CLAC's in Home Fleet

Sigs wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:So - between them, in 1922 at least, 142+ CLAC's minus some losses (but not many; CLAC's don't come under much fire). I don't think that 106+ in the RMN in 1922 is too compatible with
42 in 1920. It's not logically impossible, but it's a real stretch, and if it is the case, it means that the 42 total figure and 16 in the Home System do still represent a short and exceptional period.

Well the Fleet strength as of 1920 stated that there are 42 CLAC's, which to me means that in the time frame between 1920 and 1922 the RMN more than tripled their carrier strength, a lot of CLAC's were destroyed before 1920, the Fleet Strength numbers wrong http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/site/entry/Harrington/106/1 or a lot of those CLAC's were decommissioned by the High Ridge government and/or sold off to Allies or a combination of all those things.

Huh, I'd not recalled that infodump, thanks. I don't think a lot of CLAC's were destroyed, I'm not going to reject the 1920 infodump figures or HoS totals, and I don't think CLAC's were decommissioned by Janacek in vast amounts (too recent and too critical to the "Hemphill Paradigm"). Given all of that, we're left with sucking up the surprise of jumping up in CLAC count radically in a couple years. The infodump figures don't include units that were under construction - including construction on effective hold - at the time, so maybe much of that lump was just those not-quite-finished CLAC's completed in the late Janacek and early Alexander-Harrington Admiralties.

Someone with War of Honor at their fingertips may be better able to say.

I am using one instance in time to gage the fleet strength of home fleet because as far as I know that is the most detailed breakdown of Home Fleet in the series prior to the Battle of Manticore. As for CLACs being there as a reserve to draw from, it would require that SD(P )'s also be part of the reserve as well as lighter escort ships. Having only CLAC's as your reserve seems like a bad idea, and raiding Home Fleet for SD's, BC's and escorts to send out as reinforcements also does not make too much sense, I realize it has been done but doing something repeatedly and for good reason does not necessarily mean it stops being a bad idea.

Right. CLAC's and wings aren't a special element for emergencies - they'd be no more or less likely to be drawn out, or drawn out alone, than most other comparable elements. (Well - if you want maximum ooomph per hyper transit, a CLAC and wing is likely a better choice than a comparable SD(P).)

Also when I refer to Aircraft Carriers and Fighters I am referring to the relationship between the carrier and its aircraft or in the case of LAC's the carrier and its LAC's. I am using fighters as a generic term for the aircraft of the carrier, I know its wrong and from this point on I'll try to remember to refer to them as simply aircraft. It is true that a CLAC could drop off its LAC's in a system with an ammunition ship and leave them there but then again a Japanese Helicopter Destroyer can drop off its aircraft on land as long as they drop off ammunition and fuel stores.

The helicopter carrier analogy may be more apt, just because helicopters are slower and less picky about their landing facilities than jets.

cthia wrote:Jeff Engel:
... I'd just suggest that there's (a) not much of a corollary...

I can get on this bus. I assume you did acknowledge this...

Cthia:
I never said that I agreed with Sig's analogy of Carriers/Jets to CLACs/LACs. I only said that I appreciate the sharing of his angle. An interesting angle.

I simply think it insightful to be able to take a step back and perceive the similarity. Of course the two separate pieces of the puzzle aren't wholly interchangeable, and I'm willing to wager that neither does Sigs think that they are completely analogous. I simply thought his analogy was interesting and insightful, as I stated and commend him for it.

I took that as bringing it up as an interesting point for discussion. And discussed! I just think there's a lot more mileage in contrasting CLAC's/LAC's with carriers/aircraft than taking them as analogous.

Jeff Engel:
If you're looking for a wet naval counterpart though, that's more like old destroyers and tenders, or torpedo boats and tenders - and I'm pretty sure they've been the more specific comparison made by RFC at some point or another.

*I've come across this several times in this thread alone. You miss a profound subtlety - when one's tactical or strategic situation calls for the promotion of a piece to a stronger force such as the analogous logistics of Aircraft carriers/fighter jets (Rooks), as opposed to the weaker analogy of old destroyers/torpedo boats and tenders, (Bishops, Knights) per my perspective. It isn't that I search for a wet navy counterpart (nor do I think it so with Sigs). I am looking for a satisfying, appropriate force. Suitable, fitting to properly fill a particular strategic requirement.

I'm afraid that clarification didn't help at all.

*I do tend to reduce many things to the chess board. (Surprise) My niece and I must be twins in that regard. We understand each other. I once read that great Generals were avid chess players and that the hallmark of the best was the ability to reduce strategy and tactics to a simplest form. Occams Razor.

Hmmph, I've always suspected it's a matter of chess floating in the same circles and a deliberate promotion of it as somehow relevant. I'm more struck by disanalogies there too and the grievous potential for mistakes confusing warfare with a chess board. Comparisons with poker, football, or Monopoly would be about as good, sometimes better, but still leave you wide-open to bringing over the wrong lessons.

I also wonder how much the chess as war, war as chess notion owes to formalism in 17th/18th century war in Europe and people harkening back to the good old days before mass armies and enthusiasm. I'm curious too how often it comes up in naval warfare theory as opposed to ground warfare thinking, at least in that era. Depending on weather, tides, and a "game board" where status reports are always dated, partial and unreliable don't lend themselves to chessboard thinking.

Jeff Engel:
And if the comparison brings in associations that will steer the strategist wrong, it's a problem. If the strategist has to work to guard against those, it's a cost that may or may not be worth it.

Conversely, the kind of strategist who recognizes situational simularities in Aircraft carriers/Jets to CLACs/LACs is disciplined and intelligent enough to recognize the limitations inherent and would obtain the wherewithal not to carry(npi) the analogy too far.

Your confidence in those strategists' control over the metaphors floating around is a whole lot stronger than mine. People think with these ideas. If it's a dubious idea, dubious fruit will grow from it. If there are good and bad lessons to be drawn, absent care and luck, you can count on mostly the bad ones cropping up. Chess doesn't prepare one for taking Murphy's Law seriously.

Jeff Engel:
What's gained by the comparison?

A situational, Occam's razor sharp clarity.


The analogy isn't inherently wrong. Incorrect application, thereof, would be.

That could be said for any analogy. The point of one is to come up with good ideas and patterns of thought that wouldn't come without it, or far less easily, without opening the door for confusion. Wet naval analogies for the CLAC's and wings are available that are better. Skipping the analogies entirely - the LAC's are simply small STL warships - isn't a problem, so there's not even much use for a good analogy.

You could use a loaded gun with a glitchy safety as a paperweight, but it's not looking like a good idea.

Chess doesn't prepare one for taking Murphy's Law seriously.

Every piece on the board is a clone of Murphy.

There were CLACs sent to Talbott to deliver LACs to various systems and provide the protection that LACs represent against the types of problems that were then expected in Talbott.
That would be pirates, commerce raiders, and various light units of FF or systems like Monica and others who had actual warships and might be expected to use them.

What Mike ended up doing was short-stopping those CLACS and either adding them to 10th Fleet or deploying them to places in Talbott where she could not put (or keep) other warships.

What I took from reading about those CLACs was that they were supposed to be delivering actual Squadrons of LACs (and multiple squadrons at that) into Talbott as existing and trainted up orgainziations with structure and experience. Shipping LACs with cadres of mechanics and trainers is and was always something that was being done to provide protection and work up local forces with Manticore equipment and tactics with training and the LACs would be based at local system facilities - either converted or to be built. Sending CLACs to deliver an entire established and trained WING of LACs is a whole other discussion. These would be Wings (multiple squadrons) of LACs which had put together and trained together in the Manticore system, probably at least training with CLACs assigned to that duty. There would be differences between LAC units intended for static deployment (from orbital facilites or in-system bases) than for those used on the CLACS. Launching and recovering from CLACs would add a whole lot of extra skill and tactical learning.

On the other hand, delivering a Wing's worth of LACs, fully trained and as part of a functioning and trained together wing- even if it was one intended to work from system bases and not trained to fly off of CLACs- really delivers a force to a system. Not clear if the transportation by CLAC was accompanied by transports with the maintenance and ammunition intended for the system baseing to be built.

A full trained Wing would give serious trouble to FF CAs and BCs to say nothing of being able to beat the snot out of several SLN DDs.
It's an interim and expedient method to covering places you really need to cover but for which you do not have the available warships to place two or more (even DDs) in those systems.

cthia wrote:

Chess doesn't prepare one for taking Murphy's Law seriously.

Every piece on the board is a clone of Murphy.

I get this picture in my head of setting up for a game and all the pieces get up off the board, steal your lunch, scare your cat, and send disturbing website links to your mom....

cthia wrote:

Chess doesn't prepare one for taking Murphy's Law seriously.

Every piece on the board is a clone of Murphy.

Not even remotely. When was the last time somebody won by moving their rook diagonally?

Brigade XO wrote:It's an interim and expedient method to covering places you really need to cover but for which you do not have the available warships to place two or more (even DDs) in those systems.

Do you mean by "it" here using CLAC's to deliver full wings, trained for CLAC-based operations and in just about one CLAC wing's strength, or using LAC groups at all for system defense?

I ask because LAC's for system defense - along with missile pods - seems to be, and reasonably, a general emerging foundation.

JeffEngel wrote:

Sigs wrote:Well the Fleet strength as of 1920 stated that there are 42 CLAC's, which to me means that in the time frame between 1920 and 1922 the RMN more than tripled their carrier strength, a lot of CLAC's were destroyed before 1920, the Fleet Strength numbers wrong http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/site/entry/Harrington/106/1 or a lot of those CLAC's were decommissioned by the High Ridge government and/or sold off to Allies or a combination of all those things.

Huh, I'd not recalled that infodump, thanks. I don't think a lot of CLAC's were destroyed, I'm not going to reject the 1920 infodump figures or HoS totals, and I don't think CLAC's were decommissioned by Janacek in vast amounts (too recent and too critical to the "Hemphill Paradigm"). Given all of that, we're left with sucking up the surprise of jumping up in CLAC count radically in a couple years. The infodump figures don't include units that were under construction - including construction on effective hold - at the time, so maybe much of that lump was just those not-quite-finished CLAC's completed in the late Janacek and early Alexander-Harrington Admiralties.

Someone with War of Honor at their fingertips may be better able to say.

Most likely the additional CLACs were closest of all to completion. Consider that a RMN CLAC is both smaller and less armoured than a SD(P) and designed with more holes than swiss cheese.

The High Ridge government also resumed construction on SD(P)s and CLACs closest to completion. At any rate, 19 unfinished CLACs were lost at Grendelsbane, so I'm tempted to assume that the Manticoran Binary System's shipyards were building another sixty or more, on the admittedly flimsy concept that Grendelsbane was the fourth largest yard and those four yards had proportional construction assignments. Pushing it up to 80 accounts for virtually every additional CLAC mentioned between the 1920PD chart and HoS.

As for CLAC losses, there weren't that many. Given the nature of their armanent, they're low-value targets in fleet combat once their LACs have launched, assuming they hadn't retreated into hyper afterwards.

And Janacek didn't decommission any new ships that had entered service - he wasn't THAT stupid. To be fair, the ships he were tossing were old wallers - obsolete in the pod-laying environment. The Cromarty government would almost certainly have done the same thing with them - but only to transfer their crews into all the new types laid down.

Jeff Engel:
Chess doesn't prepare one for taking Murphy's Law seriously.

Cthia:
Every piece on the board is a clone of Murphy.

JeffEngel wrote:I get this picture in my head of setting up for a game and all the pieces get up off the board, steal your lunch, scare your cat, and send disturbing website links to your mom....

Dammit Jeff! I'm wearing a $350 Rayner & Sturgess dress shirt that's covered in grape soda!

Hilarious reply!

cthia wrote:

Chess doesn't prepare one for taking Murphy's Law seriously.

Every piece on the board is a clone of Murphy.

crewdude48 wrote:Not even remotely. When was the last time somebody won by moving their rook diagonally?

Easy answer here. My youngest niece, less than 18 months old, insists on moving rooks any way she likes. Horses should be able to jump as far as she likes. And the Queen and King cannot die. Her pawns is a wall that shouldn't be moved.

She smacks my hand when I try and take one of her pieces off the board. And she's very resolute.