?

Brigade XO wrote:Remember that they didn't hit the Philippines till essentially the next day
(yeah, "somebody" should have been not only fired but put in prison for not getting the US forces in the Phillippines on dispersal and full alert but 24 hours later.)

To be slightly fair, the US Army Air Force in the Philippines at least tried, they just had really rotten luck.

They didn't have time to build dispersion fields in that single day (which really should have been funded and authorized by Congress as tensions rose) but they requested permission to make a preemptive attack on the Japanese airfields on Formosa; and when that was denied they worked out the most likely time for the Japanese air strike from there to arrive -- and had all their fighters patrolling at altitude and all the B-17s up in a defensive formation. And then the airstrike didn't come, and didn't come, and didn't come, and then came at the worst possible time -- when the US planes got caught on the ground after they'd been forced to land and refuel. (And caught in neat rows - not because of fear of sabotage, as was the case with planes at Pearl Harbor, but to facilitate quickly getting them turn around and ready to be back in the air)

It was their bad luck that fog over the Formosan airfields, which the USAAF wasn't aware of, had delayed the departure of the Japanese attack by critical hours.

And because the Philippines hadn't been supplied with the long range early warning network you'd need to launch and get to combat altitude after the incoming strike was detected you had to guess and launch on an estimate or be caught at low altitude; which isn't a lot more survivable than being caught on the ground.
(The newly arrived P-40s were probably the fastest climbing planes in the Philippines, and even they took at least 8 minutes to climb from take-off to the 20,000 feet the incoming bombers were at. 8 minutes during which the escorting Zeros could swoop down on them)

With the benefit of hindsight you could argue that when the raid didn't show up as expected the USAAF should have started cycling planes down for fuel early, to keep at least some of them in the air at all times. But even that can only be sustained for so long -- unlike modern jet engines the high performance internal combustion engines used in WWII combat planes needed a lot of maintenance per flight hour. If they'd committed to keeping their planes constantly refueled and flying for an entire day they'd probably have to stand them all down for at least a couple days to do major engine overhauls!

They could have split the bombers up into penny packets spread around the other islands, but with only a day to do so wouldn't have been able to reposition the fuel, maintenance supplies, or ordinance -- which was still at great risk of being destroyed at their original fields. Having the planes survive but be combat ineffective, and shortly flight ineffective, wouldn't be vastly better that losing them like they did. And if they had caught the Japanese attack with their fighters they might have preserved the bomber formations as a usable combat formation -- at least for a while longer.


Can't speak for the ground troops though - just not as familiar with what their plans were and how obviously went wrong.

I'm not an expert on this, but I do know that some military historians claim that General MacArthur was a much better self publicist than a military genius. As often happens, when his actions and decisions were analysed decades later some found them wanting.

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:There is no one in the whole of the RMN that could even handle Trevor's Star. McQueen kept putting her foot in every Manty's ass that hypered in, while she was on a shoestring naval budget! Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if McQueen was defending Trevor's star with a bunch of decrepit old destroyers! Heck, she wasn't being supported by her government. Yet, she sure kicked some Manty ass. Her 'smoke and mirrors' baffled the mighty Manty machine.

Um WHAT!!!

Trevor's Star was taken while Honor was stuck on Cerberus - she literally wasn't involved in a single combat in the entire Trevor's Star campaign.

So other people in the RMN absolutely handed Trevor's Star.

We know of exactly one, ONE, fight where McQueen almost pulled off a significant win -- Nightingale; where her subordinate panicked and engaged early; allowing White Haven to deftly extract the majority of his fleet from an overwhelmingly superior number of enemy units.

White Haven though he was "only" outnumbered 4:3 (and with the Peep's usual additional tonnage advantage in being mostly SDs, while the RMN still had a heavy leavening of the smaller less powerful DNs - the battle started with 32 Peep SDs vs the RMN's 8 SDs and 16 DNs). But it turned out that McQueen actually held over a 2:1 advantage: 56 wallers to White Haven's 24. And White Haven still killed almost as many ships he lost; while he escaped that overwhelmingly more powerful force.



McQueen was able to slow down the capture of Trevor's Star because, far from defending it with "a bunch of decrepit old destroyers", for the entire campaig she always had the larger fleet of SDs! Manticore, White Haven, was always fighting smarter and exploiting the RMN's tech edge to wear down that consistently larger, more powerful, fleet and force it to surrender system after system as smaller RMN fleet steadily (if slowly) pushed their way to Trevor's Star.

And remember, the reason McQueen was back over Haven to save the committee from the Levelers is that Pierre had pulled her from Trevor's Star because - despite still having the larger more powerful fleet the Peeps knew she couldn't successfully hold it (and didn't want to be forced to execute their best Admiral for failing to do the impossible -- hold a strategically vital system while having the larger fleet)

I never claimed Honor was at Trevor's Star! In fact, we had a discussion -- in I think the Top Ten Strategists and Tacticians thread -- about whether Honor would have fared better than Hamish at Trevor's Star. And whether Honor could have defeated McQueen. Even my niece said that Honor would have been too young and inexperienced for McQueen.

I keep getting whipped when it comes to Trevor's Star! But shouldn't a 2:1 ratio in ships be in Manty favor? Or either Project Gram is a fail, or the strategist and or the tactician is a dud.

And or, the other side's strategist and tactician is a master with smoke and mirrors and is also a part-time sadist. LOL

Actually, it reminds me of the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program. Top Gun. It was created to increase the exchange rate between air-to-air combat engagements.

Hamish just wasn't a Top Gun???

penny wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Um WHAT!!!

Trevor's Star was taken while Honor was stuck on Cerberus - she literally wasn't involved in a single combat in the entire Trevor's Star campaign.

So other people in the RMN absolutely handed Trevor's Star.

We know of exactly one, ONE, fight where McQueen almost pulled off a significant win -- Nightingale; where her subordinate panicked and engaged early; allowing White Haven to deftly extract the majority of his fleet from an overwhelmingly superior number of enemy units.

White Haven though he was "only" outnumbered 4:3 (and with the Peep's usual additional tonnage advantage in being mostly SDs, while the RMN still had a heavy leavening of the smaller less powerful DNs - the battle started with 32 Peep SDs vs the RMN's 8 SDs and 16 DNs). But it turned out that McQueen actually held over a 2:1 advantage: 56 wallers to White Haven's 24. And White Haven still killed almost as many ships he lost; while he escaped that overwhelmingly more powerful force.



McQueen was able to slow down the capture of Trevor's Star because, far from defending it with "a bunch of decrepit old destroyers", for the entire campaig she always had the larger fleet of SDs! Manticore, White Haven, was always fighting smarter and exploiting the RMN's tech edge to wear down that consistently larger, more powerful, fleet and force it to surrender system after system as smaller RMN fleet steadily (if slowly) pushed their way to Trevor's Star.

And remember, the reason McQueen was back over Haven to save the committee from the Levelers is that Pierre had pulled her from Trevor's Star because - despite still having the larger more powerful fleet the Peeps knew she couldn't successfully hold it (and didn't want to be forced to execute their best Admiral for failing to do the impossible -- hold a strategically vital system while having the larger fleet)

I never claimed Honor was at Trevor's Star! In fact, we had a discussion -- in I think the Top Ten Strategists and Tacticians thread -- about whether Honor would have fared better than Hamish at Trevor's Star. And whether Honor could have defeated McQueen. Even my niece said that Honor would have been too young and inexperienced for McQueen.

I keep getting whipped when it comes to Trevor's Star! But shouldn't a 2:1 ratio in ships be in Manty favor? Or either Project Gram is a fail, or the strategist and or the tactician is a dud.

And or, the other side's strategist and tactician is a master with smoke and mirrors and is also a part-time sadist. LOL

Actually, it reminds me of the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program. Top Gun. It was created to increase the exchange rate between air-to-air combat engagements.

Hamish just wasn't a Top Gun???

Sorry, I somehow misread "There is no one in the whole of the RMN that could even handle Trevor's Star." as "There is no else one in the whole of the RMN that could even handle Trevor's Star." and was very confused; since obviously there was someone else who handled it while Honor was out of the picture.

Still McQueen might have been a slightly better tactician that White Haven; but demonstrably not sufficiently better to let her win against the Manty tech edge despite having a significant numbers and tonnage advantage.

White Haven won the Trevor's Star campaign largely with pre-war Mantie tech; the biggest benefits of Project Gram (like Ghost Rider recon drones and MDMs) not reaching the fleet until about [edit: 2-3 years] after the liberation of Trevor's Star. And no, the Manties wouldn't have a 2:! ship numbers in their favor -- they were fighting outnumbered against a far larger navy of a far larger nation for the entire war. So in most of their battles the Peeps had the numbers and tonnage advantage over the RMN forces.

And Project Gram had nothing to do with ship construction numbers; so I'm not sure why you'd think it would give White Haven a major numerical edge over the Peeps -- but it definitely didn't.

penny wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Um WHAT!!!

Trevor's Star was taken while Honor was stuck on Cerberus - she literally wasn't involved in a single combat in the entire Trevor's Star campaign.

So other people in the RMN absolutely handed Trevor's Star.

We know of exactly one, ONE, fight where McQueen almost pulled off a significant win -- Nightingale; where her subordinate panicked and engaged early; allowing White Haven to deftly extract the majority of his fleet from an overwhelmingly superior number of enemy units.

White Haven though he was "only" outnumbered 4:3 (and with the Peep's usual additional tonnage advantage in being mostly SDs, while the RMN still had a heavy leavening of the smaller less powerful DNs - the battle started with 32 Peep SDs vs the RMN's 8 SDs and 16 DNs). But it turned out that McQueen actually held over a 2:1 advantage: 56 wallers to White Haven's 24. And White Haven still killed almost as many ships he lost; while he escaped that overwhelmingly more powerful force.



McQueen was able to slow down the capture of Trevor's Star because, far from defending it with "a bunch of decrepit old destroyers", for the entire campaig she always had the larger fleet of SDs! Manticore, White Haven, was always fighting smarter and exploiting the RMN's tech edge to wear down that consistently larger, more powerful, fleet and force it to surrender system after system as smaller RMN fleet steadily (if slowly) pushed their way to Trevor's Star.

And remember, the reason McQueen was back over Haven to save the committee from the Levelers is that Pierre had pulled her from Trevor's Star because - despite still having the larger more powerful fleet the Peeps knew she couldn't successfully hold it (and didn't want to be forced to execute their best Admiral for failing to do the impossible -- hold a strategically vital system while having the larger fleet)

I never claimed Honor was at Trevor's Star! In fact, we had a discussion -- in I think the Top Ten Strategists and Tacticians thread -- about whether Honor would have fared better than Hamish at Trevor's Star. And whether Honor could have defeated McQueen. Even my niece said that Honor would have been too young and inexperienced for McQueen.

I keep getting whipped when it comes to Trevor's Star! But shouldn't a 2:1 ratio in ships be in Manty favor? Or either Project Gram is a fail, or the strategist and or the tactician is a dud.

And or, the other side's strategist and tactician is a master with smoke and mirrors and is also a part-time sadist. LOL

Actually, it reminds me of the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program. Top Gun. It was created to increase the exchange rate between air-to-air combat engagements.

Hamish just wasn't a Top Gun???

Jonathan_S wrote:Sorry, I somehow misread "There is no one in the whole of the RMN that could even handle Trevor's Star." as "There is no else one in the whole of the RMN that could even handle Trevor's Star." and was very confused; since obviously there was someone else who handled it while Honor was out of the picture.

Still McQueen might have been a slightly better tactician that White Haven; but demonstrably not sufficiently better to let her win against the Manty tech edge despite having a significant numbers and tonnage advantage.

White Haven won the Trevor's Star campaign largely with pre-war Mantie tech; the biggest benefits of Project Gram (like Ghost Rider recon drones and MDMs) not reaching the fleet until about 6 months after the liberation of Trevor's Star. And no, the Manties wouldn't have a 2:! ship numbers in their favor -- they were fighting outnumbered against a far larger navy of a far larger nation for the entire war. So in most of their battles the Peeps had the numbers and tonnage advantage over the RMN forces.

And Project Gram had nothing to do with ship construction numbers; so I'm not sure why you'd think it would give White Haven a major numerical edge over the Peeps -- but it definitely didn't.

I should have made both points clearer. Your misunderstanding is my own fault. I will endeavor to do better. I try to respond to so many threads as time permits and I oftentimes find myself rushing through. Incomplete sentences and lots of other mistakes or bad habits that I have become accustomed to in text messages and emails, yada yada yada.

But Project Gram's original purpose was to offset a much larger system's numbers advantage. Same as Top Gun was conceived to offset the enemy's superior numbers of fighters in air-to-air engagements.

I didn't make it clear but I thought it was implied from your own post. The 2:1 advantage was the Peep's advantage. And I would tend to think that Project Gram's toys could handle a 2:1 Peep advantage. That is what Gram was created for. Much like Top Gun pilots should be able to handle a 2:1 advantage. The US Navy at one point was winning against a 3:1 advantage. And then when the proficiency began to drop considerably, the Navy developed the Fighter Weapons School.

Late edit: If the bulk of Gram's toys didn't become a factor until 6 months after Trevor's Star, then I need to reconsider my stance.

penny wrote:
Late edit: If the bulk of Gram's toys didn't become a factor until 6 months after Trevor's Star, then I need to reconsider my stance.

Actually it was even worse than that - I'd used the timeline from the wiki and mixed up the dates for the liberation of Trevor's Star (1911 PD) and it's request for annexation (June 1914). The main fruits of Gram weren't shown at all until probably 1913 with the 2nd battle of Hancock, and weren't used in mass for nearly a year after that in late 1914 with 8th Fleet's Operation Buttercup. So it was actually a few years, not just 6 months! Oops.

The things that House of Steel tells up Gram, and it's subprojects, Mjølner etc., were working on were:
* Improved RDs - Eventually being realized as the Ghost Rider drones; but those debuted in AoV.

* MDMs, Mjølner - Also from Project Ghost Rider; first seen in relation to HMS Minotaur in EoH; so a bit earlier than its recon drones.

* Improved missile/drone power supply; first seen as the microfusion power plants in the aforementioned Ghost Rider RDs.

* Improved missile acceleration and/or endurance - some of the acceleration improvements might have been in effect prior to SVW; the RMN's main missiles were quicker than those the old CL Fearless carried. OTOH they were only on par with the accelerations of Havens missiles - so no real advantage.
The first real improvement in endurance we saw was to either was the ceasefire era ERMs and LERMs, carried by the Sag-Bs, and by the Avalons and Wolfhounds. And the first real improvements in acceleration were the new 130,000g Mk30 CMs at Sidemore. So those didn't even make the first war; much less the Trevor's Star campaign.

So no revolutionary items that would have been in play for the 1911 PD Trevor's Star campaign. White Haven did have the towed single-ship missile pods; but the lightweight LAC launchers that allowed those don't appear to have been a product of Gram -- and in any case were a pre-war technology.

I'd also say there's no shame in saying White Haven is an equally skilled tactician and strategian compared to McQueen, maybe even her inferior. McQueen was definitely the best of her generation in the Peep system.

Theisman executed her plan against Pierre and OSJ, but he was not the PN CNO; he was only the Capital Fleet CO after being recalled from Seaford Nine. He made Admiral very quickly, but that was Pierre's doing with the decapitation of the Legislaturalist PN officer corps and then the literal decapitation of failing flag officers in the first few years. So Theisman is actually very junior compared to McQueen and thus should be considered the next generation.

McQueen also had a major fault: she dedicated far too much of her strategy-thinking time to how to win politically at home (the fact that the system made her do it notwithstanding). So we don't actually know how good she was and how the war could have fared if she could have dedicated herself completely to it. That means it's difficult to compare her to Theisman, but I tend to think he's actually better than her; he's definitely a better leader than she was.

The liberation of Trevor's Star was undertaken with entirely old tactics and hardware, something the SLN officers would completely understand when explained to them. That is, the time when battles were rarely conclusive because you really needed to get into energy range. It was also against well-prepared defences that the Peeps had been installing for 30 T-years. The Alliance had a tech edge, but not decisively so to better a 2:1 odds against them. That might have been enough anywhere else, but not with those fixed defences.

This is also at a time when the RMN was feeling the strain of the war. Remember when Adm. Cortez explained to Honor shortly before her shipping out in the mission that was ultimately when she got captured that the RMN really needed to stand down a lot of ships for refit because the tempo of the war in the opening phases had been so intense.

BTW, was this also when Honor had her conversation with Hamish and had him accept that he had to open up to new tactics? Or was that after her return from Cerberus? IIRC, it was at this time, which means that Third Fleet liberating Trevor's Star happened after Hamish's eyes were (forcibly) opened.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
McQueen also had a major fault: she dedicated far too much of her strategy-thinking time to how to win politically at home (the fact that the system made her do it notwithstanding). So we don't actually know how good she was and how the war could have fared if she could have dedicated herself completely to it. That means it's difficult to compare her to Theisman, but I tend to think he's actually better than her; he's definitely a better leader than she was.

The liberation of Trevor's Star was undertaken with entirely old tactics and hardware, something the SLN officers would completely understand when explained to them. That is, the time when battles were rarely conclusive because you really needed to get into energy range. It was also against well-prepared defences that the Peeps had been installing for 30 T-years. The Alliance had a tech edge, but not decisively so to better a 2:1 odds against them. That might have been enough anywhere else, but not with those fixed defences.

This is also at a time when the RMN was feeling the strain of the war. Remember when Adm. Cortez explained to Honor shortly before her shipping out in the mission that was ultimately when she got captured that the RMN really needed to stand down a lot of ships for refit because the tempo of the war in the opening phases had been so intense.

BTW, was this also when Honor had her conversation with Hamish and had him accept that he had to open up to new tactics? Or was that after her return from Cerberus? IIRC, it was at this time, which means that Third Fleet liberating Trevor's Star happened after Hamish's eyes were (forcibly) opened.

McQueen also had a coupe of major handicaps which Theisman wasn’t hit with as badly. She was in charge of a major Peep fleet in the early chaotic days after the coup and decapitation of the officer corps; remember her formation at Nightengale was the first post-coup fleet that had the trust and training to hold formation, weather the missile pod strike, and keep closing to try to make their superior numbers tell against White Haven. Rallying shaken sailors and out of their depth officers like that is no small feat; and that was only the prerequisite of her actual plan.

And also in those early days the Statesec political commissars were even more disruptive than after it became clear that doing that was wrecking the effectiveness of the navy; making it lose fights.

Theisman being far junior dodged much of that; was under less suspicion; and had a more reasonable political watchdog. By the time he was more than just a ship captain the Statesec guard dogs were a bit more muzzled and the Peep navy was back on its feet. So, except at the single ship level, he didn’t have to face those same early handicaps that McQueen overcame.

Jonathan_S wrote:McQueen also had a coupe of major handicaps which Theisman wasn’t hit with as badly. She was in charge of a major Peep fleet in the early chaotic days after the coup and decapitation of the officer corps; remember her formation at Nightengale was the first post-coup fleet that had the trust and training to hold formation, weather the missile pod strike, and keep closing to try to make their superior numbers tell against White Haven. Rallying shaken sailors and out of their depth officers like that is no small feat; and that was only the prerequisite of her actual plan.

And also in those early days the Statesec political commissars were even more disruptive than after it became clear that doing that was wrecking the effectiveness of the navy; making it lose fights.

Theisman being far junior dodged much of that; was under less suspicion; and had a more reasonable political watchdog. By the time he was more than just a ship captain the Statesec guard dogs were a bit more muzzled and the Peep navy was back on its feet. So, except at the single ship level, he didn’t have to face those same early handicaps that McQueen overcame.

Indeed, which is why it's difficult to judge just how good she was. She was clearly the Napoleon Bonaparte of the Committee of Public Safety era (Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just are more obvious). RFC even joked on that by calling her "Naomi Bonaparte"... when he told us that she was a shiny distraction. Her story departs from Napoleon's on the 18th of Brumaire, but before that he was definitely the most skilled military commander of his time, and so was she.

So I repeat I don't think it's a shame to say one lost to McQueen. Operation Icarus was well-planned and well-executed too. She was that good.

Her failings were her downfall. She was too ruthless; just ask any Leveller (oh, you can't? I rest my case!). She had to cover her backside against the political system, so she had to fight with an arm or two tied behind her back. Some of these constraints will apply to the MAlign too, though with a different flavour (replace ruthlessness for arrogance).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:BTW, was this also when Honor had her conversation with Hamish and had him accept that he had to open up to new tactics? Or was that after her return from Cerberus? IIRC, it was at this time, which means that Third Fleet liberating Trevor's Star happened after Hamish's eyes were (forcibly) opened.

White Haven announces that he and Kuzak have developed a plan to capture Trevor's Star early in Honor Among Enemies, but we do not hear of it happening in that book. The next book, In Enemy Hands, begins with a prologue of Pierre, Ransom and Saint-Just discussing how to improve the Navy now that Trevor's Star has been lost.

Then in chapter 2 is the discussion between Harrington and White Haven about the Weapons Development Board's recommendations. So the discussion is before her capture and after the capture of Trevor's Star.