Solarian League Navy Personal

even if the peons of the SLN aren t willing to die gloriouse, and if the officers aren t willing to die gloriouse


the captain is sure to make them die gloriouse

Fox2! wrote:A major break point was Midway. The IJN was never able to recover from the loss of carriers. Our carrier losses were quickly made up, and then the number of US carriers never really decreased. More importantly, the losses of trained aircrews meant that the remaining IJN carriers were operating with fewer and less trained pilots. After the "Marianas Turkey Shoot," the Japanese carriers were essentially undefended targets. By the time of the "GO" plan, their only purpose was to sucker Halsey away from the invasion force. If the Japanese surface force could break in and destroy 7th Fleet, the war would be extended, possibly forcing the Americans to some sort of negotiated settlement.

So far, all of the encounters between the RMN/GA and the SLN have resulted in unmitigated disasters for the Sollies. I don't see that turning around in the SLN's favor.

For all the turning-point drama of Midway the building capacities are were a lot of the war was going to be won.

Barring US demoralization the entire swing of the Midway battle would have been hard pressed to moving the end of the war (even ignoring the Manhattan Project) by 18 months. If the US lost all 3 carriers and the Japanese lost none that would have slowed the USN by months, but not years. The python lump of Essex class was still coming in numbers Japan had no hope of matching. (And Japan likely still would have lost a number of aircrew that under their training plans were effectively irreplaceable)

Also, with all respect to Taffey 3's heroic stand, it's unlikely that Kurita's force could have inflicted that large a setback on the US forces. 7th fleet's ground forces were largely off their transports and moving inland from the beach, so less vulnerable than while afloat. And the 6 battleships under Oldendorf were fairly well positioned to intercept the 4 Japanese BBs somewhat short of the transports. That, plus the rest of the airpower scattered around the area, that would have continued to swarm them wouldn't have given Kurita force a free hand at wiping out the invasion and its supplies.

Sorry, for continuing the WWII tangent.

Jonathan_S" quote="Fox2! wrote:A major break point was Midway. The IJN was never able to recover from the loss of carriers. Our carrier losses were quickly made up, and then the number of US carriers never really decreased. More importantly, the losses of trained aircrews meant that the remaining IJN carriers were operating with fewer and less trained pilots. After the "Marianas Turkey Shoot," the Japanese carriers were essentially undefended targets. By the time of the "GO" plan, their only purpose was to sucker Halsey away from the invasion force. If the Japanese surface force could break in and destroy 7th Fleet, the war would be extended, possibly forcing the Americans to some sort of negotiated settlement.

So far, all of the encounters between the RMN/GA and the SLN have resulted in unmitigated disasters for the Sollies. I don't see that turning around in the SLN's favor.

For all the turning-point drama of Midway the building capacities are were a lot of the war was going to be won.

Barring US demoralization the entire swing of the Midway battle would have been hard pressed to moving the end of the war (even ignoring the Manhattan Project) by 18 months. If the US lost all 3 carriers and the Japanese lost none that would have slowed the USN by months, but not years. The python lump of Essex class was still coming in numbers Japan had no hope of matching. (And Japan likely still would have lost a number of aircrew that under their training plans were effectively irreplaceable)

Also, with all respect to Taffey 3's heroic stand, it's unlikely that Kurita's force could have inflicted that large a setback on the US forces. 7th fleet's ground forces were largely off their transports and moving inland from the beach, so less vulnerable than while afloat. And the 6 battleships under Oldendorf were fairly well positioned to intercept the 4 Japanese BBs somewhat short of the transports. That, plus the rest of the airpower scattered around the area, that would have continued to swarm them wouldn't have given Kurita force a free hand at wiping out the invasion and its supplies.

Sorry, for continuing the WWII tangent.[/quote]

During 42 the U.S. fought with pretty much its prewar fleet. The USN held its own by and large. Starting 43 the U.S. was commissioning a carrier every other month plus all of the CVLs and the first two Iowa class BBs not to mention a load of CVEs.

Yow wrote:I wonder what the U.S. military would have done during World War Two when Japan destroyed the U.S. battleships, over ran its forward deployed commands and showed them how inferior it's forces were in comparison?

Wake Island, was supposed to be a one day fight, with at the most 3 attacker casualties per defender. Actual was three days with more than two weeks air attack between and ten times the casualties, December 1941.

Philippines were supposed to be six weeks at the most. Four months later the Battle of Corrigedor is just beginning.

There were a few American victories in the midst of the Japanese victories. The SLN has one victory, a de facto ambush.

svenhauke wrote:even if the SLN was at war, which it isn t, the crew would have access to 3d news and the internet equvialent, its not a police state... yet

so by this time everyone in the SLN knows that its lost a few million people and got no chance against the aliance

That's part of the point I was making. We are not talking about a naval ship in which everyone aboard would have access to am radio stations, some of which can be heard half way around the globe, cell phones or internet which can be picked up by satellite.

We are talking about spaceships, which can be separated by up to hundreds of light years of space from any sourse of news, some of which would arrive by couriers, some of which would come into the ship through its communications section, access to both which could be controlled by command staff if such news were to be deemed prejudicial to discipline.

Don

n7axw wrote:

svenhauke wrote:even if the SLN was at war, which it isn t, the crew would have access to 3d news and the internet equvialent, its not a police state... yet

so by this time everyone in the SLN knows that its lost a few million people and got no chance against the aliance

That's part of the point I was making. We are not talking about a naval ship in which everyone aboard would have access to am radio stations, some of which can be heard half way around the globe, cell phones or internet which can be picked up by satellite.

We are talking about spaceships, which can be separated by up to hundreds of light years of space from any sourse of news, some of which would arrive by couriers, some of which would come into the ship through its communications section, access to both which could be controlled by command staff if such news were to be deemed prejudicial to discipline.

Don

That's the thing though - we are talking SLN ships here - and the SLN Battle Fleet is rather notorious for not sending its ships away from stations too often - expenses and all that . More so, if/when the SLN decides to reposition the BF according to the current situation - that will be a massive operation including a lot of movement and transportation, and there will be a lot of information circulating around - there is no stopping the grapevine .
Now, Frontier Fleet is rather busier, but again most FF missions involve planetary action or long stays in systems. Both cases allow for good access to information available - how much info is available in any given system or base is another question.

P.S. Hi alll Long time no see.

I think what could happen is that a lot of navy personal will transfer to their native SDF fleet when planets start to break away from the League in job lots what be more interesting would be to see what recruitment is like for Solarian navy when that happens after all over 2 million is dead or pows already can the Solarian navy replace those numbers, a lot of the men and women probaly only joined the SLN because it was the only game in town now that has changed and you can bet there is a lot of resentment among worlds annexed by frontier security even after a hundred years that resentment will be there because of prolong I can see a lot of former navy personal looking for pay back because their world was raped by OFS

kiddmeier wrote:That's the thing though - we are talking SLN ships here - and the SLN Battle Fleet is rather notorious for not sending its ships away from stations too often - expenses and all that . More so, if/when the SLN decides to reposition the BF according to the current situation - that will be a massive operation including a lot of movement and transportation, and there will be a lot of information circulating around - there is no stopping the grapevine .
Now, Frontier Fleet is rather busier, but again most FF missions involve planetary action or long stays in systems. Both cases allow for good access to information available - how much info is available in any given system or base is another question.

Unless SLN never offer liberty, cancel all leaves, rigorously censor all crew communications and tightly restrict access to incoming and outgoing communications, the crews are going to rub shoulders with civilians, and receive letters/packages from home. And learn about the true results of BF meeting the GA. I'm sure that SIS/FIS will plant officers who can act as agents of influence and prime the rumor mill with information.

Once the goat lockers start trading rumors, it will be difficult to engage in total information control.

Fox2! wrote:

kiddmeier wrote:That's the thing though - we are talking SLN ships here - and the SLN Battle Fleet is rather notorious for not sending its ships away from stations too often - expenses and all that . More so, if/when the SLN decides to reposition the BF according to the current situation - that will be a massive operation including a lot of movement and transportation, and there will be a lot of information circulating around - there is no stopping the grapevine .
Now, Frontier Fleet is rather busier, but again most FF missions involve planetary action or long stays in systems. Both cases allow for good access to information available - how much info is available in any given system or base is another question.

Unless SLN never offer liberty, cancel all leaves, rigorously censor all crew communications and tightly restrict access to incoming and outgoing communications, the crews are going to rub shoulders with civilians, and receive letters/packages from home. And learn about the true results of BF meeting the GA. I'm sure that SIS/FIS will plant officers who can act as agents of influence and prime the rumor mill with information.

Once the goat lockers start trading rumors, it will be difficult to engage in total information control.

And if the command crews suddenly (try to) make the ships hermetically sealed against information from the outside universe - no independent news, no letters from home, nada - the crews and junior officers will first suspect, then share, then firmly believe, all sorts of wild things that are even worse than the truth.

None of them will be interested in fighting when they "know" that Old Earth has petitioned to join the Star Empire and every world in the Old League has a Havenite superdreadnought in orbit!

SWM wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:And the initiative doesn't always have to come from within the military. Barregos in the Maya Sector is about to break off and create an independent polity larger than the SEM, Republic of Haven, or Andermani Empire. That's going to depend on the military assessing their chances against the GA versus the rest of the SLN - and their respective willingness to fight, when the SLN would be fighting for... graft, really, and the Maya Detachment for a new, free nation organized for the benefit of its citizens.

Maya is only half the radius of the Talbot Quadrant. In volume, it is much smaller than Haven or the Anderman Empire, or even Silesia. And it has less than a dozen inhabited systems.

Exposition from Victor Cachat's POV in Crown of Slaves had the Maya Sector, were it to split off, as an independent nation more powerful than anything but the League itself. It's not, perhaps, supported by the maps we have or by the perceptions created by the rest of the narrative, but he's presumably well-informed and knows what he's thinking about.

That it's not small or trivial is also suggested by the "Maya Crisis" book from the future excerpted later.