet.

As you can guess, the boats were already fighting when we had arrived. We had been greeted with the news that Fluegel had been sunk, and a few others as well. There was also news that a disgruntled Dave Au had recovered his sunken Nagato and had apparently returned to the motel. There were murmurings from the Axis that they felt the Allies had stacked their A fleet.

Fleet Battle #1 Allied A vs. Axis A, First Sortie

The Allied A fleet was composed of: Chris Grossaint (Washington), Dana Graham (Prince of Wales), Patrick Clarke (Houston), Bart Purvis (Macon), Tim Beckett (North Carolina), John Whitsell (Invincible), Chris Pearce (North Carolina), Steve Reichenbach (Portland), Jim Coler (Savannah), Don Cole (Alabama), and Alan Oster (North Carolina). That's eleven captains, six with 6 unit battleships, one 4 unit battlecruiser, and four 3 or 3.5 unit cruisers, for a total of 52.5 units.

The Axis A fleet was composed of: David Asman (Nassau), Jamie Foster (Mogami), Fluegel (Baden), Andy Ray (Nagato), Lee McKinzie (Viribus Unitas), Dave Lawrence (Viribus Unitas), Gary White (Bismarck), Mark Roe (Scharnhorst), Dave Au (Nagato), and Wade Koehn (Bismarck). That's ten Axis captains, four with 6 or 6.5 unit battleships, two with 5 or 5.5 unit ships, three with 4 unit 28 second ships, and one 22 second 3 unit cruiser, for a total of 50.5 units.

As I said, we weren't even at the lake for this one, but below are the reports that I received from others.

Bart Purvis reports that he had a terrible battling start. About thirty seconds into the battle his throttle servo, a HiTec micro servo, failed. The throttle jammed in fast forward and his rudder went hard right. The Macon promptly ran its bow aground at full speed and the stern went awash. "Thus continued a dubious tradition that I started last year in Perry--that of captaining the first Allied ship to be sunk at Nats," reports Bart. To make matters worse, the sink would have been scored as a unseaworthy sink if it had not been for the fact that Bart had been a tad lazy and had failed to patch the three holes in his ship from the drop test on Sunday. An unseaworthy sink is only half of the ships' normal sink points, and thus Bart would have saved his team 350 points if he had only bothered to patch his ship. Bart did find one bright spot in this little fiasco. Bart's ship was scored with one hit above and one below. Apparently the Axis counter missed counting one of the drop test holes.

The rest of the report on this sortie comes from Chris Grossaint. Thanks Chris!

Admirals Pearce and Beckett led the Allied A fleet out of Scapa Flow for the initial showdown with the Axis fleet. The weather was gray and cloudy but there was no rain. The fleets deployed on the water with the Axis holding the west or left side of the pond, which also happened to be the narrow end. The Allies were to the right out in the open water.

When war was declared the Nagatos of Andy Ray and Dave Au sortied out in what seemed to be a suicide run as they attacked the Allied fleet all by themselves. Chris reports that after his initial 'war nerves' had calmed he found the picture of the two Nagato's slugging it out with four North Carolinas, a South Dakota, and the Prince of Wales to be extremely strange, especially when the rest of the Axis fleet was just peacefully waiting in the narrow west end. "It was as if they were on a Sunday stroll in the Park," said Chris about the silent Axis ships.

Then someone, Chris thinks it was Fluegel, yelled out, "Return to the fold!" or "Come Back" or something like that. Just like that the two Nagatos fled the furball and ran full out back towards the safety of the Axis Arc. Chris suspects that the Axis were expecting the Allies to follow the Nagatos into the arc and effectively impale themselves on the short Axis turning boats. It didn't happen.

Showing a bit of composure and teamwork, the Allies reformed their lines with their multiple stern guns once again pointed at the Axis hedgehog. Right in the middle of this Dave Au's Nagato sank from what Chris guesses was a mechanical failure.

After the Nagato had been recovered, Chris reports that for what seemed like the next ten minutes the line of Allied North Carolinas, the South Dakota, and the POW sat and waved their sterns back and forth at the Axis. The Axis Badens, von der Tanns, and Nassaus darted back and forth, but were slowly but steadily being forced further back into the narrow western sections of the pond. "It was one of the strangest things I've ever seen in the hobby," writes Chris.

Finally, one of the Allies, Chris thinks that it was Chris Pearce, made a lunge into the Axis line and heavy firing erupted. Suddenly Gary White's Bismarck squirted out of the pack and "the game was up. Where there had been no Axis fast battleships anywhere to be found, now they were scattered hither and yon." The battle broke up into several chases. Chris was having trouble with his Washington's stern guns but still managed to empty his magazines at Gary's Bismarck and Mark Roe's Scharnhorst.

Next several captains moved to the north shore of the pond, including Chris. The Baden and the Nassau became the obvious Axis targets for the Allied captains on the far shore. Then Tim Beckett's and Chris Pearce's North Carolinas went after Fluegel's Baden. When Dave Asman called five on his Nassau, which was already pumping hard, it became an obvious target for Chris. Dave must've known he was in trouble because he took his ship into a maze of tree branches at the extreme western point of the pond. There he sat and hid. Chris was a bit concerned about taking his bigger Washington into the maze after the small Axis dreadnought. By doing a lot of dancing, backing and turning, the Washington managed to work itself alongside the Nassau where it "commenced unrestricted sidemounting of the Nassau. It was a blast."

Dave, as would be expected, did do a few evasive maneuvers of his own and managed to survive his five. During this pummeling of the Nassau, Chris was also pleased to watch Fluegel's Baden roll over and sink at close range.

Thus ends Chris' account of the first sortie.

In addition to the above action, for the Axis, in the first sortie, the score sheets say that the Viribus Unitas of Dave Lawrence was sunk. The only clue I have to this sink is that later on Tuesday when Grant and I were chasing him, Dave said in response to his teammate Lee's question as to why he didn't stop to pump out, that "I tried that yesterday, and the hull settled instead and she filled up and sank."

Top Five High Point ships                Score            Total
===============================================================
Chris Pearce                            95-13-21           2325
Chris Grossaint                         24- 3-13            965
Alan Oster                              46- 3- 8            935
Don Cole                                35- 4- 7            800
Bart Purvis (sunk)                       1- 0- 1            760

Mark Roe (sunk)                        174-30-39           5340
Fluegel (sunk)                          93- 7-47           4355
Dave Au (sunk)                          84- 4- 4           2140
David Asman (sunk)                      26- 3-14           1835
Wade Koehn                              90- 4- 5           1250

Top Five High Point ships                Score            Total
===============================================================
Chris Au                                45-15-23           1985
Brian Eliassen                          79- 6-17           1790
Austin Keels                            42- 7-11           1145
Ted Brogden                             42- 3-12           1095
Lars!                                   22- 6-12            970

Kevin Hovis (sunk)                     236-24-17           4810
Bryan Finster (sunk)                    78- 6- 2           2230
Lief Goodson                            41-12-25           1960
Lou Meszaros                            73- 5- 7           1205
Dirty Dave Haynes                       77- 3- 4           1045

Top Five High Point ships                Score            Total
===============================================================
Chris Pearce                            63- 8-14           1530
Chris Grossaint                         40- 4-11           1050
Don Cole                                70- 0- 6           1000
Tim Beckett                             35- 7- 9            975
Alan Oster                              40- 2- 8            850

Kevin Hovis (sunk)                     175-21-23           4425
Dirty Dave Haynes (sunk)               110- 7-24           3475
Bryan Finster                          109-11-21           2415
Lou Meszaros                            87- 3-11           1495
Charley Stephens                        28- 5-11            955

Top Five High Point ships                Score            Total
===============================================================
Chris Au (sunk)                         47- 7-19           2495
Ron Horbul (sunk)                       71- 6- 6           2060
Austin Keels                            67-13-17           1845
Brian Eliassen                          45- 7-20           1625
Greig Stephens (sunk)                   25- 7- 2           1325

Mark Roe                                63-10- 6           1180
Wade Koehn                              46- 3-11           1085
Rick King                               54- 1- 8            965
Lief Goodson                            21- 2- 8            660
Dave Lawrence                           37- 2- 4            620

Tuesday

I had not been pleased with the speed on the Bellerophon, and that morning I took her for another run, after changing the gears again. This time she came in at 28 seconds even one way and 27.85 the other. I told Lief as he walked by. "Close enough," said Lief.

Fleet Battle #3 Allied A vs. Axis A, First Sortie

The Allied A fleet was shuffled around a bit, it was Frank and John Whitsell, James Clarke, Jim Coler, Dana Graham, Chris Grossaint, Chris Pearce, Steve Reichenbach, and Tim Beckett, for a total of 43 units.

The Axis A fleet had James Foster, Gary White, Andy Ray, Mark Roe, Rick King, Wade Koehn, Dave Lawrence, Lee McKinzie, David Asman and Fluegel, for 49 units.

According to Lee McKinzie's report, he had a rough start to this battle. The Contest Director and the admirals had gotten together over the concerns of people running and falling as they tried to go to the far side of the pond, and so it had been decided that captains were required to stay on the near shore. Somehow the word failed to reach Lee, who ventured over to the far side of the pond to get a better view of the action. He had just got lined up on some Sodaks and North Carolinas when folks started to yell at him to come back to the near shore. As he returned he had to pass behind some trees and lost sight of his ship. He must have bumped his throttle as he jumped across the small stream, because when he finally sighted his ship again it was attacking several North Carolinas. The Viribus Unitas took a beating before he could react and turn the ship about. He put the hard-pumping ship into reverse to back out and regain position. His mistake came when he stopped the ship, as all the water rushed back to the stern in a rush and drove the stern under.

Once again I missed most of the action on this one, but when there was an extended break in the action, I did stop and go look. Steve Reichenbach's beautiful white Portland had been ram sunk by Gary White's Bismarck (if the score sheet is right). It was out in the wide deep part of the lake, and Leroy had problems locating the ship. Several folks had a line on where the ship had gone down, but they had trouble relaying the info to Leroy. He searched for over ten minutes before people began worrying about their batteries, and he came out so that they could finish up the sortie. After the sortie was over, he went out and did find the ship relatively quickly.

During the time that Leroy was searching for the Portland, Andy and I stopped to chat with Austin Keels and Bart Purvis. Austin and Bart both had a line on the ship's sink location, and were frustrated with their inability to pass on the information. In fact, Austin got up and went to pass the word, and when he came back and sat down there was a pop from his chair and then Austin was sitting on the ground with his knees up by his chin, encased in the chair. After a quick smile while Chris Au took a picture of his predicament, Austin extricated himself, and then 'reset' the trap by replacing the flap of the chair's seat.

"There we go," he said, "a chair for Fluegel."

The long wait caused things to go wrong for Chris Grossaint. He reports that while waiting he turned off his pump, as he is always thinking to save some wear and tear on his priceless Pearce pump. After the ten to fifteen minute wait with his pump off, the battle resumed and Chris commenced to chase Rick King's Scharnhorst as Rick was on five.

Chris reports that his Washington is heavy at 37+ pounds, and doesn't have a lot of room for error, and one needs to be quick and responsive on the pump switch. Well, in a classic case of operator error, Chris wasn't quick and responsive, as he was sidemounting Rick's battle cruiser while he tugboated him a little. Then someone, probably Tim Beckett, expressed concern about how low in the water Chris's Washington was. Chris hit the pump switch, but it was already too late as the pump stream was being interfered with the water coming over the deck. In addition, the suction from the Scharnhorst helped pull the ship down. The Washington's nose came up quickly and she slid under in a blink of an eye.

Chris was naturally bummed at sinking, but there was a bit of good news as the electronics didn't get wet. In addition, Chris had light damage and even with the sink points he came in with about 1700 points for the Axis. He took more damage in later battles and didn't even come close to sinking.

Rick King also wrote to me about this battle. He was chasing someone in trouble towards the far side of the lake near the deep end. Two North Carolinas, which he thinks were Chris Grossaint's and one of the Whitsells) got Rick's Scharnhorst in an NC sandwich. Rick was running and gunning, firing both sidemounts as fast as he could and receiving the same from them, when all of a sudden Chris's ship started to list and quickly went down. Of course all of the Axis guys were cheering, whooping and hollering for several seconds. After cheering along, Rick remembered that he was still in a gunfight and so he looked back and started to make a turn away from the other North Carolina when someone yelled that the Scharny was going down. The Scharnhorst had been pumping some but not excessively and when Rick refocused on her she was settling fast and going down in a flash.

When Chris retrieved his North Carolina he was kind enough to also pull out Rick's Scharnhorst as she had sunk nearby. Back on the bench, Rick found two big ram holes, one on each side about 2" by 2". Don Cole verified these and asked Rick if he had called ram, which he hadn't. There had been a lot of bumping going on as the ships were running and gunning but no obvious rams, which would have been hard to tell from that distance anyway. Rick thinks that one might have happened when Chris's NC rolled under as the two ships were right beside each other. The other ram may have come when the Scharnhorst turned away toward the other NC. Rick's Scharnhorst only had 4 belows and the pump was running fine so the Scharnhorst was in no danger of sinking from gunfire damage. "Lesson Learned:" writes Rick, "When bumping and fighting that far away, check for rams!"

Top Five High Point ships                Score            Total
===============================================================
Chris Grossaint (sunk)                  41- 7- 3           1735
Chris Pearce                            50-14-14           1550
Frank Whitsell                          33- 5-11           1005
Tim Beckett                             26- 9- 5            735
Dana Graham                             17- 2- 9            670

Gary White                             211-20-29           4060
Mark Roe                               168-16-19           3030
Wade Koehn (sunk)                       66- 3- 7           2085
Rick King (sunk)                        36- 3- 4           1535
Lee McKinzie (sunk)                     28- 7- 4           1455

Top Five High Point ships                Score            Total
===============================================================
Bart Purvis                            132- 9-33           3195
Lars! (sunk)                            17- 7-15           1895
Chris Au                                25- 9-24           1675
Andy Dahl!                              54- 1-22           1665
Alan Oster                              60- 7-17           1625
(Also Don Cole, Austin Keels, Brian Eliassen all greater than 1000 pts)


Kevin Hovis (declared sunk)             77- 2- 3           2970
Bryan Finster                          123-14-12           2180
Charley Stephens                        14- 2-18           1090
Lou Meszaros                            40- 3- 6            775
Dirty Dave                              34- 0- 3            490

Wednesday

After breakfast we went out and ran some errands, getting another box of water, some more snacks for the lake, and other random supplies. Afterwards, we went back to work a bit on the ships. I finally got around to trying to fit in Grant's third gun, but the angles I needed for the magazine were such that I gave up the task until I had time for the job back home.

Over in Chris Grossaint's room, Chris reports that after checking to the regular maintenance of all systems on the Washington, it was time to correct many of the mistakes that reared their ugly heads during her first combat test. The expensive plastic stitching armor that had so startled Leroy the diver was removed and cheap, 2-liter soda-pop bottle armor was installed. The radio box water tightness was improved and a regular Futaba radio was installed within its protective balloon. Olympic was a quite different ship on Thursday.

Finally it was time for the BOD meeting. Grant and Andy were the only non-BOD members there, and played quietly in a corner of the room while the annual business meeting was run. As for the meeting itself, it went pretty smoothly, as some items were decided, and others were organized for further action. (That reminds me, I got some things to do for that....)

After the BOD meeting, it was time to get the boys out to the pond. I had told them that they were not going to be fighting in the night battle that evening, but to make it up for it they could do all the one-on-ones we could manage before 6:30. On the drive out, we started talking again about the campaign battles of the day before. Grant was busy trying to decide which aircraft carrier he would build. Then Andy spoke up.

"You know," he said quietly, "I've decided that I like campaign better than I did yesterday."

"Really?" Grant and I said, together. If you know Andy, this was a major move.

"Yep, today I give campaign a one out of ten. Yesterday it was zero out of ten."

Out at the lake, we found Ron Horbul battling away happily with Lief. Ron had continued to have radio problems all day Tuesday, and despite trying several people's transmitters and combinations and special positioning, had been unable to nail down the problem. Today with the limited crowd the radio was working fine, and even though he sank soon after we arrived, he was still happy.

There were others out at the pond as well. Kevin Bray wrote to me that he'd come out to the lake around 10:00 A.M to find only the USS Macon but no Bart Purvis. When Dana Graham, Dave Asman, Lee McKinzie, and Dave Lawrence showed up, a class 4 death match was called for. Randy Stiponovich also showed up and was involved as well.

In the words of Kevin, this is how it went:

Basic Rules were this:

1. 2 minutes would be called instead of 5.
2. CO₂ and bb's could be reloaded each sortie.
3. Batteries would have to remain in the ship throughout the battle.

The event started with everyone looking for targets of opportunity. Each ship lasted the first sortie without much difficulty. The second sortie, Dana Graham forgot to turn his pump on then there were 5 ships left. The forgetfulness was catching because in the third sortie, David Asman went down from pump forgetfulness as well. The forth and fifth sorties were slugfests. Each remaining ship took turns giving and receiving. By the fifth sortie, Lee's ship succumbed to the waves. In the sixth sortie Lee asked to re-enter due to a ram not being called. We were all there to have fun so we said sure. Both Lee and Dave sunk in that sortie. Our batteries were getting low and it looked like the guy with the most amps would win. I had 20 amp hours in my ship and I knew my ship could last. In the seventh sortie, David asked to come back and since Randy Stiponovich and myself were all that was left, we obliged him. We both concentrated our fire on David and he quickly sank again. That left Randy and myself to battle it out for the "title".

The eighth sortie we both "jockeyed" for position. There was a lot of "give and take" going on. My ship had developed a "list" and that worked to my advantage. I protected the side that was exposed and Randy was denied a target with the other. Toward the end of the sortie, it seemed obvious Randy's ship was doomed. The battery was rather weak but the captains spirit was strong. So we went into the ninth sortie.

The ninth sortie, I backed the Moltke into position and released several rounds of bb's. Some of them were finding their target and some where hitting his casement area. In the end, he sank. It was a very hard fought battle that lasted for around 4 hours. It was the most intense battling I had ever participated in and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

While the death match was going on, there weren't a lot of others available to battle the boys. Andy fought a sortie with Lief while Ron was off fixing up after a sink. Andy was a bit more cautious than usual, but Lief put some good holes into him while Andy zipped back and forth trying to hit the veteran. Lief and I tried to coach him to stop when his guns came to bear and the other ship was relatively motionless, but with a thumb continually on the throttle Andy's opportunities were short. But he enjoyed the match and seemed pleased with the comments Lief had given him.

Grant managed to snag a match with James Clarke, who was driving the Houston. I cautioned him on how to attack the faster cruiser, but the lesson James gave him probably stuck a lot better. The dual-sterned cruiser let the battlecruiser chase and chase while the cruiser picked her shots well. However, after 'the Dads' limited the boundaries for the cruiser to run, the Indomitable, armed only with sidemounts, managed to catch the cruiser a few times in sidemount passes.

After the score was tallied, the cruiser had more hits with 15 aboves for 150 points. However, the Indomitable had scored three aboves and 3 belows to gain 180 points. Both boys seemed pleased with the outcome.

After Matthew Clarke had a turn fighting the Houston against an Jamie Foster's Mogami, James was back to take on Andy's Inflexible. Andy learned the same lessons as his brother had, but James had also picked up a few pointers too, and took the match at 355 to 170.

When James Foster had arrived with Jamie, he had moaned, "I don't know why I brought my ship, no one has challenged me in two years." David Asman took the challenge and after Andy gave him the radio clip the two went off to fight, but I didn't catch the results. It probably helped that David was using his Z-boat and not his Westfalen.

Grant, in the meantime, had talked Dana Graham into pulling back out his Invincible. Dana was his usual gruff self, and the two similar ships fought hard. At one point Grant said, "I think I shot your superstructure."

"You better not have," growled Dana, which got a subdued chuckle from Grant, and a larger grin from his father and Andy. Andy says he even saw a smile on Dana's face. After the match was over, Dana reported a count of 9 aboves and 4 belows, while Grant said he easily had more than that. I was impressed, as Grant has never been skilled in the use of the sidemounts, but seemed to be catching on. I decided that not having a bow or stern gun for a few battles was probably a good thing for Grant.

In the meantime, Lief and Ron were still fighting away. Ron came back up after a second sink, and although his pump had worked in this battle, its output wasn't so hot, and so we discussed the possibility of if it could be wired up backwards. After tinkering with the system, Ron went back out and got sunk again. "I don't care," he said afterwards. "I learned a lot. It almost makes up for my problems on Tuesday."

Well, the other folks were packing up, and a check of the time showed that the magical hour of 6:30 had come. We went back to the motel and unloaded. To save time, we went and ate in the motel restaurant. We ordered burgers, and also some breaded cauliflower for an appetizer. The appetizers were interesting in that they were steaming hot on the outside but still frozen on the inside. After having them reheated, they were great.

Back in our room, I brought out the electrical connection for the lights. A test of the system had two of the four wired up lights working. I decided that was good enough for me. As I was putting the ship back together and rearming the guns, Chris Pearce knocked on the door. "Better hurry," he said. "Sun is going down."

As we were driving out to the pond, the sun did go down. I got into a conversation with the boys when Andy said, "I've seen a vulture on every trip to the lake except this one." We finally determined that it was likely a hawk that he was seeing. But when the conversation was over I didn't recognize our surroundings in the different light conditions, and panicked, thinking that I had driven past the turn-off and hadn't realized it. After a few minutes with my adrenaline screaming and wondering if we should turn around, the boys assured me that they recognized a few things, and we continued on. They turned out to be correct, and we found the turn-off and all was well again.

After unloading the ship, we waited for the darkness to settle. Andy and I both had flashlights along, and Grant used mine to help out Kevin Bray, who was struggling to fix his rudder. Leroy, not to be outdone and always helpful, walked up with a blazingly bright lantern. It was too bright for me, and it brought with it the bugs.

I found Ron Horbul, who had decided to leave Nats in mid-week but had stayed just to watch the night battle. "Curly was all set to go, but then he decided not to go. I can't figure him out," said Ron.

Night Battle

This year, the two fleets were more evenly matched for the annual excursion into darkness. There was no moon, and the glow from the baseball fields in Leeton were masked by the trees. There was just a hint of starlight on the pond, and only those ships that were in the right spots could be dimly seen when their lights were off.

The Allies on the water were: the North Carolinas of Chris Pearce, Tim Beckett, and Frank Whitsell. Brian Eliassen had his South Dakota, Chris Au had the Malaya, and Patrick Clarke was running the Houston. Then there was Lars with his 28 second Bellerophon.

The Axis lineup included Fluegel's Baden, the Nagatos of Dirty Dave Haynes and Andy Ray, Wade Koehn's Bismarck, Jeff Lide's Kirishima, Kevin Bray's Moltke, Lief Goodson's von der Tann, James Foster's D. Victoria, and Randy Stiponovich's 1.5 unit destroyer Akizuki.

As the Allies assembled on the wider, right side of the pond, I took the Bellerophon around to the back of the Allied Fleet. Lights flashed on and off on the lake as people waited. The Axis were all clustered to the left in the narrower portion. The call for battle came.

Remembering my problems with timers in the past two years, I had Andy keep right next to me with the timer and his flashlight with the shaded lenses. He was using all three. Kevin Bray had asked if Grant would help him out, and I had quickly agreed. Not wanting to lose Andy by walking back and forth, I remained mostly stationary, only moving up the shoreline once during the battle.

As the battle began, both fleets juked about nervously, waiting for someone to move. Then the rudder malfunctioned on Kevin's Moltke, and he called five out of control. Other ships broke formation, and the attacks started. I watched as the little Akizuki dart back and forth, looking for a target for her spurt gun. I let the Bellerophon drift in close with its lights off, but when the little destroyer seemed to be close I could no longer see my own ship. Flicking on the lights showed that she was in perfect position for her sidemount gun, but I only got a few shots off as the Akizuki quickly sensed her danger and accelerated away.

I tried the same trick again, floating in slowly on another Axis ship, but the Allies kept cutting me off. At one point I was floating next to the Malaya, which had just backed off after a big exchange of sidemounts. Tim Beckett later told me that Chris Au was just about to open fire on the Bellerophon when Tim identified the ship for Chris.

Despite the score, it seemed like the Axis were the aggressors in this battle, as the battle slowly moved from the left until Andy and I were standing in the thick of things. Then when Kevin's five minutes expired, battle paused as Leroy went in to recover the ship. Standing there waiting, I found that Andy and I were standing next to Lief and Fluegel.

"Where are you, Lars?" asked Lief. I had been quite helpful in years past, so I'm not surprised that he asked.

"Out there somewhere," I said. Darkness was my friend this year.

Then the light from an Axis spotlight lit up the Bellerophon. "Is that the Bellerophon?" asked someone else. "Where are you, Lars?"

"Right out..." I heard Andy start to say. Andy said later that he was going to point at the Baden, but I stopped him before he could finish. The Baden and the Bellerophon weren't far apart and I thought he was going to give me away.

"Don't tell them where I am," I said, under my breath. In a louder voice, in answer to the query, I said, "No, that's the Baden."

For the rest of the sortie, Andy took great delight in saying, "No, that's Fluegel's Baden" whenever the Bell turned up in the spotlights.

Every so often, when the action drifted off, I flicked on the lights to 'find my ship' again. This was happening all over, and had been all battle. It was like the lake was covered by large, bright, fireflies.

At one point, however, I lost the ship, and didn't feel safe enough to try the lights. "Where am I?" I said to Andy.

"Right there," said Andy, and then looked up. He had his own moment of panic, as he thought I looked like Lief and that Lief, just up the shoreline, was actually me.

The battle continued to slowly work its way to our right, but we were in the thick of things for a time, trying to sneak in on Fluegel's Baden, but the old sea-dog was suspicious every time we got close, and spun his haymaker in the Bell's direction. I did get in a few sidemounts on Lief though. "That was a good one, Lars," hollered Lief.

The action continued, and now it seemed like we were entirely surrounded by Axis. James Foster's D. Victoria was especially interesting, with a row of small blinking LED's on top of the fore and aft turrets. There were about six of the little lights on each turret, and they were all on dim, except that they alternated in going to full bright, and so they looked those moving light setups for aircraft runways, or movie theater aisles. Two or three Axis had very bright spotlights that were used to find targets hiding out in the dark, and they could pick up ships twenty to thirty feet away easily. It was really eerie to see your own ship light up in those ghostly lights. Sometimes the Axis hollered out that they saw you, other times they chased another ship that was closer and yours disappeared again into the murk.

Then "Man in the water" was called again.

"Why?" people called out, as the action stopped.

"Lief sank," came the answer. Later Lief said that his von der Tann had run ashore, and 'when it kicked off the bank, it rolled and sank." He didn't look too happy. I also noticed that when the ship was under the water there was no sign of her lights.

I used my bow gun quite a bit in this battle, sneaking up on ships, and after I'd dumped the majority of my sidemounts and I'd spent a several minutes without identifying a fellow Allied, I decided to call five and head out to the far shoreline to meld with the shoreline and sit out my five. A few times I was chased, but was able to shake off pursuit. The toughest part was trying to bring in the ship after the five had expired. I had no idea what kind of damage I had, and didn't want to turn my lights on and thus my pump off for too long of time. By the time I'd figured out what direction the ship was going, it was already turning away from me again. In big swooping turns the ship gradually made its way to shore. Andy had been a great help, standing alongside and giving me calls on the timer, and so I allowed him to reach down and touch the ship when it came in.

The battle was petering out, and there were no more sinks. After we carried the ship back to the pit area, we looked around for Kevin and Grant. There, we found out about Kevin's troubles.

Kevin sent me the following on his night battle:

This year, some of the best allied captains showed up. It was quite dark with the lack of moonlight and no city lights to help. Battle was called. It did not take long for the ships guns to report they had found something to shoot at. Lots of lights flickered back and forth. The Moltke called "5 out of control" immediately. This caused Chris Pearce to move down the shore line looking for her. Brian Eliassen was using military style "night vision" goggles. He said he had ordered them for just this occasion. They seemed to work well because he was enjoying himself greatly. I can't really say who sunk or not but I remember the gnats controlling the area after we were through battling. It was good to participate in night battle and even better to have it over with.

Yes, Brian had indeed used night goggles (with a price tag of $1700), a fact I didn't learn until after the battle was over. My first reaction was negative, all I could see was either an 'arms race' or another rule proposal. Brian said that they were a big help but that he still had a terrible problem with ship identification, a skill he is rather poor at during the day.

Allied fleet beat the Axis fleet by a score of 5,110 to 1,985

Top Five High Point ships                Score            Total
===============================================================
Chris Pearce                            18- 5- 5            555
Chris Au                                17- 2- 5            470
Brian Eliassen                          16- 1- 3            335
Frank Whitsell                           5- 0- 3            200
Lars!                                   14- 0- 1            190

Lief Goodson (sunk)                     14- 5- 6           1365
Dirty Dave Haynes                       79- 3- 6           1165
Andy Ray                                61- 6- 2            860
Wade Koehn                              40- 3- 6            775
Fluegel                                 21- 1- 3            385

After the ships were all off the water, the lights came back on in the pits. Kevin Bray asked me to count him, as he was planning to spend the night in Leroy's camper. One solitary hit on the waterline was all I found.

As we walked away from the tents back to the mangy Ranger, I stopped the boys. "Here's what I've been talking about, getting out into the country where you can really see the stars." I showed them the Milky Way and the giant dust cloud, something we can't see back in the city. A few other star watchers joined us for a minute or two, but the gnats and mosquitoes drove us on to our vehicles.

Back at the motel, it was a rush to get the ships counted, the scores turned in, and then start the patching. By this time the boys were getting more and more tired of the long days, but they refused to go to bed until I was back in the room. There was not to be any late-night meals this year. I was ready to hit the hay myself.

Thursday

As we started to pack up for the trip out to the lake, Grant suddenly turned to Andy and said, "Hey Andy, Nats is more than half over! Man, the time went quick!"

"Speak for yourself," I grumbled, under my breath. The boys heard it anyways, and smiled nervously. "But that doesn't mean I haven't had fun," I said to their relief.

Out at the lake, we were once again the last battlers to arrive. I was surprised, however, that we got there before the A Fleets started. The bbs started firing after we had set up. On this day, our table and Curly's table had moved to under the large Administration tent. Curly had come up with Ron, but he was going home with us. We had sent Curly's tent home with Ron, to save space.

Fleet Battle #4 Allied A vs. Axis B, First Sortie

The order was swapped on this day, a reverse of the battles on Tuesday, so that the two split fleets could face their alternates in campaign.

On this day, the Axis changed their strategy. Instead of maintaining a compact formation, they stretched out the Allies and they had a better time of it.

As for the Allies, they were running a bit short-handed. Bart and Austin Keels were taking it easy, and Greig Stephens and Jim Coler were not on the water either. They were, however, out at the lake, giving Chris Grossaint a hard time.

Kevin Hovis reports that he was glad for the change in Axis strategy. Teamed with Dirty Dave, the Bismarck and Mutsu held to the usual position in the narrows for a short period. After about ten minutes they ran out into the open water to attack the Allied heavy hitters. Tim Beckett and Chris Pearce were the main attackers, but Dirty and Jeff Lide and Lou Meszaros hit them pretty hard. The Bismarck only took light damage. Kevin says he emptied his sterns too soon and called five about the time that Alan Oster's North Carolina went down.

I asked Alan about his sink, and he wrote that he had an uncharged battery for some reason that he has not yet figured out. He was able to maintain speed for only the first six minutes or so of the sortie. When he realized he was losing speed he tried to make for the open lake but was cut off by Andy Ray and Jeff, both of them raked the North Carolina terribly but Alan was able to turn away right into the path of Kevin Bray and Lief and others who also were getting some good shots. His return fire was weak and ineffective and with the Allied fleet supporting units engaged elsewhere the North Carolina went down about 10 yards from shore.

Top Five High Point ships                Score            Total
===============================================================
Alan Oster (sunk)                       46- 3-24           2735
Dana Graham                             42- 8-34           2320
Chris Pearce                            54-12-28           2240
John Whitsell                           27- 7-12           1045
Tim Beckett                             15- 3- 8            625

Gary White                             285-13-20           4175
Kevin Hovis(sunk)                      120-20-25           3950
Bryan Finster                           79-10-39           2990
Rick King                               59- 4- 5            940
Mark Roe                                25- 6- 4            600

Top Five High Point ships                Score            Total
===============================================================
Lars! (sunk)                            76-13-25           3135
Andy Dahl! (sunk)                      114- 4-15           2790
Ted Brogden                             78- 6-17           1780
Brian Eliassen                          52- 6-15           1420
Don Cole                                77- 5- 4           1095

Lou Meszaros (sunk)                    235-12-20           4650
Wade Koehn                              65- 8-18           1750
Lee McKinzie (sunk)                     26- 3- 8           1535
Dave Lawrence (sunk)                    52- 0- 4           1520
Fluegel                                 27- 4-18           1270

Friday

Out at the lake, the atmosphere was calm and relaxed as people prepared for the last fleet battle. The issue on who was going to win the week was no longer in doubt, the Allies had about a 25,000 point lead. Those on both sides that still had a functional ship were joking and laughing as they prepared.

The Axis had kept together their strong A fleet of the day before, but they lost Dirty Dave right at the start as a broken servo knocked the veteran battler out of the line-up.

Fleet Battle #5 Allied A vs Axis A, First Sortie

The Axis fleet boasted eleven ships with 58.5 units. The Allied A fleet put out eight ships with 43 units.

With nothing to hold back for the battling was hot and furious. Several of the Allied battlers came off the water talking about how fierce the action had been.

Kevin Hovis records that this was his best of the fleet battles. The Axis had decided to repeat the plan from Thursday and attack the heavy hitters. They went after Tim Beckett. Kevin's Bismarck took substantial triple damage during the first sortie and called five when the pump stream got heavy. Chris and Tim took this opportunity to attack him, but were in turn attacked by the Bismarck's teammates. After Kevin survived his five and brought his ship off the water, his inspection showed some really big holes near the waterline, but not much below.

Alan Oster writes that his battle on Friday began with his North Carolina nearest to shore and in line with the Allied heavies in line abreast with sterns toward the Axis units at the narrow end of the lake. War was declared and the Axis came hard on and engaged. His first target was Jeff Lide's Kongo who stayed in there and duked it out close in to shore. Alan kept his ship near shore and lost track of his friendly units who were targeting the Bismarck and Scharnhorst in the narrow neck area. The couple of slower Axis units in the narrow end came up and Alan beat feet a little farther out with Jeff Lide and Andy Ray now engaging. Then Yamato showed up and he realized it was time to make for the other side of the lake. Instead of just running the North Carolina had to trade shots with Yamato and Andy but got the worst of it and ran pumping very hard with Jeff in pursuit. After reaching the relative safety of the far reaches of the ocean Jeff and Yamato ran Alan until his ship went down about 25 yards out.

The other sink in the first sortie was Rick King's Scharnhorst. Rick writes that his sink really wasn't a sink. Rick was one of the battlers who kept having radio interference problems, and had missed both first sorties on Monday due to the problem. He had problems again in this sortie. Guns were firing intermittently, and the ship was moving by itself, but Rick somehow managed to make it through the sortie. By the time the second sortie was to start, he could tell that he was going to have more of the same problems. It was hot and Rick was really tired so he just said the heck with it and didn't go out for the second sortie. He didn't realize that this was counted as a sink, especially as he hadn't actually launched before the sortie started. If the score had been close he says that he would have pressed for a 'no sink' ruling or some other relief, but with Nats about over and as he hates whining he let it go.

Top Five High Point ships                Score            Total
===============================================================
Dana Graham                             58-15-60           3955
Tim Beckett (sunk)                      41-15-31           3335
Alan Oster (sunk)                       28- 1-20           2305
Don Cole                                60- 4- 7           1050
Chris Grossaint                         23- 3-13            955

Kevin Hovis                            179-18-24           3440
Bryan Finster                          108- 4-10           1680
Rick King (sunk)                        11- 1- 0           1035
Gary White                              72- 3- 2            895
Kevin Bray                              13- 9- 8            755

Top Five High Point ships                Score            Total
===============================================================
Frank Whitsell                          39- 5-21           1565
Ted Brogden                             44- 3-20           1515
Lars!                                   46- 7-15           1385
Chris Au                                34- 7-17           1365
Austin Keels                            39- 4-12           1090

Lief Goodson (sunk)                     67-16-36           3670
Fluegel                                 93-16-25           2580
Randy Stiponovich (sunk)                69- 3- 9           2015
James Foster (sunk)                     48- 3- 7           1605
Charley Stephens                        51-12- 8           1210
Curly Barrett                           29- 4- 5            640

Saturday

"I didn't think it would all fit," said Curly. "I am glad the tent went home with Ron, though."

We gave a sad farewell to Leroy and Kevin, and then pushed off.

The ride home was a bit interesting. The mangy Ranger was pretty cramped for two adults and two teenagers. We all ended up moving around to give folks a turn stretching out, and even Curly and I both took a turn in the little tiny back seats, while Curly entertained us with some of his tales.

First off, he had found out that the Axis plan and the Allied plan for the first three fleet battles both had the Axis fleet doing the same thing. "There's got to be a problem with somebody's plan if the other side is trying to get you to do the exactly what you want to do," he laughed glumly.

Then there was the voting for "Most Feared Axis". He wasn't begrudging the award to Fluegel, but felt that he had deserved a few votes. "No one would come play with me until I lost my rudder. If that's not fear, I don't know what is. Maybe I'd have won if it was 'Most Ignored Axis' and not Most Feared." He had us all chuckling.

Well, if Curly didn't take many hits during the battle, he sure took some hits on the way home. Don't ask me how, but we spilled pop and juice on him at least three times, and all three were below the waterline.

As we droned through Iowa, we passed a convoy of more than thirty army trucks pulling large cannons. "Hey Grant, remember your question on the trip down about Canada invading Minnesota?" I asked. "I think you may have been on to something."

At the Minnesota/Iowa border rest area, we called home. Curly told his wife Amy that we would be home by ten o'clock. I thought he was nuts, we'd be home by 6:30 easy. "That's true, but then it's a surprise and I get bigger hugs," said Curly.

He was right. He got plenty of big hugs.

This is where I would have ended the chronicles had it just been written by me. With the reports I received, and folks' bests and worsts, here are a few extras that I didn't know quite where to put, but were too good to not use or re-use again.

Extras

Rank       Allied Captain                    Score           Sink Pts    Total
==============================================================================
 1         Chris Pearce                    308-57-92              -       9105
 2         Chris Au                        206-48-97            900       9010
 3         Alan Oster                      220-16-77           2000       8450
 4         Lars!                           175-33-68           2400       8375
 5         Dana Graham                     147-27-107             -       7495
 6         Brian Eliassen                  287-36-65              -       7020
 7         Andy Dahl!                      271-18-51            800       6510
 8         Tim Beckett                     151-36-57           1000       6260
 9         Ted Brogden                     218-18-55              -       5380
10         Don Cole                        319-16-35              -       5340
11         Chris Grossaint                 134-21-49           1000       5315
12         Austin Keels                    218-28-47              -       5230
13         Frank Whitsell                  133-23-61              -       4955
14         Bart Purvis                     145-10-39            700       4350
15         Grant Dahl!                     116-16-33              -       3210
16         Ron Horbul                       90- 9- 6            900       2325
17         Grieg Stephens                   49-10- 6            800       1840
18         John Whitsell                    55-11-20              -       1825
19         Rick Whitsell                    75- 5-18              -       1775
20         Steve Reichenbach                41- 5-10              -       1035
21         Matthew Clarke                   47- 4- 3              -        720
22         James Clarke                     19- 3- 2              -        365
23         Patrick Clarke                   10- 0- 4              -        300
24         Jim Coler                        13- 0- 3              -        280
25         Mike Maxwell                     13- 0- 0              -        130

Rank       Axis Captain                      Score           Sink Pts    Total
==============================================================================
 1         Kevin Hovis                     787-85-92           5000      19595
 2         Bryan Finster                   497-45-84           1200      11495
 3         Mark Roe                        456-63-73            900      10685
 4         D.W. Fluegel                    285-30-96           1800      10200
 5         Gary White                      636-40-55              -      10110
 6         Lief Goodson                    185-39-81           1600       8475
 7         Lou Meszaros                    435-23-44           1000       8125
 8         Wade Koehn (Bismarck)           307-21-47           1000       6945
 9         David Haynes                    319-15-42           1000       6665
10         Charley Stephens (Vdt)          181-31-52              -       5185
11         Rick King (Scharnhorst)         160- 9-17           1800       4475
12         Lee McKinzie                     99-17-16           1600       3815
13         Dave Lawrence                   148- 3-10           1600       3655
14         David Asman (Nassau)             97- 8-33            800       3620
15         Dave Au                         138-11-14           1000       3355
16         Andy Ray                        210-16-11              -       3050
17         Randy Stiponovich (Vdt)          94- 8-14            800       2640
18         James Foster                     89-10-13            700       2490
19         Curly Barrett                    96-11-25              -       2485
20         Jeff Lide                       169- 6- 9              -       2290
21         Kevin Bray                       33-13-28              -       2055
22         Jamie Foster                     35- 6-10              -       1000
23         Wade Koehn (Lutzow)               0- 0- 0            700        700
24         Randy Stiponovich (Akizuki)       6- 0- 3            400        610
25         David Asman (Z-35)                0- 0- 0            600        600
26         Rick King (Graf Spee)             0- 0- 0              -          0
27         Charley Stephens (Scharn.)        0- 0- 0              -          0