What is the |value| of captured enemy systems?

Jonathan_S wrote:Well it worked for some definition of worked, once they got vastly more planes than pre-war theorists thought they'd need and (for the USAAF) long range fighter escort which they didn't think they'd need because the bomber would always get through. And of course until the Atomic bombs (which the pre-war theorists weren't anticipating) it certainly didn't singlehandedly end the war like it's most ardent supported claimed it would. (And they certainly didn't anticipate that one of the uses of USAAF bombing raids would be as fighter traps forcing the Luftwaffe to come up where those weren't supposed to be needed long range escort fighter can grind them down.

There's a quite good case that the Allies would have been significantly better off if in '40 - '42 when RAF Bomber Command didn't have the critical mass (nor the developed blind bombing aids) to be truly effective yet they'd been stripped of say a third or so of their long range bombers to be tuned over to Coastal Command for anti-submarine patrols. (But that's a total violation of pre-war bomber theory)

Guess I wasn't forthright enough.
They couldn't hit a city, let alone the correct city at the start. A building, railroad yard, etc? Please pull the other leg. Yet naval planes figured it out just fine on smaller targets which moved..... Eventually they figured out HOW to do the later, yet never switched tactics. Guess they didn't want to do the training. Most pinpoint bombing, at least from my reading of the war, was done with medium bombers, B25's, A26's, Mosquito's, even P47 Thunderbolts, not heavies. Seems every single time I read accounts of specific targets being taken out it was almost never done with a 4 engined bomber outside the oil raids and the sub pen raids(did nothing). Which makes you wonder.... WHY? They knew from photo reconnaissance that the mediums were getting the job done VERY accurately(for their time several planes take out a target), yet they kept sending the heavies out to mass carpet bomb pastures full of sheep, pigs, and cows with the hope of setting the farmers cottage on fire. I guess they REALLY wanted to make sure the Germans had no reason to bitch after the war as they stayed well stocked in all things of fine leather.

How to bomb fairly accurately from a shallow dive was KNOWN early in 43' yet..... heavies continued to blow up earth worms in unprecedented numbers. I suppose they felt chivalrous since all the German men were at the front and wanted to help out those farmers wives and daughters so they did not have to till their fields.

Yea, eventually they figured out how to hit a city. Still couldn't hit which quadrant of a city... yet the mediums were busy blowing up bridges, rail lines, tunnels, fuel refineries, manufacturing sites, etc etc etc and the heavies continued taking MASSIVE losses to just blow up someones townhouse forcing everyone to live closer to everyone else on the remaining parts of the city.... Sigh. Yea yea, a rare few heavies actually went after factories and succeeded. Wasn't the Brits though.

cthia wrote:During most all historical occupations, many horrible things occurred. I always wondered what happened to occupied systems in the Honorverse when the combatants had such hate for each other.

Before Harrington began to show the Peeps that war could be waged in a decent fashion, Peeps were murdering and abusing Manticoran prisoners. It is difficult to believe that Peep occupied systems treated the local population with decency and respect.

Unless I'm forgetting something the Peeps never occupied an Allied inhabited system. The most they ever did was temporarily take back systems Manticore had captured. Statesec probably cracked down hard on anybody collaborating with the occupiers, but there wouldn't be many Manticoran civilians to abuse. (Maybe a few as specialist helping with the occupation, but most of the captured Allied citizens there would be military - naval or ground supporting the occupation.

As for how Manticore treated the people they captured evidence is it isn't too bad as a number of systems were expected even by Haven to vote for independence or even some kind of arrangement with Manticore if the peace treaty every got to the local plebiscite stage.

How much Manticore interacted with them would probably depend on what support they wanted to try to extract from the planet. They might settle for a pretty hands off approach. Their navy controls the system and orbitals, so nobody is likely to easily flee out of the system. If the local police and government isn't too corrupted and oppressive you could pretty much stay hands off with the planetary surface and leave it self-regulated after rounding up any major Peep military or StateSec ground forces and equipment. Obivously if you're trying to draw support from the captured population you may need more forces to achieve that and prevent sabotage - though how much depends on much you're viewed as a conqueror verse somebody who liberated them from the Peep who'd captured the system a generation or two before.
Until Buttercup Manticore hadn't penetrated deeply enough to be occupying the core worlds of the Peeps, the ones who'd been part of the system longer than anybody there had been alive. Trying to get support from those systems is probably harder than from a system that's seen things go to hell over the last 50-60 years since the Peeps took over

Relax wrote:Guess I wasn't forthright enough.
They couldn't hit a city, let alone the correct city at the start. A building, railroad yard, etc? Please pull the other leg. Yet naval planes figured it out just fine on smaller targets which moved..... Eventually they figured out HOW to do the later, yet never switched tactics. Guess they didn't want to do the training. Most pinpoint bombing, at least from my reading of the war, was done with medium bombers, B25's, A26's, Mosquito's, even P47 Thunderbolts, not heavies. Seems every single time I read accounts of specific targets being taken out it was almost never done with a 4 engined bomber outside the oil raids and the sub pen raids(did nothing). Which makes you wonder.... WHY? They knew from photo reconnaissance that the mediums were getting the job done VERY accurately(for their time several planes take out a target), yet they kept sending the heavies out to mass carpet bomb pastures full of sheep, pigs, and cows with the hope of setting the farmers cottage on fire. I guess they REALLY wanted to make sure the Germans had no reason to bitch after the war as they stayed well stocked in all things of fine leather.

How to bomb fairly accurately from a shallow dive was KNOWN early in 43' yet..... heavies continued to blow up earth worms in unprecedented numbers. I suppose they felt chivalrous since all the German men were at the front and wanted to help out those farmers wives and daughters so they did not have to till their fields.

Yea, eventually they figured out how to hit a city. Still couldn't hit which quadrant of a city... yet the mediums were busy blowing up bridges, rail lines, tunnels, fuel refineries, manufacturing sites, etc etc etc and the heavies continued taking MASSIVE losses to just blow up someones townhouse forcing everyone to live closer to everyone else on the remaining parts of the city.... Sigh. Yea yea, a rare few heavies actually went after factories and succeeded. Wasn't the Brits though.

There were a few late war exceptions. Probably most publicized was No. 617 Squadron (aka the Dam Busters) where they used Lancaster 4 engine heavy bombers at very low level with special skip bombs against dams.

But late war in the Pacific B-17s used somewhat similar low level skip bombing attacks pretty effectively against individual freighters.

At high level attacks using the giant tallboy bombs became fairly effective and even with their "earthquake" effect those needed to be pretty close to the target.

The surprising one is that within their operational range the late ware British night blind bombing systems were. Gee H could get a heavy bomber to release within 120 yards of aim-point over Germany (and tighter when bombing occupied France or Belgium as the aiming error was roughly proportional to range from the transmitters). Still somewhat ironically despite finally having a blind bombing system that was usually much more accurate that the USAAF daylight "precision" bombing RAF Bomber Command still defaulted to large area targets.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:During most all historical occupations, many horrible things occurred. I always wondered what happened to occupied systems in the Honorverse when the combatants had such hate for each other.

Before Harrington began to show the Peeps that war could be waged in a decent fashion, Peeps were murdering and abusing Manticoran prisoners. It is difficult to believe that Peep occupied systems treated the local population with decency and respect.

Unless I'm forgetting something the Peeps never occupied an Allied inhabited system. The most they ever did was temporarily take back systems Manticore had captured. Statesec probably cracked down hard on anybody collaborating with the occupiers, but there wouldn't be many Manticoran civilians to abuse. (Maybe a few as specialist helping with the occupation, but most of the captured Allied citizens there would be military - naval or ground supporting the occupation.

As for how Manticore treated the people they captured evidence is it isn't too bad as a number of systems were expected even by Haven to vote for independence or even some kind of arrangement with Manticore if the peace treaty every got to the local plebiscite stage.

How much Manticore interacted with them would probably depend on what support they wanted to try to extract from the planet. They might settle for a pretty hands off approach. Their navy controls the system and orbitals, so nobody is likely to easily flee out of the system. If the local police and government isn't too corrupted and oppressive you could pretty much stay hands off with the planetary surface and leave it self-regulated after rounding up any major Peep military or StateSec ground forces and equipment. Obivously if you're trying to draw support from the captured population you may need more forces to achieve that and prevent sabotage - though how much depends on much you're viewed as a conqueror verse somebody who liberated them from the Peep who'd captured the system a generation or two before.
Until Buttercup Manticore hadn't penetrated deeply enough to be occupying the core worlds of the Peeps, the ones who'd been part of the system longer than anybody there had been alive. Trying to get support from those systems is probably harder than from a system that's seen things go to hell over the last 50-60 years since the Peeps took over

Candor and Minette. The Peeps took both and held on to them until they were booted. It was a diversion to draw down the Grayson forces in Flag in Exile. I don't know how long they held onto them. Days, weeks. But they certainly had them. It doesn't take long to abuse prisoners, especially when you hate them with a passion.

cthia wrote:
Candor and Minette. The Peeps took both and held on to them until they were booted. It was a diversion to draw down the Grayson forces in Flag in Exile. I don't know how long they held onto them. Days, weeks. But they certainly had them. It doesn't take long to abuse prisoners, especially when you hate them with a passion.

Thanks. Clearly another reminder that I need to reread the series. I kept thinking of Zanzibar's defenses getting repeatedly overrun, or the raid on Basilisk, or when Santino panicked and got blown away at the captured system of Seaford Nine. Totally didn't remember Candor and Minette.

Yep, it's quite possible that there was some organized or spontaneous abuse of captured population. Those were far enough behind the front they probably didn't plan to hold them long. I doubt they'd have shipping in a large army force to secure the groundside. It'd take too long to extract when the inevitable Manticoran response showed up to kick them out. But they might have attached a smaller force to try some industrial smash and grab looking for any tech googies Manticore might have shared - or just crippling domestic industry to force Manticore to divert resources to replace it. Or StateSec might have included a small ground force looking to capture or kill significant members of government and industry as an example of why they shouldn't have allied with Manticore. Or heck a sufficiently rabid people commissioner could have rounded up a scratch force of marines and crewman to run a short rein of terror.

I'd hope for benign neglect of the groundside after blowing away orbital and deep space infrastructure - but I wouldn't have much trust that that's what would happen.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:
Candor and Minette. The Peeps took both and held on to them until they were booted. It was a diversion to draw down the Grayson forces in Flag in Exile. I don't know how long they held onto them. Days, weeks. But they certainly had them. It doesn't take long to abuse prisoners, especially when you hate them with a passion.

Thanks. Clearly another reminder that I need to reread the series. I kept thinking of Zanzibar's defenses getting repeatedly overrun, or the raid on Basilisk, or when Santino panicked and got blown away at the captured system of Seaford Nine. Totally didn't remember Candor and Minette.

Yep, it's quite possible that there was some organized or spontaneous abuse of captured population. Those were far enough behind the front they probably didn't plan to hold them long. I doubt they'd have shipping in a large army force to secure the groundside. It'd take too long to extract when the inevitable Manticoran response showed up to kick them out. But they might have attached a smaller force to try some industrial smash and grab looking for any tech googies Manticore might have shared - or just crippling domestic industry to force Manticore to divert resources to replace it. Or StateSec might have included a small ground force looking to capture or kill significant members of government and industry as an example of why they shouldn't have allied with Manticore. Or heck a sufficiently rabid people commissioner could have rounded up a scratch force of marines and crewman to run a short rein of terror.

I'd hope for benign neglect of the groundside after blowing away orbital and deep space infrastructure - but I wouldn't have much trust that that's what would happen.

Note that the Manties faced hostility when suggesting protectorates to some of the OFS occupied planets? It is not fun to be ruled from afar.

Tirpitz.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:During most all historical occupations, many horrible things occurred. I always wondered what happened to occupied systems in the Honorverse when the combatants had such hate for each other.

Before Harrington began to show the Peeps that war could be waged in a decent fashion, Peeps were murdering and abusing Manticoran prisoners. It is difficult to believe that Peep occupied systems treated the local population with decency and respect.

Unless I'm forgetting something the Peeps never occupied an Allied inhabited system. The most they ever did was temporarily take back systems Manticore had captured. Statesec probably cracked down hard on anybody collaborating with the occupiers, but there wouldn't be many Manticoran civilians to abuse. (Maybe a few as specialist helping with the occupation, but most of the captured Allied citizens there would be military - naval or ground supporting the occupation.

As for how Manticore treated the people they captured evidence is it isn't too bad as a number of systems were expected even by Haven to vote for independence or even some kind of arrangement with Manticore if the peace treaty every got to the local plebiscite stage.

How much Manticore interacted with them would probably depend on what support they wanted to try to extract from the planet. They might settle for a pretty hands off approach. Their navy controls the system and orbitals, so nobody is likely to easily flee out of the system. If the local police and government isn't too corrupted and oppressive you could pretty much stay hands off with the planetary surface and leave it self-regulated after rounding up any major Peep military or StateSec ground forces and equipment. Obivously if you're trying to draw support from the captured population you may need more forces to achieve that and prevent sabotage - though how much depends on much you're viewed as a conqueror verse somebody who liberated them from the Peep who'd captured the system a generation or two before.
Until Buttercup Manticore hadn't penetrated deeply enough to be occupying the core worlds of the Peeps, the ones who'd been part of the system longer than anybody there had been alive. Trying to get support from those systems is probably harder than from a system that's seen things go to hell over the last 50-60 years since the Peeps took over

Relax wrote:Guess I wasn't forthright enough.
They couldn't hit a city, let alone the correct city at the start. A building, railroad yard, etc? Please pull the other leg. Yet naval planes figured it out just fine on smaller targets which moved..... Eventually they figured out HOW to do the later, yet never switched tactics. Guess they didn't want to do the training. Most pinpoint bombing, at least from my reading of the war, was done with medium bombers, B25's, A26's, Mosquito's, even P47 Thunderbolts, not heavies. Seems every single time I read accounts of specific targets being taken out it was almost never done with a 4 engined bomber outside the oil raids and the sub pen raids(did nothing). Which makes you wonder.... WHY? They knew from photo reconnaissance that the mediums were getting the job done VERY accurately(for their time several planes take out a target), yet they kept sending the heavies out to mass carpet bomb pastures full of sheep, pigs, and cows with the hope of setting the farmers cottage on fire. I guess they REALLY wanted to make sure the Germans had no reason to bitch after the war as they stayed well stocked in all things of fine leather.

How to bomb fairly accurately from a shallow dive was KNOWN early in 43' yet..... heavies continued to blow up earth worms in unprecedented numbers. I suppose they felt chivalrous since all the German men were at the front and wanted to help out those farmers wives and daughters so they did not have to till their fields.

Yea, eventually they figured out how to hit a city. Still couldn't hit which quadrant of a city... yet the mediums were busy blowing up bridges, rail lines, tunnels, fuel refineries, manufacturing sites, etc etc etc and the heavies continued taking MASSIVE losses to just blow up someones townhouse forcing everyone to live closer to everyone else on the remaining parts of the city.... Sigh. Yea yea, a rare few heavies actually went after factories and succeeded. Wasn't the Brits though.

There were a few late war exceptions. Probably most publicized was No. 617 Squadron (aka the Dam Busters) where they used Lancaster 4 engine heavy bombers at very low level with special skip bombs against dams.

But late war in the Pacific B-17s used somewhat similar low level skip bombing attacks pretty effectively against individual freighters.

At high level attacks using the giant tallboy bombs became fairly effective and even with their "earthquake" effect those needed to be pretty close to the target.

The surprising one is that within their operational range the late ware British night blind bombing systems were. Gee H could get a heavy bomber to release within 120 yards of aim-point over Germany (and tighter when bombing occupied France or Belgium as the aiming error was roughly proportional to range from the transmitters). Still somewhat ironically despite finally having a blind bombing system that was usually much more accurate that the USAAF daylight "precision" bombing RAF Bomber Command still defaulted to large area targets.

That was Mike inserting foot in mouth. Which she was careful to avoid thereafter, since she really did mean protection, as in "we'll keep the thugs off your backs until you can take care of yourselves"

Mind you, "pull the other one, it's got bells on it" is a not-unreasonable response to the proposal under the circumstances.

ldwechsler wrote:

Note that the Manties faced hostility when suggesting protectorates to some of the OFS occupied planets? It is not fun to be ruled from afar.

Daryl wrote:Tirpitz.

Yea, how many heavy LANCs with tallboys? ~100 on a ship going nowhere.

JohnS: 617 lost 2/3 of its squadron mates going low and slow for the dams... The 4 engined heavies were required to hoist the massive bombs to do enough damage when they landed close enough(Canal, RR bridge, dam) from nice and high. Kinetic energy baby. What is funny is that it turns out the giant bombs are far easier to drop accurately than the smaller bombs due to kinematics(wind shear resistance)

Still 100 planes against a non moving ship with the most accurate high altitude bomb ~3 hits. About equal to the mediums using glide bombing from my reading actually.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:
Candor and Minette. The Peeps took both and held on to them until they were booted. It was a diversion to draw down the Grayson forces in Flag in Exile. I don't know how long they held onto them. Days, weeks. But they certainly had them. It doesn't take long to abuse prisoners, especially when you hate them with a passion.

Thanks. Clearly another reminder that I need to reread the series. I kept thinking of Zanzibar's defenses getting repeatedly overrun, or the raid on Basilisk, or when Santino panicked and got blown away at the captured system of Seaford Nine. Totally didn't remember Candor and Minette.

Yep, it's quite possible that there was some organized or spontaneous abuse of captured population. Those were far enough behind the front they probably didn't plan to hold them long. I doubt they'd have shipping in a large army force to secure the groundside. It'd take too long to extract when the inevitable Manticoran response showed up to kick them out. But they might have attached a smaller force to try some industrial smash and grab looking for any tech googies Manticore might have shared - or just crippling domestic industry to force Manticore to divert resources to replace it. Or StateSec might have included a small ground force looking to capture or kill significant members of government and industry as an example of why they shouldn't have allied with Manticore. Or heck a sufficiently rabid people commissioner could have rounded up a scratch force of marines and crewman to run a short rein of terror.

I'd hope for benign neglect of the groundside after blowing away orbital and deep space infrastructure - but I wouldn't have much trust that that's what would happen.

No prob. I recall a sentiment in FiE that says part of the Peep's strategy was to show that they could hit most anywhere they wanted by operating deep in the RMN's rear, to foster the fear in enemy systems that they were not safe. Which would result in pressure on Manticoran politics to loose tonnage and spread them even thinner. If fear was on their menu, perhaps a little abuse down on planet was just what Peep doctors ordered.

Strategic depth is also something hard to fathom in the Honorverse in the vicinity of wormholes and termini.* Plus, the distance between systems seems to negate some of the traditional benefits associated with strategic depth when the enemy can sneak around undetected, i.e., strategic depth is supposed to make it more difficult for an enemy to mount a significant attack at a single point because of the strategy of Defense in depth. That doesn't seem to be the case in the Honorverse. Though the ability to mount a quick response to an attack is still a benefit. As witnessed by the RMN's response to the Peeps seizing Candor and Minette.

Strategic depth seems more of a weapon of defense when an enemy can operate deep in your rear areas and seize two systems before you can even be alerted, much less respond.

Basilisk has a termini, which makes it impossible for me to make heads or tails out of why the RMNs initial support of her was so sketchy. It was as if Basilisk was hardly important to the SK, which seemed ridiculous in light of the fact that the Peeps held Trevor's Star at the time, and adding Basilisk to the pot would have greatly enhanced the Peep's strategic depth let alone the possibility of a two pronged invasion of Manticore. All which adds fuel to the thought that a system's absolute value isn't so straightforward in these neck of the woods.

After all, Pavel Young was holding Basilisk - a system with a fricking terminus - down.


*I realized after the fact that this sentiment was first thrown out by TFLYTSNBN. Thus, he drew first blood and should get the credit. Though I wholeheartedly agree with his sentiment.