I must take this opportunity to say a big thank you to Dave Watson - the man behind the http://balkandave.blogspot.com/ blog specialising in Balkan military history. During the course of a couple of email exchanges (as well being mentioned on a very useful bibliography) it came to pass that a chap by the name of A.J. Martins published way back in 1997 a couple of booklets on the Balkan War of 1912 - 1913. The first one covered the land side and the second was devoted to the war at sea. Needless to say I was very interested in both but sadly, Dave had lost contact with A.J. Martins and the likelihood of ever getting copies of these was remote. Happily though, Dave was able to supply me with the information from the naval booklet and what a gem it is! The technical side I am quite happy with as my own resources cover this in sufficient detail but from the strategic side this is an absolute goldmine! I was really impressed with the details concerning the 'island-hopping' in the Aegean and the various Greek operations - patrols using destroyers etc. One of the more startling pieces of information was the fact that the four Greek destroyers - Leon, Panther, Aetos and Ierax (purchased from UK and were originally ordered by Argentina) fought the entire war without any torpedoes as they were purchased without them! That is certainly something I will need to include in my Balkan Wars based naval games and no mistake!
There is much more detail I need to check up on but certainly it will provide the stimulus to consider some combined arms operations in due course.
Once again though, a massive thanks to Balkan Dave for his help with this.
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