My God! My God, the seccies have guns!

According to several sources the first thing some of the SS said at the start of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was, "My God! My God! The Jews have guns!"

I was wondering if there was similar sentiment in COG when the battle of the seccy towers began.

It would probably be off stage, no mention of it in textev. Opinions?

They knew they had guns. They were unaware of the scope of their arsenal, but they knew the criminal gangs didn't seem to have a problem finding guns. They also knew that there was some leakage of heavy weapons, but again didn't realize the actual scope.

kzt wrote:They knew they had guns. They were unaware of the scope of their arsenal, but they knew the criminal gangs didn't seem to have a problem finding guns. They also knew that there was some leakage of heavy weapons, but again didn't realize the actual scope.

The surprise was that they would turn them against the "authorities", which heretofore had apparently never (or at least, only in scattered event brutally suppressed). Or that they would fight so valiantly and smartly.

That said, I did have more than a little trouble with the casualty-rate exchange in the Battle for Neuw Rostok-armed and armored troops, even in a disadvantageous combat climate, shouldn't have taken the losses they did against a force of no more than several thousand 'irregulars', no matter how well led and entrenched.

But that's the opinion of a civilian, so I may well be wrong.

Hutch wrote:That said, I did have more than a little trouble with the casualty-rate exchange in the Battle for Neuw Rostok-armed and armored troops, even in a disadvantageous combat climate, shouldn't have taken the losses they did against a force of no more than several thousand 'irregulars', no matter how well led and entrenched.

But that's the opinion of a civilian, so I may well be wrong.

You are not alone in thinking this was absurd. I whined about this at the time, the whole approach was absurd.

Considering it was Mesa, the "smart" option would have been to drop a KEW big enough to penetrate to the lower level of the building and then blow the block. Just blow it and be done with the "uprising of a criminal gang using stolen heavy weapons"

Why waste the time, the troops (because even with Marine level armor you are going to take nasty casualty levels) and run the time on letting the criminals actually get away with this?

Moderation is NOT called for on Mesa.

Hutch wrote:

kzt wrote:They knew they had guns. They were unaware of the scope of their arsenal, but they knew the criminal gangs didn't seem to have a problem finding guns. They also knew that there was some leakage of heavy weapons, but again didn't realize the actual scope.

The surprise was that they would turn them against the "authorities", which heretofore had apparently never (or at least, only in scattered event brutally suppressed). Or that they would fight so valiantly and smartly.

That said, I did have more than a little trouble with the casualty-rate exchange in the Battle for Neuw Rostok-armed and armored troops, even in a disadvantageous combat climate, shouldn't have taken the losses they did against a force of no more than several thousand 'irregulars', no matter how well led and entrenched.

But that's the opinion of a civilian, so I may well be wrong.

You've never fought in an urban environment have you. Read up on the battles of Caen, Stalingrad, Berlin and Manila, Also the Warsaw uprising comes to mind. In urban combat every building becomes a mini-fortress.

saber964 wrote:You've never fought in an urban environment have you. Read up on the battles of Caen, Stalingrad, Berlin and Manila, Also the Warsaw uprising comes to mind. In urban combat every building becomes a mini-fortress.

As a matter of fact, I am well-acquainted with all of those battles, but in this case we had an irregular force numbering not more than several thousand against up to 12,000 trained and fully armored troops with full weapons support.

That the defenders would have an initial advantage I do not argue; but the attackers had much more firepower, even without the KEW's, to destroy the strong-points without just running into them.

And noting the battles above, except for Stalingrad, the attackers won, and were able to then continue their campaigns (albeit the front-line combat forces had to be withdrawn, but that is common in any modern battle.

I just have trouble accepting that a bunch of Manty Navy types with one combat pro could break though a fortified position (Shadow of Freedom) without loss, while trained field troops could not without unacceptable losses.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

Brigade XO wrote:Considering it was Mesa, the "smart" option would have been to drop a KEW big enough to penetrate to the lower level of the building and then blow the block. Just blow it and be done with the "uprising of a criminal gang using stolen heavy weapons"

Why waste the time, the troops (because even with Marine level armor you are going to take nasty casualty levels) and run the time on letting the criminals actually get away with this?

Moderation is NOT called for on Mesa.

They did. See Cauldron of Ghosts, Chapter 63. And if you say that isn't quite what you had in mind, consider that Commodore Terehkov did exactly what you suggested at Mobius, and the result was to essentially destroy everything in a half-kilometer radius around the tower. That was in a built-up area where there were cermacrete towers in all directions, not where there was a lot of open space.

Hutch wrote:

saber964 wrote:You've never fought in an urban environment have you. Read up on the battles of Caen, Stalingrad, Berlin and Manila, Also the Warsaw uprising comes to mind. In urban combat every building becomes a mini-fortress.

As a matter of fact, I am well-acquainted with all of those battles, but in this case we had an irregular force numbering not more than several thousand against up to 12,000 trained and fully armored troops with full weapons support.

That the defenders would have an initial advantage I do not argue; but the attackers had much more firepower, even without the KEW's, to destroy the strong-points without just running into them.

And noting the battles above, except for Stalingrad, the attackers won, and were able to then continue their campaigns (albeit the front-line combat forces had to be withdrawn, but that is common in any modern battle.

I just have trouble accepting that a bunch of Manty Navy types with one combat pro could break though a fortified position (Shadow of Freedom) without loss, while trained field troops could not without unacceptable losses.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

I don't have much trouble with it. In the first bit, the defenders are basically a bunch of uniformed thugs with incompetent leaders who are planning to roll over and surrender as soon as they've got enough casualties to cover their asses, against a force that has the maintenance schematics and is running a feint to cover the actual attack elsewhere.

In the second case, you've got what looks on the surface like a professional force, which has probably never seen significant action against any kind of determined resistance, fighting an irregular force that knows they're in Death Ground, where the attackers are prevented from using the weapon (targeted KEW strikes) they really want by political interference.

It was noted that they had at least some plasma cannon and that light plasma guns did horrible things to the structural integrity. What do you think something probably two orders of magnitude more powerful would do to the tower?

Plus, every military in the honorverse uses wedge based aa and at missiles. What would the effect be of flying one of those through a hole in the wall and down a central corridor? Note that the wedges, while small by mdm standards, are quite a bit larger then the corridors described. What happens to the people waiting in the corridor to ambush the troops when the wedge goes by? How popular will ambush duty be after you use that the second time?

And they won't just have a few of these, they will have hundreds to thousands of them.