Off Keeleeng Formosa 1885: Sino-French War

[MengJiao]

  Yes, there was a Sino-French war in 1884-85.  The Chinese did surprisingly well considering the forces actually engaged with the French were deliberately not given much support by Beijing and the Northern Fleet.  The Northern Fleet could have moved faster and sent the German-built ironclads Zhenyaun and Dingyuan to attack the French and catch their ironclads without their torpedo boats.  Here's the Fighting Iron set up for a battle along those lines (lots of dice will be rolled).  I checked on the ships involved and added AP shells for the French and reasonable fire-fighting parameters for the Chinese.  Apparently, an American mercenary, Philo McGriffin, was often running these Chinese Ironclads which I guess accounts for the extremely high command ratings on them.  But we will see.   

[Gusington]

Nice. I've actually read up a bit on the Sino-French War. Those illustrations you have up there look exactly like the ones from the book I read. I think it may have been an Osprey title from their 'Duel' series.

[MengJiao]

Nice. I've actually read up a bit on the Sino-French War. Those illustrations you have up there look exactly like the ones from the book I read. I think it may have been an Osprey title from their 'Duel' series.

  That would be cool.  I love the duel series.  It's funny how often the statistics show the reverse of what the stereotypes are for a particular kind of encounter.  One weird thing about the war is that it was so unpopular with everyone around the world that the commanders gave up sending telegrams directly and just said things like...when the news (telegraphed -- by Reuters I guess) says X then excute plan Y.

  Anyway, the two Chinese ironclads are the same ones the Japanese captured in 1895 and that were in action as late as 1905.

[Gusington]

Correction, it was not an Osprey title but an MMPBooks title: https://amzn.to/3r13WnU.

[MengJiao]

Correction, it was not an Osprey title but an MMPBooks title: https://amzn.to/3r13WnU.

  Looks good.  In an ahistorical note -- the Chinese ships -- slightly faster, with slightly better turning radii, slightly better guns and much better armor -- in this hypothetical scenario, they got set on fire, but controlled that and closed in scoring some crew hits on the French.  As the Chinese circled in to get their funnel smoke out of the way and close, they scored a command hit on the French flagship.  Signals were out, the French didn't stay on course.  The flagship took serious damage and I declared a Chinese victory in the half-hour, mid-morning (inshore breeze) battle.