Hamish Alexander

wiki wrote:Once promoted to Admiral's rank, Alexander led the school of traditionalist tactical thought against Admiral Sonja Hemphill's jeune ecole.

After Paul Tankersley's death, he gave Honor Harrington the order not to challenge Earl North Hollow to a duel. After she defied the order and killed Young, he regretted having given an illegal order and that he knew would be ignored even if legal.

wiki wrote:
He continued his drive on the Trevor's Star System and considered making a direct attack despite his reputation as a master of the indirect approach. He also managed to incorporate certain ideas of the jeune ecole despite his general distaste for it.

hanuman wrote:I've always wondered exactly how Hamish conquered Trevor's Star - was it explained in one of the books? Or an infodump?

hanuman wrote:I've always wondered exactly how Hamish conquered Trevor's Star - was it explained in one of the books? Or an infodump?

cthia wrote:And here's to Hamish Alexander — although his accomplishments were ultimately overshadowed by Honor Harrington's, at nearly 6'3" tall, Hamish Alexander reminds me of an old star football quarterback, who ran the plays when the ships were still made out of real pig skin. The RMN owes a lot to Alexander. I often wonder where Manticore would have been without him — militarily and politically.

It could be argued that Alexander was as powerful as Elizabeth herself in as many names as he could drop. He was the uncle of Lord Theodore Harper, Planetary Grand Duke of Manticore — one of the highest-ranking peerages in the Star Kingdom of Manticore, older brother to Lord William Alexander — one of the most capable Prime Ministers ever enjoyed by the Star Kingdom and descendant of a heraldic clan of White Havens whose seeds were essential to the core of Manty.

He chose to rise through the ranks on talent and tact instead of by the threads of his lineage. In essence, he belonged where he was. It was his destiny.

wiki wrote:Once promoted to Admiral's rank, Alexander led the school of traditionalist tactical thought against Admiral Sonja Hemphill's jeune ecole.

Perhaps this very opposition served to galvanize Sonja Hemphill to achieve.

Did Hamish Alexander indirectly save Honor Harrington's life at Yeltsin's Star by desperately launching missiles on a ballistic course at Thunder of God causing Sword Simonds to execute a fatal defensive maneuver exposing her bow to Fearless? I wonder if Harrington or Alexander was aware of the impact of those desperately fired missiles.

After Paul Tankersley's death, he gave Honor Harrington the order not to challenge Earl North Hollow to a duel. After she defied the order and killed Young, he regretted having given an illegal order and that he knew would be ignored even if legal.

Okay, shouldn't there at least have been a thin line between 'legal' 'illegal?' She was an important officer in the RMN, with a responsibility to the Queen she pledged to serve. Politically, her actions was going to be a disaster, regardless of the legality of the duel. None wanted Young dead more than I, but Honor's duty was "To the Queen." Not to herself. You're in the Navy now Honor! I always felt that Alexander had a good argument for being able to issue that 'order.'

wiki wrote:
He continued his drive on the Trevor's Star System and considered making a direct attack despite his reputation as a master of the indirect approach. He also managed to incorporate certain ideas of the jeune ecole despite his general distaste for it.

Direct approach against McQueen???

Was Alexander the first to execute a mass transit? That move gave Honor a piece of tactical insurance, and it proved to be experience for Astro Control for Honor's maneuver.

The star athlete always gets the girl. This star athlete got two. Both trophy wives.

Raise another toast to the 13th Earl White Haven, where there is nothing unlucky about this 13. With the rich history of twelve Earl White Havens before him, he was the culmination of an extraordinary baker's dozen...and boy could he cook.

Lord Skimper wrote:Was? This Was? That????

Is this a hint?

One of the books has a description of the battle, unless that was a different battle? He calls for Theisman to surrender, only Theisman isn't there. One of the recent books has a semi play by play of the short battle. Nor terminus transition though, just drop out of hyper with a short number of defenders who get punched out by Mk23 and Shrike LAC.

Lord Skimper wrote:Was? This Was? That????

Is this a hint?

One of the books has a description of the battle, unless that was a different battle? He calls for Theisman to surrender, only Theisman isn't there. One of the recent books has a semi play by play of the short battle. Nor terminus transition though, just drop out of hyper with a short number of defenders who get punched out by Mk23 and Shrike LAC.

Lord Skimper wrote:Was? This Was? That????

Is this a hint?

One of the books has a description of the battle, unless that was a different battle? He calls for Theisman to surrender, only Theisman isn't there. One of the recent books has a semi play by play of the short battle. Nor terminus transition though, just drop out of hyper with a short number of defenders who get punched out by Mk23 and Shrike LAC.

Weird Harold wrote:

hanuman wrote:I've always wondered exactly how Hamish conquered Trevor's Star - was it explained in one of the books? Or an infodump?

A frontal assault to pull the defenders away from the terminus and a mass transit to catch the Peeps from behind.

That's as much detail as textev supports, afaik.

runsforcelery wrote:In the case of Trevor's Star, the Peeps hadn't put any forts on the terminus. They hadn't needed to. If anyone started any wars between them and the SKM, they intended for it to be them, which meant that --- unlike the SKM --- they didn't have to worry about a sneak attack in peacetime. Therefore, it made more sense to use the immensely less expensive option of mining the single transit lane to a fare-thee-well. That strategy came back to bite them when White Haven managed to convince the Admiralty to let him go after the terminus from both directions at once, but please do note how long it took him to convince Admiralty House to let him try that even with the enormous strategic edge Trevor's Star's was going to give the RMN. Had the PR been able to find the resources to put forts on the terminus to protect it against an attack through hyper-space, White Haven's plans probably wouldn't have worked because there would have been something in place to back up the mines, but the PN didn't have all those big nasty forts and was under the impression that a sufficient number of SDs ought to do the trick

runsforcelery wrote:Moreover, there hasn't been -- and isn't going to be -- an actual unassisted assault through a heavily defended terminus (see my comments on Trevor's Star below). And because I didn't fight the Battle of the Trevor's Star Terminus on stage, all of this debate really constitutes what happens when I share details with the readers and they aren't what the readers thought they were because the aforesaid readers had made certain assumptions. It's enough to make me sometimes reconsider whether I want to tell people anything that isn't already in the books because every time I do someone squawks that I'm "changing everything" when, in fact, what's really happening is that they're getting a look deeper into what was going on all along and it just happens not to be what they thought was going on.

[major snip about wormhole assults in general; and the impact of the transit physics]

In the case of White Haven's attack on Trevor's Star, there were no Havenite fortresses covering the Trevor's Star Terminus. The Peeps had never built any because if anyone was going to do any attacking through the terminus, it was going to be them (even though they never actually intended to do anything of the sort), and partly because they didn't care if they blew away the occasional merchant ship by relying on minefields and/or laser heads. So White Haven's problem was to deal with a mobile force as well as the Junction itself. Note that no one at any time on Manticore's side even thought about proposing an unassisted assault through the terminus. In addition, the transit lane for Trevor's Star is way shorter than the transit lane for the Junction; it's a single terminus, without the "focusing" effect of the Junction. An attacker coming through from the Manticore side finds himself in a transit lane which is about 12,000 kilometers across (not 9,000) and which extends only about 10,000 kilometers from the terminus itself. This means that a Manticoran superdreadnought with a 1910 compensator would spend only about 90 seconds trapped in the transit lane inbound to Trevor's Star, as opposed to the 4.5 minutes of an assault into the Junction.

Now, 90 seconds is more than enough time for a thicket of laser heads to take out a superdreadnought, but what White Haven did was to attack with a sufficiently powerful force to draw the defending wall of battle into engaging him out of its own range of the terminus utself. San Martin and its orbital infrastructure were also highly important to the People's Republic of Haven (that's where the actual Trecor's star fleet base was located), and he was in a position to choose an attack vector which threatened both the terminus and San Martin at a time when the Peeps, due to losses (in those preliminary approach operations of his) and lack of maintenance, could not afford to put two powerful fleets in place to defend each objective separately.

Once he had the defensive fleet units drawn out of effective range of the terminus in order to engage him, he sent a waiting destroyer into hyper to the force of battlecruisers he'd tucked away there. Those battlecruisers then dropped out of hyper almost on top of the terminus, headed directly away from the defending fleet units accelerating towards White Haven. Their function was to "sweep" the mines covering the transit lane. White Haven knew they wouldn't get all of them, but he anticipated that they would be able to inflict sufficient damage on them to make it possible for the single scout ship being sent through from Manticore to survive, return home, and bring back reinforcements. In the event, they didn't send the courier through at all; one of the battlecruisers came through the Junction from the Trevor's Star side, and the additional fleet units immediately made transit. The purpose of the transit was not to suddenly bring a massive weight of fire to bear on the defenders' rear and flanks; it was to hugely reinforce White Haven's fleet (already almost strong enough to take Trevor's Star on its own) directly from Home Fleet. If it was possible for the reinforcements to catch the defenders between themselves and White Haven's wall of battle, that would be wonderful. In the far more likely case that it wouldn't be possible for them to do that, however, they would still constitute such a powerful increase in combat power that the defenders would have no choice but to abandon both San Martin and the Trevor's Star Terminus.

I apologize for not having fought the battle out in all its gory details, but I was sort of concentrating on HMS Wayfarer and Silesia at the time the attack actually went in. I will also concede that not having actually fought the battle out in the books -- simply knowing how it was fought, if you take my meaning -- means that I hadn't refined all of the details as thoroughly as I would have if I'd actually shown you the tactics. It didn't occur to me that there was any need to do so, since it was all going to happen "offstage," and so there are a few touches and tweaks I would have added/made to White Haven's battle plan -- and the way he described it to Caparelli in Honor Among Enemies -- which don't appear in the books and probably contribute to this entire furor. (For example, I would probably have gone ahead and omitted the whole "send a courier through" portion of his initial battle plan because I would have realized how much more sense it would make to send the BC through from the Trevor's Star end. There critics of the battleplan as described to Caparelli probably have a valid criticism.) The fact that I didn't show you the battle step-by-step and blow-by-blow doesn't mean that the battle plan didn't conform to the way junction transits actually occur, however.