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.

Jonathan_S wrote:

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.

Weird Harold wrote:

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.

kzt wrote:

Galactic Sapper wrote: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?

Galactic Sapper wrote:
As for Beowulf manufacturing, they had their own shipyards and missile production lines - with the associated manpower - for keeping their own SDF running. They still needed months to retool and ramp up production, using money and resources not available to the fleet base at Grendelsbane.

Galactic Sapper wrote:

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

I believe he meant Havenite Naval Intelligence there. Legislaturist, StateSec, or Republican, none of them were keeping track of cashiered Manticoran captains and thus didn't realize who had seen their destroyer relay.

Dauntless wrote:don't forget that originally it was just a repair yard. at a time when they were still tied into slow system by system grindfest.

i'll grant that then upping it to full scale construction base seems a bit odd, but you act like grendalsbane was their main yard, it wasn't. it was simply a big one, the biggest outside the home system. so when they had every slip full in the binary system they started building them outside the MBS.

only after seeing how efficient the graysons were with stand alone frame work yards do they adopt that approach and start building more at home.

still i agree that it was probably a plot driven decision.

Louis R wrote:http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/104/1

Dauntless wrote:don't forget that originally it was just a repair yard. at a time when they were still tied into slow system by system grindfest.

i'll grant that then upping it to full scale construction base seems a bit odd, but you act like grendalsbane was their main yard, it wasn't. it was simply a big one, the biggest outside the home system. so when they had every slip full in the binary system they started building them outside the MBS.

only after seeing how efficient the graysons were with stand alone frame work yards do they adopt that approach and start building more at home.

still i agree that it was probably a plot driven decision.

Dauntless wrote:don't forget that originally it was just a repair yard. at a time when they were still tied into slow system by system grindfest.

i'll grant that then upping it to full scale construction base seems a bit odd, but you act like grendalsbane was their main yard, it wasn't. it was simply a big one, the biggest outside the home system. so when they had every slip full in the binary system they started building them outside the MBS.