R S Pierre

I just found this on Wiki. I may be the last one to know this. Anyroad, here it is. Just a bit of real history.
07/28/17
From Wikipedia

July 28: On this day:

1794 – French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, architects of the Reign of Terror, were executed after having been arrested the previous day.

More:

Robert Stanton Pierre, commonly known as Rob S. Pierre, was a Havenite citizen and politician.
As chairman of the Committee of Public Safety, he was one of the most prominent figures of the late People's Republic.

Oscar Saint-Just was a Havenite politician and intelligence officer, the first and only chief of the Office of State Security, as well as the second and last Chairman of the Committee of Public Safety.

They are straight out of History books.

I joined the forum to share this.

DW had to get the names from somewhere.

It is nice to know. If you care look up the names in Wiki and get all the facts.

DW must have looked hard to find French bad guys.

Shs0110 wrote:I just found this on Wiki. I may be the last one to know this. Anyroad, here it is. Just a bit of real history.
07/28/17
From Wikipedia

July 28: On this day:

1794 – French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, architects of the Reign of Terror, were executed after having been arrested the previous day.

More:

Robert Stanton Pierre, commonly known as Rob S. Pierre, was a Havenite citizen and politician.
As chairman of the Committee of Public Safety, he was one of the most prominent figures of the late People's Republic.

Oscar Saint-Just was a Havenite politician and intelligence officer, the first and only chief of the Office of State Security, as well as the second and last Chairman of the Committee of Public Safety.

They are straight out of History books.

I joined the forum to share this.

DW had to get the names from somewhere.

It is nice to know. If you care look up the names in Wiki and get all the facts.

DW must have looked hard to find French bad guys.

Welcome to the Forums! have a virtual drink on us!

Yep, you caught the first of hundreds of historical connections DW made with the Honorverse. Honor Harrington was originally Horatio Hornblower in space - the CS Forester novels told a story of a fictional character (who was based on Lord Nelson) in the Napoleonic wars and the age of Sail.

The Physics of the ships is dictated by a space going approximation of age of sail ships of the line, and the main happenings, and many characters and happenings, are modeled off real life combat and stories.

The entire Havenite revolution was based on the French revolution, down to the signing in the Tennis court, and the committees of public safety. Honor was even originally supposed to die in a version of the battle of Trafalgar which took the life of Lord Nelson (though this changed as the story line progressed.)

You will find references of real life events and political figures all the way up to a Margo Thackery and the Suez crisis - good luck finding them!

For extra points - my screen name here is a nod to the French Revolution as well - though no one has ever noticed. Do you know what it is?

Theemile wrote:

Shs0110 wrote:I just found this on Wiki. I may be the last one to know this. Anyroad, here it is. Just a bit of real history.
07/28/17
From Wikipedia

July 28: On this day:

1794 – French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, architects of the Reign of Terror, were executed after having been arrested the previous day.

More:

Robert Stanton Pierre, commonly known as Rob S. Pierre, was a Havenite citizen and politician.
As chairman of the Committee of Public Safety, he was one of the most prominent figures of the late People's Republic.

Oscar Saint-Just was a Havenite politician and intelligence officer, the first and only chief of the Office of State Security, as well as the second and last Chairman of the Committee of Public Safety.

They are straight out of History books.

I joined the forum to share this.

DW had to get the names from somewhere.

It is nice to know. If you care look up the names in Wiki and get all the facts.

DW must have looked hard to find French bad guys.

Welcome to the Forums! have a virtual drink on us!

Yep, you caught the first of hundreds of historical connections DW made with the Honorverse. Honor Harrington was originally Horatio Hornblower in space - the CS Forester novels told a story of a fictional character (who was based on Lord Nelson) in the Napoleonic wars and the age of Sail.

The Physics of the ships is dictated by a space going approximation of age of sail ships of the line, and the main happenings, and many characters and happenings, are modeled off real life combat and stories.

The entire Havenite revolution was based on the French revolution, down to the signing in the Tennis court, and the committees of public safety. Honor was even originally supposed to die in a version of the battle of Trafalgar which took the life of Lord Nelson (though this changed as the story line progressed.)

You will find references of real life events and political figures all the way up to a Margo Thackery and the Suez crisis - good luck finding them!

For extra points - my screen name here is a nod to the French Revolution as well - though no one has ever noticed. Do you know what it is?

I assume it has something to do with Rousseau, even if a bit obscure. That was one of his key characters in a major treatise on education.

Wish I had thought of it before I joined under my own name although I think I might have used Arouet.

ldwechsler wrote:

Theemile wrote:
For extra points - my screen name here is a nod to the French Revolution as well - though no one has ever noticed. Do you know what it is?

I assume it has something to do with Rousseau, even if a bit obscure. That was one of his key characters in a major treatise on education.

Wish I had thought of it before I joined under my own name although I think I might have used Arouet.

Good catch.

"The Emile, or On Education" was concerning the education of the common man (In comparison to the works by Bacon, Locke and others about the Education of the Nobleman), is called by many the slowmatch behind the French Revolution, as it was the first main work which equated the common man with the Nobleman in all things, empowering the masses.

I read it my freshman year of college, from a photocopy of the 1907 English printing, and several of my classmates remarked how I reminded them of the title character. The next time I needed a login, I found my old one was in use, so I used Theemile.... since then, It always seems to be available...and on this forum, it seemed more relevant than ever.

[ion of the Nobleman), is called by many the slowmatch behind the French Revolution, as it was the first main work which equated the common man with the Nobleman in all things, empowering the masses.

I read it my freshman year of college, from a photocopy of the 1907 English printing, and several of my classmates remarked how I reminded them of the title character. The next time I needed a login, I found my old one was in use, so I used Theemile.... since then, It always seems to be available...and on this forum, it seemed more relevant than ever.[/quote]

I like your quote for RFC a lot. Frankly, those folk who discuss how quickly the Sollies will have the same level of weaponry as the Manties just grinds on me.

First, they have to accept that they are way behind. Some people know it but the navy refuses to accept it. There are a lot of well-connected bureaucrats whose careers would be messed up and will defend the status quo.

Finally, when change is actually agreed upon, there will be battles over who gets the contracts and then there'll be all sorts of arguments over how little change will be acceptable.

Finally, after payoffs are made, they have to actually build and test the new ships and weapons. Leave out the fact that major science and tech issues have to be solved.

Chances are it would take at least a decade to get to where the Grand Alliance is. And that would also work on the assumption that there were no raids on shipyards, etc., that would slow down work.

Not to mention the whole breakup of the League.

ldwechsler wrote:Finally, when change is actually agreed upon, there will be battles over who gets the contracts and then there'll be all sorts of arguments over how little change will be acceptable.

Finally, after payoffs are made, they have to actually build and test the new ships and weapons. Leave out the fact that major science and tech issues have to be solved.

Chances are it would take at least a decade to get to where the Grand Alliance is. And that would also work on the assumption that there were no raids on shipyards, etc., that would slow down work.

You should look at how fast things get done in a real war. Look at the USN of 1938 and the USN of 1943. And the USN as a whole in 1940 had barely any idea what the Japanese were doing, what their fleet consisted, or was capable of doing. And the USN of 1940 and most of 1941 most certainly had a peacetime attitude.

kzt wrote:

ldwechsler wrote:Finally, when change is actually agreed upon, there will be battles over who gets the contracts and then there'll be all sorts of arguments over how little change will be acceptable.

Finally, after payoffs are made, they have to actually build and test the new ships and weapons. Leave out the fact that major science and tech issues have to be solved.

Chances are it would take at least a decade to get to where the Grand Alliance is. And that would also work on the assumption that there were no raids on shipyards, etc., that would slow down work.

You should look at how fast things get done in a real war. Look at the USN of 1938 and the USN of 1943. And the USN as a whole in 1940 had barely any idea what the Japanese were doing, what their fleet consisted, or was capable of doing. And the USN of 1940 and most of 1941 most certainly had a peacetime attitude.

I have looked. Actually, much of the planning for change was done in the years before the war. We had aircraft carriers at Pearl Harbor. We just built a lot more of them and did relatively small upgrades. Basically minor tech changes.

Same for most ships. There was relatively really new built in terms of ships.

And notice that torpedoes did get somewhat better but not really better as the top leadership dithered and obstructed.

Airplanes improved quite a lot but a lot of the tech had already been developing and many of the different models were created basically because of the army=navy split as well as different companies competing and the government essentially giving away money.

Yes, there was a lot of change but the pathetic Buffaloes, for example, pretty much used (and shot down) for the last time at Midway were already set for replacement before the war. And
the really big change, the jet, was fought every step of the way until reports of the German progress got through.

There were improvements, sure, but no major scientific jumps. Radar was in development before the war and was pushed forward and tanks were improved (although never as good as the German ones).

Note the great improvement in weaponry when we jump to Korea nine years after Pearl Harbor. We had a lot of time to develop...and even then there were not that many enormous breakthroughs.

Another factor, of course, was that at the start of the war we thought we might lose. That encouraged us.

Another factor: the Japanese never improved all that much. There were not that many improvements on their part and they lost a lot of key personnel at Midway. Remember that four of their six great carriers died there as did pretty much the crews of those ships.

We improved our planes enough that we could gradually ensure that we would generally win. But it was not through tech breakthrough.

And the Sollies are far more ossified than we ever were. We didn't have a real "fifth column" trying to hold us back. During WWII the Communists wanted us to fight. On the other hand, there are people deliberately blocking the Mandarins from learning what they need to know and the great size of the League means that many naval leaders have no idea of the better tech of the Manties. Note that even in the latest book, several admirals and captains were totally ignorant even of the fact of going to war.

ldwechsler wrote:I have looked. Actually, much of the planning for change was done in the years before the war. We had aircraft carriers at Pearl Harbor. We just built a lot more of them and did relatively small upgrades. Basically minor tech changes.

Same for most ships. There was relatively really new built in terms of ships.

The change in carriers was mostly pre-war but the final prewar designs (Essex class) didn't commission until about a year after Pearl Harbor - but the first 11 had be ordered before Dec '41 and the first already laid down by then, with the next pair laid down that month.
Arguably the Midway class did incorporate some of the early war lessons - OTOH they just missed the end of the war (but presumably would have contributed to the invasions of Japan had that had to go ahead)

Similar for other ships, there were many new designs in the pipeline that weren't ready until a year or more into the war - but you're right that for most ship types there wasn't time to finalize and build (before the end of the war) yet another new designs - Roosevelt and Congress mostly went for repeat build of existing designs to avoid disrupting war production.


There were a few inovations that did happen during wartime on weaponry. The obvious biggest and most expensive is the Manhatten Project designing and building atomic bombs.
But the ASM-N-2 Bat - radar guided anti-ship missile, the Mark 27 'Cutie' anti-escort acoustic homing torpedo, the technologically related Mark 24 Mine 'Fido' (aka air-dropped anti-submarine acoustic homing torpedo) are less know weapons developed and deployed during the war (though IIRC classified for a while afterwards).

Oh and VT proximity fuses for heavy AA guns was a wartime development. I believe the short range Mark 51 director for aiming 40mm AA guns was also developed after Dec '41 (though probably borrowing from earlier AA directors for heavy guns)

Even the 'dumb' Mark 18 electric torpedo for US Subs was developed during the war (admittedly inspired by recovered German G7e electric torpedoes)

Project Cadillac naval carrier airborne radar stemmed from 1942 MIT combining radar with TV broadcasting so the PPI screen could be broadcast to the carrier's fighter direction center so the small carrier plane just had to run the radar - not try to provide figher direction as well.


So there was a fair bit of innovation in weapons and control, in things fast enough to build (like the aircraft you already mentioned) that they could come into service before they anticipated the war would end (and without too large a disruption is current production)

kzt wrote:

ldwechsler wrote:Finally, when change is actually agreed upon, there will be battles over who gets the contracts and then there'll be all sorts of arguments over how little change will be acceptable.

Finally, after payoffs are made, they have to actually build and test the new ships and weapons. Leave out the fact that major science and tech issues have to be solved.

Chances are it would take at least a decade to get to where the Grand Alliance is. And that would also work on the assumption that there were no raids on shipyards, etc., that would slow down work.

You should look at how fast things get done in a real war. Look at the USN of 1938 and the USN of 1943. And the USN as a whole in 1940 had barely any idea what the Japanese were doing, what their fleet consisted, or was capable of doing. And the USN of 1940 and most of 1941 most certainly had a peacetime attitude.

That was mostly because of the lack of people who could read and speak Japanese. In late 1941 the U.S. Navy had a grand total of 55 men who could read and speak Japanese in the ONI, it was slightly worse for the U.S. Army at 47. There was a terrible lack of up to date information in the Pacific region in general. I remember reading that USS Wahoo did a war patrol to New Guinea with a ten year old map taken from a National Geographic magazine and a children's encyclopedia. Outside of missionaries and a few academics how many people visited places like the Carolina Island or Solomon Islands. IIRC the total number of non-Japanese Japanese speakers was less than 400 in the U.S. The British was better but not by much.

Yes, and the USN had spent the last 10 years planning to fight a war with Japan. With elaborate plans in great detail about how they were going to do this, without actually bothering to learn anything about Japan or the the Japanese Navy.

Sound like a scene out of series you might have heard of?