Sigs wrote:n7axw wrote:Good questions, Sigs. Theemile and I were just extrapolating on basis of available textev. I do suspect that your figures are low. Early in the series, Admiral Cortez in the course of a discussion mentioned that Manticore had as many as 250 wallers under construction. But that would have included those lost building slips in Grendesbane. IIRC there were 90 of those which were lost in Thunderbolt. That would leave 160 at Manticore which then becomes the number of SDs that could have escaped OB to Trevor's Star.
Frankly, this is speculation on textev that is a bit thin on the ground.
Don
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At the beginning of at all costs there is a meeting between the Queen, PM, Admiralty and Adm. Harrington. In that meeting it is stated after what happened in Grendelsbane, they had only 35 SD(P)'s under construction to be commissioned within 6-10 months. In their own words their pod-laying wall will consist of no more than 110 SD(P)'s for at least 2 years. This discussion is at most a month or two into the war.
IAN had 42 SD(P)s in commission and another 90 SD(P)'s in various states of completion. Some would not be done for 18 months but let's say there was a push and finished all earlier that is 132 SD(P)'s
Adm. Caparelli estimates that within 18 months, if construction hold up they should have roughly 400 SD(P)'s between the GSN, RMN and IAN.
This leads me to believe that the GSN had 43 SD(P)'s under construction on top of their 115 SD(P)'s in service.
Oyster Bay happened roughy 2 years after the start of the war. How many SD(P)'s could realistcly be build in the two years between Thunderbolt and Oysterbay considering that 168 SD(P)'s were build by the alliance in the two years of war.
#1 between the first and second war, at least to me it seemed like Grayson was on war footing so they couldn't likely have put more SD(P)'s down simultaneously before those they had under construction left the Yards. So they might have laid down 10-15 more immediately at the start of the war but I can't imagine it would be much more than that.
#2 the IAN was having problems getting it's ships finished as it was so I doubt they laid down any new once until some of the once they had under construction were done.
#3 the only one who had capacity to letdown a lot of new ships was Manticore and they would have stated within a couple of months of the war since they would need to get organized and get resrouces, infrastructure and manpower in place to lay down the ships.
By the BoM SD(P)'s strength would be:
RMN ~110 SD(P)'s
IAN ~132 SD(P)'s
GSN ~153 SD(P)'s
If the Alliance lost 139 SD(P)'s in BoM which would be at about the 18 month mark, it leads me to believe that the alliance had ~261 SD(P)'s. That is assuming that in the first 18 months of the war the Allies did not lose a single SD(P) which is not the case.
If both the Andermani and Grayson were struggling to finish the ships they had in the yards the only one who can contribute significantly to any lump of SD(P)'s is Manticore which would mean they essentially double their fleet after loosing one of their main yards at the beginning of the war.
If we look at the causalities in the BoM proportional to the fleet strength at time of BoM we can assume that the remaining fleet was:
- RMN had ~76 SD(P)'s.
- IAN had ~86 SD(P)'s
- GSN had ~99 SD(P)'s.
Once again that assumes nothing was lost in the 18 months of war. We know that is not true since 11 SD(P)'s were lost in Zanzibar alone. They also lost 1 SD(P) in Solon. There might have been more but I can't remember at the moment.
So post BoM there would have been ~260 SD(P)'s in Alliance fleet minus what was lost in the 18 months of war aside from BoM.
I can't see there being a lump of 120 SD(P)'s being done over and above the once already counted as under construction in the 2 years between thunderbolt and Oyster Bay since manticore would have had to lay down immediately at start of war around 100 SD(P)'s to have them out of the yard hands before Oyster Bay and Grayson would have to have laid down the other 20 SD(P)'s immediately as well even though they were also struggling to finance the once they were building. and that would bring the alliance fleet up to 295 SD(P)'s after we remove the IAN.
At second Manticore the GA had:
-RHN ~250 SD(P)'s
-GSN ~150 SD(P)'s
-RMN~40 SD(P)'s + 60 SD(P)'s at Beowulf and 12-20 SD(P)'s with 10th Fleet.
This implies to me that the RMN took much heavier casualties in BoM than Grayson and the ~120 SD(P)'s they had at Second Manticore were all they had +/- a squadron or two.'
And with that many GSN wallers in Second Manticore they would have had to nearly strip the GSN Home Fleet to the barebones.
The problem with all of this is that we are looking at different numbers at different times. Just because RMN is building a certain number of ships at one time does not mean they are building the same number a year later.
It would be difficult to build MORE ships than before right after Oyster Bay because the shipyards were destroyed. On the other hand, the government will want more ships.
So we are guessing. Also, based on the numbers at the Academy, there will be a lot more ships. And we don't know how many snotties will be on each ship. Based on Hexapuma, there were five middies for a ship of 700. In other words, less than one percent of the crew.
I would guess that the number might hold up for all ships...no way 100 middies would be on a larger ship that holds 1500. Also, would middies be attached to Home Fleet where they would almost certainly never see action? Yes, there were a couple of battles but generally nothing happened there.
The building program must have been quickly expanded and I would guess a lot of the middies were assigned to LACs. With ten personnel per LAC and 108 assigned to a CLAC, that's a lot of people and they are heavy on officers.