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A Question about Sandra Crandalls conduct in Meyers

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Re: A Question about Sandra Crandalls conduct in Meyers
Post by Jonathan_S   » Sat Dec 23, 2017 8:58 pm

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Daryl wrote:Don't forget that RFC is a Naval Historian, and his books take their cues from the interesting period between HMS Victory and Jutland and beyond.
I'm not totally sure about the RN's Admirals but know that the British Army's Generals were described as "Donkeys leading Lions". Family pedigree and connections were much more important than competence, so it is reasonable to assume that this applied to many in the RN as well. The RN just knew that they had the best ship technology, and this proved to be a problem at Jutland.
I'm hardly an expert but from that I've read I got the impression that by and large the UK's Royal Navy Admirals were a far slight better than their Army counterparts. The Army could afford to be a aristocratic playground because it was the navy that kept the country safe; whereas the army was mostly used for colonial expeditionary warfare.

Now there are screw-ups in any service. And the some Admirals did seem to believe that hearts of oak could overcome surprising disadvantages in speed or firepower (See the court martial, though later acquittal, of Tourbridge for refusing to charge a battlecruiser with four older, and slower, armored cruisers). But buy and large their RN's sense of superiority didn't rise to the level of delusional or significantly impair their fighting capabilities.

Go back in time a while, and look at their [edit:Revolutionary War -> War of 1812] skirmishes with the USN's "super frigates". Yeah, a couple British frigates got beaten, which was humiliating, but their Admiralty quickly gave orders for frigates to avoid engaging their USN counterparts one-on-one. And not long after that the RN battle squadrons largely hard the USN blockaded into port. Some captain's hubris caused them to attack larger and more heavily armed ships, but the navy quickly slapped behavior down after they learned of the losses.
Last edited by Jonathan_S on Wed Dec 27, 2017 12:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: A Question about Sandra Crandalls conduct in Meyers
Post by ldwechsler   » Sun Dec 24, 2017 8:41 am

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Jonathan_S wrote:
Daryl wrote:Don't forget that RFC is a Naval Historian, and his books take their cues from the interesting period between HMS Victory and Jutland and beyond.
I'm not totally sure about the RN's Admirals but know that the British Army's Generals were described as "Donkeys leading Lions". Family pedigree and connections were much more important than competence, so it is reasonable to assume that this applied to many in the RN as well. The RN just knew that they had the best ship technology, and this proved to be a problem at Jutland.
I'm hardly an expert but from that I've read I got the impression that by and large the UK's Royal Navy Admirals were a far slight better than their Army counterparts. The Army could afford to be a aristocratic playground because it was the navy that kept the country safe; whereas the army was mostly used for colonial expeditionary warfare.

Now there are screw-ups in any service. And the some Admirals did seem to believe that hearts of oak could overcome surprising disadvantages in speed or firepower (See the court martial, though later acquittal, of Tourbridge for refusing to charge a battlecruiser with four older, and slower, armored cruisers). But buy and large their RN's sense of superiority didn't rise to the level of delusional or significantly impair their fighting capabilities.

Go back in time a while, and look at their Revolutionary War skirmishes with the USN's "super frigates". Yeah, a couple British frigates got beaten, which was humiliating, but their Admiralty quickly gave orders for frigates to avoid engaging their USN counterparts one-on-one. And not long after that the RN battle squadrons largely hard the USN blockaded into port. Some captain's hubris caused them to attack larger and more heavily armed ships, but the navy quickly slapped behavior down after they learned of the losses.


It tended to apply most when there were no real threats. But the obvious treason of the Conservative/Liberal coalition that actually threatened Manticore caused changes. Some were political (decreased power of the Lords) but undoubtedly a lot of dead wood was trimmed from the navy.

Honor had a lot of high-placed enemies before she was even well-known. And they had enough power to prevent Pavel Young from getting the full punishment he deserved. It would have been interesting to find out what happened to the two on the court martial panel who supported him all the way.
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Re: A Question about Sandra Crandalls conduct in Meyers
Post by Brigade XO   » Sun Dec 24, 2017 11:18 am

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The US "super frigates" were the USS Constitution (launched in 1797) & her sisters and that was War of 1812/Napolionic Wars.
The American Colonies did purpose build some warships during the Revolution but they were few, of conventional design, and the perponderence of the American ships engaged were along the lines of armed merchantmen acting under Letter of Marque. Most not much more than pirates in the view of the Crown as they were sent out by, at best, the individual colonies as commerce raiders or privateers. Still, they did cause the British Navy a lot of difficulty, mostly by picking off transports and supply ships and causing the Navy to have to send raiding attacks against suspected or known bases of operations.
Few wanted to go up against a British warship anywhere near the same capability in a stand-up fight but they played merry hell with most of whatever else they encountered. Major source of supplies for the Rebel Army.
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Re: A Question about Sandra Crandalls conduct in Meyers
Post by saber964   » Sun Dec 24, 2017 2:18 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:
Daryl wrote:Don't forget that RFC is a Naval Historian, and his books take their cues from the interesting period between HMS Victory and Jutland and beyond.
I'm not totally sure about the RN's Admirals but know that the British Army's Generals were described as "Donkeys leading Lions". Family pedigree and connections were much more important than competence, so it is reasonable to assume that this applied to many in the RN as well. The RN just knew that they had the best ship technology, and this proved to be a problem at Jutland.
I'm hardly an expert but from that I've read I got the impression that by and large the UK's Royal Navy Admirals were a far slight better than their Army counterparts. The Army could afford to be a aristocratic playground because it was the navy that kept the country safe; whereas the army was mostly used for colonial expeditionary warfare.

Now there are screw-ups in any service. And the some Admirals did seem to believe that hearts of oak could overcome surprising disadvantages in speed or firepower (See the court martial, though later acquittal, of Tourbridge for refusing to charge a battlecruiser with four older, and slower, armored cruisers). But buy and large their RN's sense of superiority didn't rise to the level of delusional or significantly impair their fighting capabilities.

Go back in time a while, and look at their Revolutionary War skirmishes with the USN's "super frigates". Yeah, a couple British frigates got beaten, which was humiliating, but their Admiralty quickly gave orders for frigates to avoid engaging their USN counterparts one-on-one. And not long after that the RN battle squadrons largely hard the USN blockaded into port. Some captain's hubris caused them to attack larger and more heavily armed ships, but the navy quickly slapped behavior down after they learned of the losses.



The RN had a long tradition of excellence. But they also had a tradition of rising on your merits. It was not uncommon for a relative nobody to go quite high in the nobility. IIRC several RN admirals became Counts Earls Barons and even a few Dukes. In the British Army they had a practice of selling commissions up through (IIRC) Major.
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Re: A Question about Sandra Crandalls conduct in Meyers
Post by WLBjork   » Sun Dec 24, 2017 3:43 pm

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saber964 wrote:The RN had a long tradition of excellence. But they also had a tradition of rising on your merits. It was not uncommon for a relative nobody to go quite high in the nobility. IIRC several RN admirals became Counts Earls Barons and even a few Dukes. In the British Army they had a practice of selling commissions up through (IIRC) Major.


Pretty sure it's Colonel, as you purchase a commission in a particular regiment, the highest rank being Colonel.
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Re: A Question about Sandra Crandalls conduct in Meyers
Post by pnakasone   » Sun Dec 24, 2017 7:02 pm

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One thing I think helped the RN was even at the best of time sailing ships where rough places to live and work. Every ship officer had to start as an midshipman at a what was young age even then.

That and truly incompetent officers often went over the sides during storms with or with out help.
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Re: A Question about Sandra Crandalls conduct in Meyers
Post by quite possibly a cat   » Sun Dec 24, 2017 8:56 pm

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jtg452 wrote:
No captain of a warship- of ANY nation- worthy of holding that position is going to roll over and show his belly like that.
Its possible they might refuse to allow their ships to be taken intact, but they have absolutely no chance to defeat Byng. However destruction of evidence would damn Manticore.
You don't strike your colors (or, in the Honorverse, your wedge) and submit to being boarded and 'inspected' by a foreign navy in a neutral port or anywhere else. Just having the temerity to make such a demand is a good way to end up getting shot at on general principle.

Byng was friends with the local government AND Manticore had just destroyed one of the New Tuscany freighters (as far as New Tuscany was concerned). At most it would take a minute or two to launder the request through the local government. Who absolutely has the authority to order such.
The only difference in the outcome would have been the Manty destroyers' wedges would have been building up when Byng fired instead of being completely down and their backstopping ship would have gotten a recording of a Solly admiral making such outrageous demands.
Part of why what Byng did was so outrageous was because he didn't ask for surrender. This was brought up in the books. Repeatedly.

Come to think of it, the Manties are good enough to have probably gotten off a few shots, too, before they were destroyed.
I seriously doubt it. The only way to do that would be firing first. That would have been little more than an act of murder and mass suicide. It also would have been an act of piracy. Manticore does not train its people to be murderous suicidal pirates.

Even if they DID go so far as to do this, it would still be overwhelming evidence of Manticore's guilt. Why would they decide to die instead of being taken alive unless there were guilty and going to be executed?

cthia wrote:Byng wasn't just an idiot, he was riddled with intense hatred for all things Manticoran. You almost wanted to ask him 'What the hell did the Manties ever do to you?'
They got him in trouble for impounding a freighter which is just another example of his stupidity! He wants to impounds a freighter, but he can't even find a real charge? Harrington didn't have any trouble finding actual smuggling! Plus its the freaking Solarian League. Countless worlds with countless time to come up obscure stupid laws, or stop enforcing laws. He should have been able to find something.

Plus, who fabricates a smuggling charge? At least trump up a more serious charge. I would go with piracy. You just convince one or two persons to say they were forced to work and execute the rest. Go-go Gadget Cherwell Convention. Its not like they'll recant and admit to mass murder!

What? Is this guy the stupidest person in the entire SLN?!?
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Re: A Question about Sandra Crandalls conduct in Meyers
Post by Weird Harold   » Sun Dec 24, 2017 11:00 pm

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WLBjork wrote:
saber964 wrote:In the British Army they had a practice of selling commissions up through (IIRC) Major.


Pretty sure it's Colonel, as you purchase a commission in a particular regiment, the highest rank being Colonel.


Colonel was often an elected position, so probably only commissions through Major were for sale.
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Answers! I got lots of answers!

(Now if I could just find the right questions.)
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Re: A Question about Sandra Crandalls conduct in Meyers
Post by Silverwall   » Mon Dec 25, 2017 1:14 am

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jtg452 wrote:
quite possibly a cat wrote:Byng was terrible! I wanted to smack him for being so stupid. He could have gotten such perfect revenge against the Manties, and he blew it!

1) He should have ordered all non-SLN ships to come to a nice orbit, declare themselves and power-down as soon as possible. Any other assets they have in space need to be declared and powered down as well. If the manties cooperate you can just skip to "4", since refusal to cooperate proves guilt.

2) Assuming you get compliance, you can then start the investigation. First you need to secure any armed ships. This means the crews will have to get out, but you do have some spare space in the brig. You'll also obviously need full control and access to every ship. The civilian ships should be cleared pretty quickly because they don't randomly carry nukes or stealth tech. That leaves the Mantie military ships.

3) The investigation would find nothing amiss with any ship at all, except one of the probes that the Manties super stealthy probes they supposedly launched is missing. Not there. So weird. Didn't find anything at the spot they declared a drone was at. Of course, after searching the reports you find an example of Manties using nuke armed stealth drones as a weapon. It fits their MO. They can't account for the drone. And this is the star nation that stiffed them. You have means, motive, opportunity, them lying, and it matches tech only they have.

4) Finally you finish up by interrogating a Manty captain who has been steeped in the Saganami tradition. Obviously there will be assorted people to observe so you don't mistreat the Manty captain. After you point out that the Manties are pirates since there wasn't a declared war, and unless there is evidence that the rest of the crew is innocent you'll execute them all, he'll confess to the whole thing and say his crew had nothing to do with it.

At this point you seize the ship from the captain that confessed and now have all the fancy Manty tech.

Either way, you have proof the Manties did it, and you have a confession. Case closed. Manties just murdered over forty thousand civilians as far as anyone else knows.

As a free bonus, TIY will pay a ton for your prize ship. And your intelligence service will probably be pretty happy about getting to examine the probe you didn't find.


No captain of a warship- of ANY nation- worthy of holding that position is going to roll over and show his belly like that.

You don't strike your colors (or, in the Honorverse, your wedge) and submit to being boarded and 'inspected' by a foreign navy in a neutral port or anywhere else. Just having the temerity to make such a demand is a good way to end up getting shot at on general principle.

The only difference in the outcome would have been the Manty destroyers' wedges would have been building up when Byng fired instead of being completely down and their backstopping ship would have gotten a recording of a Solly admiral making such outrageous demands.

EDIT

Come to think of it, the Manties are good enough to have probably gotten off a few shots, too, before they were destroyed.


Exactly just demanding they surrender while in 3rd party space can only be interpreted in one of two ways by Manticore - An Act or War or an act of piracy. You CANNOT demand a sovreign warship surrender in such a situation - especially when it is not even your soverign space. Even back in OBS Honor is well aware she may well be starting the Havenite wars by attacking the Q ship.

Either way the correct Manticoran action is to attempt to withdraw with all defensive systems spun up and if the Sollies fire on them they are the aggressors and things proceed as per now but with a much higher chance of Manty survivors. As soon as Spindle gets the news Michelle Henke goes collecting scalps and things proceed as usual.
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Re: A Question about Sandra Crandalls conduct in Meyers
Post by quite possibly a cat   » Mon Dec 25, 2017 1:52 am

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Silverwall wrote:Exactly just demanding they surrender while in 3rd party space can only be interpreted in one of two ways by Manticore - An Act or War or an act of piracy. You CANNOT demand a sovreign warship surrender in such a situation - especially when it is not even your soverign space. Even back in OBS Honor is well aware she may well be starting the Havenite wars by attacking the Q ship.
First off, New Tuscany had almost certainly empowered Bygn to intervene in case of piracy.

Regardless:
quite possibly a cat wrote:Byng was friends with the local government AND Manticore had just destroyed one of the New Tuscany freighters (as far as New Tuscany was concerned). At most it would take a minute or two to launder the request through the local government. Who absolutely has the authority to order such.



Silverwall wrote:Either way the correct Manticoran action is to attempt to withdraw with all defensive systems spun up and if the Sollies fire on them they are the aggressors and things proceed as per now but with a much higher chance of Manty survivors. As soon as Spindle gets the news Michelle Henke goes collecting scalps and things proceed as usual.

It takes a long time to power up a wedge, and nothing else would do anything about energy weapons.

Also this brings me to another benefit of getting a surrender and capturing the Manties: Henke won't fire on Bygn if he has Manties on board!
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