NATS Numbers and Misc Fun Facts

Each year I take a look at the scores from NATS and find what percentage of bbs that go on the water make holes in the other fleet’s ships. I find the hit percentage by taking the units for the ships and subtracting 1 or 1/2 units for each ship’s pump. I adjust for people who sank in the first sortie. Then I take that number as the Gun Units and multiplied it by 100 to get the total bbs that could be shot. Then I add up the number of holes and divide by bbs. I do not have the number of bbs left in captain’s guns at the end of each sortie or when they sink. I guessed that for every 100 bbs that could get shot only 75 did get shot. This year the Allies were outnumbered in ships and in even more outnumbered in guns. This created a target rich environment. The Allies ended the week with a higher percentage of hits then the Axis 17.1% to 12.5%. For the week the Axis had 137 more gun units (13,700 more bbs) on the water then the Allies.  Even with this large disadvantage the Allies were able to keep the battles close enough to give the Axis a very close NATS. The number of holes made by each fleet were also very close. The Axis had a total score of 2989-337-706 (4032 total). While the Allies had 3012-321-890 (4223 total).

In the “Hug n Slug” small fleet battle on Wednesday the No Flag fleet shot an incredible 63.1%. Most of this damage was done to the Hood, as that ship took a stern gun pounding for 222 aboves.

Every year I give Chris Kessler a hard time for the small number of hits he takes during NATS. His first two years he used the same hull skin and had a total of 52-9-17. He only took damage in five of the ten battles he participated in. All of NATS 2004 he took 11-0-0. This year Chris got into the furball a little more often taking 63-7-20, passing his total from the past two NATS.

The most aboves taken in a fleet battle (Not counting the Hood’s 222) were 164 by Wade’s Bismark and 135 by Brian Kohler’s Vandgaurd. The most ons go to Charlie’s NC and DallasBaden each with 19. The most bellows went into Frank’s Arizona 42 and Ty’s I-boat 40 both in the Monday afternoon battle. The most holes taken in a battle go to Charley and the Hood 243, followed by Wade’s Bismark 198 and Ty’s I-boat 181. I did not think you could get 181 holes in an I-boat, there’s just not that much room.

In the battle of the future stars Nathaniel Goodson (19-1-2) beat Bryan Bray (10-1-1) when Bryan forgot to turn on his pump and sank.

Once again history repeats itself as the Bismarck sinks the Hood is a quick one sided battle 7-1-3 to 47-6-23.

There were a lot of cruisers running around in campaign this year. Tuesday something strange must have happened to them as five of them sunk. I saw two of the Houston class floating down the pond with their bows sticking out of the water. It would have been funny if they were not on my team.

The “World Series of NATS” was tied with each fleet winning four battles.

The 1530 point difference in the NATS score was the amount of damage taken by 47 ships in fleet battles. Twelve ships took twice that damage. In the Monday afternoon battle Ty took almost three times that in damage. How close is 1530 points? That’s 153 aboves or 62 ons or 31 belows, seven allied ships took more bellows then that in a battle. Thirteen targets knocked down in campaign would make up 1530 points (The Axis kept 8 standing). One Class 10 return convoy run is worth 2000 points. A Class 10 sink is worth 1500. The return convoy run of a Class 8 is worth 1600 points. Getting your ship stuck under a dock and sunk is worth 1400 points.

Out of the 38 sinks in fleet battles 11 were in the first sortie. Of these 11 sinks 8 ships sank with very little damage. Leaving only 3 ships to sink from combat damage in the first sortie. Ten ships sank in the 2nd sortie with low damage totals, including a few withdrawals. This leaves us with 20 sinks from combat damage and 18 from systems failures, most likely a pump. I’m sure that a few of the 20 sinks from combat damage had that damage caused by another system failing (Drive or rudder). The Allies lost at least 11 ships (50 units) with suspected systems failures and the Axis lost 7 ships (26 units). Once again if all of your systems work and the captain does not do anything stupid (Leaving a pump off, getting beached) you will stay afloat. This difference in reliability was easily the difference in the Axis victory at NATS.