Hi all it's Neil here with another Casting Off post for Victory at Sea with my growing Royal Navy task force. This time is all about battleships as I have painted up the Duke Of York, a King George V class battleship. I will in this post show you my painted model, give a brief overview of historical battleship use and how I see them being used in games.
Battleships were long the pinnacle power of surface navies combining big guns and thick armour to slog it out with other battleships and easily destroy lighter ships. This usually came at the cost of speed compared to the lighter ships. The primary role of the battleship was fight enemy ships, usually other battleships, in the line of battle. WW2 saw the eventual decline and replacement of the battleship by the aircraft carrier as the primary surface striking force. Battleships took up extra roles during this transition, supporting the aircraft carriers in the Pacific to help defend from enemy aircraft, escorting convoys in the Atlantic where their presence was enough often to prevent it being attacked and bombarding shore targets in support of amphibious landings.
The King George V class battleships of the Royal Navy are part of the "treaty battleships" group in that they were build to comply with one or more of the interwar naval treaties which restricted total displacement of the vessels and the size of armament with the aim to prevent the naval arms races that had typified the build up to WW1. The King George V class was built with good protection, ten 14 inch guns in two turrets with 4 guns and a single turret with 2 guns and able to achieve a speed of 28.3 knots, which is good for a battleship. Compared to many contemporary battleships, the class had under-caliber guns but they used heavier shells with improved explosive charges to make up for this to keep the treaties that other nations were ignoring. 5 ships of this class were built including the Duke Of York.
HMS Duke of York was an active ship in WW2 escorting Atlantic convoy, serving in the Mediterranean supporting the African campaigns and the invasion of Sicily before transferring to the North Sea and getting involved in the destruction of the German battleship Scharnhorst. It was transferred to the Pacific theatre but suffered mechanical failures preventing its arrival before Japan surrendered.
I painted up my Duke of York in the same way as I've painted the previous ships but instead of doing the dark brown decking I went with a lighter brown using the Citadel Gorthor Brown paint.
In game, the role of battleships is the same as the primary role in real life to use their large guns and good armour to duel the enemy battleships and to destroy their supporting cruisers. They are slower ships in game so can take time to get into position especially if needing to get across the board for objectives. Despite their good armour, they are vulnerable to torpedo and air attacks as these can often circumvent it or deal critical damage reducing their combat effectiveness. Targeting priorities should always be the enemy battleships and heavy cruisers for your main guns and your light guns should be sued for destroyers or if dual-purpose taking down aircraft. These are what you should rely on as your main fighting force and if equipped with observation aircraft can still contribute towards your scouting points. These should be screened by your cruisers to prevent destroyers closing and along with fighters to prevent enemy aircraft attacking them.
The HMS Duke of York now takes my Royal Navy task force upto 3 destroyers, 3 light cruisers and 2 battleships with an aircraft carrier still to add. I am also looking forward to the release of the full rulebook release with the full fleet list for the factions to see what options I can add such as the ill-fated HMS Hood (which I do have on pre-order). I hope that you're enjoying this series so far and finding it interesting. Come back soon for some more Victory At Sea and check out my Instagram for WIP pictures of what I'm painting currently. If you want to check out more Victory at Sea posts, here is a link to the full Casting Off series. See you on the seas again soon!
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