Dauntless wrote:cthia wrote:
Another reason I considered that Honor may have influenced Alice's tactics is because there was a tendency to exchange mail and Alice and Honor were rather fond of each other. I also seem to recall one of Honor's very dearest inner circle being tapped for that command. Tremaine. Which offers up another avenue for Honor's teachings to have effected LAC strategy.
Scotty didn't get Command of a LAC wing until after the return from Hades, at least 6 months more like a year after Truman and Harmon started working out how to actually use the lovely LACs the Tax Payers had bought for them.
again I point you to the time line. even assuming Alice had been informed she was to take command of the RMN's first proper carrier while Honor was still in the SKM and likely to be there for a while yet, it was early in ecohes of Honor that we even see Mintour and at that time she didn't have her LACs. most of which were delivered via freighter to Hancock after Minotaur got there.
there is a minimum of 12 months (more like 18 months) between Honor leaving for Grayson and work up trails for both carrier and wing. A year in which honor was insanely busy with taking command of her squadron, early! which meant even more effort needed. Then not long after she left on convoy escort she is captured and is VERY incommunicado.
so again I say: Did honor help with the basic ideas? very possibly (maybe even likely) but Alice and Jackie had to take theory and make it work without Honor's input, her being presumed dead etc.
now after Honor and Co returned it is very likely that Honor helped Alice refine the basic ideas, in light of the actual combat data they now had.
but my point is that Honor may have helped Alice but credit for making the LAC swarm concept really work by doing the hardest part, taking the idea from theory to an actual workable weapon, goes to Alice Truman and Jackie Harmon.
Slight nit-pick with your timeline:
Honor assumes command early
after tearing a strip off White Haven for venting his spleen on the recommendations of the WDB that Honor had led.
At this time, the process was no more than a few months along - it's unlikely that the hull for HMS Minotaur had been laid down at this point.
Somehow in the three to four years or so that Honor was sorting out the squadron, escorting the JMNT convoy, getting captured, shipped off to Tourville's fleet base, short-stopped by Ransom and redirected to Hades, escaped and blew up a battle-cruiser, contacted Camp Inferno, liberated the planet then captured the shipping and escaped to Trevor's Star (phew!) Minotaur was built, equipped with LACs
and tied up in endless exercises until the Havenite attack which went a little awry.
Furthermore, both Truman and Harmon had had previous experience with LAC carriers as both were assigned to Honor's task-force in Silesia, so they weren't coming at the idea completely cold so to speak.
So yes, Minotaur and her LACs were worked up - and the Book written - without a lot of Honor's direct input - but both officers were of the same "train harder than you intend to fight" school as Honor anyway - so they would probably think along parallel lines anyway.
