Commerce raiding

The commerce raiding and protection in the series is done by BC’s, CA’s,CL’s and DD’s for the most part and it makes sense since since anything else is overkill. What I don’t quite get is why the RHN never used their BB’s for commerce raiding at the start of the first war? If battleships can not be used to fight dreadnoughts and super-dreadnaughts and are instead relegated to protecting rear systems of little to no value to Haven why didn’t the RHN release 80 battleships for commerce raiding and give the RMN a dilemma, let their merchant ships be captured/destroyed or use dreadnaughts to escort convoys. The RMN didn’t have enough lighter ships to provide sufficient protection for convoys that may be attacked by 2-4 battleships with cruisers and destroyer screen so they would be forced to disperse dreadnaughts for escort duty which would put a stop on their offensive operations.

Manticore started the war with 188 Super-dreadnoughts and 121 dreadnoughts and had obligations to defend at least 8 systems outside of the home system and also had to provide ships for home fleet and offensive operations. So if Haven was using the battleships for commerce raiding manticore would be forced to use dreadnaughts for escort duties since they don’t have even remotely close to enough BC’s for escort duties and which would force the SKM to escort huge convoys with wallers or do away with convoys altogether and give lighter units of the RHN a plenty of individual targets. Once dreadnaughts are used for convoy escorts it allows Haven to use their dreadnaughts to pick off and destroy individual convoys and their dreadnaught escorts with little to no risk to themselves.

There were political considerations to any use of the BB's, which is one reason that they were not much used. More important is that Manticore commerce was mainly with the Solarian League or Silesia. It is not clear, at the start of the war, that it would be acceptable to the League to attack in their territory. Particularly since the ships there were mainly carrying League cargos.

So that leaves Silesia and throughout the war there were only two major thrusts into Silesia. There are three problems. The first is that Silesia is very far away from Haven, on the other side of Manticore with no wormholes that could help them cover the distance. The next is that Silesia may provide income to Manticore, but is not absolutely necessary to Manticore's economy. The last is that Manticore could easily send patrols into Silesia using its wormholes.

As discussed in SLN circles, commerce raiding is mainly a strategy of weakness. If there is a force advantage, then attack the opponents force, A better use for BB's is what Haven tried with Stalking Horse, send them to systems that were not guarded by SD's or DN's.

Some of it may be their BB's sluggish acceleration; they're 10% slower than even a BC; and thus have relatively low overtake against fast freighters.

Plus even early war you could counter them with having a few of the freighter haul along pods to drop for the escorts. Even a pair of BBs is going to be hurting if the cruisers escorting a convoy dump a dozen missile pods into their face.

And to tlb's point, even if the League didn't object to raiding Manticoran commerce within their borders, outside of fleet train convoys, most of Manticore's commerce went straight through the Junction -- so ships attempting to raid it need to travel many months through hyperspace just to get to the far termini where the freighter traffic pops out to begin it's hyperspace trips.

I don't know if battleships were optimized for long range patrols like cruisers and BCs were. But even with ships designed for long range patrols pushing them that far from your maintenance, fuel, repair, and supply bases isn't easy. (And given Haven's internal political unrest if you'd pulled BBs to, say, supplement the one commerce raiding mission we know they pulled in Silesia you've got to come up with enough replacement force that potential rioters/insurrectionists remain deterred by the iron boot looming overhead)

The other problem for Haven is that with the Junction Manticore can potentially exploit it extreme internal lines to cut loose DNs or SDs from home fleet, show up in the commerce raiding area and crush the BBs, then be back before Haven knows those ships were diverted (much less before they could warn the BBs about the wallers).

In the time frame of the RH-Manticore wars the BBs don't seem to fit anybody's overall strategy except to suppress potential revolts. At least nobody has mentioned anybody else having BB or using them to do anything other than what Haven was doing. In the story line, Haven didn't park Dreadnaughts or SD in systems they only wanted to keep subdued so my thinking is that the BBs were impressive enough a deterrent as well as serve as the overall HQ and Power exercise the way the Hercules was used initially in Talbot sector. Really tough for restive locals to get at the ship which provides a reserve force for ground suppression as needed.
One question would be how old are the Havenit BBs? If they are 50 to 100 years old, they may be fine for a system defense roll against raiders and certainly to hammer insurgents in systems Haven had captured but what is the value of one or even two BB in commerce raiding? You can only chase one ship at a time with one battleship and a convoy of two fighters with a DD escort can have the two merchants scatter as the DD presents a (minor) threat the BB has to deal with.

Since we never got the the Haven equivalent of House of Steel, we can only speculate. But Operations Stalking Horse and Dagger were intended to use battleships against modern ships of a lower rank, so they could not have been too ancient.

Upthread someone said commerce raiding is a strategy of weakness? Uh, since when? Are you in a peer competition war or not? If not it is a strategy of weakness by the weaker party, if you are in a peer war, it is the #2 target on any Militaries list right after the navy, as any COMPETANT admiral knows the war will be longer than 7 days... Here the problem was DW said RHN forces did not have enough light ships for commerce raiding

As Brigade brought up: the books show RHN BB's being used to HOLD DOWN potential revolting systems from Havenite Tyranny.

#1) While RHN BB ~4.5M tonnage is impressive, what is NOT impressive is their age. 100+ year old ships as war fighting secondary ships are not good. Yes, for their time they were missile heavy, but compared to BC's, they are not.
Still better at beam range than a BC.

#2) Haven doesn't have Dreadnaughts(technically a couple of them)

#3) Latest RMN Dreadnaughts are LARGER and more heavily armed than old SD's.

#4) Dreadnaughts have identical armor/weapons as SD's, just slightly smaller.

--Wet navy equivalent is 1st, 2nd, & 3rd rates. Identical armor where only real difference is number of guns carried.

Using ~Billions of dollars to guard millions of dollars of commerce or whatever the ratio is in HV -->> is NOT cost effective and how you lose. Why LOTS and LOTS of light units are used and ultimately why one mass produces commerce ships to begin with. In the grim math of war, they can be lost. Dreadnaughts not so much. Space is vast, you can't be everywhere. In the days of wet navy sailing ships, the same was true. You can't be everywhere even if you are the RN.

The problem with commerce raiding in general is the ships required to do this DEMAND logistical support.

Fuel, yes, even in the Honorverse fuel is a problem. Maintenance parts. And here we are ~told the RHN is deficient. So, it is NOT just RHN has enough BC/CA/CL to raid commerce(they do), but how long are those ships legs? DO they have sufficient logistics support to know WHERE to go hunting? DO they have depot ships for spares? Here we are told RHN did Whole system replacement as their techs were not good enough to fix in place. We are also told they did not have many repair/depot ships for extended ops. This makes extended commerce raiding VERY difficult as your commerce raiders are spending FAR MORE time traveling to their hunting grounds than actually hunting.

Commerce raiding is duration dependent, not just in fuel, but in food, and command structure which is used to long term deployment without support. So, while I my eyes at DW's statement not enough ships, the REST of the story fits reality.... not enough ships functional enough to commerce raid effectively. It would be on the job training, but here I say... SO WHAT? Sitting on your hands afraid to screw up isn't winning. You have to sometimes jump first and learn the HARD way.

Oh yea, RHN is dead BROKE, so if one assumes one can just drop by the local star system and pick up fuel/spares... Yea, no that is not happening unless they are stealing it.

Relax wrote:Upthread someone said commerce raiding is a strategy of weakness? Uh, since when? Are you in a peer competition war or not? If not it is a strategy of weakness by the weaker party, if you are in a peer war, it is the #2 target on any Militaries list right after the navy, as any COMPETANT admiral knows the war will be longer than 7 days... Here the problem was DW said RHN forces did not have enough light ships for commerce raiding

As Brigade brought up: the books show RHN BB's being used to HOLD DOWN potential revolting systems from Havenite Tyranny.

#1) While RHN BB ~4.5M tonnage is impressive, what is NOT impressive is their age. 100+ year old ships as war fighting secondary ships are not good. Yes, for their time they were missile heavy, but compared to BC's, they are not.
Still better at beam range than a BC.

#2) Haven doesn't have Dreadnaughts(technically a couple of them)

#3) Latest RMN Dreadnaughts are LARGER and more heavily armed than old SD's.

#4) Dreadnaughts have identical armor/weapons as SD's, just slightly smaller.
--Wet navy equivalent is 1st, 2nd, & 3rd rates. Identical armor where only real difference is number of guns carried.

I said it was a strategy of weakness and I will stand by that. If two forces are exactly equal, then it weakens the ability to commit force against force. Only if one side is superior can they commit forces to simultaneously attack commerce. Whereas if one side is weaker, they cannot afford to attack enemy forces and so can only attack commerce.

When the Allied surfaces forces in the Pacific were at least equal to the Japanese surface forces, the US submarines were free to attack Japanese commerce, a particularly effective move since Japan had to import all its oil. The US submarines could have started when the fleet strength was weaker, but for the problem with the torpedoes.

The German Navy was never equal to the Commonwealth naval forces, so had to rely almost entirely upon their U-boats in both World Wars.

If you know for a fact that all the battleships in Haven's Navy were at least a century old, then I do not understand how Operation Dagger was ever approved.

In the entire Manticore versus Haven war, there was only one attempt made to conduct commerce raiding. Even after Trevor's Star was captured, the raids by Manticore were against military and political targets and not against commerce.

tlb wrote:

Relax wrote:Upthread someone said commerce raiding is a strategy of weakness? Uh, since when? Are you in a peer competition war or not? If not it is a strategy of weakness by the weaker party, if you are in a peer war, it is the #2 target on any Militaries list right after the navy, as any COMPETANT admiral knows the war will be longer than 7 days... Here the problem was DW said RHN forces did not have enough light ships for commerce raiding

As Brigade brought up: the books show RHN BB's being used to HOLD DOWN potential revolting systems from Havenite Tyranny.

#1) While RHN BB ~4.5M tonnage is impressive, what is NOT impressive is their age. 100+ year old ships as war fighting secondary ships are not good. Yes, for their time they were missile heavy, but compared to BC's, they are not.
Still better at beam range than a BC.

#2) Haven doesn't have Dreadnaughts(technically a couple of them)

#3) Latest RMN Dreadnaughts are LARGER and more heavily armed than old SD's.

#4) Dreadnaughts have identical armor/weapons as SD's, just slightly smaller.
--Wet navy equivalent is 1st, 2nd, & 3rd rates. Identical armor where only real difference is number of guns carried.

I said it was a strategy of weakness and I will stand by that. If two forces are exactly equal, then it weakens the ability to commit force against force. Only if one side is superior can they commit forces to simultaneously attack commerce.

When the Allied surfaces forces in the Pacific were at least equal to the Japanese surface forces, the US submarines were free to attack Japanese commerce, a particularly effective move since Japan had to import all its oil. The US submarines could have started when the fleet strength was weaker, but for the problem with the torpedoes.

The German Navy was never equal to the Commonwealth naval forces, so had to rely almost entirely upon their U-boats in both World Wars.

If you know for a fact that all the battleships in Haven's Navy were at least a century old, then I do not understand how Operation Dagger was ever approved.

You do know that the HV equivalent is NOT WWI/II right? Aircraft/Radio/submarines drastically changed commerce raiding.

The equivalent is the entire history of naval warfare before this, when Over-the-Horizon meant you were on your own and you had ~effectively zero clue where anyone might be, or instantly show up, and you had zero help. Thus why you could have 4th, 6th rate frigates (or lighter) running around as "independent" commands which can actually do damage to commerce and other targets of opportunity. The equivalent in WWI/WWII never happened due to a thing called the radio/telegraph.

WWI was NOT the first world war. 7 years war was first Global War and is the model for RMN/RHN conflict. Lots of commerce warfare in 7 years war by the way. Way back in 17th century. Just not sexy to read about as a USA citizen and was so long ago most do not. IN fact, USA calls it the French Indian war of all dumb things instead of what it REALLY was. World War Zero or 7 years war.

WWII had the submarine as the PRIMARY commerce raider of ALL nations and ALL nations hunted commerce at EVERY opportunity. You just do not read about all the British commerce raiding ops in the Med/Baltic/SE Asia theatres as they aren't sexy, like hunting the Bismark/Hood etc. Saying it is a strategy of weakness is beyond absurd. No fuel, food, or bullets, it does not matter what a nation has. That so called "strategy of weakness" almost eliminated the UK from WWII putting them on brink of starvation and without a drop of oil. That strategy ELIMINATED Italy from the war done primarily by the British. If USA did not support the UK with a crap ton of ships that "weak strategy" would have eliminated them right out of the war. UK's fuel stocks in early 1943 were nearly empty. They had less than 3 months of food depending on who you read and who is doing the math(a bit hazy on the logic when I read the book so big grain of salt here but...) Have to remember UK imported ~50% of their food before WWII and still do to this DAY. Germany imported 30% and one of the reasons they went to war. Japan also had this "strategy" its just most of their submarine missions were in the SE Asia theatre and not in the Pacific as logistically their submarines did not have the legs. Or more technically, they ~had the legs, but would spend their entire range on ranging TO the USA and back with near zero time finding anything to sink and even then it is was ~barely and unprofitable to do so. And yes, Japan had no oil to do so.

Relax wrote:You do know that the HV equivalent is NOT WWI/II right? Aircraft/Radio/submarines drastically changed commerce raiding.

The equivalent is the entire history of naval warfare before this, when Over-the-Horizon meant you were on your own and you had ~effectively zero clue where anyone might be, or instantly show up, and you had zero help. Thus why you could have 4th, 6th rate frigates (or lighter) running around as "independent" commands which can actually do damage to commerce and other targets of opportunity. The equivalent in WWI/WWII never happened due to a thing called the radio/telegraph.

WWI was NOT the first world war. 7 years war was first Global War and is the model for RMN/RHN conflict. Lots of commerce warfare in 7 years war by the way. Way back in 17th century. Just not sexy to read about as a USA citizen and was so long ago most do not. IN fact, USA calls it the French Indian war of all dumb things instead of what it REALLY was. World War Zero or 7 years war.

WWII had the submarine as the PRIMARY commerce raider of ALL nations and ALL nations hunted commerce at EVERY opportunity. You just do not read about all the British commerce raiding ops in the Med/Baltic/SE Asia theatres as they aren't sexy, like hunting the Bismark/Hood etc. Saying it is a strategy of weakness is beyond absurd. No fuel, food, or bullets, it does not matter what a nation has. That so called "strategy of weakness" almost eliminated the UK from WWII putting them on brink of starvation and without a drop of oil. That strategy ELIMINATED Italy from the war done primarily by the British. If USA did not support the UK with a crap ton of ships that "weak strategy" would have eliminated them right out of the war. UK's fuel stocks in early 1943 were nearly empty. They had less than 3 months of food depending on who you read and who is doing the math(a bit hazy on the logic when I read the book so big grain of salt here but...) Have to remember UK imported ~50% of their food before WWII and still do to this DAY. Germany imported 30% and one of the reasons they went to war. Japan also had this "strategy" its just most of their submarine missions were in the SE Asia theatre and not in the Pacific as logistically their submarines did not have the legs. Or more technically, they ~had the legs, but would spend their entire range on ranging TO the USA and back with near zero time finding anything to sink and even then it is was ~barely and unprofitable to do so. And yes, Japan had no oil to do so.

I know that the series was initially presented as Hornblower in space, which corresponds to the Seven Years War (although some say it was more like a second Hundred Years War due continual fighting between the British and the French in the Eighteenth Century). Also the various participants have their own names for it, The English prefer Seven Years War, but the French call it something else. It did cause the Philippine colony to change hands for some time, but did not involve Japan nor China (so was just slightly less global than the ones that are generally called World Wars). Yes, Hornblower did take prizes in the books.

Interesting as that may be, I am more interested in your statement that ALL battleships in Haven's Navy at the start of the war are at least a century old. If so I do not understand how they were sent to find more modern ships in Operation Dagger.