A question about the destruction of Admiral Filareta

Lord Skimper wrote:From the text we know that the main bridge was destroyed. We don't know if the backup bridge was. The bomb wasn't silent on the ship. Would make a huge noise. Two bombs set off from one place or taking out the communications room might be a better bet.

In point of fact, the bridge was not destroyed. The FLAG BRIDGE was destroyed. There is no on-board second location for that. See SVW. The backup in the command chain is on some other ship, in a different squadron, and probably in a different task group.

Before any transfer of authority would take place, since the flagship was not destroyed outright and visibly, the flagship captain would have to determine a) what had happened on his ship, b) whether Adm Filareta was truly dead or incapacitated, c) make the appropriate signal to the next ranking flag officer, d) explain the loss of the CO (admittedly, "he's dead" would suffice, but this is Battle Fleet - there would be useless follow-up questions), and e) explain the status or negotiations and why the missile pods had been flushed...which he didn't know. All of the above would have to occur in the few minutes before the salvos of missiles arrived on either side, while the both the flagship captain and the contacted admiral were slightly engaged in trying to fight a desperately one-sided battle to survive.

Where do you come up with this stuff, LS??

dreamrider

dreamrider wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:From the text

Where do you come up with this stuff, LS??

dreamrider

In another thread 2 days ago he admitted, admitted, that his books are boxed up and he doesn't even bother to read them to figure anything out.

So, where does he come up with this stuff?

Where the sun don't shine.

I think the text says it all, that there was about a ten second lapse after the massive pod fired launch went out.

In between, I imagine that the signal that went out "from the flag" was "fire everything", at which point all the SLN captains, etc. tell their tac officers "Holy s---", the admiral just sent the cascade order", and every tac officer in the SLN hits their fire and forget button.

Then, lightspeed moments later, the Flag Bridge blows the heck up, which you doesn't take your tac officer's finger off the button he already pushed, sending the remaining missiles on their way.

Nothing in the text says that the Mantie communication to the flag bridge was broadcast on identifiable frequencies to all of the SLN ships fleet wide.

So who's supposed to give a fleet wide surrender to Harrington in the mean time because Filereta et. all have not told any individual ship captains how badly they've been outclassed? Filerata himself is in shock about it and realizes that he has to surrender, and he's supposed to be "the smart cookie".

And then, like Theisman says, it was Honor's job to destroy the enemy, not take their fire. She does so, and then captures whatevers left.

It wouldn't suprise me to find a secondary string had been set to that bow to screw with the flag ships communications as well.
We'll probably never know but it seems reasonable.

SWM wrote:No one would have been able to assume command in that situation, in the few minutes available.

actually they did - that's why the fleet turned to bring their broadsides to action and got off some shots (as I remember reading). His 2nd in command took over when they were unable to establish contact with the flag to find out "what the #*@$ he was thinking". It seams to me that they could have just as easily ordered "strike the wedge" - unless they had some nanospy as-well.

MAD-4A wrote:

SWM wrote:No one would have been able to assume command in that situation, in the few minutes available.

actually they did - that's why the fleet turned to bring their broadsides to action and got off some shots (as I remember reading). His 2nd in command took over when they were unable to establish contact with the flag to find out "what the #*@$ he was thinking". It seams to me that they could have just as easily ordered "strike the wedge" - unless they had some nanospy as-well.

Pfft. Turn broadsides to bear - which is something they'd instinctively do just to bring point defense to bear - and start firing, is simply carrying on the situation as the next admiral saw it. Having time to think and communicate and consider wild hypotheses just didn't obtain in that situation. It was all reflex action. No need to ring in more nanotech, especially since the nanotech doesn't really suffice to have someone start giving natural-sounding orders responsive to the situation.

SWM wrote:No one would have been able to assume command in that situation, in the few minutes available.

MAD-4A wrote:actually they did - that's why the fleet turned to bring their broadsides to action and got off some shots (as I remember reading). His 2nd in command took over when they were unable to establish contact with the flag to find out "what the #*@$ he was thinking". It seams to me that they could have just as easily ordered "strike the wedge" - unless they had some nanospy as-well.

JeffEngel wrote:Pfft. Turn broadsides to bear - which is something they'd instinctively do just to bring point defense to bear - and start firing, is simply carrying on the situation as the next admiral saw it. Having time to think and communicate and consider wild hypotheses just didn't obtain in that situation. It was all reflex action. No need to ring in more nanotech, especially since the nanotech doesn't really suffice to have someone start giving natural-sounding orders responsive to the situation.

Still, ten seconds is a relatively short time (the time that was mentioned in the after-action discussion between the SLN pods firing and the rest of the ships opening fire) to take command and provide fleet orders to open fire.

It may have been more of a personal choice by the various Admirals commanding the sub-forces under Filareta. Remember, at least 60 SLN SD's came through without damage at all (per textev from ART). Given the level of fire Honor and Lester would have launched, I've always found that improbable....unless those ships had NOT LAUNCHED under command of whatever admiral was in charge of that portion of the fleet and had dropped their wedges and surrended once the GA riposte showed exactly 0% of survival.


Might have been cowardice or strong-minded practicality, but it's the only way I could see those 60 ships surviving without a scratch.

IMHO as always, YMMV.

Hutch wrote:
It may have been more of a personal choice by the various Admirals commanding the sub-forces under Filareta. Remember, at least 60 SLN SD's came through without damage at all (per textev from ART). Given the level of fire Honor and Lester would have launched, I've always found that improbable....unless those ships had NOT LAUNCHED under command of whatever admiral was in charge of that portion of the fleet and had dropped their wedges and surrended once the GA riposte showed exactly 0% of survival.


Might have been cowardice or strong-minded practicality, but it's the only way I could see those 60 ships surviving without a scratch.

IMHO as always, YMMV.

Hard to believe that Honor would have not targeted 15% of the invading fleet, given the number of missiles she had available to her, and the command links to control them. I suspect that the original orders to the sub fleet commanders was do not fire until I give the order, but then fire for effect, and each of them given specific targets to attack. It was basically one or two sub fleet commanders who realized that the attack was a mistake and didn't follow the standing pre-op orders, and thereby survived intact.

Hutch wrote:Still, ten seconds is a relatively short time (the time that was mentioned in the after-action discussion between the SLN pods firing and the rest of the ships opening fire) to take command and provide fleet orders to open fire.

It may have been more of a personal choice by the various Admirals commanding the sub-forces under Filareta. Remember, at least 60 SLN SD's came through without damage at all (per textev from ART). Given the level of fire Honor and Lester would have launched, I've always found that improbable....unless those ships had NOT LAUNCHED under command of whatever admiral was in charge of that portion of the fleet and had dropped their wedges and surrended once the GA riposte showed exactly 0% of survival.


Might have been cowardice or strong-minded practicality, but it's the only way I could see those 60 ships surviving without a scratch.

IMHO as always, YMMV.

They didn't have to take command and give orders to fire. The orders had already been made--by the commander of the fleet. Once those orders went out, the ships simply followed those orders.

As for how 60 ships managed to survive without damage, that is probably simply a matter of probabilities. Not every ship was targeted equally, and the defenses did not counter all missiles equally. Each defending ship was not trying to target only the missiles aimed at that ship. No, the ships coordinated their counter-fire. It is purely a matter of chance which ship a destroyed missile had been assigned to. So, by chance, all the missiles assigned to Ship A might be taken out by point defense while none of the missiles assigned to its neighbor Ship B are taken out. The undamaged ships could simply be the lucky ships whose assigned missiles were all taken out by the coordinated defensive fire.

SWM wrote:

Hutch wrote:Still, ten seconds is a relatively short time (the time that was mentioned in the after-action discussion between the SLN pods firing and the rest of the ships opening fire) to take command and provide fleet orders to open fire.

It may have been more of a personal choice by the various Admirals commanding the sub-forces under Filareta. Remember, at least 60 SLN SD's came through without damage at all (per textev from ART). Given the level of fire Honor and Lester would have launched, I've always found that improbable....unless those ships had NOT LAUNCHED under command of whatever admiral was in charge of that portion of the fleet and had dropped their wedges and surrended once the GA riposte showed exactly 0% of survival.


Might have been cowardice or strong-minded practicality, but it's the only way I could see those 60 ships surviving without a scratch.

IMHO as always, YMMV.

They didn't have to take command and give orders to fire. The orders had already been made--by the commander of the fleet. Once those orders went out, the ships simply followed those orders.

As for how 60 ships managed to survive without damage, that is probably simply a matter of probabilities. Not every ship was targeted equally, and the defenses did not counter all missiles equally. Each defending ship was not trying to target only the missiles aimed at that ship. No, the ships coordinated their counter-fire. It is purely a matter of chance which ship a destroyed missile had been assigned to. So, by chance, all the missiles assigned to Ship A might be taken out by point defense while none of the missiles assigned to its neighbor Ship B are taken out. The undamaged ships could simply be the lucky ships whose assigned missiles were all taken out by the coordinated defensive fire.

The probabilities don't seem to work out. Of the 427 SDs that Filareta brought with him, 296 were destroyed outright (69.3%), 71 damaged but repairable (16.6%) and 60 untouched (14.1%). At the battle of Spindle, which is the only one for which we have SD defense numbers, there were 9200 missiles fired at 23 SDs, and the entire task force would have been defending. Of those 9200 missiles, 1007 (11% were stopped), and all 23 were effectively destroyed. At the BoM II, Honor has available over 25 million missiles, she would have used at least as many per ship as were used at Spindle (for a total of 170,800 missiles for Filareta's fleet), and since she had much better information on the capabilities of Halo, an even higher percentage of her missiles would get through, so of the 170,800, at least 152,000 missiles attack the SLN fleet. I submit that there is not a chance in hell that any of the SLN ships would have survived unscathed in that maelstrom unless they were deliberately spared.