A question about the destruction of Admiral Filareta

I know the admiral was wanting to surrender to Admiral Harrington but The Mesan Alignment kinda shot their golden bullet before blowing up the Flag Bridge. What has me is that the Damage Control aboard the flagship should have been all over that happening and asking a lot of "WHAT THE HELLS!!?!?!" given that the Flagship was destroyed about 5-7 minutes later it seems moot but I just can't help but wonder if some officer on that damage control room checked the video logs of the flag bridge and if he was quick enough shot them over the fleets Tac net....or to the honorverses euqivilent of youtube?

That was a question I had as well - The damage to the flag bridge was nearly simultaneous to the launch and there were several minutes before the missiles crisscrossed. His 2nd in command (& further down if the same thing happened to them) should have seen the hopelessness of the situation, asked "WTF!" when their pods flushed & checked with the flag...which isn't there, then assumed command & surrendered/self-dest the missiles on their own authority before the fleet was whipped out, citing to the Manties "critical failure on the flag bridge". The results would have still been a massive SL loss but not destruction.

MAD-4A wrote:That was a question I had as well - The damage to the flag bridge was nearly simultaneous to the launch and there were several minutes before the missiles crisscrossed. His 2nd in command (& further down if the same thing happened to them) should have seen the hopelessness of the situation, asked "WTF!" when their pods flushed & checked with the flag...which isn't there, then assumed command & surrendered/self-dest the missiles on their own authority before the fleet was whipped out, citing to the Manties "critical failure on the flag bridge". The results would have still been a massive SL loss but not destruction.

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

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

Especially true for a peacetime but well drilled navy, as the SLN is.

They're not going to have a plan for disruptions of the chain of command, unlike a unit that had seen a lot of combat/casualties and is more used to acting independently.

Although even the best navy would have had trouble going anything effective in time to prevent the inevitable. By the time any coherent response could occur, the Manticoran counterstrike would have been most of the way there.

For another example, see 1st Hancock, where the competent flag officer was incapacitated, the other competent officers were out of communication and Honor basically decided to break military law to pretend Sarnow was in command to prevent an idiot from taking command.

Barring a flag officer with unusual initiative in that situation, the ability of Manticorans to shift command would have resulted in an idiot in charge and an even worse outcome. Although Honor was still investigated for breaking the rules...and was willing to accept the consequences if it was deemed she'd done wrong. Luckily for her the encounter ended well, although if it had not (ie, the expected situation before DNs showed up) she'd likely be too dead to prosecute anyway.

For another example, see 1st Hancock, where the competent flag officer was incapacitated, the other competent officers were out of communication and Honor basically decided to break military law to pretend Sarnow was in command to prevent an idiot from taking command.

Err...no. The problem was that the next senior officer, Captain Rubenstein, was in a ship that was too beat up to exercise command and had lost FTL comm capability. Nike, despite its previous damage, was still in good shape and did retain FTL comm capability. The fear was that Rubenstein did not have the tactical knowledge that Danislav's DNs were in system. It had nothing to do with his competence.

Duckk wrote:

For another example, see 1st Hancock, where the competent flag officer was incapacitated, the other competent officers were out of communication and Honor basically decided to break military law to pretend Sarnow was in command to prevent an idiot from taking command.

Err...no. The problem was that the next senior officer, Captain Rubenstein, was in a ship that was too beat up to exercise command and had lost FTL comm capability. Nike, despite its previous damage, was still in good shape and did retain FTL comm capability. The fear was that Rubenstein did not have the tactical knowledge that Danislav's DNs were in system. It had nothing to do with his competence.

Though Citizen Captain Hall did break military law to pretend Citizen Rear Admiral Kellet was in command to prevent an idiot from taking command at Second Hancock.

Duckk wrote:

For another example, see 1st Hancock, where the competent flag officer was incapacitated, the other competent officers were out of communication and Honor basically decided to break military law to pretend Sarnow was in command to prevent an idiot from taking command.

Err...no. The problem was that the next senior officer, Captain Rubenstein, was in a ship that was too beat up to exercise command and had lost FTL comm capability. Nike, despite its previous damage, was still in good shape and did retain FTL comm capability. The fear was that Rubenstein did not have the tactical knowledge that Danislav's DNs were in system. It had nothing to do with his competence.

Duckk, re-reading Harolds' comments above and yours, I don't see the disagreement. Harold said "the other competent officers were out of communication". which is close enough to your detailed explanation.

Or are you going pedantic on us...

Seriously, the OP is a good question, and I have wondered if the survival of 60 or so SLN SD's without damage was due to the officer commanding that portion of the fleet realizing that things had gone FUBAR and dropping his task forces wedges and surrending in time for the GA missiles to be self-destructed. While the rest decided that there must be some reason for the command ship to fire off the missiles and joined in simply because it seemed the only option available (they chose...poorly).

MAD-4A wrote:That was a question I had as well - The damage to the flag bridge was nearly simultaneous to the launch and there were several minutes before the missiles crisscrossed. His 2nd in command (& further down if the same thing happened to them) should have seen the hopelessness of the situation, asked "WTF!" when their pods flushed & checked with the flag...which isn't there, then assumed command & surrendered/self-dest the missiles on their own authority before the fleet was whipped out, citing to the Manties "critical failure on the flag bridge". The results would have still been a massive SL loss but not destruction.

His second in command was on another ship. Filareta's flagship wasn't outwardly affected. It's going to take at least a minute for his flag captain to realise flag bridge is gone, get on the com and contact the second in command.

Who, by this point, is preoccupied by the incoming return fire. There simply wasn't time for them to catch up and override their missiles, re-establish contact with the GA(one of the downside of using those FTL relay drones, the enemy's second in command can't tap in), convince them to abort their own missiles as well and then surrender the largest fleet in history.

Until Filareta's death was confirmed, it's probable that nobody would've overridden the flagship. That's why their surrender didn't happen until after it was destroyed and command unquestionably fell onto another admiral's shoulders.

If the secondary flagship was destroyed as well, nobody alive would know what had happened. That information simply wouldn't have disseminated and the SLN clearly never developed the need for something like the Code Omega protocol from Starfire.

MAD-4A wrote:That was a question I had as well - The damage to the flag bridge was nearly simultaneous to the launch and there were several minutes before the missiles crisscrossed. His 2nd in command (& further down if the same thing happened to them) should have seen the hopelessness of the situation, asked "WTF!" when their pods flushed & checked with the flag...which isn't there, then assumed command & surrendered/self-dest the missiles on their own authority before the fleet was whipped out, citing to the Manties "critical failure on the flag bridge". The results would have still been a massive SL loss but not destruction.

Somthing to consider. The person who gave the order to fire could have been under mesan control as well. Considering how well the rest of Mesa's plans are made out and set up with contingencies, I think it is possible the person who actually pushed the button was already under their control, either by the nano tech or by willing choice.

Commodore Oakius wrote:Somthing to consider. The person who gave the order to fire could have been under mesan control as well. Considering how well the rest of Mesa's plans are made out and set up with contingencies, I think it is possible the person who actually pushed the button was already under their control, either by the nano tech or by willing choice.

I thought it was fairly obvious that was the case. The guy who pushed the button was definitely a nano-assassin.

The tech who placed the bomb, OTOH, probably wasn't nano-controlled; the task was too complex and the Tech survived (afawk.)

ETA texev:

Admiral William Daniels reached for his console to transmit the orders Admiral Filareta had given him. He was still in a state of shock, of disbelief, yet what he felt most strongly was relief. Relief that Filareta had been willing to recognize reality. Relief that Eleventh Fleet wasn’t going to be destroyed after all.

Relief that abruptly vanished as he saw his own hand flip up a plastic shield and hit the button under it.

Filareta stiffened in horrified disbelief as fifty-one hundred pods launched fifty-one thousand missiles in a single enormous salvo.

“What the fuck d’you think you’re do—?!”

The fleet admiral never completed the question. Before he could, William Daniels’ hand, still under someone—or something—else’s command, kept right on moving. The operations officer fought desperately to stop it, but it moved smoothly, efficiently, punching in a numerical command code he’d never learned or even seen before.
The command that detonated the bomb a petty officer named Harder had installed in his console and killed every man and woman on SLNS Philip Oppenheimer’s flag bridge.