A question about the battle of Saltash

Theemile wrote: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....

Sorry! If it helps any, I just remembered there was also a FF intel officer attached to Crandall's staff, who also raised several red flags if not as strongly. Hago something, I believe.

munroburton wrote:
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.

Hell even Filaretta seems to be a reasonably competant officer in terms of tactics, the problem is your taking someone with no real world experiance and inferior equipment into a situation they have not had a chance to learn from.

To use a scenario using names from the real world imagine taking Rommel's division from the invasion of france and suddenly pitting it against the Soviet guards tank army commanded by Zhukov in the final push to berlin. Rommel won't be familiar with the tactical evolution and will be crushed by the quality of equipment he is facing. T34/85s vs the Czech light tanks he was equiped with (13 tons with a 37mm gun) is not an even fight. Hell at this point he doesn't even know that the anti arcraft guns in his division are kickass anti tank weapons and has not dedicated anti-tank ammo for them (88mm cannons btw).

Hell if you took Honor's force in Honor in Exile and pitted it against the force of podnoughts Haven used in the resumed war she would achieve precicely nothing against the havenite ships, if the opposing admiral is even marginally competant she never gets into range and all her skill is meaningless.

zuluwiz wrote: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.

And that information is: if they have anything heavier than a CA or they only have lighter units and you don't have SDs, run or surrender immediately.

Do we know if Rolands can take out Solly SDs? It might shorten the information just to: run or surrender.

IMHO the bulk of the competent SLN officers are going to come out of FF not BF. BF has for centuries been swanning around the core worlds playing gimme simulations and generally learning how to brown nose at the right kind of party. BF deployments would probably be like a RW deployment of USS Blue Ridge 7th fleet flagship during my USN service. Depart Yokohama Japan, arrive Pusan SK for exercise with ROK Navy make courtesy call Inchon SK, depart for Hong Kong courtesy call, depart for Singapore courtesy call, depart for Pattiay Thailand, depart for Manila PI, depart for Okinawa Japan for joint exercise with USMC JMSDF JADF and JGDF, depart for home port. Total deployment time 97 days. (Just long enough to qualify for Sea Service Ribbon)

FF has been for the same time been theoretically doing its job e.g. piracy suppression, disrupting the slaves trade etc. and occasionally getting shot at

I rise on a point of pedantry:

Was just reviewing the design history of the FlaK18/36 [Rommel would probably have had 18s in the Ghost Division, if he had any at all] for another thread, and they were built from the get-go as dual-purpose guns, so the AP ammo would have been there. Not enough, but it was there. Reading between the lines, the usefulness of AA artillery in the anti-tank role was recognised before the end of WWI, and a lot of the designs available at the start of WWII were either dual purpose or very quickly put on modified carriages for ground fire.

Silverwall wrote:< snip >
To use a scenario using names from the real world imagine taking Rommel's division from the invasion of france and suddenly pitting it against the Soviet guards tank army commanded by Zhukov in the final push to berlin. Rommel won't be familiar with the tactical evolution and will be crushed by the quality of equipment he is facing. T34/85s vs the Czech light tanks he was equiped with (13 tons with a 37mm gun) is not an even fight. Hell at this point he doesn't even know that the anti arcraft guns in his division are kickass anti tank weapons and has not dedicated anti-tank ammo for them (88mm cannons btw).

kzt 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.

The US Navy in November 1941 didn't have that kind of officer. The US Navy in 1942 had more. By 1944 they had a lot.

But the US of 1941 isn't the Sollies. The Sollies don't like to upset the applecart. And they're not going to develop such officers at present because they're so overmatched. Anyone with the potential to become a good officer is almost certainly going to see the writing on the wall and do whatever the Manties command, up to and including scuttling. That's going to get them demoted or cashiered, not promoted.

noblehunter wrote:And that information is: if they have anything heavier than a CA or they only have lighter units and you don't have SDs, run or surrender immediately.

Do we know if Rolands can take out Solly SDs? It might shorten the information just to: run or surrender.

They might not be able to one on one but that's more a matter of magazine size than anything else.

We saw that Sollie missile defense is basically ineffective against two-stage missiles at this point. Mantie warheads on even light missiles are at least capital-ship strength by Sollie standards.

The Mantie EW takes down a wave of countermissiles and there isn't time for another shot, the countermissiles do basically nothing regardless of the number fired. It all comes down to the laser clusters (and not all Sollie SDs even have them!) and now that their EW has been totally compromised even they don't do much.

Thus it comes down to whether the SD is destroyed before the Roland's magazines run out. I would expect the answer to be yes but by no means would I call it certain.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

noblehunter wrote:And that information is: if they have anything heavier than a CA or they only have lighter units and you don't have SDs, run or surrender immediately.

Do we know if Rolands can take out Solly SDs? It might shorten the information just to: run or surrender.

They might not be able to one on one but that's more a matter of magazine size than anything else.

We saw that Sollie missile defense is basically ineffective against two-stage missiles at this point. Mantie warheads on even light missiles are at least capital-ship strength by Sollie standards.

The Mantie EW takes down a wave of countermissiles and there isn't time for another shot, the countermissiles do basically nothing regardless of the number fired. It all comes down to the laser clusters (and not all Sollie SDs even have them!) and now that their EW has been totally compromised even they don't do much.

Thus it comes down to whether the SD is destroyed before the Roland's magazines run out. I would expect the answer to be yes but by no means would I call it certain.

It might need several Rolands per Sollie SD simply because the Mk-16, while having the same size laserheads, has fewer per missile (6 vs. 10) than the Mk-23, as well as having a somewhat less powerful warhead. That translates to fewer hits for a given number of missiles, as well as less energy on target when they *do* get a hit.

Loren Pechtel wrote:But the US of 1941 isn't the Sollies. The Sollies don't like to upset the applecart. And they're not going to develop such officers at present because they're so overmatched. Anyone with the potential to become a good officer is almost certainly going to see the writing on the wall and do whatever the Manties command, up to and including scuttling. That's going to get them demoted or cashiered, not promoted.

They have two options, change or lose. Surrender now is certainly an option, and time'a wasting it they are not going to change. And the head of the SLN knows this. Even Czarist Russia found some effective leaders.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

noblehunter wrote:And that information is: if they have anything heavier than a CA or they only have lighter units and you don't have SDs, run or surrender immediately.

Do we know if Rolands can take out Solly SDs? It might shorten the information just to: run or surrender.

They might not be able to one on one but that's more a matter of magazine size than anything else.

We saw that Sollie missile defense is basically ineffective against two-stage missiles at this point. Mantie warheads on even light missiles are at least capital-ship strength by Sollie standards.

The Mantie EW takes down a wave of countermissiles and there isn't time for another shot, the countermissiles do basically nothing regardless of the number fired. It all comes down to the laser clusters (and not all Sollie SDs even have them!) and now that their EW has been totally compromised even they don't do much.

Thus it comes down to whether the SD is destroyed before the Roland's magazines run out. I would expect the answer to be yes but by no means would I call it certain.

Here is my logical guess: (an organized way to go wrong with confidence)
It takes on the order of 200 capital ship missiles hitting a target to mission kill a SD. Mk-16 missile warheads are not as powerful as capital ship missile warheads so would need at a guess 500 Mk-16 hits.

At a guess, SL SD point defense could probably handle 25-50 MK-16 warheads.

5-rolands would give two double broadside salvo's of 120 missiles, of which there will be 15 dazzlers, 15 dragons teeth and 90 attack missiles. The SD would take out 36, meaning that 54 would hit, so would need on average about 9 salvo's to kill a solly SD, using up most of its ammo.