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RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)

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Re: RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)
Post by Hegemon   » Fri Jan 05, 2018 4:38 pm

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kzt wrote:David tries pretty hard, but there is a reason I refer to AAC as that awful book. You are looking at in far too much detail, it has many problems that you will uncover, so don’t.


On the topic of AAC, what I would really like would be to look at President Pritchart and Secretary Theisman just after they learn the result of the Battle of Manticore. Maybe somebody would have the courage to tell them to their face: "Congratulations, you just had and half our navy destroyed and two million spacers killed because you did not know when to fold them ! And now Manticore will plow us under anyway. You feared the reaction of Congress more than losing two million spacers and this is the result. You should have ordered the navy not to engage the enemy or to abandon ship when confronted with Apollo until even our Congress understood the writing on the wall."
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Re: RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)
Post by ldwechsler   » Fri Jan 05, 2018 4:54 pm

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cthia wrote:
kzt wrote:David tries pretty hard, but there is a reason I refer to AAC as that awful book. You are looking at in far too much detail, it has many problems that you will uncover, so don’t.

And that is why I don't like looking at things in detail, because you taint the storyline. AAC is among my most favorite reads.



Another problem is that ships get lost for other reasons as well. There could be skirmishes in different places. That would throw numbers off.

And do we really want David Weber to sit with a calculator figuring out numbers instead of writing?

If what you count as being important is consistency in numbers you are missing the basic plot of the stories.

Remember the (Gene) Rodenberry rule: Don't let facts get in the way of the stories. A lot of tech in Star Trek was sort of anachronistic: 200 years from now (and talk about crunching a whole lot of exploration into a tiny amount of time) the communications devices are no better than what we have now. Why? Because if they were perfect, a lot of plots were ruined.

And no matter how fast a ship could go (warp 6 or 10 as limits), there were always enemies who could go as fast. And you couldn't just transport out.

The story comes first. Frankly, I don't give a damn if there are 350 or 370 SD's. First of all, we don't know the rate of production and we generally only get to "be on" a couple of them.
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Re: RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)
Post by Theemile   » Fri Jan 05, 2018 5:02 pm

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Hegemon wrote:
Theemile wrote:Only The Sidemore and Grendlesbane loses fit into the construction numbers.


I am not sure I understand you. I understand that you refer to the 7 SD(P)s lost at Grendlesbane. Do you have any precise data on the on the RMN DN, SD or SD(P) losses at Sidemore (Marsh) ? I am pretty sure the text strongly suggests TF 34 lost no capital ships (unless you count the 2 BCs) (See my comment on Marsh losses in my Inconsistency A post).

Theemile wrote:Were are told that, just prior to Thunderbolt, the RMN has only Gryphon, Sphinx and Samothrace SDs in service, and the last 11 DNs are with Honor in Sidemore.


I am inclined to think that there were still a few active King William-class ships during Thunderbolt because Janacek saddled Honor with them along with the 11 DNs.
My conjecture is based on the names of ships in BatRon 29
http://honorverse.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_Squadron_29
They seem to me to suggest to be from the same class as HMS King William.



Sidemore - No loss details, other than on the March 1920 FleetList only 6 DN were mentioned as being on active duty, not the 11 Honor had in 1919. The assumption is 5 ships took sufficient damage to warrant being retired over being repaired (all were slated for retirement anyway) even though they technically survived the battle.

Ship names are tricky, since ships lost in battle often have their names reused - So a Lost King William would end up being replaced by a Gryphon, the only RMN SD built during the war.

Besides, a large early subplot of WoH is Janacheck placing the entire remaining King William Class up for sale at scrap prices - this was followed by sales of the remaining Andurils and finally the 34 surviving Victories.

Finally, wouldn't put too much faith in the Wiki, it is full of errors. always back check any data you get from there.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)
Post by Hegemon   » Fri Jan 05, 2018 5:44 pm

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Theemile wrote:Sidemore - No loss details, other than on the March 1920 FleetList only 6 DN were mentioned as being on active duty, not the 11 Honor had in 1919. The assumption is 5 ships took sufficient damage to warrant being retired over being repaired (all were slated for retirement anyway) even though they technically survived the battle.


Thank you for your answer. The idea of 5 damaged DNs retired by choice is very plausible, especially when the Bellerophon-class DNs were active until 1921.

Theemile wrote:Ship names are tricky, since ships lost in battle often have their names reused - So a Lost King William would end up being replaced by a Gryphon, the only RMN SD built during the war.


Serious question: how about recycling ship designation of destroyed or sold ships ? For example, if the first GSN Courvosier II-class BC(P) was designated BC-44, can we conclude for example that there were 43 previous GSN BCs ever in service ?.

Theemile wrote:Besides, a large early subplot of WoH is Janacheck placing the entire remaining King William Class up for sale at scrap prices - this was followed by sales of the remaining Andurils and finally the 34 surviving Victories.


Thank you. I rechecked WoH and found the paragraph.

Theemile wrote:Finally, wouldn't put too much faith in the Wiki, it is full of errors. always back check any data you get from there.


Good advice. I found that out several times.
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Re: RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)
Post by Theemile   » Fri Jan 05, 2018 6:34 pm

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Hegemon wrote:C) The inconsistency between the number of RMN SDs in 1905 (186), RMN SDs lost in the First Havenite-Manticoran War (more than 21), RMN SDs lost in Operation Thunderbolt (54), the units sold to Grayson (53-55) and Erewhon (9-12), the number of pre-pod RMN SDs in 1920 (225) and the number of Sphynx-class SDs listed as built by Manticore between 1905 and 1913 according to House of Steel.

There were 90 GSN active and reserve pre-pod SDs in 1920 (http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/si ... gton/106/1) , of which (according to House of Steel):
- 27 were Manticore’s Gift-class ships: 11 ships gifted by Admiral White Haven in 1905, 1 ship destroyed at Fourth Yeltsin, 14 Duquesne-class and 3 Haven-class ships bought in 1917
- 22 were Steadholder Denevski-class ships
- 3 (5 according to http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/si ... gton/110/1) were Benjamin the Great-class ships
- 34 were Protector-class (former RMN Victory-class) ships bought in 1918
- Therefore 2-4* (the difference to 90) were King William-class ships bought in 1918
*This supposes that the only GSN SD ever lost was GNS Glorious during Fourth Yeltsin. Otherwise, the number should increase to cover any additional GSN SD losses during the First Havenite-Manticoran War.

There were 225 RMN active and reserve pre-pod SDs in 1920 (http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/si ... gton/106/1) . According to House of Steel, here are the numbers of SDs that RMN could have had in 1920 (excluding the sold ships and 6 ships that House of Steel heavily implies are destroyed in the First Havenite-Manticoran War):
- up to 3 Manticore-class ships in mothballs (2 decommissioned before 1905, 1 decommissioned in late 1905)
- up to 7 Samothrace-class ships, most of them in mothballs
- up to 17 King William-class ships most of them in mothballs (of the 25 ships, a squadron of 6-8 was sold to Erewhon in 1919 and probably another 2-4 to Grayson in 1918-1919)*
- up to 11 Anduril-class ships in mothballs (of the 14 ships, at least 3-4 were sold to Erewhon in 1918)
- no Victory-class ships (of the 36 ships, all the 34 remaining were sold to Grayson in 1918 and the other 2 were destroyed in the First Havenite-Manticoran War)
- up to 67 Sphinx-class ships, about half in mothballs
- up to 163 Gryphon-class ships, about half in mothballs
- no Duquesne-class ships (of the 18 captured ships, all 14 remaining units were sold to GSN, the other 4 were destroyed in the First Havenite-Manticoran War**)
- no Haven-class ships (all 3 captured ships never saw action and were sold to GSN)
In total, no more than 268 ships, excluding losses. That would mean that the combined RMN SD losses during the First Havenite-Manticoran War and Operation Thunderbolt were no more than 268 + 2 (Victory-class) + 4 (Duquesne-class) - 225 (SDs still present in 1920) = 49 SDs. This is a lower number than the 54 SDs (out of the 61 SDs and SD(P)s) Elizabeth says have been destroyed by RHN during Thunderbolt alone ("Basically, we've lost (...) sixty-one superdreadnoughts.") ! We know 7 SD(P)s were destroyed at Grendelsbane, so the rest of 54 were presumably pre-pod SDs.

*As you can see, these are minimum numbers, that do not even consider that some King William-class ships were sold to other allied navies (other than Erewhon or Grayson) according to House of steel.
**Given that they were used for rear area security, they were probably destroyed during operation Icarus.



Your numbers are pretty good, but there are some discepencies

1) according to the 1920 Fleetlist, Manticore had 225 SDs in service and reserve, with text saying that they were all Samothrace, Sphinx, or Gryphons. Only 237 ships of the 3 designs were built, accounting for only 12 losses. Ratio wise, this matches the losses with the Victories (2/36 or 1/18 Victories lost vs ~1/20 Sphinx/Gryphon/Samothrace)

By this point, all the other SD classes were sold off or destroyed.

Only 6 DNs were still service, with the remaining Gladiators and Bellerophons in reserve until 1921. We can assume that since Honor had the last 11 at Sidemore, 5 were damaged enough to write off after the battle. The remaining DNs (Ad Astras, Royal Wintons and Majestics) were sent to the breaker pre-1919.)

All captured Havenite SDs and DNs in RMN service were posted to backwater locations and never saw combat in RMN hands, and all of which survived the war ok. The DNs were sent to the breakers and Grayson bought the remaining 21 Haven and Duquesne classes along with the Victories. They bought ~ 60 ships, so they must have also bought some King Williams and/or Andurils also.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)
Post by Theemile   » Fri Jan 05, 2018 6:47 pm

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Hegemon wrote:Serious question: how about recycling ship designation of destroyed or sold ships ? For example, if the first GSN Courvosier II-class BC(P) was designated BC-44, can we conclude for example that there were 43 previous GSN BCs ever in service ?.


Hull numbers are never reused, unless you reset the entire sequence. At that point, you either renumber all your hulls (which the RMn did in antiquity with CAs), or you are so high, that starting over will cause no active or recent overlap (ie stopping at 1000, and starting again at 1 instead of 1001 when only 30 ships are in service). Otherwise, even if you built another identical ship and gave it the name of a lost ship, it would have a different hull number than it's predecessor.

Very interesting find... In my records, there are 71 BCs of the other 4 Grayson BC classes. ( 5 ex-warlords, 3 Reliants, and 16 Redoubtables, in addition to the 47 homegrown Courvosiers). It is possible that Courvosier production continued past the 1919 start dat of the first Courvosier II, but 25+ units - that just seems odd....

Doing research for you I found another problem with HoS. In the RMN section. There are 18 Duquenes SDs mentioned and 3 Havens, all mentioned as surviving the war as being in backwater commands and being sold to Grayson. In the Grayson section, 17 Duquesne SDs were sold to Grayson in addition to the original 11 captures, and the Haven class is not mentioned.

it is possible 1 Duquesne could be an engineering casuality, and since they were bought at scrap prices, was just scraped for parts and never entered Service, but what about the Haven class?
Last edited by Theemile on Fri Jan 05, 2018 6:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)
Post by ldwechsler   » Fri Jan 05, 2018 6:53 pm

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Theemile wrote:
Hegemon wrote:Serious question: how about recycling ship designation of destroyed or sold ships ? For example, if the first GSN Courvosier II-class BC(P) was designated BC-44, can we conclude for example that there were 43 previous GSN BCs ever in service ?.


Very interesting find... In my records, there are 71 BCs of the other 4 Grayson BC classes. ( 5 ex-warlords, 3 Reliants, and 16 Redoubtables, in addition to the 47 homegrown Courvosiers). It is possible that Courvosier production continued past the 1919 start dat of the first Courvosier II, but 25+ units - that seems odd....

Doing research for you I found another problem with HoS. In the RMN section. There are 18 Duquenes SDs mentioned and 3 Havens, all mentioned as surviving the war as being in backwater commands and being sold to Grayson. In the Grayson section, 17 Duquesne SDs were sold to Grayson in addition to the original 11 captures, and the Haven class is not mentioned.

it is possible 1 Duquesne could be an engineering casuality, and since they were bought at scrap prices, was just scraped for parts and never entered Service, but what about the Haven class?


Ships are being built and retired all the time. Frankly, I would rather have RFC writing more books than worrying over numbers from previous works. We had no Honor books last year. I want more books, not more bookkeeping.
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Re: RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)
Post by Hegemon   » Fri Jan 05, 2018 7:37 pm

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Theemile wrote:Hull numbers are never reused, unless you reset the entire sequence. At that point, you either renumber all your hulls (which the RMn did in antiquity with CAs), or you are so high, that starting over will cause no active or recent overlap (ie stopping at 1000, and starting again at 1 instead of 1001 when only 30 ships are in service). Otherwise, even if you built another identical ship and gave it the name of a lost ship, it would have a different hull number than it's predecessor.

Very interesting find... In my records, there are 71 BCs of the other 4 Grayson BC classes. ( 5 ex-warlords, 3 Reliants, and 16 Redoubtables, in addition to the 47 homegrown Courvosiers). It is possible that Courvosier production continued past the 1919 start dat of the first Courvosier II, but 25+ units - that just seems odd....


The HoS states about Courvosiers: "With the resumptionof hostilities, an emergency construction program ordered
another four squadrons of this well-tried, reliable class, the last of which was delivered in late 1920." So if the first GSN BC(P) appeared in 1919, there were as you said 5 ex-warlords, 3 Reliants, and 16 Redoubtables and 19 Courvosiers BCs. Therefore, 4 more Courvosiers were built before the war in 1919 and another 24 were build as an emergency construction after Thunderbolt to a total of 47.

Theemile wrote:Doing research for you I found another problem with HoS. In the RMN section. There are 18 Duquenes SDs mentioned and 3 Havens, all mentioned as surviving the war as being in backwater commands and being sold to Grayson. In the Grayson section, 17 Duquesne SDs were sold to Grayson in addition to the original 11 captures, and the Haven class is not mentioned.

it is possible 1 Duquesne could be an engineering casuality, and since they were bought at scrap prices, was just scraped for parts and never entered Service, but what about the Haven class?


The HoS states that "Seventeen more ex-Havenite superdreadnoughts were added in 1917 PD when the remainder in RMN service were decommissioned by the Janacek Admiralty." so they consist of 3 Havens and 14 Duquesnes.
The other 4 Duquesnes were either too worn out or destroyed by the deep raids of Operation Icarus.
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Re: RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)
Post by Theemile   » Fri Jan 05, 2018 7:50 pm

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Hegemon wrote:
Theemile wrote:Hull numbers are never reused, unless you reset the entire sequence. At that point, you either renumber all your hulls (which the RMn did in antiquity with CAs), or you are so high, that starting over will cause no active or recent overlap (ie stopping at 1000, and starting again at 1 instead of 1001 when only 30 ships are in service). Otherwise, even if you built another identical ship and gave it the name of a lost ship, it would have a different hull number than it's predecessor.

Very interesting find... In my records, there are 71 BCs of the other 4 Grayson BC classes. ( 5 ex-warlords, 3 Reliants, and 16 Redoubtables, in addition to the 47 homegrown Courvosiers). It is possible that Courvosier production continued past the 1919 start dat of the first Courvosier II, but 25+ units - that just seems odd....


The HoS states about Courvosiers: "With the resumptionof hostilities, an emergency construction program ordered
another four squadrons of this well-tried, reliable class, the last of which was delivered in late 1920." So if the first GSN BC(P) appeared in 1919, there were as you said 5 ex-warlords, 3 Reliants, and 16 Redoubtables and 19 Courvosiers BCs. Therefore, 4 more Courvosiers were built before the war in 1919 and another 24 were build as an emergency construction after Thunderbolt to a total of 47.

Theemile wrote:Doing research for you I found another problem with HoS. In the RMN section. There are 18 Duquenes SDs mentioned and 3 Havens, all mentioned as surviving the war as being in backwater commands and being sold to Grayson. In the Grayson section, 17 Duquesne SDs were sold to Grayson in addition to the original 11 captures, and the Haven class is not mentioned.

it is possible 1 Duquesne could be an engineering casuality, and since they were bought at scrap prices, was just scraped for parts and never entered Service, but what about the Haven class?


The HoS states that "Seventeen more ex-Havenite superdreadnoughts were added in 1917 PD when the remainder in RMN service were decommissioned by the Janacek Admiralty." so they consist of 3 Havens and 14 Duquesnes.
The other 4 Duquesnes were either too worn out or destroyed by the deep raids of Operation Icarus.


The Haven's are specifically a different class, as mentioned in the RMN area. And it was stated that there were no war losses of either class.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)
Post by Hegemon   » Fri Jan 05, 2018 8:07 pm

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Theemile wrote:Your numbers are pretty good, but there are some discepencies

1) according to the 1920 Fleetlist, Manticore had 225 SDs in service and reserve, with text saying that they were all Samothrace, Sphinx, or Gryphons. Only 237 ships of the 3 designs were built, accounting for only 12 losses. Ratio wise, this matches the losses with the Victories (2/36 or 1/18 Victories lost vs ~1/20 Sphinx/Gryphon/Samothrace)

By this point, all the other SD classes were sold off or destroyed.


I was being very generous by supposing that the total of 225 RMN SDs was in fact counted by RFC as 'RMN SDs and ex-RMN (King William-class and Anduril-class) SDs sold to Allied Navies other than GSN and Erewhon Navy' If you consider only the Samothrace, Sphinx, or Gryphons classes,
than the discrepancies between the 237 SDs initially built, the 1905-1915 losses, the 131-149 active RMN pre-pod SDs during Operation Thunderbolt, and the 225 active and reserve SDs in 1920) are even worse.

Theemile wrote:Only 6 DNs were still service, with the remaining Gladiators and Bellerophons in reserve until 1921. We can assume that since Honor had the last 11 at Sidemore, 5 were damaged enough to write off after the battle. The remaining DNs (Ad Astras, Royal Wintons and Majestics) were sent to the breaker pre-1919.)


As I said in a previous post, I agree about the DNs

Theemile wrote:All captured Havenite SDs and DNs in RMN service were posted to backwater locations and never saw combat in RMN hands, and all of which survived the war ok. The DNs were sent to the breakers and Grayson bought the remaining 21 Haven and Duquesne classes along with the Victories. They bought ~ 60 ships, so they must have also bought some King Williams and/or Andurils also.


The HoS only says about the Haven-class SDs that it never saw combat. I never saw it stated about the Duquesne-class SDs. And the Operation Icarus raids hit quite a few of those backwater locations ...
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