Brigade XO wrote:Its not that the Sollies can't do anything to counter the GA technical strengths, the developed tactics and the (often decades) of true combat experience, it is that they are being forced to improvise and see what works. Sending 80-90 BC sized warships to someplace that seems to have also been provided with a smaller RMN contingent should give them a victory even if it means leaving out the part about how many ships they loose plus crew.
Of course, the GA isn't invincible and stuff is going to happen. A few ships get mousetraped, people get caught in situations they can't get out of, the other side does things that are compleatly unexpected (even if it costs them big time) and they have victories.
I seem to recall a story about some people in the US Navy mounting torpedoes on a PBY to make it an anti-ship weapon. They did use PBYs with depth charges against subs but the story was in the Pacific and was against a warship. The British "mined" an approch road to London against the expected invasion early in the war by doing things like rigging a house on a slope of a hill to be detonated and cover the road (and expected tanks) with gasoline.
Sending an SLN task group into a system and dumping a lot of missles on ballistic course to both intersect with anticipated movements of locally stationed GA warships AND any orbital service and opeations facilities (including space stations) would give them a "win" if the objective is to destroy things. They might even catch a defending ship that way or with missles dropped behind in the path of pursuit as in Shadow of Victory.
SLN WILL come up with things. How effective after the 1st try is another matter. Part of the backstory in Babalon 5 was that Sheriden killed a Mimbari Crusier by deploying nuclear weapons as mines and based the trap on the Mimbari vastly superior ability to come out of hyperspace with essentialy pinpoint accuracy so they popped in on the Earth Alliance ship when it began to move....right into the mines. The Mimbari considered that a dishonorable trick but .....well, it was war and we are human:)
It will be interesting to see what individual SLN people come up with.
Your talking about the battle of Midway. It was a night attack by PBY's on the IJN transport force IIRC they hit a tanker (the only airdropped torpedo to hit a ship by the USN). During the Solomon's campaign the PBY's became night bombers unofficially known as the Black Cats. They conducted anti-shipping and barge patrols. The units were very successful sinking a total of 17 transports and 250+ Dihatsu landing craft and barges and damaging 3 destroyers 45 transports and 200+ landing craft and barges.
