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It's Always Something

Mark De Antonio

Photos for this battle are available at http://www.scrapcombatships.com/photos/2002.html.

On Dec 7, 2002 SCRAP gathered at Irvine Lake for the Pearl Harbor Memorial Battle. Attending Captains were Joe Dworniczak with the SMS Von der Tann, John Flores with the SMS Moltke, Ty Siouxpancic with the HMS Inflexible and Mark De Antonio with the USS Brooklyn. Brian Eliassen was also present but left the SoDak at home to keep the teams even. We also had three guest. Matt, Todd and Brandon who came out to look at the ships and watch the battle.

Since this was a sanctioned battle, speed testing and hull hardness tests were conducted. All four ships passed speed testing and were actually running slow. All ships passed hull hardness testing with the exception of Inflexible. However, everyone agreed to allow Ty to battle as long as he replaced his sheeting before the next battle.

All Captains then tweaked their guns and the ships were put on the water. Von der Tann soon had some kind of electrical problem but it was fixed shortly as it turned out to just be a dead battery. All ships were then on the water and battle was called.

Almost immediately the Inflexible drove over a sand bar and became totally stuck. This seemed odd because usually all ships in SCRAP can pass over this part of the lake at the level the water was. The consensus on shore at the time was that the ship must be stuck in the mud.

The Moltke and Brooklyn engaged and both ships fired on , and scored, multiple hits on the other. Moltke then had radio problems, called five out of control , and tried to make it back to shore while the ship still had some control. Moltke beached itself but this put its stern underwater and the pump was unable to keep up so it sunk by the stern before the 5 minutes could expire.

While the Inflexible and Moltke were having difficulties, it was far from over yet. Von der Tann continued to have a problem with one of it's systems and had to be pulled off the water. Then the Brooklyn came to a complete stop in the water in the same area as the Inflexible.

So the situation was this, two ships with malfunctions that made it back to shore, and two ships stuck out in the water about 30' from shore. Ty and Mark decided to flip a coin to see who would get the ships. As Mark was wading out into the very cold water, muttering under his breath, he decided that next time he would call "tails". When the ships were reached the problem was discovered. Both ships had huge wads of moss wrapped around the props. Must have been the unusually warm weather we had a while back.

Due to the condition of several ships, the battle for the rest of the day was cancelled. Ballots were passed out to all eligible voting members for the SCRAP officers elections with all non-attending eligible voting members to be contacted via e-mail. It was announced that the tentative date for the next battle is Sat Jan 11 2003 at Irvine Lake. Hopefully next month the green slime will be gone.