ThinksMarkedly wrote:cthia wrote:Would Eighth Fleet have taken it on the Chin, had she only had 18 podnaughts?
Or would it, Chin's chin, have absorbed the blow?
Or, forsaking layman's terms, could Honor have wiped chin off, if she hadn't been reinforced?
She could have, since she outranged and outshot Chin. The problem is that with a lower kill ratio, it might be too little too late. Chin might have decided to take absorb the blows to the chin while finishing off Home and Third Fleets, then linking up with Tourville. Then Eighth Fleet would be facing the combined remnants of Second and Third Fleets. Eighth Fleet was 150 million km away from Second, out-system to it. Honor proved she could shoot from that far, but we're talking about a 90 million km coasting phase and if Eighth Fleet hadn't been reinforced, she might not be able to destroy what remained of the RHN before they made it to Manticore orbit and demanded the Queen's surrender.
Ignoring the numbering of fleets in your post, as it's obvious what you meant.Haven was basically playing for a battle of mutual destruction with 3rd/8th Fleet the same as they did with Home Fleet. They were gambling that neither Home Fleet nor 3rd Fleet had ANY Apollo ships, and 8th Fleet had not many more than the
twelve they'd seen. Not the 30ish they actually ran into.
2nd Fleet took out Home Fleet, losing about half their ships in the process. Between the 100+ combat effective survivors of 2nd Fleet and the 96 fresh SDs from 5th Fleet, they were expecting to be able to take the 80ish SDs of the combined 3rd/8th Fleets - more than two and a half to one odds, even better than what 2nd Fleet had when it hit Home Fleet. I'm fairly sure not all of 3rd Fleet's SDs were podlayers, either, so the effective odds would have been even higher. Plus the advantage of hitting them from two different directions, thinning out their missile defense screen.
Even if 8th Fleet had a few more Apollo ships than Haven thought they did, the pincer effect
should have meant that only one of Haven's fleets would get completely boned. After all, 8th Fleet couldn't send that massive Alpha launch in two different directions at once. So the worst case Haven planned on would have been that Second Fleet got finished off by the Apollo ships while the salvos 2nd and 5th fleets got off in that time would wreck enough of 3rd/8th Fleets that 5th Fleet could finish them off as soon as they could chase the survivors down. They were expecting (stupidly, as discussed elsewhere) timed fire such as was used at Lovat rather than a massive Alpha launch, which would have meant far more launches from 2nd Fleet while it was being wrecked.
Harrington coming through an hour late made the whole difference. If she'd been on the terminus ready to go, Haven would have had a good chance of wiping out all three fleets, even if they'd have been too weak afterward to face the planetary defenses or even the Lynx and Basilisk pickets.
If she'd been a even few more hours out from the terminus or out on a raid, the plan would have forced the settlement Haven wanted. There was no way Manticore could have survived losing 150 SDs, even if Haven couldn't immediately follow through on the advantage by killing their infrastructure. Manticore simply wouldn't have any ships available for offensive operations.