Thomas Thiesman

dreamrider wrote:Xenophon: "Now there are two ways out of this mess, boys:
1 - we could surrender. This probably means death or slavery.
2 - we could march 800 miles, through the mountains and desert and hostile tribes, with no supplies, toward the Persian capital. Then we turn left, march another 500 miles through some more mountains, and try to hitch a ride home on any ships we find on the Black Sea coast. Of course, we will have to fight the Persian provincial armies all along the way.
So which choice do you guys think we should take??"


dreamrider

The classics geek in me just squeeeeed like a twelve-year-old girl at a Bieber concert.

MaxxQ wrote:

HB of CJ wrote:One of the very few recurring unrealistic themes of the Honorverse is the seemingly willingly suicidal military personnel who by the millions apparently have little problem taking that final death ride to death?

Or, put another way, one of the first things a commanding officer learns, (sometimes the hard way) is to never give an order that he has reason to believe will not be carried out. Why did not the Peep fleet just refuse?

HB of CJ (old coot) Lt.Cm....no...wait...I have been promoted! Hee Haw!! I am now a full Commander! I love this Forum!

Ummm.. because if they *had* refused, they would have been sitting on their asses in the Havenite system waiting for the Manties to come over the wall and either kill them all there while defending their home system, or they would have surrendered in utter and humiliating defeat.

By attacking Manticore while there was still a *possibility* of winning, they at least *may* not have died in vain. As it was, they did, but there was still a *chance*.

Die now when there's a chance of winning, or die later when there's no chance at all... tough decision, eh?

Edit: Might as well ask why all those troops in WWI went over the trenches into murderous machine gun fire.

After a while, the French Army and the Russian Army did mutiny. At the end of the war, the Austro-Hungarian Army collapsed and started walking home. When the Imperial German navy was sent on a last-time effort against the allied fleets, it mutinied and refused to sail.

phillies wrote:
After a while, the French Army and the Russian Army did mutiny. At the end of the war, the Austro-Hungarian Army collapsed and started walking home. When the Imperial German navy was sent on a last-time effort against the allied fleets, it mutinied and refused to sail.

True but because a few military forces did such a thing doesn't negate the possibility that a military force might do otherwise. Also I'm all but certain all of the above military forces were in much worse situations than Haven's navy was when the attack on Manticore was launched.

Roguevictory wrote:

phillies wrote:
After a while, the French Army and the Russian Army did mutiny. At the end of the war, the Austro-Hungarian Army collapsed and started walking home. When the Imperial German navy was sent on a last-time effort against the allied fleets, it mutinied and refused to sail.

True but because a few military forces did such a thing doesn't negate the possibility that a military force might do otherwise. Also I'm all but certain all of the above military forces were in much worse situations than Haven's navy was when the attack on Manticore was launched.

I can't speak about the Russian and Austro-Hundarian cases, but in the case of the High Seas Fleet the men mutinied when they found out that they were being ordered to sea to pick a fight with the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet - a fight in which the German fleet was expected to be shattered - partly in the hope of inflicting enough damage on the British to improve Germany's at the bargaining table in the peace talks and partly for the honor of the Navy. In addition, this was against the background of nationwide outbreaks of communist and revolutionary movements all aimed at ending the war as soon as possible.

As for the French, the mutinies of 1917 occurred in the aftermath of the Nivelle Offensive, which had promised to end the war in weeks but turned out to be a dismal failure. Coming after the slaughterhouse of Verdun the previous year, the shock to morale was overwhelming. Even then, there were few outbreaks of full-blown mutiny (very few officers killed, for instance). Most units maintained military cohesion and remained in their position, they just refused to undertake any further offensives.

The RHN fleet in Beatrice, by contrast, knew that it was attempting to achieve an outright victory using a plan designed by a C-in-C who they trusted implicitly not to throw their lives away needlessly.

Military personell do occasionally mutiny, but usually when that happens it is due to a breakdown of leadership which in turn causes a loss of discipline. Under leadership that is regarded competent and trustworthy, troops will face the most extreme situations and certain death.

Don

As to why Tourville didn't target the space stations, most likely the same reason the MA attack didn't use missiles against the stations, just the graser torps. No one wanted to risk and end of run MDM missing the station and plowing into a populated planet.

Don't forget that for Beatrice the stations were ready, probably with clouds of LACs and lots of tugs surrounding them for active and passive defense.

twistedpuppy wrote:As to why Tourville didn't target the space stations, most likely the same reason the MA attack didn't use missiles against the stations, just the graser torps. No one wanted to risk and end of run MDM missing the station and plowing into a populated planet.

Don't forget that for Beatrice the stations were ready, probably with clouds of LACs and lots of tugs surrounding them for active and passive defense.

Odd then that they were willing to target orbital industry at Zanzibar from extremely long range. Zanzibar's industry wasn't a war winning target, while Manticore's was.

kzt wrote:Odd then that they were willing to target orbital industry at Zanzibar from extremely long range. Zanzibar's industry wasn't a war winning target, while Manticore's was.

Did they? It's a long time since I read the relevant books, but my recollection is that the asteroid mining and industrial sites were destroyed with long-range fire, not installations in orbit of the planet.

Hi KZT,

Actually the alliance lost 'only' 98 SDP's and 48 SD's to ~317 RHN SDP's at BoMA, so the alliance still had some 237 SDP's including ~100 IAN, while the RHN only had 252 other SDP's in commission [~588 before Beatrice] at that time with around another ~160[?] of the 800 being built at Bolthole still under construction through February of 1922, so the ratio of SDP's had drastically improved for the alliance's favor, which the RHN knew and who's quality, even without Apollo, as Theisman admitted at the beginning of AAC, easily surpassed the RHN's SDP's.

Again, even without Apollo the qualitative margin was easily in the alliance's favor, NTM with the new construction about to begin to commission, another attack was suicidal, especially with only 75% of Beatrice's force available to start with.

L

kzt wrote:

Roguevictory wrote:I don't think a followup attack would be a good idea. If they went for Manticore again they would be facing eighth fleet at the ready. and if they attacked anywhere else the RMN might send eighth fleet to hit Haven in retaliation.

They can't attack Haven with 8th. The RHN blowed up all the other RMN ships.

Hi Twistedpuppy,

Tourville didn't because it wasn't on the plan's schedule at that time [only after the mobile fleets had been "neutralized"; while from the textev the RHN knew the planets had very heavy defenses, that would ruin his fleet before Kuzak appeared, making Chin's mousetrap pointless.

Kuzak ordered the planetary defenses to only fire in self defense to avoid provoking possible leakers with massive civilian casualties; which is not an EE if the planet fired first, IIRC.

L

twistedpuppy wrote:As to why Tourville didn't target the space stations, most likely the same reason the MA attack didn't use missiles against the stations, just the graser torps. No one wanted to risk and end of run MDM missing the station and plowing into a populated planet.

Don't forget that for Beatrice the stations were ready, probably with clouds of LACs and lots of tugs surrounding them for active and passive defense.