Battle of Trevor's Star

He couldn't because to do so was to give Manticore hard evidence that Haven was behind the native up-rising.

While, he might have "imagined" that it wouldn't start the war between Haven and Manticore, he also had good reasons to believe that when he got home, he'd be in big trouble with his government.

GregD wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:Did anyone miss the fact that throughout the last third of OBS Honor was doing the worst thing she possibly could have done There she is, frantically trying to stop this much more powerful Q-ship, getting her crew slaughtered with the utmost courage and gallantry . . . and all the Peep skipper is trying to do is to get to the rendezvous to call the operation off. The problem was that she had to go with the info she had and a worst-case assumption. She did that with perfect intelligence (as in smarts) and supreme dedication and she never, ever learned that so many of her crew were killed (in real terms) for nothing. In fact, her very success is what guaranteed that the Peep task force that eventually stopped by for a "courtesy call" didn't simply turn around and go home without ever putting in an appearance.

Yeah, I've always scored that as a failure by the Peep skipper. He could have called her up, and offered to hang out inside the hyper limit limit for 2 - 3 days, and then left.

This would have given Home Fleet enough time to get out there, and given hm enough time to stop the Peep fleet from showing up.

Win-Win

Except, then Honor doesn't get her launch to fame, and the book doesn't get it's needed big battle.

DrakBibliophile wrote:He couldn't because to do so was to give Manticore hard evidence that Haven was behind the native up-rising.

While, he might have "imagined" that it wouldn't start the war between Haven and Manticore, he also had good reasons to believe that when he got home, he'd be in big trouble with his government.

runsforcelery wrote:Did anyone miss the fact that throughout the last third of OBS Honor was doing the worst thing she possibly could have done There she is, frantically trying to stop this much more powerful Q-ship, getting her crew slaughtered with the utmost courage and gallantry . . . and all the Peep skipper is trying to do is to get to the rendezvous to call the operation off. The problem was that she had to go with the info she had and a worst-case assumption. She did that with perfect intelligence (as in smarts) and supreme dedication and she never, ever learned that so many of her crew were killed (in real terms) for nothing. In fact, her very success is what guaranteed that the Peep task force that eventually stopped by for a "courtesy call" didn't simply turn around and go home without ever putting in an appearance.

GregD wrote:Yeah, I've always scored that as a failure by the Peep skipper. He could have called her up, and offered to hang out inside the hyper limit limit for 2 - 3 days, and then left.

This would have given Home Fleet enough time to get out there, and given hm enough time to stop the Peep fleet from showing up.

Win-Win

Except, then Honor doesn't get her launch to fame, and the book doesn't get it's needed big battle.

Drak has a point about both the proof of Havenite complicity and the degree of trouble the Q-ship skipper would find himself in for handing it to the Manties (which was present in the hiss mind, I assure you). The other point is that he believed --- with a lot of reason on his side --- that ultimately, he was going to blow Fearless out of space, so the folks who were going to die if he didn't follow his mission orders were all going to be Manties.

He was all right with that.

cthia wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:Did anyone miss the fact that throughout the last third of OBS Honor was doing the worst thing she possibly could have done There she is, frantically trying to stop this much more powerful Q-ship, getting her crew slaughtered with the utmost courage and gallantry . . . and all the Peep skipper is trying to do is to get to the rendezvous to call the operation off. The problem was that she had to go with the info she had and a worst-case assumption. She did that with perfect intelligence (as in smarts) and supreme dedication and she never, ever learned that so many of her crew were killed (in real terms) for nothing. In fact, her very success is what guaranteed that the Peep task force that eventually stopped by for a "courtesy call" didn't simply turn around and go home without ever putting in an appearance.

GregD wrote:Yeah, I've always scored that as a failure by the Peep skipper. He could have called her up, and offered to hang out inside the hyper limit limit for 2 - 3 days, and then left.

This would have given Home Fleet enough time to get out there, and given hm enough time to stop the Peep fleet from showing up.

Win-Win

Except, then Honor doesn't get her launch to fame, and the book doesn't get it's needed big battle.

But then, Eloise didn't want to go back to war. Neither did Beth. They both acted on what they thought they knew. And what they definitely did know could and most definitely would happen.

Lots of good people dying all for nothing was a recurrent theme. But dammit, White Haven kept getting his head handed to him each and every time he visited Trevor's Star. He knew what was gonna happen. He was simply not welcome there. Insanity expecting different results.

I mean, it isn't like Esther kept it a big fat secret. She used a few tricks on him, yea, but she was always nice enough to supply the mirrors so he could see himself getting whipped.

"See the smoke? Some of it is streaming from your butt!"

Since White Haven was the best at the time but still kept getting sent home without his panties - even though Esther was unsupported - I shutter to think what she would have done to someone else. Or accomplished had she been properly supported.

"Please! Why do they keep sending in these kids!"

runsforcelery wrote:You know, I don't really understand why you think White Haven made repeated costly attempts on Trevor's Star and got handed his head over and over again. He didn't, and I don't believe it says anywhere in the books that he did. For that matter I don't know why you think McQueen was "unsupported." Trevor's Star and DuQuesene Base were the Peeps' two most important forward fleet bases and staging areas. They were supported to the max, even after the Coup. That was one of the problems freeing up forces for Operation Stalking Horse in FIE. The striking forces had to be made up to weight with BBs because the surviving wallers were tasked to defend critical systems (like, oh, Trevor's Star).

He did make an attack that was turned back with losses, and he did reflect that the Peeps were getting their second wind while the Manticoran Alliance had overextended itself and needed to rethink, and he did reflect on the fact that McQueen was really, really good and had proven no one could take liberties with her.

But he also extricated his forces from the ambush which had been carefully prepared for him with only moderate losses. And after he did that, he went away and evolved a strategy that continued the attritional whittling down of the PRN (and picking off good junior officers before they became good senior officers) and succeeded in sucking the Peeps completely off balance so he could close in and take a star he should not have been able to take. And, trust me, it didn't really matter that McQueen wasn't still in command when he sprang the trap. She'd been in command every meter of the way while he was setting the trap, and he still pulled it off.

The fact is that she was good, but she wasn't as good as he was. She had the advantage of the defensive position (not to be sneered at, especially in pre-pod combat days) and she was ruthless and tough minded enough to use everything she did have to best advantage, but if she'd still been in command when White Haven launched the attack he'd spent all that time setting up, there never would have been an Admiral Cluster Bomb back in Nouveau Paris because Citizen Admiral McQueen would either have been dead or having tea in a POW camp somewhere in the SKM.

There it is! Those are the passages, or at least the language from the passages I've had an APB out for, for eons. I was just about to admit to Louis that I had no idea where I'd gotten it in my head. The only thing I could remember for certain, that I was half-assed sure of, was the sentiment came straight from the horse's mouth - White Haven. (Of course he's a horse, he's married to one.)

Now I am almost certain that I recall talk that she could no longer be sent replacements. And I thought also for certain that that talk came from her superiors, and also from her. Since you say nay, then I accept it. . . until a reread of course!

To be honest, I'm just tickled pink that it was indeed Esther who White Haven tangled with. Because this conversation came up a few times in the past and we couldn't quite seem to nail down whether or not it was indeed Esther who White Haven danced with or if she'd simply directed the forces who did. Well, I was certain, but my Opposition was not. And since I could never locate the passages, admittedly, I was beginning to worry that it was all pillow talk.

Yes! Pillow talk. Esther and I had a thing and since she's no longer alive to corroborate the fact that we were cuddling, I don't expect anyone to believe it. But one thing is for certain, the way she told it to me, there's no way I'm going to believe that White Haven was better and that she didn't do exactly what she said she did after she removed his panties. . . Whack dat ass! Hrrmph!

Of course, it also could have simply been the mystique surrounding the legendary battle that seeped into my head after I was lying next to Esther, completely satiated and dreaming, after she'd just spanked me.

Of course, you do realize that your formally saying that White Haven was better than she, is finally, meat fleshed out for the grinder.

cthia wrote:Of course, you do realize that your formally saying that White Haven was better than she, is finally, meat fleshed out for the grinder.

Actually he didn't say that. He said that White Haven, given Manticore's available forces, logistics, and technology was able to slowly force Ester McQueen given Haven's available forces, logistics, and technology, towards defeat in and around Trevor's Star.

But that doesn't definitively resolve who is a better tactician on some abstract level.

It's entirely possible that if they had magically dropped into each other's shoes at the start of that campaign that McQueen could have led the Manticoran forces to drive White Haven back into defeat at least as well as he'd done. Sometimes the playing field is uneven enough that the best a superior tactician can do is to do make the enemy's victory as slow and painful as possible (setting up hope for later successful counterattack).

Re CTHIA,

I much prefer the image of dropping Honor Harrington's panties to administer a spanking rather than dropping Whitehaven's panties, thank you.

In a more serious vien, I think the PRN understood not only the strategic importance of Trevor's Star but the tactical vulnerability. Unlike the RMN which was hampered by isolationist sentiments against imperialism, they did not heavily fortify their end of the wormhole. The PRN was too much in the habit of being on the offensive. From their perspective, it seemed smarter to use the resources to build more mobile forces including SDs.

The PRN learned too late that the vast size of the PRH was a strategic liability. They had something like 100 star systems to defend? Their decision to build hundreds of battleships was driven by the need to have suffecient heavy forces to defend these systems at an affordable cost. This decision was logical back when their potential opponents, including the RMN, deployed few ships heavier than a BC. Even so, they could deploy no more than a squadron of BBs at each of their systems.

By the time Whitehaven attacked Trevor's star, the RMN had been conducting raids that were seriously attriting PRN forces. I do not recall it being stated explicitly, but the PRN BBs were no doubt the primary victims. I imagine raiding forces of a squadron of DNs or SDs backed up by BCs. The capitol ships would engage the BBs and the BCs would hunt down the cripples. This no doubt explains why the PRN was throwing BBs into the Yelstin furnace in FIE. They knew that they were going to loose them anyway.

The strategic consequences of destroying the RHN picket forces is interesting. Not explicitly stated is that such raids would culminate in the destruction of orbital industries and the PRH security forces. This left the system unproductive, impoverished (unless the PRH shipped in massive aid), resentful and no longer constrained by garrisons backed up by orbital bombardment platforms. The RMN had been doing unto the PRH what the PRH was intending to do unto the RMN at Masada in FIE.

As a result, by the time of IEH and EOH, the PRN was compelled to draw down forces away from Trevor's Star and the terminus to protect its most productive and critical systems from RMN raids. There were conversations about which systems were not productive enough to be worth defending.

While the PRH understood the strategic value of the Trevors Star terminus, they understood the tactical vulnerability. The constant threat that the RMN might send Home fleet through the wormhole to back any attack resulted in the need for a huge picket force. It was far to late to build forts. Once Whitehaven had suffeciently attrited PRH forces and inflicted enough chaos, the PRN made a strategic decision to withdraw forces from Trevor's star because the knew that they could not hold it. The San Martinos might have been raising Hell for them as encouragment.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:In a more serious vien, I think the PRN understood not only the strategic importance of Trevor's Star but the tactical vulnerability. Unlike the RMN which was hampered by isolationist sentiments against imperialism, they did not heavily fortify their end of the wormhole. The PRN was too much in the habit of being on the offensive. From their perspective, it seemed smarter to use the resources to build more mobile forces including SDs.

The PRN learned too late that the vast size of the PRH was a strategic liability. They had something like 100 star systems to defend? Their decision to build hundreds of battleships was driven by the need to have suffecient heavy forces to defend these systems at an affordable cost. This decision was logical back when their potential opponents, including the RMN, deployed few ships heavier than a BC. Even so, they could deploy no more than a squadron of BBs at each of their systems.

By the time Whitehaven attacked Trevor's star, the RMN had been conducting raids that were seriously attriting PRN forces. I do not recall it being stated explicitly, but the PRN BBs were no doubt the primary victims. I imagine raiding forces of a squadron of DNs or SDs backed up by BCs. The capitol ships would engage the BBs and the BCs would hunt down the cripples. This no doubt explains why the PRN was throwing BBs into the Yelstin furnace in FIE. They knew that they were going to loose them anyway.

I agree that the Peeps opted for building flexible ships rather than inflexible forts at Trevor's Star. After all, from their standpoint temporarily losing control of the terminus wasn't considered a huge problem - so while forts are more economical that fleets to defend fixed points the terminus wasn't a fixed point Haven had to hold. Normally using ships to keep Manticore from poking their head through was fine, and if the war moved on those ships could be reassigned, while forts couldn't be.

But I disagree that Manticore would have been cutting wallers lose for raids deeper into the PRH. They needed every DN and SD they could scrape up to hold critical systems or to win the attrition fight against the Peep wallers around the front lines. Deep raids with wallers was a 2nd war tactic after missile pods and LAC swarms took up much of the weight of rear area defense (and when Manticore had no real choice except to try to keep Haven off balance).

The primary raiding forces of Manticore were BCs backed by other cruisers (and probably some fast logistic ships). So any BBs the Peeps were losing in their rear areas would have been to BCs towing pods. (And we heard of at least one instance where a talented BB commander mousetrapped several RMN BCs and blew them away. Raiding was risky when the defenders outgun you - and pods and skill can't always tilt the balance in your favor)

TFLYTSNBN wrote:While the PRH understood the strategic value of the Trevors Star terminus, they understood the tactical vulnerability. The constant threat that the RMN might send Home fleet through the wormhole to back any attack resulted in the need for a huge picket force. It was far to late to build forts. Once Whitehaven had suffeciently attrited PRH forces and inflicted enough chaos, the PRN made a strategic decision to withdraw forces from Trevor's star because the knew that they could not hold it. The San Martinos might have been raising Hell for them as encouragment.

Also, defending a wormhole terminus from attackers trying to come through the wormhole, is ludicrously asymmetric in favor of the defense once laserheads came on the scene.

The attacking force arrives in the middle of a grav eddy, at very low speed, with sails up and no ability to raise sidewalls. Any missiles or CMs they try to launch will be instantly destroyed by the grav forces; as will towed or free flying decopys. And it will take several minutes to get to a point where you can switch from sails to wedge, get a sidewall up, and start using CMs to defend yourself.

During that period inbound laserheads, which with their 30,000+ km standoff range can engage you from outside the destructive grav forces, can hit you from pretty much any angle, including from directly above or below - where PDLC's don't cover well and which usually carry less armor. And all you can use to try to survive is your onboard ECM and energy weapons, PDLCs and broadside.

Oh and you either have a max number of SDs you can send in a mass transit or you're trickling ships in once every couple minutes.

Pods just make it much, much worse for the attackers, but even without them the defenders probably have at least 10:1 advantage and all their shots in the first couple minutes are free ones - the attackers have no way to engage them until the defenders are dumb enough to get within about 500,000 km (energy range). Heck the defenders have an energy range advantage since their sidewalls protect them down to about a half million km, but the attackers, who lack sidewalls for the first critical minutes after transit, are vulnerable from at least 25-50% further out than that.

So the Peeps don't need to tie down massive forces to keep a detachment from poking through the wormhole uninvited. A much smaller force, backed by mines, is plenty to fatally weaken even a serious attack by home fleet. And the Peeps would gladly trade Trevor's Star for inflicting so much damage to Home Fleet that they could then take Manticore.


There's a reason even once White Haven conceived of a way to use some of Home Fleet in the attack it wasn't done until 3rd Fleet's BCs had cleared the mines and jumped through to Manticore to let the Home Fleet detachment know the way was clear. Otherwise the mines and even some BCs backing them could have seriously chewed up those SDs and ruined White Haven's plans.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:I do not recall it being stated explicitly, but the PRN BBs were no doubt the primary victims. I imagine raiding forces of a squadron of DNs or SDs backed up by BCs. The capitol ships would engage the BBs and the BCs would hunt down the cripples. This no doubt explains why the PRN was throwing BBs into the Yelstin furnace in FIE. They knew that they were going to loose them anyway.

See the discussions on the Peep side in Flag In Exile. They started using the BBs in active operations though they knew they were not suited for them because they were more suited than any other available force.

But the BB's didn't get all destroyed. There were enough left that the pre-war RMN BC deep raid strategy was a disaster that was rapidly discontinued.

kzt wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:I do not recall it being stated explicitly, but the PRN BBs were no doubt the primary victims. I imagine raiding forces of a squadron of DNs or SDs backed up by BCs. The capitol ships would engage the BBs and the BCs would hunt down the cripples. This no doubt explains why the PRN was throwing BBs into the Yelstin furnace in FIE. They knew that they were going to loose them anyway.

See the discussions on the Peep side in Flag In Exile. They started using the BBs in active operations though they knew they were not suited for them because they were more suited than any other available force.

But the BB's didn't get all destroyed. There were enough left that the pre-war RMN BC deep raid strategy was a disaster that was rapidly discontinued.

Um. That really isn't explicitly stated in the books anywhere because it isn't what happened.

The prewar RMN favored the BC because they thought in terms of commerce warfare as a substitute for the deep raid doctrine that later evolved. They intended to raid their opponents' shipping and conduct raids on orbital infrastructure using their BCs as the primary platforms for both.

Two things mitigated against that. One was, indeed, the BBs the Peeps used for rear area security, but that was definitely secondary to their thinking. The BBs didn't surprise them or their prewar planners, but the deployment pattern the Peeps adopted post coup was a bit of a surprise, because the Legislaturalists had always intended the BBs moe for internal system control than as a primary defensed against external attacks, since under their doctrine, they were the ones who were supposed to do all the attacking.

When Pierre & Co. overthrew the Legislaturalists, they pulled the BBs out of a lot of the rear area systems to concentrate them for (a) system defense and, later, for (b) offensive operations, mainly as diversionary forces, because the true PRN wallers were so desperately needed elsewhere.

This brings us to the second factor from the RMN's side, which was that (1) there weren't as many opportunities to raid Peep commerce as they'd expected, once the Peeps adopted a convoy system (with, admittedly, BB escort) and (2) they needed a lot more pickets among their alliance partners' home systems than they'd anticipated prewar. That was largely a political issue; the allies had decided they needed a lot more cover than had been agreed to prewar now that the shooting had started, and the SKM saw no option but to provide it, both as a moral obligation and because everyone on both sides was still thinking in terms of short advances with well secured bases close to the front. There is actually a point in one of the books where Honor and (I think) Mercedes are discussing the fact that in light of the operational realities of the actual war (as opposed to the prewar assumptions) many of the Alliance members were more burden than aid because of the diversion of Manty effort they represented, especially pre-Shrike. The RMN was already badly overstretched in the run up to the final Trevor's Star campaign and, then, the lead into Buttercup, and they made up a lot of the weight the pickets needed with BCs because the Peeps couldn't spare anything heavier than battleships for the raids the pickets were expected to defend against. In other words, the political requirements of coalition warfare required the diversion of forces, and the BCs were more dispensable than wallers would have been. They were, in effect, doing on the Manties' side of the line precisely what the BBs were doing on the Peeps' side of the line. (And despite the basic failure of Stalking Horse, that and McQueen's offensives had the desired effect of making the Manties' allies even more insistent on detachments to help safeguard their systems.)

It wasn't the function Manticore had envisioned for the BCs any more than the carrier escort role had been the primary task visualized for the new USN BB designs of the late 30s, but it wasn't because the BBs had turned their original strategy into a "disaster that was rapidly discontinued." It was because of a confluence of events. Without the required diversion of forces to the pickets, the Manties might well have persevered in their deep raids, at which point the Peep BBs would have discovered that a pair of Manty BCs was more than a match for any Peep BB in commission . . . which was about the tonnage ratio the Manties had figured they'd need all along.

Perhaps fortunately for both sides, in this respect, the realities of their war threw both sides' prewar doctrine and planning out of whack.

Interesting. Thanks.