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Henke — to do, or not to do.

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Re: Henke — to do, or not to do.
Post by Duckk   » Fri Sep 12, 2014 7:22 pm

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Perhaps I should make myself clearer. I fully understand why Mike didn't surrender in that situation. My point is that if she surrendered, it would not have been "cowardly act amounting to treason" as Sharp Claw claimed. I gave Prince Adrian as a parallel example to counter that assertion.
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Re: Henke — to do, or not to do.
Post by n7axw   » Fri Sep 12, 2014 7:32 pm

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What happened here falls in the realm of ruse or ambush, which has always been part of warfare. The only factor here is that Ajax wasn't getting away. The reponsibility rests with the Havenite commander who failed to avoid it.

Don
When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.
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Re: Henke — to do, or not to do.
Post by exiledtoIA   » Fri Sep 12, 2014 11:45 pm

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Thank you, this is the point I was trying to make.
I don't have issues with being sneaky.
I do have issues with something that can be used as a precedent to shoot up other lifepods/damaged ships in the future.
Lifepods are designed to be easy to see.
Missile pods are designed to be hard to see.
Because of the timing it could be argued that Mike used the lifepods to screen the missile pods.
We know this isn't so, but will other Haven officers believe it?
Or will they make sure that other Manties don't get the chance to do into others one last time and then surrender?


Joker41NAM wrote:It seems like everyone's talking about Henke's 3 options (surrender, scuttle now, fight and scuttle later).

Surrender wasn't an option in Henke's opinion, because Ajax was brand new; unlike Prince Adrian, which was a decades-old ship that had some (not all) of the tech upgrades, Ajax was brand-spanking new, with every bell and whistle. Adrian had been able to get rid of her most valuable electronics (the recon platforms) by launching them with orders to self-destruct. Ajax was made of most-valuable materials.

As for scuttling, without evacuating the crew, I don't think anyone saw that as an option. You don't kill your own people. Even if you have to just wait for the enemy to do it or you, you still give them that chance. Even on a destroyed ship, there are normally survivors (unless the fusion plant goes up). Give your crew that chance, at least.

But I always saw this as Option #4: Take as many of them with us as possible.

Until the boat bay was cleared, allowing Ajax to continue evacuating at the last minute, Henke's plan was to strike as heavy a blow as possible.

I haven't read the passage in a while, but IIRC, Henke had guessed that since the Havenites hadn't started shooting as soon as they had her within range, they were planning to close to just outside Ajax's maximum range, and then demand her surrender. If she accepted, so much the better. If she didn't, they'd have better locks for when they did start shooting.

Henke, however, realized that she could actually get a shot off, with her whole magazine in one shot. She took that chance, so that even if they couldn't evac, they'd take a lot of the enemy with them.

As it happened, they were able to evacuate at the last minute, but that made it appear they'd been waiting to sucker the Havenites in. Henke realized this, and tried to do something about it, but was too late. There was nothing dishonorable or nasty about how it happened, just MWW's sense of timing and drama.

P.S. I just went back and peeked at the passage, and Henke's ops officer actually said he wished they could take some with them, which is what got Mike thinking about the pod drop.
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Re: Henke — to do, or not to do.
Post by Greentea   » Sat Sep 13, 2014 12:54 am

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I think the issue for Henke was the fact that she couldn't get half the crew off before she had to scuttle in order to prevent the enemy from capturing the ship, turning a defeat into a debacle. I think Henke gave the order to fire off the pods, in part to make it so the deaths of the people unable to evacuate from Ajax were not in vain. They at least took a ship or two with them. Otherwise, she would just be blowing up the ship while portions of the crew were still trapped board.

cthia wrote:
exiledtoIA wrote:
Snipped to save bandwidth.

The problem I have always had with this incident is the precedent it sets for future engagements.
How are other Haven commanders supposed to know if Manties are really abandoning ship or setting them up for an ambush?

If I were a Haven officer and I heard about this situation my initial reaction to ANY damaged Mantie ship suddenly launching "lifepods" or debris would be to lay some lovin on them. Just in case.
Little rough on anyone in the pods, but hey, how am I to know what they were REALLY up to?
Henke's actions have to possibility to endanger Manticore Navy personnel if future engagements because of the precedent they set.

Firstly, I appreciate all of your thoughts.
Secondly, I am being quite truthful in that I am really having a problem with this act and it bothers me in ways I can't localize.
Thirdly, I knew that discussing it would help me come to terms with my subconscious issues. This post helps.

I realize, because of this post and Greentea's, a little more specifically what bothers me. Now I don't know how many others of you may do this, but oftentimes while reading other officer's confrontations, I can't help but wondering WWHD (What Would Honor Do?) And for the life of me, I cannot imagine Honor Harrington pulling that particular move, or condoning it. I just can't. Moreover, Honor worked so hard to get the mindset of the Peeps to be civil towards prisoners (captured or floating about in space.) I just don't see Honor herself employing this tactic. And I wouldn't be surprised if she, at a later private time, discussed it with Henke and made her see why it might not have been the right thing to do.

Now, if there was danger of the Peeps overtaking Honor's ship and that ploy was used to buy comrades time to escape ... okay.

And I see your point exiledtoIA. You wouldn't want to create an awful situation by setting a precedent where decency during evacuation may be discarded.

What is that phrase? ...
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

In that same situation, I think Honor would have given the order to scuttle and shot down any similar plan. IMHO.
Cup of tea? Yes, please.
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Re: Henke — to do, or not to do.
Post by lyonheart   » Sat Sep 13, 2014 1:04 am

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Hi ExiledtoIA,

*PS added*

Given Tom's in charge of the RHN, no absolutely not, and darn few ex-peep officers feeling that way are still left in the RHN in the first place; they would have been the first to be forced out by Tom Theisman as the new Secretary of War and CNO.

Secondly, since the RHN joined the GA, its really rather moot, don't you think? ;)

On a note of personal curiosity, what's so bad about being exiled to Iowa?

I noted before that Tom hosted Mike at a dinner with the admiral in question, that reviewed what happened and Tom took her side, as others have pointed out.

At the time the boat bay was cleared and the last small craft were leaving, the life pods had left around an hour earlier, so claiming they were potential camouflage or masking the pods is again incorrect the pods had been jettisoned earlier since it took over 15 minutes to eject them all, well before the boat bay was cleared.

That meant they were spread out over 16 million km along Ajax's trajectory; rather awkward to synchronize them all to fire all at once at the overtaking BC's at such short range, but RFC IS A GREAT STORY TELLER, okay?

Even though the RHN didn't know how small the crew of an Agamemnon was due to the automation, they should have realized the number was far too few to account for abandoning the ship and scuttling, so the with the wedge still up, the RHN admiral [not peep with a State-Sec commissar second guessing him] saw what he wanted to see, someone preparing to abandon, not fight to the very last as cleverly as possible.

Regarding option #4; when was it characterized as the death ride?

I remember a Matt Helm more than 20 years ago, where he describes it as 'the death ride'; where you know you're going to die and your whole intent is to take as many as possible as professionally impressive as you can, to teach them not to do this; and that's just off the top of my head because I'm certain it wasn't the first.

Regarding getting everyone off, given they were about to be picked up ASAP by the RHN, I suspect the pinnaces etc could have carried the remainder of the crew for that short period of time despite being way over the shuttle or pinnace's nominal life support intended for days etc, even if some people had to depend on their skin suits' oxygen, so they could have had the volume to carry every body, probably briefly and awkwardly, if RFC had wanted them to.

L

PS: I forgot to add that I suspect the dinner Tom hosted for Mike was recorded and the pertinent parts written up and sent to all RHN TG commanders etc for their information, with the details of this part of the battle included for their information, possibly with some pointed remarks by the CNO to prevent the possibility you suggest, even though the life pod evacuation preceded the missile pod launch by almost an hour, plenty of time to differentiate the two.

**Please return to your previous post readings. ;) **


exiledtoIA wrote:Thank you, this is the point I was trying to make.
I don't have issues with being sneaky.
I do have issues with something that can be used as a precedent to shoot up other lifepods/damaged ships in the future.
Lifepods are designed to be easy to see.
Missile pods are designed to be hard to see.
Because of the timing it could be argued that Mike used the lifepods to screen the missile pods.
We know this isn't so, but will other Haven officers believe it?
Or will they make sure that other Manties don't get the chance to do into others one last time and then surrender?


Joker41NAM wrote:It seems like everyone's talking about Henke's 3 options (surrender, scuttle now, fight and scuttle later).

Surrender wasn't an option in Henke's opinion, because Ajax was brand new; unlike Prince Adrian, which was a decades-old ship that had some (not all) of the tech upgrades, Ajax was brand-spanking new, with every bell and whistle. Adrian had been able to get rid of her most valuable electronics (the recon platforms) by launching them with orders to self-destruct. Ajax was made of most-valuable materials.

As for scuttling, without evacuating the crew, I don't think anyone saw that as an option. You don't kill your own people. Even if you have to just wait for the enemy to do it or you, you still give them that chance. Even on a destroyed ship, there are normally survivors (unless the fusion plant goes up). Give your crew that chance, at least.

But I always saw this as Option #4: Take as many of them with us as possible.

Until the boat bay was cleared, allowing Ajax to continue evacuating at the last minute, Henke's plan was to strike as heavy a blow as possible.

I haven't read the passage in a while, but IIRC, Henke had guessed that since the Havenites hadn't started shooting as soon as they had her within range, they were planning to close to just outside Ajax's maximum range, and then demand her surrender. If she accepted, so much the better. If she didn't, they'd have better locks for when they did start shooting.

Henke, however, realized that she could actually get a shot off, with her whole magazine in one shot. She took that chance, so that even if they couldn't evac, they'd take a lot of the enemy with them.

As it happened, they were able to evacuate at the last minute, but that made it appear they'd been waiting to sucker the Havenites in. Henke realized this, and tried to do something about it, but was too late. There was nothing dishonorable or nasty about how it happened, just MWW's sense of timing and drama.

P.S. I just went back and peeked at the passage, and Henke's ops officer actually said he wished they could take some with them, which is what got Mike thinking about the pod drop.
Last edited by lyonheart on Sat Sep 13, 2014 2:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Henke — to do, or not to do.
Post by lyonheart   » Sat Sep 13, 2014 1:51 am

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Hy Cthia,

First of all, you overlooked what I posted; Honor didn't expect her generous treatment of POW's to affect InSec or StateSec, ie during the first war; yet you used as evidence the reborn republic and RHN under Tom Theisman in the second war, which has nothing like StateSec or InSec, mixing apples and apricots.

It indicates your confusion not mine.

To use Tom and his morally reborn RHN as evidence of being affected by Honor's behavior is inaccurate when we saw it from the prologue of of AAC; which indicates the new RHN didn't need Honor's example, they were already behaving that same way because Tom Theisman could do no less than Honor in treating POW's as they should be, and insisted HIS navy do the same.

The RHN briefing discussion you cited is more an awareness or growing understanding among Tom's staff which is coming to understand HH and the RMN and its alliance as Tom already does.

He didn't lead the discussion, or dictate what was to be done, but he got the result he wanted, one impressive sign of a true if not great leader.

Regarding confusing the life pods and missile pods, the first got away almost an hour earlier, it was only RFC's coincidence that the final evacuation happened just when the jury rigged missile launch occurred; it was not a trick or ruse, it just happened that way, and it could have happened the very same way to HH if RFC had wanted it to.

Please cite where abandoning ship was seen as surrender; the textev has always been striking the wedge, which has on occasion been followed by abandoning ship.

L


cthia wrote:*quote="lyonheart"*

Hi Cthia,

I have to disagree here.

Honor has been there; the death ride, when you know you're going to die and your main concern is taking as many of the enemy with you as possible, so I wouldn't be surprised if Honor didn't congratulate her on her clever tactic, because that's exactly what she would have done if she'd been in command.

Furthermore I disagree with the statement "Honor worked so hard to get the peeps to improve their treatment of POW's"; she treated them with respect and consideration yes, but it wasn't to change their treatment of Manty POW's [do you really think InSec or StateSec was going to change its policies because a handful of ex-POW's said she treated them so well? please -first- :roll:]; it was simply Honor being Honor, she could do no less and still be Honor.

Kinda like G. Washington. :D

Again life pods and missile pods are so completely different that you can't confuse the two unless you're probably Battle Fleet. ;)

L*quote*


Snipped to save bandwidth.


****** *


Lyonheart,
I appreciate the post and I surely must disagree "two."

Honor has been there; the death ride, when you know you're going to die and your main concern is taking as many of the enemy with you as possible, so I wouldn't be surprised if Honor didn't congratulate her on her clever tactic, because that's exactly what she would have done if she'd been in command.

Respectfully, I'm afraid I view the aforementioned situations as apples to oranges. Honor's situations — the death rides — were hopeless but not helpless. She still had a chance, to go down fighting in the form of a golden BB. Which is what Tester always delivered unto her, a golden bb. And the situation warranted it, inasmuch as Honor was not in the middle of a desperate evacuation. No Lyonheart, I must passionately disagree that Honor would have employed such a dishonorable act. IMHO of course. And IMH-O' ... hearts.

As far as ...
Furthermore I disagree with the statement "Honor worked so hard to get the peeps to improve their treatment of POW's"; she treated them with respect and consideration yes, but it wasn't to change their treatment of Manty POW's [do you really think InSec or StateSec was going to change its policies because a handful of ex-POW's said she treated them so well? please -first- :roll:]; it was simply Honor being Honor, she could do no less and still be Honor.

It is definitely inaccurate.

I recall your attention to exhibit-A, when Eighth Fleet was operating in the Peeps rear areas. Honor consistently gave extra time to evacuate. And she insisted on proper treatment of POW's, but not before insisting that every life-pod be collected. There was definite textev, featuring a conversation in Haven's - War room (IIRC) of it's top brass (forget who) that Harrington may be sending the message that she would be open to proper treatment of prisoners as well as a certain morality if Haven would reciprocate. It was an almost verbatim "I think Harrington may also be sending the message that she'd be willing to exercise restraint if we were." I distinctly remember that Peep conversation. And IIRC, it was echoed in Honor's thoughts. If you do not remember that passage, I shall divert energies and task myself to bring it to bear, or perhaps any of our more studious, surprisingly efficient tac witches. Honor worked very hard to restore a sense of morality!

However, I can't remember if it was during the time of StateSec or no.


Again life pods and missile pods are so completely different that you can't confuse the two unless you're probably Battle Fleet. ;)

I think it has been misunderstood exiledtoIA's point about the life pods. I don't think he meant it as a possibility of confusing the two, rather seizing the fact that a combatant does not desecrate the inherent sanctity of "waving the white flag of surrender" by booby trap. Desperately abandoning ship is akin to waving the white flag. IMHO, and I think exiledtoIA's point. I concur.
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Re: Henke — to do, or not to do.
Post by lyonheart   » Sat Sep 13, 2014 2:09 am

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Hi Duckk,

Allow me to disagree, please.

Given the Prince Consort class wasn't bleeding edge tech to start with, what textev do we have for the tech upgrades you mentioned?

Nike [#413] was the first built with the full Grayson improvements which required a new hull; the Prince Adrian may have been upgraded, but I doubt it contained the secret of the compensator or ECM improvements that would have been wasted on a 40, 50 or 60 year old hull.

Most importantly, Prince Adrian had no real effective way of striking back at those cutting her off, while Ajax certainly did.

Don't forget Mike's action meant the RHN's casualties were nearly double the RMN's, far more than HH realised.

L


Duckk wrote:Perhaps I should make myself clearer. I fully understand why Mike didn't surrender in that situation. My point is that if she surrendered, it would not have been "cowardly act amounting to treason" as Sharp Claw claimed. I gave Prince Adrian as a parallel example to counter that assertion.
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Re: Henke — to do, or not to do.
Post by lyonheart   » Sat Sep 13, 2014 2:55 am

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Hi SWM,

Quite right.

Under the same circumstances I think HH would have done the same thing, HH has been one of Mike's models during her career and I often suspect in her heart of hearts, she asks herself what would Honor do as part of her reasoning process.

If Mike had decided to scuttle, destroying the pods with their micro-fusion bottles etc would have required jettisoning them anyway, to avoid destroying the Ajax simultaneously so the pods were going to be ejected, once that decision was made, doing something more than just wasting them would occur naturally.

So what happened followed very naturally from the decisions people made as a result of what they knew then.

Observing them from the godlike position of the reader, and condemning them after the fact when they're ignorant of what we know seems quite unfair to me.

L


SWM wrote:Duckk is right--Ajax could have surrendered without dishonor. The text explicitly says so. The reason she didn't is due to a specific and carefully thought-out decision.

Once that decision was made, it was merely a question of whether or not to strike at the Havenites before scuttling/destruction.

I'm not positive that Honor would have made the same decision, but I think she might have. I definitely think she would not consider it wrong for Henke to have made the decision to launch the missile pod ambush. As others have stated, the Ajax was not asked to surrender and gave no indication that it was going to surrender. The accepted method of announcing surrender in the Honorverse is to send a message of surrender, or to drop the wedge if that is not possible or practical. Launching life pods is not an announcement of surrender.
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Re: Henke — to do, or not to do.
Post by Duckk   » Sat Sep 13, 2014 7:59 am

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Given the Prince Consort class wasn't bleeding edge tech to start with, what textev do we have for the tech upgrades you mentioned?

Nike [#413] was the first built with the full Grayson improvements which required a new hull; the Prince Adrian may have been upgraded, but I doubt it contained the secret of the compensator or ECM improvements that would have been wasted on a 40, 50 or 60 year old hull.


http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... ngton/62/1

They knew where the new compensator technology was coming from, and one reason they built the Mars-class as big as they did was because they anticipated giving their hands on that technology. One of these days I may write the short story of exactly what happened to that anticipated data windfall. Part of it was that they didn't get the opportunity to capture samples of the new compensator hardware until they took what was left of Prince Adrian (and she was so badly damaged they basically had to study the hardware in place because they couldn't take her with them). And another part of it was that StateSec got quite a bit of information on the new compensator from a couple of BuShips technicians they'd managed to compromise. Unfortunately for StateSec, the technicians they'd "compromised" were actually working for Pat Givens and ONI. The information they got was very creatively designed to send them down a blind alley.



Most importantly, Prince Adrian had no real effective way of striking back at those cutting her off, while Ajax certainly did.


Go reread IEH again. Prince Adrian was hurt, but still had offensive capability left, and she definitely was in range to engage, considering the Peeps were still lobbing missiles at her.

Don't forget Mike's action meant the RHN's casualties were nearly double the RMN's, far more than HH realised.


Irrelevant. Again, as Honor said to Jaruwalski, one must look past the Saganami tradition and look at the lives any commanding officer is responsible for. Unless sacrificing those lives gains some critical strategic or tactical objective, a good officer won't throw those lives away for nothing. Mike Henke thought she had a good reason, but no board of inquiry would charge her of cowardice and/or treason had she thought otherwise.
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Re: Henke — to do, or not to do.
Post by Sharp Claw   » Sat Sep 13, 2014 11:19 pm

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OK, the treason comment may have been a little over the top, lets just say surrendering a pod BC would have been a really bad choice as it would have handed the Havenites technology that could have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of manticoran spacers and possibly resulted in the end of the Star Kingdom of Manticore. An actual traitor could not have done Manticore much more damage.

As for the "ethical" questions, I just don't see the problems others are having. Henke had NOT surrendered, had NOT struck her wedge and had NOT sent a message saying she intended to surrender. Getting as many of her people off the ship alive before fighting is what any good commander would do facing those odds in combat. She thought of a really clever tactic that gave her a chance to do the maximum damage to the enemy even though she was in a tactically hopeless situation, exactly as I believe Honor would have done.

Sometimes, a commander has to make really tough choices, including sacrificing their entire unit to save the rest of the army. If Michelle Henke had decided to blow up her own ship with everyone who was unable to escape, that would have been a decision that minimized Manticoran casualties in the long run, considering the number of Manticorans that would be killed in the future if Haven got its hands on her ships technology. I am sure Michelle would have evacuated as many as possible first, even giving crew the choice of jumping out an airlock in a skinsuit .
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