Talking about naval predictions, when I was reading a book on Naval Wargaming by Donald Featherstone which described the 1920s and 1930s wargames by a guy called Fletcher Pratt. Pratt used to play in a large scale in ballrooms and used a kind of "guess the range and that's where you're shells hit" principle. Anyway, using his rules (which are quite good I might add, but not for the faint-hearted) he fought out an action like the battle of the river plate, only the Graff Spee was sunk in action, not limped into harbour. Most back then denounced his rules as being unrealistic as they figured no 3 cruisers could ever sink or even engage a pocket battleship....