Infrastructure

This discussion makes me want to look more closely at Grayson's storage habits for missiles. Grayson didn't produce its own missiles did they? They relied on the missile production of Manticore. Yet Grayson couldn't have relied on Manticoran collier delivery from paycheck to paycheck. They must have had some sort of stockpile themselves. Where would their stockpile have been kept? At the space station where they were manufactured certainly wouldn't have been an option open to Grayson. And putting them in one location for the enemy to target is silly. Or that would have been one of the first things an enemy would target when entering a system. It is an age-old tactic from time immemorial to destroy an enemy's weapons or ammunition storage to put paid to its weapon's systems. In the days of forts the cavalry would protect the stockpile of extra guns and gun powder. Eliminate the gun powder in those days and you effectively eliminate the enemy's ability to wage war.

In Manticoran space, it seems within the protection of planetary forts would be a good place to store any missile stockpiles if colliers isn't feasible.

Also targeted in an infrastructure trashing would be a system's fuel -- in the Honorverse that would be a system's hydrogen production plants. Which meant that fuel would also be at an all time low until facilities were rebuilt, from most infrastructure raids. Hydrogen fuel storage was probably the only assault on infrastructure that the Yawata strike did not include because of time.

cthia wrote:<snip>
Also targeted in an infrastructure trashing would be a system's fuel -- in the Honorverse that would be a system's hydrogen production plants. Which meant that fuel would also be at an all time low until facilities were rebuilt, from most infrastructure raids. Hydrogen fuel storage was probably the only assault on infrastructure that the Yawata strike did not include because of time.

Well, David did base OB on the Pearl Harbor strike, and one of the 3 big strategic "misses" of the strike, and potentially the most achievable one, was the destruction of the Fuel storage facility at Hawaii. The complex was completely missed in the strikes, and the fuel kept here fueled the Pacific fleet for the next year or so.

So if it survived, I doubt it was a mistake on David's part.

Theemile wrote:

cthia wrote:<snip>
Also targeted in an infrastructure trashing would be a system's fuel -- in the Honorverse that would be a system's hydrogen production plants. Which meant that fuel would also be at an all time low until facilities were rebuilt, from most infrastructure raids. Hydrogen fuel storage was probably the only assault on infrastructure that the Yawata strike did not include because of time.

Well, David did base OB on the Pearl Harbor strike, and one of the 3 big strategic "misses" of the strike, and potentially the most achievable one, was the destruction of the Fuel storage facility at Hawaii. The complex was completely missed in the strikes, and the fuel kept here fueled the Pacific fleet for the next year or so.

So if it survived, I doubt it was a mistake on David's part.

Not a fair parallel. The Japanese intentionally missed the fuel tanks at Pearl Harbor for strategic reasons that would not have been relevant in the Honorverse. Their thinking was that the plumes of smoke from the resulting explosions would cloud their ability to effectively target the ships. I mentioned that upwind.

cthia wrote:This discussion makes me want to look more closely at Grayson's storage habits for missiles. Grayson didn't produce its own missiles did they?

IIRC, the loss of Grayson's missile production at Blackbird Yards is explicitly mentioned when the missile shortage is discussed.

cthia wrote:

Theemile wrote:
Well, David did base OB on the Pearl Harbor strike, and one of the 3 big strategic "misses" of the strike, and potentially the most achievable one, was the destruction of the Fuel storage facility at Hawaii. The complex was completely missed in the strikes, and the fuel kept here fueled the Pacific fleet for the next year or so.

So if it survived, I doubt it was a mistake on David's part.

Not a fair parallel. The Japanese intentionally missed the fuel tanks at Pearl Harbor for strategic reasons that would not have been relevant in the Honorverse. Their thinking was that the plumes of smoke from the resulting explosions would cloud their ability to effectively target the ships. I mentioned that upwind.

Tactical consideration or not, it still was a strategic miss which could have been targeted at the end of the 3rd wave. The other 2 were the missing of the Carriers (an event uncontrollable by the Japanese, which bad intel/timing kept out of port), and not following up with a 2nd strike on the Panama locks, isolating the Pacific fleet from Atlantic reinforcements. (Which Yamamoto considered to be overreach and Buck Fever.)

David's chatted about the 3 strategic misses of Pearl Harbor several times in the past when speaking about OB, so any parallel is most likely on purpose.

cthia wrote:

Theemile wrote:
Well, David did base OB on the Pearl Harbor strike, and one of the 3 big strategic "misses" of the strike, and potentially the most achievable one, was the destruction of the Fuel storage facility at Hawaii. The complex was completely missed in the strikes, and the fuel kept here fueled the Pacific fleet for the next year or so.

So if it survived, I doubt it was a mistake on David's part.

Not a fair parallel. The Japanese intentionally missed the fuel tanks at Pearl Harbor for strategic reasons that would not have been relevant in the Honorverse. Their thinking was that the plumes of smoke from the resulting explosions would cloud their ability to effectively target the ships. I mentioned that upwind.

Theemile wrote:Tactical consideration or not, it still was a strategic miss which could have been targeted at the end of the 3rd wave. The other 2 were the missing of the Carriers (an event uncontrollable by the Japanese, which bad intel/timing kept out of port), and not following up with a 2nd strike on the Panama locks, isolating the Pacific fleet from Atlantic reinforcements. (Which Yamamoto considered to be overreach and Buck Fever.)

David's chatted about the 3 strategic misses of Pearl Harbor several times in the past when speaking about OB, so any parallel is most likely on purpose.

Even during the 3rd wave there were reasons not to target the tanks. The Japanese sent along aerial photography planes to document each attack. They wanted confirmation of each ship's destruction. Photographing during plumes of black smoke would have been difficult to impossible. And confirmation was important. The pilots themselves would not have been deemed knowledgeable enough to determine a ship's "total loss" status -- lest it sank. That determination would have been left up to higher powers.

I grant that "ultimately" it was a strategic miss, again as I mentioned upstream. But I think we should be historically accurate and add my can of caveat (to borrow my niece's play on stinkin' caviar) in the deeming of it a "miss" in the traditional sense. Since it was calculated.

Incidentally, much of the imagery from the Japanese ships is now available to US historians and has been used to get a better feel for Pearl Harbor.

Actually it wasn't only the smoke plumes from hitting the tank farms it was the Japanese warrior mentality, basically it wasn't sexy enough to hit. There were cases of Japanese submarine commanders being court martialed for returning from a war patrol and had only sunk merchants. The IJN did not start going after allied merchants in any type of systematic way until late 43. It is also like IJN convoy system which was for most of the war pathetic and nearly nonexistent until mid 44. Also the other blunder was not bombing the shipyard, imagine what would have happened if they had knocked Pennsylvania off her blocks in the drydock. They would've had a tough time getting Maryland and Tennessee back in action.

Iirc, they bombed the hell out the baseball fields, thinking they were the clever camouflage for the fuel distribution system.

kzt wrote:Iirc, they bombed the hell out the baseball fields, thinking they were the clever camouflage for the fuel distribution system.

To be fair, I believe the baseball fields were built over the planned location for the underground fuel tanks. But then there was a change in plans and the tanks were built elsewhere; then the ball fields went in in the newly available acreage.

So the Japanese were working off out of date intel that said the US Navy was building their fuel storage in that location. (Making it more understandable to think baseball diamonds were camouflaging the tanks - because they already "knew" the tanks were being buried there)


But assigning bombers to hit the believed location of the buried fuel tanks must have meant they weren't so worried about the smoke plumes interfering with bomb damage assessment photo reconnaissance. Because blowing the top off buried tanks would still make a big fire with lots of smoke.

The information that I gave came straight out of the mouths of several Japanese officers and a few who flew the planes. The pilots were specifically ordered not to target the storage tanks for the reasons I gave -- tanks that were so large you could see them from miles away. Especially from the air.

This is all fairly new information that was acquired which wasn't previously available, especially the awesome footage of the bombing runs. There is film of bombs being dropped from a perfect birds eye view from directly (12 noon) overhead. Awesome footage. This was a new documentary on the history channel, I think. Chime in if you've seen it as well.

Ignoring the storage tanks was a calculated decision. Destroying the ships on battleship row was the main objective and the Japanese were just employing the KISS principle by giving the pilots a straightforward task! They were using a new torpedo developed for shallow running. The Americans didn't think that torpedos could be developed for the shallow waters on battleship row. And the Japanese were in the same boat as the RMN -- no way of knowing how well their newly developed torpedo would actually perform under real battlefield conditions. They wanted ALL of the weapons and planes to concentrate on the ships on battleship row (akin to the RMN concentrating their fire on a few objectives).

Also, they knew they had the element of surprise on the first run. They didn't think that element of surprise would hold out.

They came to destroy ships. NOT fuel! They didn't think the fuel storage would even matter if there were not enough ships left to wage war.

Fuel w/o ships? They were wrong, but that was their thinking -- straight from a few of their horses' mouths.