cthia wrote:In light of Theemile's post -- in retrospect -- it is logical that 8th and 3rd are both positioned at Trevor's Star. Trevor's Star is too important not to protect. Someone has to do it. So I suppose 3rd Fleet inherited that responsibility, and 8th Fleet was only there to refit and repair Honor's torn undies. (And her "slip" was showing too.)
The fact that it was a necessity that Honor be at Trevor's Star for repairs is something that I missed. Honor at Trevor's Star wasn't actually a deployment.
But let's take a closer look at Kuzak. Kuzak was closer to the junction than Honor. I am perplexed by Kuzak's close proximity to the junction instead of being positioned closer to the planet. I am assuming I missed a memo? I know that the junction is important, but wouldn't San Martin lobby for protection; which should imply a position closer to the planet? Unless there was a contingent in orbit about the planet.
Holding forces near the Junction allows her to respond to an attack on either side. There's also a passage about how Home Fleet sometimes have to do the same so they can defend all three planets in the MBS side properly. From the Junction, the forces can travel to the inner system's hyperlimit within 20 minutes, if their hypergenerators were ready. That's a problem for Sphinx, but probably not for San Martin.
Wasn't the Second Battle of Basilisk during Operation Icarus like that too? (Or was that Thunderbolt)
But my main point is that Honor's tertiary obligations should have been moved to the front burner in light of the current conditions.
We can now agree. The problem is that this requires hindsight. It appears no one in the RMN predicted the reaction, so this all depends on an assessment that did not happen or did not come to the right conclusion.
If you get to the right conclusion, then yes, the RMN forces should have been re-positioned somehow.
But beyond even that. I am questioning what should be Honor's optimum positioning even if she had been moved to the MBS. Should she have remained close to the MWJ so she could quickly support Trevor's Star if she had been moved to the Home System and Kuzak had to respond from Trevor's Star?
I do think that moving Eighth Fleet into the MBS side and parking them incognito somewhere inside A's hyperlimit but not blocked by the RZ. Or maybe park them close to the Junction, but not where they'd be readily observed by every ship that transited. Though either would have meant that a spy might have seen that and getting the latest intel probably was in Beatrice's plan.
At this point, no one thinks that Apollo is capable without the FTL link (not even Theisman), so redistributing them to ships without KH2 wouldn't be done.
Why wouldn't Honor have taken up a position in orbit right along with Home Fleet? Remember, anything else would invite defeat in detail.
It's only defeat in detail if they are not in position to support each other. The option is not so binary.
If Tourville saw Honor's wedges lighting up, he'd have changed his vector and that might have compromised the whole operation.
And if Honor had been in orbit with Home Fleet, then would she be in command of the play to run? She would be subordinate to Home Fleet wouldn't she? Hence, at D'Orville's mercy. Yet, we know who is the better strategist / tactician. There was no way D'Orville was qualified to handle Apollo.
Fleet Admiral Sebastian D'Orville would have been senior commander on scene. And given the ability for FTL communications, it's completely possible he'd attempt to micromanage Honor. So yes, her being in the MBS side could lead to worse results.
If D'Orville is smart, he'd leave her to operate her Apollo as best she saw fit because, as you say, she's the only flag officer with experience to use them.
You think the above is all that irks me? There's more. Haven supposedly brought along two of its finest tacticians. Tourville and Chin. They had to go the long way around, but they still managed to support the operation with two separate fleets. No big deal, it is par for the course.
I don't think Chin was that good a strategist at all. Maybe only a tactician. But she's oh-for-two against Honor now.
In any case, remember Beatrice was planned for Giscard. So the two fleet commanders would have been Giscard for the anvil force and Tourville for the hammer. But Giscard died in the Battle of Lovat, so the RHN had to send someone else. It's possible that Chin was simply the best one on scene because she'd been Tourville's understudy for the hammer force, and she's nowhere as good as she'd really need to be.
Yet the RMN only had one tactician more to await them. And two of them weren't even at HOME at the time to welcome them. The great big MBS only had one additional tactician at the party than the RHN. Let us investigate further.
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Which means, the galaxy's most premiere navy only had two tacticians at Home during what should have been an expected all-out-attack by Haven. A Case Zulu.
This again assumes they're expecting the reaction that the Havenites did have. If they're expecting it, then the forces are re-deployed and then your situation doesn't happen. But they didn't.
The two tacticians in the hot seat were D'Orville, who at best should have been retired, and who obviously had a poor appreciation for strategy and tactics. Heck, he had had his bell rang by Honor during the war games; a reality which may have been the smoking gun ( smoking grav lance) that he had outlived his usefulness.
Whoa, that's a mighty mischaracterisation of the war games at the beginning of OBS. HMS Fearless managed to sneak up and attack HMS King Roger exactly once. In all the other iterations of the games, D'Orville's forces were competing (and succeeding in) to see who would nail Fearless first and Honor got nowhere near to use the weapon that shall not be named. That and their banishment to Basilisk contributed to the crew feeling extremely disappointed, something she had to work on and was the plot of the middle third of the book.
I don't know if D'Orville should have been retired. I actually don't think so. He was good. Nowhere as good as Honor or (we now know) Truman, but he was good enough for the MBS and he was also much senior to Truman. Truman had also had much less exposure to operations in which to show her prowess, so you can't really fault the humans in the Admiralty for opting to go with a tried and true instead of an unproven one.
Also remember that Home Fleet is under the eyes of the Admiralty. They could countermand D'Orville if needed.
So, the MBS was weak in the firepower available to the navy, weak on the number of tacticians standing guard at the gate, weak in the choice of tacticians and / or their command, thus weak in strategy and tactics.
Which places an exclamation point on why I stand by the notion that Henke should have been recalled. Or someone else during this delicate window of vulnerability.
The RMN has far more good people waiting in the rafters. They're revealed to us frequently, like Higgins, Kotouč, and Petersen. Adm. Higgins assumed the new Home Fleet after Honor's forces became 8th again; where was he during BoMa? He's not likely to have been fishing at his summer home around the Jason Bay because he was on half-pay. He's likely to have been serving somewhere, most likely under D'Orville or Kuzak, which would mean he did participate in the battle.
Which is to say I don't think bringing Adm. Gold Peak home and forcing her to break her word of honour would have been required. She's good -- in fact, she's probably the best in RMN service after Honor. But she'd just been promoted to Admiral because she kept sabotaging her own career (Honor had to browbeat that into her), so she actually had less to show than Truman.
And again, all of this depends on the RMN coming to the realisation that Apollo was that a game changer.
