Battle of Trevor's Star

At the time Whitehaven did have the forces to take Trevors Star.
However; trying to take New Paris would havebeen suicide.

cthia wrote:

Dauntless wrote:there were 2 reasons for trevors star being so prominent.

1) the fact that is has a terminus of the junction, and that automatically makes it priority for the RMN to secure in some fashion. but prior to the loss of TS the peep threat was seen as a long way off and so the idiots in parliament were even more troublesome about building a wall of battle when it would cut into the funds for commerce protection which is what they saw the navy real job, assuming they acknowledged a need for a navy in the first place.

though to be fair before the peeps arrived trevors star had a decent fleet and defences. more then enough for general security if the peeps hadn't decided to turn conquistador

and

2) it was close/in haven space.

honestly if it wasn't for its location in haven space it would have been a system like gregor, i think it is, which was a very minor world, with nothing to draw people to it, even with the junction terminus, until the andies annexed it.


could the war have been won? oh yes. Podnoughts and MDMs made the first war winnable, though there is no question that taking TS helped. manticore might have lost more of the smaller members of the alliance first, but I seriously doubt that in the 2/3 years between the fall of TS to the RMN and buttercup they would have able to take manticore proper. worst case might have lost bassilisk, but again remember when White Haven took Barnett, the podnoughts and MDMs just wiped out anyone that came against them.



why did the RMN take TS? again 2 reasons.

1) it was knife at their back. as long as the peeps had TS then RMN had to keep substantial forces in the home system. it was believed a wormhole assault would be a blood bath but the RMN wasn't taking the chance, so home fleet had to be kept very strong.

2) logistics. convoys of supply ships no long needed to cross hundreds of ly to get supplies to the front. a quick hop through the junction and then a relatively short cruise through hyper at almost zero risk. compared to a possibly months long trip with the risk of raiders, so escorts needed. another drain on ships. ships the the RMN had in much fewer numbers then the peeps.

Nice!

Ah, close to Havenite space. There it is! Somehow I missed that. I was under the impression that it was closer to Manty space, but exited deep into Havenite space. You filled in a lot of my holes. I know that w/o Trevor's Star a lengthy trip would have been needed and no support from Home Fleet and its supply chain.

At any rate, all thru White Haven's prolonged engagement of Trevor's Star, I kept thinking that the Star Kingdom could have directed all of that metal towards Noveau Paris, instead. I'm sure it only appeared that way to me, but it seemed like Esther cost White Haven enough firepower to take Noveau Paris alone! LOL

"White Haven, didn't your gf tell you that this is going to cost you, dearly?," says Esther.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:
Ah, close to Havenite space. There it is! Somehow I missed that. I was under the impression that it was closer to Manty space, but exited deep into Havenite space. You filled in a lot of my holes. I know that w/o Trevor's Star a lengthy trip would have been needed and no support from Home Fleet and its supply chain.

At any rate, all thru White Haven's prolonged engagement of Trevor's Star, I kept thinking that the Star Kingdom could have directed all of that metal towards Noveau Paris, instead. I'm sure it only appeared that way to me, but it seemed like Esther cost White Haven enough firepower to take Noveau Paris alone! LOL

"White Haven, didn't your gf tell you that this is going to cost you, dearly?," says Esther.

I did a quick look on the Honorverse wiki (so standard warning apply) but Trevor's Star is about 200 light years from Manticore while Nouveau Paris is about 300.

That makes it sound like you could send those forces against Haven instead, but the distance from the closest support base is much different. Manticore had spent the immediate pre-war time, and during the war building, up supply and repair bases between Manticore and the front so most ships didn't have to cycle all the way back to Manticore for repair and resupply.

Lunging another 100 or so LY beyond that support would have been very risky. Also the Haven System home fleet was large enough that the fleet that took Trevor's Star almost certainly wouldn't have been able to defeat it.

Now if Manticore knew that the podnaughts would be along in several more years, that they'd be as effective as they turned out to be, and that Haven would have stayed on the defensive until then - they could have preserved their forces, left Trevor's Star alone, and let 8th fleet's podnaughts go strait to Nouveau Paris and blow everything away with their MDMs.

But that's a hell of a gamble. Better to grab Trevor's Star while you could, vastly shorten and secure the supply line, and be better positioned if they need to continue the conventional attacks.

Thanks Jonathan. Whitehaven needed way too much support handling Esther McQueen that if he would have opted for Nouveau Paris instead w/o Hemphill's new bag of tricks, probably would have been suicide. It just seemed like he wasted an awful lot of firepower during that protracted engagement trying to take it, that my sensibilities kept screaming. . .

"Give up Hamburger Hill you pill, and go directly for the kill!"

Going directly for the kill is what he was finally prepared to do until Saint-Just pulled a Kim Jong-un on him! LOL

If the objective would have been Haven orbit from the get-go, it might've run out the clock and preempted Saint-Just's ploy.

cthia wrote:

cthia wrote:
Ah, close to Havenite space. There it is! Somehow I missed that. I was under the impression that it was closer to Manty space, but exited deep into Havenite space. You filled in a lot of my holes. I know that w/o Trevor's Star a lengthy trip would have been needed and no support from Home Fleet and its supply chain.

At any rate, all thru White Haven's prolonged engagement of Trevor's Star, I kept thinking that the Star Kingdom could have directed all of that metal towards Noveau Paris, instead. I'm sure it only appeared that way to me, but it seemed like Esther cost White Haven enough firepower to take Noveau Paris alone! LOL

"White Haven, didn't your gf tell you that this is going to cost you, dearly?," says Esther.

Jonathan_S wrote:I did a quick look on the Honorverse wiki (so standard warning apply) but Trevor's Star is about 200 light years from Manticore while Nouveau Paris is about 300.

That makes it sound like you could send those forces against Haven instead, but the distance from the closest support base is much different. Manticore had spent the immediate pre-war time, and during the war building, up supply and repair bases between Manticore and the front so most ships didn't have to cycle all the way back to Manticore for repair and resupply.

Lunging another 100 or so LY beyond that support would have been very risky. Also the Haven System home fleet was large enough that the fleet that took Trevor's Star almost certainly wouldn't have been able to defeat it.

Now if Manticore knew that the podnaughts would be along in several more years, that they'd be as effective as they turned out to be, and that Haven would have stayed on the defensive until then - they could have preserved their forces, left Trevor's Star alone, and let 8th fleet's podnaughts go strait to Nouveau Paris and blow everything away with their MDMs.

But that's a hell of a gamble. Better to grab Trevor's Star while you could, vastly shorten and secure the supply line, and be better positioned if they need to continue the conventional attacks.

Thanks Jonathan. Whitehaven needed way too much support handling Esther McQueen that if he would have opted for Nouveau Paris instead w/o Hemphill's new bag of tricks, probably would have been suicide. It just seemed like he wasted an awful lot of firepower during that protracted engagement trying to take it, that my sensibilities kept screaming. . .

"Give up Hamburger Hill you pill, and go directly for the kill!"

Going directly for the kill is what he was finally prepared to do until Saint-Just pulled a Kim Jong-un on him! LOL

If the objective would have been Haven orbit from the get-go, it might've run out the clock and preempted Saint-Just's ploy.

And if White Haven had possessed a crystal ball and Honor had been able to read tea leaves, maybe they might have done that.

Look, a whole big part of the series is that the entire warfighting paradigm has been changing from the very first battle in OBS on. That's what happens in wars against peer competitors. You find out a bunch of the stuff you thought would work won't, that stuff you never thought of will, that the tools you're being given change with breathtaking speed once the shooting actually starts (especially if you've been doing a heck of a lot of pre-war R&D nobody knew about), and that you frigging never know enough when it comes to either tactical or strategic planning.

That's . . . what . . . happens . . . in . . . wars.

Did anyone miss the fact that throughout the last third of OBS Honor was doing the worst thing she possibly could have done There she is, frantically trying to stop this much more powerful Q-ship, getting her crew slaughtered with the utmost courage and gallantry . . . and all the Peep skipper is trying to do is to get to the rendezvous to call the operation off. The problem was that she had to go with the info she had and a worst-case assumption. She did that with perfect intelligence (as in smarts) and supreme dedication and she never, ever learned that so many of her crew were killed (in real terms) for nothing. In fact, her very success is what guaranteed that the Peep task force that eventually stopped by for a "courtesy call" didn't simply turn around and go home without ever putting in an appearance.

Similar situation in HotQ when she goes against her instincts and doesn't close with Thunder of God while the Masadan crew is running the ship with the training manuals open in their laps. She didn't know. If she had known, she'd have closed in and killed the damned ship before they ever figured out which way was up and her losses would probably have been immensely lower.

If White Haven had known about the MDMs and the podnoughts --- and how effective the untried and untested system was going to be, his tactics would have been different from the get-go. If the Manties had realized Theisman's navy had MDMs and podnoughts of its own before Thunderbolt, the outcome at places like Grendelsbane would have been very different. If the RMN had truly realized how effective its fleet logistics train was, they might have skipped Trevor's Star. or, having taken it and moved their "rear area" deep into pre-war Havenite territory, they might have opted for a deep strike on Nouveau Paris. If they'd been positive of how effective the new weapons were going to prove before they were actually deployed in Buttercup, they wouldn't have bothered with Duquesene Base; they'd've gone straight for Nouveau Paris and ended the war.

At every single stage of these books, there was always a better option for the planners, good guys or bad guys, than the one they ultimately took . . . but they didn't kmow it.

Discussion of positive alternative tactics is all well and good, but the only two valid meter sticks are:

(1) What did the commanders know and how intelligently did they act given what they knew, and

(2) Did it work.

The one thing I will guarantee you --- and I hope to hell it shows in the books --- is that no decent commander on either side was ever indifferent to the losses his forces suffered or determined to do one centimeter less than his/her duty.

One more IF RFC. . .

If White Haven had known who was waiting for him at Trevor's Star and the hickory stick she was fond of, he wouldn't have made my baby use Smoke and Mirrors, pull down his little pink panties - and proceed to . . . whack dat ass!


"Go home to your mother!"

runsforcelery wrote:Did anyone miss the fact that throughout the last third of OBS Honor was doing the worst thing she possibly could have done There she is, frantically trying to stop this much more powerful Q-ship, getting her crew slaughtered with the utmost courage and gallantry . . . and all the Peep skipper is trying to do is to get to the rendezvous to call the operation off. The problem was that she had to go with the info she had and a worst-case assumption. She did that with perfect intelligence (as in smarts) and supreme dedication and she never, ever learned that so many of her crew were killed (in real terms) for nothing. In fact, her very success is what guaranteed that the Peep task force that eventually stopped by for a "courtesy call" didn't simply turn around and go home without ever putting in an appearance.

Yeah, I've always scored that as a failure by the Peep skipper. He could have called her up, and offered to hang out inside the hyper limit limit for 2 - 3 days, and then left.

This would have given Home Fleet enough time to get out there, and given hm enough time to stop the Peep fleet from showing up.

Win-Win

Except, then Honor doesn't get her launch to fame, and the book doesn't get it's needed big battle.

runsforcelery wrote:Did anyone miss the fact that throughout the last third of OBS Honor was doing the worst thing she possibly could have done There she is, frantically trying to stop this much more powerful Q-ship, getting her crew slaughtered with the utmost courage and gallantry . . . and all the Peep skipper is trying to do is to get to the rendezvous to call the operation off. The problem was that she had to go with the info she had and a worst-case assumption. She did that with perfect intelligence (as in smarts) and supreme dedication and she never, ever learned that so many of her crew were killed (in real terms) for nothing. In fact, her very success is what guaranteed that the Peep task force that eventually stopped by for a "courtesy call" didn't simply turn around and go home without ever putting in an appearance.

Thought to be fair having the the Havenite squadron show up did have some beneficial political and military side effects that might not have happened had Honor been slower off the mark and let the Q-ship slip away without interception.

That made it very clear to most Manticorans that the Peeps were behind the whole plot - in a way that would be harder to show if you just had a bunch of dead natives, a few overrun trading posts, and a ship that fled never to return. I got the impression that it was that unmistakable evidence of Haven stirring up trouble that got Basilisk formally incorporated into the Star Kingdom, got a real naval station put out there, and was likely helpful to by Manticoran diplomats trying to build up the pre-war alliance.

Still, whether the long term gains were worth the cost might be hard to judge. But in tactical terms you're absolutely right that had Honor done nothing Basilisk would have still been totally safe from that Havenite fleet.



Anyway, thinking aloud based off what you said about without the new weapons that were still a ways off, and totally unproven, White Haven didn't have the forces to go after Nueva Paris.

As various characters in the books say from time to time neither side had enough forces to cover their critical area and also launch an attack overwhelming enough to be reasonably likely of taking their enemy's home system. (Haven might of if they'd been able to adopt a sufficiently miserly definition of critical area and been willing to temporarily write off a number of major system)

Without that force level the war pretty much inevitably evolved into an attritional contest. Each side trying to build up forces, and wear down the enemy's until they had achieve sufficient strength that they could take their opponents home system without leaving their own vulnerable.

It's not actually clear to me that, pre-buttercup, that deep raids would have been more effective ways to attrit Haven's fleet (since I assume her major shipyards would have likely been to heavily defended for a raid to wreck). And given Manticore's missile combat advantage, in the towed pod era I think the best attritional fights are a bunch of smaller ones where your single pod launch is a bigger fraction of the total missiles fired.

Taking territory was almost secondary to killing or crippling enemy ships at a favorable exchange rate. (Except for Trevor's star because taking that simultaneously removes some risk from your Home System and puts your main supplies and shipyards effectively a couple hundred lightyears closer to the front - letting you significantly improve your operational tempo and cycle ships back for refit much more efficiently. If you can get your damaged ships fully repaired and back in the fight quicker than the other guy that's an attritional advantage to you)

It would have been awesome if there had been a tech breakthrough sooner, or an amazing tactic, that would have gotten that war out of its attriptional grind. But nobody was able to find one until Project Gram finally paid out and gave the RMN Buttercup and the end of the war.

GregD wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:Did anyone miss the fact that throughout the last third of OBS Honor was doing the worst thing she possibly could have done There she is, frantically trying to stop this much more powerful Q-ship, getting her crew slaughtered with the utmost courage and gallantry . . . and all the Peep skipper is trying to do is to get to the rendezvous to call the operation off. The problem was that she had to go with the info she had and a worst-case assumption. She did that with perfect intelligence (as in smarts) and supreme dedication and she never, ever learned that so many of her crew were killed (in real terms) for nothing. In fact, her very success is what guaranteed that the Peep task force that eventually stopped by for a "courtesy call" didn't simply turn around and go home without ever putting in an appearance.

Yeah, I've always scored that as a failure by the Peep skipper. He could have called her up, and offered to hang out inside the hyper limit limit for 2 - 3 days, and then left.

This would have given Home Fleet enough time to get out there, and given hm enough time to stop the Peep fleet from showing up.

Win-Win

Except, then Honor doesn't get her launch to fame, and the book doesn't get it's needed big battle.

But then, Eloise didn't want to go back to war. Neither did Beth. They both acted on what they thought they knew. And what they definitely did know could and most definitely would happen.

Lots of good people dying all for nothing was a recurrent theme. But dammit, White Haven kept getting his head handed to him each and every time he visited Trevor's Star. He knew what was gonna happen. He was simply not welcome there. Insanity expecting different results.

I mean, it isn't like Esther kept it a big fat secret. She used a few tricks on him, yea, but she was always nice enough to supply the mirrors so he could see himself getting whipped.

"See the smoke? Some of it is streaming from your butt!"

Since White Haven was the best at the time but still kept getting sent home without his panties - even though Esther was unsupported - I shutter to think what she would have done to someone else. Or accomplished had she been properly supported.

"Please! Why do they keep sending in these kids!"

Jonathan_S wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:Did anyone miss the fact that throughout the last third of OBS Honor was doing the worst thing she possibly could have done There she is, frantically trying to stop this much more powerful Q-ship, getting her crew slaughtered with the utmost courage and gallantry . . . and all the Peep skipper is trying to do is to get to the rendezvous to call the operation off. The problem was that she had to go with the info she had and a worst-case assumption. She did that with perfect intelligence (as in smarts) and supreme dedication and she never, ever learned that so many of her crew were killed (in real terms) for nothing. In fact, her very success is what guaranteed that the Peep task force that eventually stopped by for a "courtesy call" didn't simply turn around and go home without ever putting in an appearance.

Thought to be fair having the the Havenite squadron show up did have some beneficial political and military side effects that might not have happened had Honor been slower off the mark and let the Q-ship slip away without interception.

That made it very clear to most Manticorans that the Peeps were behind the whole plot - in a way that would be harder to show if you just had a bunch of dead natives, a few overrun trading posts, and a ship that fled never to return. I got the impression that it was that unmistakable evidence of Haven stirring up trouble that got Basilisk formally incorporated into the Star Kingdom, got a real naval station put out there, and was likely helpful to by Manticoran diplomats trying to build up the pre-war alliance.

Still, whether the long term gains were worth the cost might be hard to judge. But in tactical terms you're absolutely right that had Honor done nothing Basilisk would have still been totally safe from that Havenite fleet.



Anyway, thinking aloud based off what you said about without the new weapons that were still a ways off, and totally unproven, White Haven didn't have the forces to go after Nueva Paris.

As various characters in the books say from time to time neither side had enough forces to cover their critical area and also launch an attack overwhelming enough to be reasonably likely of taking their enemy's home system. (Haven might of if they'd been able to adopt a sufficiently miserly definition of critical area and been willing to temporarily write off a number of major system)

Without that force level the war pretty much inevitably evolved into an attritional contest. Each side trying to build up forces, and wear down the enemy's until they had achieve sufficient strength that they could take their opponents home system without leaving their own vulnerable.

It's not actually clear to me that, pre-buttercup, that deep raids would have been more effective ways to attrit Haven's fleet (since I assume her major shipyards would have likely been to heavily defended for a raid to wreck). And given Manticore's missile combat advantage, in the towed pod era I think the best attritional fights are a bunch of smaller ones where your single pod launch is a bigger fraction of the total missiles fired.

Taking territory was almost secondary to killing or crippling enemy ships at a favorable exchange rate. (Except for Trevor's star because taking that simultaneously removes some risk from your Home System and puts your main supplies and shipyards effectively a couple hundred lightyears closer to the front - letting you significantly improve your operational tempo and cycle ships back for refit much more efficiently. If you can get your damaged ships fully repaired and back in the fight quicker than the other guy that's an attritional advantage to you)

It would have been awesome if there had been a tech breakthrough sooner, or an amazing tactic, that would have gotten that war out of its attriptional grind. But nobody was able to find one until Project Gram finally paid out and gave the RMN Buttercup and the end of the war.

And it happened during peace time. The good news is that Haven wasn't quite ready to go to war. So, happening when it did was certainly providence, Jonathan.

And! We all know how they felt about Honor at the time, so her word about the whole sordid affair w/o proof would have been worthless.

You keep on saying this, so it would be interesting to know where you're getting it from. It's not in any of the books, that's for sure!


The closest I can find is the account of the Battle of Nightingale - and I've never seen any confirmation that McQueen was in command there, it could just as well have been Theisman or Giscard, given the size of the force - and this from HAE: "In essence, the earl proposed to abandon the messy, inconclusive fighting of a direct approach and work around the perimeter of Trevor's Star." If it's inconclusive, ain't nobody getting paddled except the poor suckers out on the pointy end. The Somme in 1916 is the epitome of 'messy, inconclusive fighting'.

In point of fact, the entire reason that McQueen was in Nouveau Paris for Grapeshot Day was that she was _losing_, and everybody knew it. She was, nonetheless, seen as too valuable to take out and shoot when Trevor's Star was finally lost, so she'd been called home for reassignment. Dunno if Rob had already decided to put her in the Octagon at that point, or if it was the result of seeing close-up how effective she could be, but at that point she had definitively _lost_ to White Haven, not beaten him.

cthia wrote:
< snip >

Lots of good people dying all for nothing was a recurrent theme. But dammit, White Haven kept getting his head handed to him each and every time he visited Trevor's Star. He knew what was gonna happen. He was simply not welcome there. Insanity expecting different results.

I mean, it isn't like Esther kept it a big fat secret. She used a few tricks on him, yea, but she was always nice enough to supply the mirrors so he could see himself getting whipped.

"See the smoke? Some of it is streaming from your butt!"

Since White Haven was the best at the time but still kept getting sent home without his panties - even though Esther was unsupported - I shutter to think what she would have done to someone else. Or accomplished had she been properly supported.

"Please! Why do they keep sending in these kids!"

cthia wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:Did anyone miss the fact that throughout the last third of OBS Honor was doing the worst thing she possibly could have done There she is, frantically trying to stop this much more powerful Q-ship, getting her crew slaughtered with the utmost courage and gallantry . . . and all the Peep skipper is trying to do is to get to the rendezvous to call the operation off. The problem was that she had to go with the info she had and a worst-case assumption. She did that with perfect intelligence (as in smarts) and supreme dedication and she never, ever learned that so many of her crew were killed (in real terms) for nothing. In fact, her very success is what guaranteed that the Peep task force that eventually stopped by for a "courtesy call" didn't simply turn around and go home without ever putting in an appearance.

GregD wrote:Yeah, I've always scored that as a failure by the Peep skipper. He could have called her up, and offered to hang out inside the hyper limit limit for 2 - 3 days, and then left.

This would have given Home Fleet enough time to get out there, and given hm enough time to stop the Peep fleet from showing up.

Win-Win

Except, then Honor doesn't get her launch to fame, and the book doesn't get it's needed big battle.

But then, Eloise didn't want to go back to war. Neither did Beth. They both acted on what they thought they knew. And what they definitely did know could and most definitely would happen.

Lots of good people dying all for nothing was a recurrent theme. But dammit, White Haven kept getting his head handed to him each and every time he visited Trevor's Star. He knew what was gonna happen. He was simply not welcome there. Insanity expecting different results.

I mean, it isn't like Esther kept it a big fat secret. She used a few tricks on him, yea, but she was always nice enough to supply the mirrors so he could see himself getting whipped.

"See the smoke? Some of it is streaming from your butt!"

Since White Haven was the best at the time but still kept getting sent home without his panties - even though Esther was unsupported - I shutter to think what she would have done to someone else. Or accomplished had she been properly supported.

"Please! Why do they keep sending in these kids!"

You know, I don't really understand why you think White Haven made repeated costly attempts on Trevor's Star and got handed his head over and over again. He didn't, and I don't believe it says anywhere in the books that he did. For that matter I don't know why you think McQueen was "unsupported." Trevor's Star and DuQuesene Base were the Peeps' two most important forward fleet bases and staging areas. They were supported to the max, even after the Coup. That was one of the problems freeing up forces for Operation Stalking Horse in FIE. The striking forces had to be made up to weight with BBs because the surviving wallers were tasked to defend critical systems (like, oh, Trevor's Star).

He did make an attack that was turned back with losses, and he did reflect that the Peeps were getting their second wind while the Manticoran Alliance had overextended itself and needed to rethink, and he did reflect on the fact that McQueen was really, really good and had proven no one could take liberties with her.

But he also extricated his forces from the ambush which had been carefully prepared for him with only moderate losses. And after he did that, he went away and evolved a strategy that continued the attritional whittling down of the PRN (and picking off good junior officers before they became good senior officers) and succeeded in sucking the Peeps completely off balance so he could close in and take a star he should not have been able to take. And, trust me, it didn't really matter that McQueen wasn't still in command when he sprang the trap. She'd been in command every meter of the way while he was setting the trap, and he still pulled it off.

The fact is that she was good, but she wasn't as good as he was. She had the advantage of the defensive position (not to be sneered at, especially in pre-pod combat days) and she was ruthless and tough minded enough to use everything she did have to best advantage, but if she'd still been in command when White Haven launched the attack he'd spent all that time setting up, there never would have been an Admiral Cluster Bomb back in Nouveau Paris because Citizen Admiral McQueen would either have been dead or having tea in a POW camp somewhere in the SKM.