Ship Logs Overview

Set Up - Battle Damage

In the diagram at left is shown part of a sample ship log for the Japanese Battleship Mikasa. Note the vessel's name entered above the data bars, and that all six propulsion boxes are filled in with the available speeds. A very important detail to note is how the main, secondary and boat gun armaments are recorded in the right half of each armament box. These areas are where players track actual weapon availability and damage. Lettered "positions" always appear in the center-line of the box, and each number is fully marked off if damaged. This means that if a hit were scored on the Mikasa's main guns, and the player rolled a "four" on the die roll (to randomly locate the damage; 1-6 = forward, 7-12 = aft), the top "2" on the Mikasa's main armament box would have the appropriate slash or cross drawn across it to show that the entire forward two-gun turret is out of commission. Lettered positions located down the center-line of the box are always lost in "sets."

Mikasa's secondary armament is different. It is based on the "beam pattern" arrangement of single mounted guns. These numbers are always drawn along the left side of the box in order to show that they can be marked off and new numbers written next to them. Also note that the numbers must be written according the the beam pattern arrangement (if any). In the Mikasa's case, she uses beam pattern one, which means she has one secondary gun in each of four sponsons. These are written in the armament box as a "1," "5" and "1" respectively for each side of the ship. This indicates one sponsoned gun forward on each side, five guns amidships on each side, and another sponsoned gun aft on each side. Note that the pattern number is written in the "pos:" slot for convenience.

The boat gun listing indicates the simplest beam pattern class 0. This class requires no special tracking of sponsoned or turreted weapons, and merely supplies a list of one-gun positions to be marked off as damage occurs.

In the example at left, the Mikasa (same example vessel as above) has suffered several different types of damage. One of her propulsion boxes has been destroyed and two further boxes have been damaged, reducing her maximum available speed 68 millimeters per turn. She has also suffered light flooding in her forward compartment and moderate flooding in her port-amidships compartment. Her forward two-gun main turret is damaged and not able to fire until repaired. Both forward secondary sponsons are destroyed, as well as two port-side secondaries amidships. Another port-side secondary amidships is damaged. Note that several of her boat guns on both sides of the ship have also been lost in unison with the secondaries.