How was Haven supposed to fight the SL (Detweiler Plan)?

kzt wrote:Sometimes it does. The guy running the fire brigade counterattacking to screw up attacks when you are on the defensive needs to be pretty good. Bit that wasn’t what they were doing.

At the same time, the guy who would lead between 35% and 54% of your SD(P)'s in the biggest and most important battle of the war needs to be pretty good as well.

Sigs wrote:At the same time, the guy who would lead between 35% and 54% of your SD(P)'s in the biggest and most important battle of the war needs to be pretty good as well.

Then send the only person who'd ever defeated Honor Harrington (though he was tied in losses too).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Because Pritchart doesn't want it. That is too close to what the Peeps would have done and she wants to distance herself and the renewed Republic from that image.

But see that makes no sense, she can use 40 SD(P)'s to relive pressure on her own nation, free up hundreds of SD(P)'s assigned to rear area security in order to launch an attack on the alliance to force them tot he negotiating table or she can surrender the initiative. She can convince anyone she wants how different the republic is, once they are at the negotiating table, while they are shooting at her people she should be doing everything to force the Alliance to disperse their strength.

Theisman fought the whole second war with an arm tied behind his back. There were probably strategies that would let him win outright on Thunderbolt -- I disagree with your plan of attacking Manticore and Trevor's Star simultaneously, but it could have succeeded. More importantly, if winning was the goal, then all they had to do was wait a little longer. The Bolthole production was going steady, the RMN was not growing and the GSN production would have to sooner or later plateau.

The point is, they didn't have to wait, it seems like the whole plan was to take back what they lost in the first war, and go back to the negotiating table with Manticore from a position of strength. If they had instead send out 32 SD(P)'s to Grendelsbane and the rest to Trevor's Star in two separate fleets, one to attack 3rd Fleet and the other to block 3rd Fleets retreat and crush them between the two fleets it would have started the war in a devastating fashion for the Alliance.

I've made my position clear that they could and they did.

No, no you haven't.


They planned for 330 SD(P)'s and miraculously they managed to concentrate only 330 SD(P)'s. To me that means they didn't bother to do much.

So what is your point?

That Caparelli was wrong when he said that they'd get 35 ships within 18 months, because we saw very few ships being added to Eighth Fleet between Thunderbolt and Solon.[/quote] They had other commitments than 8th Fleet. For example, the RMN Home Fleet went up from 12 SD(P)'s active to 42 SD(P)'s, there were all the minor allies who needed SD(P)'s which would have had to come from somewhere because they sure as hell weren't stripping GSN Home Fleet, IAN Home Fleet, 3rd Fleet, or the insignificant RMN Home Fleet to reinforce them. So those 35 SD(P)'s plus the 43 SD(P)'s under construction in Grayson would have been split into RMN Home Fleet as well as reinforcing all of the minor allies like Zanzibar, Alizon and the other unnamed allies as well as likely the Basilisk Picket. They couldn't weaken Grayson or Trevor's Star but they had to reinforce Manticore and all the minor allies, those ships had to come from somewhere.

It was only for Lovat that Honor started getting really new units. And this is with the GSN building 20/year, so over 1.5 years we should have seen 30 ships from them too. We didn't, not until Lovat.

In January 1920 Caparelli estimated that in 18 months they would have ~400 SD(P)'s.

RMN 75(a) SD(P)'s Active and 35(b) SD(P)'s under construction
IAN 42(c) SD(P)'s Active and 90(d) SD(P)'s under construction
GSN 115(e) SD(P)'s Active and x under construction

Since I have already explained this several times I will break it down in simple math.

400-75(a)=325
325-35(b)=290
290-42(c)=248
248-90(d)=158
158-115(e)=43

Therefore x=43 SD(P) at least. Since we know the size of all 3 allied navies and we know how many SD(P)'s are under construction in the IAN and RMN we can substract all of their active and under construction as well as the GSN active ships to get to 43 GSN SD(P)'s under construction.

At the time Caparelli would have known exactly how many SD(P)'s were under construction in the GSN/RMN/IAN, subsequent delays are irrelevant to how many SD(P)'s were actually under construction.

Of course they had to redistribute their forces to cover Manticore and the shipyards there. My point is that you can't calculate the forces of the entire Alliance against the RHN because the Alliance cannot concentrate all their forces in one place.

Neither can the RHN apparently. If they had 620 SD(P)'s to start with they would have no more than 270 SD(P)'s left over so they don't have the luxury to send their entire 270 SD(P)'s into Manticore or Grayson again. The IAN and GSN can send reinforcements to Manticore and Trevor's Star a hell of a lot quicker than Haven can learn of the outcome of the battle.

If the Allied Fleet started off with 340 SD(P)'s and lost ~100 SD(P)'s in BoM then they are left with no more than 240 SD(P)'s.
IAN Home Fleet=40 SD(P)'s
GSN Home Fleet=80 SD(P)'s
RMN Home Fleet=70 SD(P)'s
RMN Third Fleet=50 SD(P)'s

The Alliance has stripped everything from the minor allies and all on essential systems. If they take some risks, they can rebuild 8th Fleet by stripping a Squadron from each of the Fleets so they break down:

IAN Home Fleet=32 SD(P)'s
GSN Home Fleet=72 SD(P)'s
RMN Home Fleet=62 SD(P)'s
RMN Third Fleet=42 SD(P)'s
MA Eight Fleet=32 SD(P)'s

Send 8th Fleet to Haven, keep it popping in and out of the system with their Scouts also jumping in and out. The RHN will be forced to deploy at least double that force in Haven and just to be sure they would have to reinforce all of their major yards near Haven. There you go, the mighty RHN is reduced to 270 SD(P)'s and tied down once again.

And this is all to discuss the musings Honor had after winning, whether there could be a force sufficient to defend Manticore after their losses, but we don't know if she was thinking of what she had on hand or what she could get in two weeks' time.

There is no force in the universe to protect Manticore without Apollo is pretty clear.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Then send the only person who'd ever defeated Honor Harrington (though he was tied in losses too).

So was Honor, so was Hamish, so was Theisman, So was Tourville, so was Chin, so was Mckeon...whats your point?

Sigs wrote:In January 1920 Caparelli estimated that in 18 months they would have ~400 SD(P)'s.

RMN 75(a) SD(P)'s Active and 35(b) SD(P)'s under construction
IAN 42(c) SD(P)'s Active and 90(d) SD(P)'s under construction
GSN 115(e) SD(P)'s Active and x under construction

Since I have already explained this several times I will break it down in simple math.

400-75(a)=325
325-35(b)=290
290-42(c)=248
248-90(d)=158
158-115(e)=43

Therefore x=43 SD(P) at least. Since we know the size of all 3 allied navies and we know how many SD(P)'s are under construction in the IAN and RMN we can substract all of their active and under construction as well as the GSN active ships to get to 43 GSN SD(P)'s under construction.

Sig's, according to the May 1st, 1921 Compendium, The GSN has a total of 165 SD(p)s of both types completed and active in the fleet at that time, for a jump of 50 ships in 14 months, or ~3.5 a month. Given the ~3 month period between this time chop and BoMA with a constant build rate, another 10 Apollo wallers should have been completed and worked up in this period and deployed at the time of BoMA. Further, another 28 Wallers should have been added to the fleet prior to OB in March 2022, with ~70 partially completed Hulls and who knows how many sidelined maintenance casualties lost in the raid.

So, if anything, the predicted Grayson build rate was conservative.

Theemile wrote:
Sig's, according to the May 1st, 1921 Compendium, The GSN has a total of 165 SD(p)s of both types completed and active in the fleet at that time, for a jump of 50 ships in 14 months, or ~3.5 a month. Given the ~3 month period between this time chop and BoMA with a constant build rate, another 10 Apollo wallers should have been completed and worked up in this period and deployed at the time of BoMA. Further, another 28 Wallers should have been added to the fleet prior to OB in March 2022, with ~70 partially completed Hulls and who knows how many sidelined maintenance casualties lost in the raid.

So, if anything, the predicted Grayson build rate was conservative.

The quote was a little over 400 SD(P)'s so I used 400 as the benchmark so it off but I don't know by how much.

If Haven had successfully seduced Grayson, that may have been a start.

cthia wrote:If Haven had successfully seduced Grayson, that may have been a start.

After recently rereading HotQ, it does not appear that Haven ever had a chance to do that. Manticore was closer, had better stuff and could be depended to not take over; so Haven had to go for the Zealots instead.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:If Haven had successfully seduced Grayson, that may have been a start.

After recently rereading HotQ, it does not appear that Haven ever had a chance to do that. Manticore was closer, had better stuff and could be depended to not take over; so Haven had to go for the Zealots instead.

We, I, know only after the fact that they didn't have a chance. As I remember it though, the author had ME on pins and needles about it. IINM, Grayson's main worry was whether the SK could hold out against the much larger Haven itself. And if they can't, Grayson would be next out of spite, if nothing else, and things would be much harder. The main point was that since Haven was in the running at all made it anything but an open and shut case. IMO. Perhaps 72% SK?

You just had a reread, am I right?

Sigs wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Then send the only person who'd ever defeated Honor Harrington (though he was tied in losses too).

So was Honor, so was Hamish, so was Theisman, So was Tourville, so was Chin, so was Mckeon...whats your point?

Which of these people you've listed has ever won on a real engagement against Honor, much less captured her?

Chin wasn't even tied, Honor had one up on her.

Your argument was that they would have stuck to Giscard because he was the best admiral. Says who? Maybe Tourville is indeed a better strategist and tactician and that's why the operation was given to him.