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NEED TO KNOW

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Re: NEED TO KNOW
Post by tlb   » Thu May 12, 2022 11:13 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:There's also been an explanation by RFC (which someone with better memory than I can report) that Fearless wasn't supposed to be sent to Basilisk at all. CL-56 was old at the time: she was supposed to be decommissioned and sent to the breakers. She was saved from that fate before the exercises specifically so they could install the grav lance on her. But once the exercises were done, she wasn't supposed to be sent anywhere. But somehow the embarrassment that TWTSNBN created was the reason Fearless was quickly shuffled aside.

I cannot find anything in On Basilisk Station to indicate that Fearless was headed for the breakers. Obviously that would have been the eventual fate due to technology changes in the war. But chapter 32 states the following:
All the time the repair ships had labored upon her battered command, Honor had made herself believe Fearless might be returned to service, but the yard techs' survey had killed that hope.
Fearless was too old. She was too small, and she'd taken too much. Given too much. Repair would require virtual rebuilding and cost as much as a newer, bigger ship, and so the decision had been made. Within the week, she would be towed out of her slip once more and delivered to the breakers at one of the orbital recovery stations, where she would be stripped, cut into jagged chunks of alloy by workers who could never truly understand all she had been and meant and done, and melted down for reclamation.
She deserved better, Honor thought, blinking on her tears once more, but at least she'd ended as a warrior. Ended in combat and then brought her surviving people home, not died in her sleep after decades in mothballs. And even when she was gone, something of her would remain, for HMS Fearless had been added to the RMN's List of Honor, the list of names kept perpetually in commission by new construction to preserve the battle honors they had earned.
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Re: NEED TO KNOW
Post by kzt   » Fri May 13, 2022 12:13 am

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David wrote a direct explanation here or on the bar about this.
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Re: NEED TO KNOW
Post by munroburton   » Fri May 13, 2022 8:23 am

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It's preserved in a pearl: https://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/e ... gton/37/1/

Hemphill did not ask to have Honor sent to Basilisk. In fact, she wasn't consulted at all. And if she had been consulted, she would have pointed out that the Fearless conversion had been carried out as part of a test program and that the test had not been a success. She would not have advocated [assigning] Fearless to a duty station where there was the least possibility of the ship being called to action. Now, she didn't protest the ship's deployment to Basilisk or argue that the ship must immediately be withdrawn from active duty and either restored to its original configuration (not going to happen; Fearless was chosen in the first place because her small size, age, and limited utility had her earmarked for disposal but she was large enough to serve as a testbed for the notion of a cruiser-mounted gravity lance) or immediately scrapped. Arguably, she should have. And practical reality, however, the decision was properly up to the people who had authorized the test exercise in the first place, which happened to be Edward Janacek's Admiralty. In fact, the officer who should have insisted that Fearless be withdrawn from service with her proper armament was undoubtedly First Space Lord Webster… who didn't. He horse-traded with Janacek, instead. Why? Because he didn't actually expect anything untoward to happen on Basilisk station, either. And he had other priorities rather than worrying about one, obsolete light cruiser which would certainly be scrapped at the end of its present commission, anyway. Indeed, he might actually have thought that allowing Honor to retain her command, even in Basilisk, would have been kinder than informing her that her ship was to be immediately scrapped.
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Re: NEED TO KNOW
Post by Theemile   » Fri May 13, 2022 8:29 am

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kzt wrote:David wrote a direct explanation here or on the bar about this.

https://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/37/1/

As far as Fearless' function in her scheme of things, she regarded the ship purely as a technological and tactical testbed. Honor's initial success against Sebastian D'Orville's flagship delighted Hemphill, because it appeared to be a vindication -- finally! -- of her determination to find technological ways account of long-standing tactical impasses. When it turned out that her brainchild didn't work if the other side knew it was coming, she got angry, and her anger showed in her communications with Honor. Her anger was even more intense because of the fact that things had looked so good in Honor's first ambush scenario. It was possibly unprofessional of her to allow that anger to show, and especially to make Honor feel that it was directed at her, but Hemphill did not ask to have Honor sent to Basilisk. In fact, she wasn't consulted at all. And if she had been consulted, she would have pointed out that the Fearless conversion had been carried out as part of a test program and that the test had not been a success. She would not have advocated [assigning] Fearless to a duty station where there was the least possibility of the ship being called to action. Now, she didn't protest the ship's deployment to Basilisk or argue that the ship must immediately be withdrawn from active duty and either restored to its original configuration (not going to happen; Fearless was chosen in the first place because her small size, age, and limited utility had her earmarked for disposal but she was large enough to serve as a testbed for the notion of a cruiser-mounted gravity lance) or immediately scrapped. Arguably, she should have. And practical reality, however, the decision was properly up to the people who had authorized the test exercise in the first place, which happened to be Edward Janacek's Admiralty. In fact, the officer who should have insisted that Fearless be withdrawn from service with her proper armament was undoubtedly First Space Lord Webster… who didn't. He horse-traded with Janacek, instead. Why? Because he didn't actually expect anything untoward to happen on Basilisk station, either. And he had other priorities rather than worrying about one, obsolete light cruiser which would certainly be scrapped at the end of its present commission, anyway. Indeed, he might actually have thought that allowing Honor to retain her command, even in Basilisk, would have been kinder than informing her that her ship was to be immediately scrapped. In short, Sonja Hemphill is not the appropriate person to blame for the fact that Fearless was committed to a combat situation with the armament she carried at the time. She is the appropriate person to blame -- or credit -- for the fact that Fearless had that armament, but, again, she never contemplated the ship's being used as anything but a testbed, unless, of course, the weapons combination have proved a brilliant success. Which she was quite well aware by the end of the fleet exercise it had not.


I believe he also mentioned elsewhere that Honor's career "sheparding" was partly to blame - it would be seen as a negative if her command stint lasted weeks, so rather than stripping command from her, the Admirality sent the ship to a secluded station where the ship's armament should not matter.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: NEED TO KNOW
Post by tlb   » Fri May 13, 2022 9:04 am

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Hemphill did not ask to have Honor sent to Basilisk. In fact, she wasn't consulted at all. And if she had been consulted, she would have pointed out that the Fearless conversion had been carried out as part of a test program and that the test had not been a success. She would not have advocated [assigning] Fearless to a duty station where there was the least possibility of the ship being called to action. Now, she didn't protest the ship's deployment to Basilisk or argue that the ship must immediately be withdrawn from active duty and either restored to its original configuration (not going to happen; Fearless was chosen in the first place because her small size, age, and limited utility had her earmarked for disposal but she was large enough to serve as a testbed for the notion of a cruiser-mounted gravity lance) or immediately scrapped.

It makes perfect sense to have chosen a ship for the test that was nearing its end of service. But whether Fearless would have immediately gone to the breakers, if she had not been chosen for this test, is still not clear to me. What we do know is that the ship was near the head of the list of those that would be scrapped, however the peacetime tempo of construction means that the actual replacement and scrapping might still be months to years away.

A question that occurs to me involves the state of Fearless after the fight: why put the effort into making her flight-worthy, if it is clear the ship is unrepairable? Is it simply that it was uneconomic to cut her up in Basilisk orbit and haul the pieces back in a freighter? Or is it that a ship placed on the List of Honor is awarded priviledges that otherwise might not be granted?
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Re: NEED TO KNOW
Post by Theemile   » Fri May 13, 2022 9:39 am

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The Courageous class (62 ships) and Nobelese Class destroyers (60 ships as a whole were being retired. Both averaged >70 years old as of OBS and had missile launchers which could not take the new variable warhead laserhead missile (IIRC Mk34 - those ships were stuck with the old Mk50 and had to swap warheads to the correct type), many of the remaining ships of the classes were gifted to Grayson after they aligned themselves with Manticore 3 years later (9 Courageous, 7 Nobelese), and the last ships were retired in 1909 and 1907 respectively.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: NEED TO KNOW
Post by Jonathan_S   » Fri May 13, 2022 9:52 am

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tlb wrote:
A question that occurs to me involves the state of Fearless after the fight: why put the effort into making her flight-worthy, if it is clear the ship is unrepairable? Is it simply that it was uneconomic to cut her up in Basilisk orbit and haul the pieces back in a freighter? Or is it that a ship placed on the List of Honor is awarded priviledges that otherwise might not be granted?

I don't know for sure but I suspect it was a combination of things.

1) A certain desire to honor the crew and the ship by letting her fly home to her decommissioning rather than being scrapped in place (where there's no facilities for it) or carried home as cargo.

2) There are a quite limited number of ships designed to transport other ships; and I have to imagine they tend to be quite expensive and often booked up well ahead of time carrying things like major station components -- so it might have been faster to patch Fearless up than to wait for a ship that could swallow her up and carry her home.

3) While it took 2 months for a fleet repair ship to patch Fearless up, that may not have been particularly expensive compared to the other options. (And it may have been seen as good peacetime training for the repair ship's crew). Most of the things they'd have to install, like replacement impeller nodes, would be stripped right back out and go back into inventory after she arrives in the Manticore system and scrapping begins. So most of the cost seems like it would be the man-hours -- and the navy's paying the repair ship crew either way.

4) Being peacetime there probably wasn't anything more urgent for the repair ship to do.

So my suspicion is that the fact that they continued to be a peace meant that freeing up the resources ASAP wasn't a priority and that allowed some combination of training, cost, and honoring the ship and crew to swing things in favor of patching Fearless up well enough for one final flight home. (Plus it makes for a better story than Fearless is being cut to pieces in the background while Home Fleet sits there to intimidate the Peeps)
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Re: NEED TO KNOW
Post by kzt   » Fri May 13, 2022 2:11 pm

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An 8Mt freighter is perfectly capable of hauling a CL if the cargo doors are large enough. I know it can handle a DD.
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Re: NEED TO KNOW
Post by Jonathan_S   » Fri May 13, 2022 4:44 pm

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kzt wrote:An 8Mt freighter is perfectly capable of hauling a CL if the cargo doors are large enough. I know it can handle a DD.

That kind of a assumes the hold(s) are contiguous (and that you can rig some kind of appropriate bracing to hold the CL steady within the hold).[1]

Doesn't do you much good if the doors are wide enough for the ship to pass between but the hold behind them is too shallow for whole length of the ship -- say a freighter subdivided lengthwise into 8-10 holds that each run side to side across the ship and each with their own large cargo hatch (or possibly a large cargo hatch in each broadside, so you could load/unlock from both sides, or treat it kind of like a Ro-Ro). So, say, a 45x45 meter opening and a 60m wide hold which only goes back 200m (to the far broadside); good luck fitting a 389m light cruiser in such a hold.

But sure, on a pure volume scale the total hold volume of an 8mt freighter dwarfs the volume of a CL.

---
[1] I believe you're alluding to this bit from IEH "Honor's cutter drifted through the enormous hatch of HMS Wayfarer's Number One Hold. The small craft was a tiny minnow against the vast, star-speckled maw of cargo doors which could easily have admitted a destroyer, and the hold they served was built to the same gargantuan scale." It doesn't clearly say that the hold was large enough to fit an entire destroyer; just that the doors were large enough and the hold was very large. But also, that hold was being modified with Warfarer's pod rails, so to carry enough pods the yard may well have modified the freighter to lengthen that hold, in addition to adding the rear cargo/pod doors and extending the hold (and pod rails) all the way to the aft end of the ship. In it's pre-conversion service the number one (rearmost?) hold might have been smaller than what's described here.

But at a minimum if you have to specify it was the number 1 hold that logically implies that she's subdivided into multiple holds; so at a minimum we know all it's cargo space isn't available to try to slip one warship into.
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Re: NEED TO KNOW
Post by cthia   » Fri May 13, 2022 5:00 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:
kzt wrote:An 8Mt freighter is perfectly capable of hauling a CL if the cargo doors are large enough. I know it can handle a DD.

That kind of a assumes the hold(s) are contiguous (and that you can rig some kind of appropriate bracing to hold the CL steady within the hold).[1]

Doesn't do you much good if the doors are wide enough for the ship to pass between but the hold behind them is too shallow for whole length of the ship -- say a freighter subdivided lengthwise into 8-10 holds that each run side to side across the ship and each with their own large cargo hatch (or possibly a large cargo hatch in each broadside, so you could load/unlock from both sides, or treat it kind of like a Ro-Ro). So, say, a 45x45 meter opening and a 60m wide hold which only goes back 200m (to the far broadside); good luck fitting a 389m light cruiser in such a hold.

But sure, on a pure volume scale the total hold volume of an 8mt freighter dwarfs the volume of a CL.

---
[1] I believe you're alluding to this bit from IEH "Honor's cutter drifted through the enormous hatch of HMS Wayfarer's Number One Hold. The small craft was a tiny minnow against the vast, star-speckled maw of cargo doors which could easily have admitted a destroyer, and the hold they served was built to the same gargantuan scale." It doesn't clearly say that the hold was large enough to fit an entire destroyer; just that the doors were large enough and the hold was very large. But also, that hold was being modified with Warfarer's pod rails, so to carry enough pods the yard may well have modified the freighter to lengthen that hold, in addition to adding the rear cargo/pod doors and extending the hold (and pod rails) all the way to the aft end of the ship. In it's pre-conversion service the number one (rearmost?) hold might have been smaller than what's described here.

But at a minimum if you have to specify it was the number 1 hold that logically implies that she's subdivided into multiple holds; so at a minimum we know all it's cargo space isn't available to try to slip one warship into.

I would think that freighters would be reconfigurable on demand. Why not, some automobiles are, and SUVs too. If you are in the business to transport goods, why limit the utility of your vehicle. Remember the phrase, build it and they will come. But I imagine the need to move something that large is what prompted the ability.

And the reconfigurable doors can be made to slide into place behind another door to increase the overall strength.

As far as strapping one down, what's wrong with tractors?

Do note that the inside of 18-wheelers are somewhat configurable depending on the product transported.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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