Honor's rescue of Marsh, nearly fatal?

TFLYTSNBN wrote:I would submit that by effectively annexing Marsh, Manticore needlessly provoked the Andermandi to abandon its polucy of not only neutrality in the Haven war but also as discussed in HAE, avoid small scale conflicts with the RMN in Silesia.
The RMN establishing a fleet base in Marsh alarmed the Andermandi and motivated Emperor Gustov to confront Manticore.

Of course I keep asking myself why the RMN was stupid enough to be building its new Inictus SD(P)s at a indensible shipyard at Grendelsbane.

Grendlesbane had defenses, there were forts which were never updated to fire MDMS, or control shoals if pods, nor were mdm pods assigned to the fortifications. There was also a Fleet of ~25 SDs, 7 SD(p)s, and 4 CLACs, or about 10-12% of the active fleet.

The fact that the forts were never updated is indefensible.

munroburton wrote:RMN deploys to Marsh, followed by Protector's Own.
RHN deploys Tourville to attack Sidemore.
Bachfisch spots Tourville's DDs, alerts Honor.
Honor alerts Manticore, which ignores the warning.
White Haven goes to Grayson and brings the Trevor's Star reinforcements.

It is quite clear that had the RMN abandoned Sidemore, the Allies would not have had any warning for Thunderbolt. They then lose Trevor's Star because the Grayson fleet is parked at Yeltsin.

My conclusion is that the forces deployed to Sidemore ended up accidentally and indirectly saving Trevor's Star. Reallocating the Allied and RHN assets present at Marsh to the other battles of Thunderbolt should not change their individual outcomes.

The only material change would have been Grayson reinforcing Grayson instead of(or along with) Trevor's Star. It's not clear whether they had enough time to reach Grendelsbane even if they had chosen to reinforce that.

Can we say that the absolutely worst tactical blunder that Haven made in Thunderbolt was to have the rendezvous take place at an inhabited planet, where the destroyers would draw notice and comment? There have been other meetings at uninhabited systems and this could have been one of them. Result would have been no warning to either Sidemore or Trevor's Star.

PS. AAC describes the Moriarty system, it does not mention the system defense called Mycroft.

No, we can't. That was a counterintelligence move, not tactical.

And justified by the channel the Octagon chose - not that they had any real choice under the circumstances - to communicate with 2nd Fleet. The courier ships being used to carry the traffic via the junction could neither be told what they were carrying nor expected to stop off for a rendezvous in an empty system without wondering - probably loudly - just what messages they were carrying for whom. They had to deliver it to a reasonable to them destination, and whatever means was used for forwarding it would be liable to exposure if it caught the wrong person's attention.

You can't really even blame the RHN for picking that particular system to do the forwarding from, as I really doubt that any of the 3 versions of NavInt that existed over the years were bothering to keep track of the activities of a cruiser captain who was effectively cashiered 20 years before Honor Harrington even went to Basislisk, never mind Marsh. The Andies might have, but probably only if they kept track of anyone running armed merchantment through Silesia [something that would have been a rather good idea, actually].

tlb wrote:Can we say that the absolutely worst tactical blunder that Haven made in Thunderbolt was to have the rendezvous take place at an inhabited planet, where the destroyers would draw notice and comment? There have been other meetings at uninhabited systems and this could have been one of them. Result would have been no warning to either Sidemore or Trevor's Star.

PS. AAC describes the Moriarty system, it does not mention the system defense called Mycroft.

Louis R wrote:No, we can't. That was a counterintelligence move, not tactical.

And justified by the channel the Octagon chose - not that they had any real choice under the circumstances - to communicate with 2nd Fleet. The courier ships being used to carry the traffic via the junction could neither be told what they were carrying nor expected to stop off for a rendezvous in an empty system without wondering - probably loudly - just what messages they were carrying for whom. They had to deliver it to a reasonable to them destination, and whatever means was used for forwarding it would be liable to exposure if it caught the wrong person's attention.

You can't really even blame the RHN for picking that particular system to do the forwarding from, as I really doubt that any of the 3 versions of NavInt that existed over the years were bothering to keep track of the activities of a cruiser captain who was effectively cashiered 20 years before Honor Harrington even went to Basislisk, never mind Marsh. The Andies might have, but probably only if they kept track of anyone running armed merchantment through Silesia [something that would have been a rather good idea, actually].

The one thing I do fault the RHN planning for was not giving Tourville any inconspicuous ships to use for picking up his message traffic. If he hadn't had to use Haven built and flagged destroyers to zip back and forth for his mail he'd never have attracted Bachfisch's attention.

Give him a boring tramp freighter sailing under someone else's flag to do that job and nobody looks twice.

Theemile wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:I would submit that by effectively annexing Marsh, Manticore needlessly provoked the Andermandi to abandon its polucy of not only neutrality in the Haven war but also as discussed in HAE, avoid small scale conflicts with the RMN in Silesia.
The RMN establishing a fleet base in Marsh alarmed the Andermandi and motivated Emperor Gustov to confront Manticore.

Of course I keep asking myself why the RMN was stupid enough to be building its new Inictus SD(P)s at a indensible shipyard at Grendelsbane.

Grendlesbane had defenses, there were forts which were never updated to fire MDMS, or control shoals if pods, nor were mdm pods assigned to the fortifications. There was also a Fleet of ~25 SDs, 7 SD(p)s, and 4 CLACs, or about 10-12% of the active fleet.

The fact that the forts were never updated is indefensible.

Gendelsbane had full scale fabrication facilities. It was perfectly capable of building the fire control systems and the missile pods needed.

tlb wrote:Can we say that the absolutely worst tactical blunder that Haven made in Thunderbolt was to have the rendezvous take place at an inhabited planet, where the destroyers would draw notice and comment? There have been other meetings at uninhabited systems and this could have been one of them. Result would have been no warning to either Sidemore or Trevor's Star.

Louis R wrote:No, we can't. That was a counterintelligence move, not tactical.

And justified by the channel the Octagon chose - not that they had any real choice under the circumstances - to communicate with 2nd Fleet. The courier ships being used to carry the traffic via the junction could neither be told what they were carrying nor expected to stop off for a rendezvous in an empty system without wondering - probably loudly - just what messages they were carrying for whom. They had to deliver it to a reasonable to them destination, and whatever means was used for forwarding it would be liable to exposure if it caught the wrong person's attention.

You can't really even blame the RHN for picking that particular system to do the forwarding from, as I really doubt that any of the 3 versions of NavInt that existed over the years were bothering to keep track of the activities of a cruiser captain who was effectively cashiered 20 years before Honor Harrington even went to Basislisk, never mind Marsh. The Andies might have, but probably only if they kept track of anyone running armed merchantment through Silesia [something that would have been a rather good idea, actually].

Jonathan_S wrote:The one thing I do fault the RHN planning for was not giving Tourville any inconspicuous ships to use for picking up his message traffic. If he hadn't had to use Haven built and flagged destroyers to zip back and forth for his mail he'd never have attracted Bachfisch's attention.

Give him a boring tramp freighter sailing under someone else's flag to do that job and nobody looks twice.

According to chapter 53 of War Of Honor, Haven bribed a Silesian ambassador for the exclusive use of the courier; it would have been easy enough to include a disguised Havenite officer in the crew to reroute the vessel after the last wormhole transition. They probably could have replaced the entire crew, if they wanted (keeping one Silesian for communication, because of the accent). We have no reason to know, one way or the other, whether the crew knew that they were carrying a message for Haven; they knew at least to deliver a message to the Haven Trade Mission.

Otherwise renting a couple third party freighters to use instead of the destroyers as Jonathan suggested.

If you are on a secret mission, then you should stay secret. Why would they not know that the trade mission did not have a dispatch boat? It is true that they would not know about Bachfisch; but they should have assumed there would be intelligence gathering.

PS. AAC describes the Moriarty system, it does not mention the system defense called Mycroft

kzt wrote:Gendelsbane had full scale fabrication facilities. It was perfectly capable of building the fire control systems and the missile pods needed.

Not really. All of the missile fabrication lines were located in the Manticore system, specifically on the three stations. They also didn't have the tooling, budget, or workforce needed for the task. It was a dedicated shipyard not a munitions factory.

Jonathan_S wrote:

drothgery wrote:And if Giancola hadn't encouraged it as part of a strategy of creating a crisis he could solve, there wouldn't have been a second war at all.

Well, it certainly wouldn't have played out the same way. But even without his playing with the correspondence High Ridge would have kept stalling any attempt at peace talks. But President Pritchart wouldn't have much choice except to keep revealing more of the strength of her shiny new navy, or possibly start deploying it provocatively, in an attempt to get Manticore to negotiate.

It's hardly impossible that even without Giancola that this kind of high stakes attempt to pressure High Ridge would have caused someone to misstep and start the war (whether High Ridge ordering a preemptive strike or Eloise eventually reluctantly ordering Theisman to resume limited combat to force Manticore to negotiate -- possibly still with a preemptive strike on Grendlesbane to remove the next wave of modern reinforcements)

I think that's unlikely, because even without Thunderbolt, the High Ridge government likely would not have survived more than a few months beyond the destruction of the North Hollow Files. At which point Pritchart's dealing with William Alexander's government and negotations get more reasonable very quickly (and Manticore's naval policy does, too).

Louis R wrote:...as I really doubt that any of the 3 versions of NavInt that existed over the years were bothering to keep track of the activities of a cruiser captain who was effectively cashiered 20 years before Honor Harrington even went to Basislisk, ...

There is textev that Adm Bachfish was a NAVINT resource for Adm Givens until the Janacek Admiralty beached her and cut most HUMINT resources.

Galactic Sapper wrote:

kzt wrote:Gendelsbane had full scale fabrication facilities. It was perfectly capable of building the fire control systems and the missile pods needed.

Not really. All of the missile fabrication lines were located in the Manticore system, specifically on the three stations. They also didn't have the tooling, budget, or workforce needed for the task. It was a dedicated shipyard not a munitions factory.

No, Honorverse fabrication is not special purpose. That’s why some random manufacturer in Beowulf could start turning out masses of Apollo MDMs without ever having even heard of then a few months earlier. And the hybrid KH2+reactor Mycroft control modules that were at most a prototype when the Manticoran stations got all blowed up. And ask yourself how many missile pods does it take to fill up the ships nearing completion. When were they going to show up?