A question about the battle of Saltash

Loren Pechtel wrote:I see no reason to think the Sollies have such an officer. Their system is not set up in a fashion that would promote such a person. While they might have someone who is actually capable they're going to be very junior and not in a position to actually do anything meaningful.

Joat42 wrote:You never know, a very junior officer may be the only surviving officer after some unfortunate accident or battle action - and it turns out that officer is very capable indeed. It's not like it has never happened before..

munroburton wrote:If that junior officer is being shot at, then probably not. I can't help thinking of the saying, a great baker can make an excellent apple pie if he has the correct ingredients, whilst a poor baker may only produce an adequate pie. However, if either baker only has access to mud, you're not getting any apple pies.

All the SLN has are a few orchards and muddy fields. Some rotten apples, no flour, an overmilked cow about to die. Good luck.

The thing is, with the number of flag officers that the SLN has, at least some of them must be competent, and one or two could very well be tactical geniuses. Being a political Admeral and being a fighting Admeral are rare in one person, but are not mutually exclusive.

Simply due to the law of averages, there must be somebody in the SLN who has the right family connections, knows what fork to use at state dinners, and is willing and able to train the ships of his taskforce to fighting ability. The training he can achieve is probably not as good as the RMN could achieve, ("You spent HOW MUCH on missiles for your stupid TRAINING?!?!?") but they could still be compitant fighters. Add a little common sense and some luck, and the RMN could have a fight on their hands if they ever run into this guy.

before we continue beating up on idiot solly officers I wish to point out that Rozark and all of his Maya sector officers are Sollies.

sure they plan to leave, but they are doing that because Rozark along with Maya governor aren't complete idiots and have been planning to go their own way long before the current hammering the manties are giving the SL.

He is not perfect no but he shows more intelligence that most of the Solly officers. If he is managed to make rear admiral then others at captains and commodore level may be competent as well, and if given the chance to do something without some idiot above them tying their hands might be able to make the GA work for their victories.

Seeing as he is now a POW, what opportunities will he have to do anything anyway?

Dauntless wrote:before we continue beating up on idiot solly officers I wish to point out that Rozark and all of his Maya sector officers are Sollies.

More to the point, they are Frontier Fleet officers, and we have several examples of Frontier Fleet officers who at least now which end of the tubes missiles come out of.

The majority of Sollies that have trouble with boots full of piss are Battle Fleet, but even there there are a a few intelligent officers who are actually finally being listened to. For that matter, Adm Filareta was bright enough to know when his intelligence assessment was flawed and he should surrender.

crewdude48 wrote:The thing is, with the number of flag officers that the SLN has, at least some of them must be competent, and one or two could very well be tactical geniuses. Being a political Admeral and being a fighting Admeral are rare in one person, but are not mutually exclusive.

Simply due to the law of averages, there must be somebody in the SLN who has the right family connections, knows what fork to use at state dinners, and is willing and able to train the ships of his taskforce to fighting ability. The training he can achieve is probably not as good as the RMN could achieve, ("You spent HOW MUCH on missiles for your stupid TRAINING?!?!?") but they could still be compitant fighters. Add a little common sense and some luck, and the RMN could have a fight on their hands if they ever run into this guy.

Buttercup is a pretty solid counter argument to that. The Peeps had re-established a reasonably decent officer corps by that point and it didn't do them any good. One good look at Apollo was enough to convince Theisman that even with the (at least) second-best officer corps in the galaxy, his navy was about to become nothing but targets. The Sollies are still most of a generation behind where Theisman was.

The differences in capabilities are just too great for the Sollies to beat. When destroyers are taking out battlecruisers and they're still suffering from a major case of overkill, the quality of the Solly officer is irrelevant.

crewdude48 wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:I see no reason to think the Sollies have such an officer. Their system is not set up in a fashion that would promote such a person. While they might have someone who is actually capable they're going to be very junior and not in a position to actually do anything meaningful.

Joat42 wrote:You never know, a very junior officer may be the only surviving officer after some unfortunate accident or battle action - and it turns out that officer is very capable indeed. It's not like it has never happened before..

munroburton wrote:If that junior officer is being shot at, then probably not. I can't help thinking of the saying, a great baker can make an excellent apple pie if he has the correct ingredients, whilst a poor baker may only produce an adequate pie. However, if either baker only has access to mud, you're not getting any apple pies.

All the SLN has are a few orchards and muddy fields. Some rotten apples, no flour, an overmilked cow about to die. Good luck.

The thing is, with the number of flag officers that the SLN has, at least some of them must be competent, and one or two could very well be tactical geniuses. Being a political Admeral and being a fighting Admeral are rare in one person, but are not mutually exclusive.

Simply due to the law of averages, there must be somebody in the SLN who has the right family connections, knows what fork to use at state dinners, and is willing and able to train the ships of his taskforce to fighting ability. The training he can achieve is probably not as good as the RMN could achieve, ("You spent HOW MUCH on missiles for your stupid TRAINING?!?!?") but they could still be compitant fighters. Add a little common sense and some luck, and the RMN could have a fight on their hands if they ever run into this guy.

Sigh. My point was that no matter how talented your hypothetical officer is, not having the ingredients means they can't possibly succeed.

You could roll Alexander the Great, Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Zhukov and Joan of Arc into Honor Harrington and she still wouldn't be able to win, if the definition of winning is "the League continues as it was".

Just like if the definition of winning at Adler was "get back into hyper after warning the convoy and luring the ambushers away". That wasn't possible, so Honor settled for two of three.

Filareta thought highly of Admiral Haverty, whose task force outperformed his other task forces by some wide margin. How much did that help 11th Fleet?

It's not enough to have a five-star commander. That commander needs a fighting force capable of surviving contact with the enemy... and the League has none at present, nor can it build one from scratch before the GA destroys it.

George J. Smith wrote:Seeing as he is now a POW, what opportunities will he have to do anything anyway?

But as a Public Relations Liaison for the next ranking Admiral, he would be one of the few people who may be able to interface with outside entities - namely the press. These are Deneb accord prisoners in a cold war - They are not going to be housed in hidden concentration camps, and starved in private.

As I was also mentioning, he may be able to move around fairly freely among the prisoners collecting "messages home", and be able to gather info from the surviving TAC officers.

Or Not - but his position could allow such a thing if he tried and pushed it.

BUT....

The admiral (Cleary?) he was assigned to was sent home on a Manty messenger to deliver the news and detailed TAC recordings in person. If the admiral was smart (and Byng's flag captain was able to inform him sufficiently of such), he would have brought back the 1 person who saw this coming and no one listened to. If so, our plucky lieutenant is no longer on New Tuscany, and the SLN leadership has his 2 reports and any follow up he wrote while returning to Sol with the TAC details.

Theemile wrote:The admiral (Cleary?) he was assigned to was sent home on a Manty messenger to deliver the news and detailed TAC recordings in person. If the admiral was smart (and Byng's flag captain was able to inform him sufficiently of such), he would have brought back the 1 person who saw this coming and no one listened to. If so, our plucky lieutenant is no longer on New Tuscany, and the SLN leadership has his 2 reports and any follow up he wrote while returning to Sol with the TAC details.

I'm afraid not. O'Cleary did indeed get sent to Sol, but she was the third in command of Crandall's task force.

Evelyn Sigbee's report was passed to Sol, but the admiral(and her staff) remained in New Tuscany. It was unclear whether the Lieutenant's original reports even left Byng's flagship, although of course he's got plenty of time to reproduce them now.

Oh yeah... I just realised the SLN personnel at New Tuscany weren't taken prisoners, just left with lobotomised ships. They have as much freedom of movement as the NT government allows them.

munroburton wrote:

Theemile wrote:The admiral (Cleary?) he was assigned to was sent home on a Manty messenger to deliver the news and detailed TAC recordings in person. If the admiral was smart (and Byng's flag captain was able to inform him sufficiently of such), he would have brought back the 1 person who saw this coming and no one listened to. If so, our plucky lieutenant is no longer on New Tuscany, and the SLN leadership has his 2 reports and any follow up he wrote while returning to Sol with the TAC details.

I'm afraid not. O'Cleary did indeed get sent to Sol, but she was the third in command of Crandall's task force.

Evelyn Sigbee's report was passed to Sol, but the admiral(and her staff) remained in New Tuscany. It was unclear whether the Lieutenant's original reports even left Byng's flagship, although of course he's got plenty of time to reproduce them now.

Oh yeah... I just realised the SLN personnel at New Tuscany weren't taken prisoners, just left with lobotomised ships. They have as much freedom of movement as the NT government allows them.

Just pop my balloon, munroburton - I forgot he got attached to Sigbee.. Still, If Sigbee knew enough of why he was transferred (which, given the situation, Sigbee may not) he may have been "reassigned" to O'Cleary.

...or not....

It might be useful to keep in mind that most of the more intelligent though junior officers in the ISLN are in the intelligence track, not the tactical track. Thus they are not going to be commanding the task forces that will be attempting to engage the Alliance. It might also be useful to point out that with the Mantie seizure of the wormhole network, news about what has been happening to the various Sollie fleets will take a lot longer to filter out to the farther reaches. Therefore the more able officers are not going to get the information they need in a timely manner.