"Don't Mess With Texas"

[Trajan Helmer]

That makes for a much more interesting scenario, but I still want to know who was the genius who thought that taking assault Dropships against a Texas Class was a good idea.  Also, if only two of six boarding shuttles made it to the target, it makes me wonder about the planning abilities of SLDF officers; that kind of casualty rate looks more like a result of something akin to  Pickett's charge.

"You go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had."  'Nuff said

[Paladin1]

See, no one mentioned a McKenna.  That changes things quite a bit.  From the way that it was presented, it sounded like they tried to take over the PE with just Assault Droppers and shuttles, which didn't make sense because I knew that there were other Warships available.

[Weirdo]

It just makes sense to me. You go after a battleship and you have several dozen of your own, why not bring one or two or three? If anything, Kerensky was probably prepared to blow Prinz Eugen in half if the boarding action failed.

[nerd]

Heck, I would have gone for the Trojan Horse method.  Send in a negotiator, and follow him up with a large group of boarders.

"General Kerensky's son is here as a negotiator.  Along with 160 staffers." >:D

Don't forget, there were other Texas class ships in the Exodus, so the Kerensky Loyal Marines would have worked the situation out on how to take over the Bridge, CIC, and Maneuvering/Engineering Control in detail before going in.  It would be not unlike the preps the Israelis had for the Entebbe raid (Operation Thunderbolt).

The best defense the crew has against boarders is knowing their ship very well.  If the boarders know the targets lay out, it's a level of magnitude harder to defend against them.

UPDATE:  If you're going against a hard target, loosing 38 dead and 56 wounded is not bad.  If there were potential hostages that could be used against mutineers, the butcher's bill on the attackers would be moderated.  Assuming you had a "distraction team" that went in expecting to die at an outlying location, Andrey Kerensky and Elizabeth Hazen's groups could have taken strategic points with out a problem.

And in my opinion, 160 boarders to hold a ship is not enough.  I'd want at least twice the crew, in sheer numbers.

For a good treatment on boarding starships, try GURPS Traveller:  Ground Forces.  BORDERS AWAY!  For Strephon!

[Stormlion1]

Quick question, does anyone know if all the mutineers were willing? When the Prinz Eugen left Kerenskys Fleet did it leave behind anyone unwilling to leave or did it take everyone aboard with them. If they took everyone its possible that Kerensky Loyalist aboard the ships may have allowed or made it easier to retake the ship.

[monty]

Quick question, does anyone know if all the mutineers were willing? When the Prinz Eugen left Kerenskys Fleet did it leave behind anyone unwilling to leave or did it take everyone aboard with them. If they took everyone its possible that Kerensky Loyalist aboard the ships may have allowed or made it easier to retake the ship.

There were Kerensky loyalists aboard the Prinz Eugen when it left. When the chief mutineers were pit on trial dozens of soldiers & civilians who had opposed the mutiny were allowed to be present. Their disheveled bloody appearance & ragged appearance were ample evidence of their attempts to redeem the worst of the mutineers. ( Founding of the Clans. Fall From Grace.) FM Warden Clans describes those who opposed the mutiny as a vocal minority including Tseng & Jorgenson, the founders of the Ghost Bears who demonstrated their loyalty by helping to put it down.

Don't forget, there were other Texas class ships in the Exodus, so the Kerensky Loyal Marines would have worked the situation out on how to take over the Bridge, CIC, and Maneuvering/Engineering Control in detail before going in.  It would be not unlike the preps the Israelis had for the Entebbe raid (Operation Thunderbolt).

The best defense the crew has against boarders is knowing their ship very well.  If the boarders know the targets lay out, it's a level of magnitude harder to defend against them.

UPDATE:  If you're going against a hard target, loosing 38 dead and 56 wounded is not bad.  If there were potential hostages that could be used against mutineers, the butcher's bill on the attackers would be moderated.  Assuming you had a "distraction team" that went in expecting to die at an outlying location, Andrey Kerensky and Elizabeth Hazen's groups could have taken strategic points with out a problem.

And in my opinion, 160 boarders to hold a ship is not enough.  I'd want at least twice the crew, in sheer numbers.

That seems to be pretty much what happened, a distraction followed by a strike on the command element of the mutiny. Fall From Grace describes Hazen signalling the assault dropships to redouble their efforts after her force had boarded the Prinz Eugen to try & distract the bridge personnel just long enough for a strike at the bridgeto succeed. Gen. Braso surrendered the ship after Adm Votok & most of the executive staff were killed during the strike on the bridge.

[Auman]

"You go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had."  'Nuff said

That's one of the worst generalized cop outs that's ever been quoted. When you have decades to plan and then execute a battle plan, you totally do get to go to war with the army you want. You only get to bust that one out when someone jacks your [expletive deleted] out of no where.

Anyway, Weirdo's got the best answer here in my opinion.

[Jellico]

That's one of the worst generalized cop outs that's ever been quoted. When you have decades to plan and then execute a battle plan, you totally do get to go to war with the army you want. You only get to bust that one out when someone jacks your [expletive deleted] out of no where.

Anyway, Weirdo's got the best answer here in my opinion.

Everyone always wants more X and extra Y. Armies have similar limits on access to resources as any other governmental department. And the march of time and technology puts militaries on an endless cycle of development, deployment then disposal, sometimes never seeing conflict and actually testing if their doctrine or equipment works.

And that is before contact is made with the enemy, at which point all plans are off. Armies are forever having to fight in places there were never meant to against enemies that were never considered. This leads into the ol' trying to refight the last war, not because you are stupid, but because it worked. You only change if something didn't work the last time. Trying to guess what might work without practice is a fools game and sometimes a necessary one.

Going to war with the army you have and trying to refight the last war are standards because its a pretty normal situation.

[Auman]

The problem I have with the quote extends into the real world, which I won't get into here. But the major, non-controversial, problem I have with it is that it's just a poor quote. You have to time to build the army you want before going to war. If you then suddenly realize that you want a different army and now have to fight it with the one you have, that's no longer a legitimate gripe but a lame cop out by a person they didn't really exercise much in the way of caution or foresight.

It's an ideological disapproval of a concept I find silly.

[DaveMac]

The problem I have with the quote extends into the real world, which I won't get into here. But the major, non-controversial, problem I have with it is that it's just a poor quote. You have to time to build the army you want before going to war. If you then suddenly realize that you want a different army and now have to fight it with the one you have, that's no longer a legitimate gripe but a lame cop out by a person they didn't really exercise much in the way of caution or foresight.

It's an ideological disapproval of a concept I find silly.

You could argue that the SLDF was so large it included units suitable for use in just about any circumstance.

How much of the capability was left to the Exodus fleet is debatable.

 

[DarthRads]

See, no one mentioned a McKenna.  That changes things quite a bit.  From the way that it was presented, it sounded like they tried to take over the PE with just Assault Droppers and shuttles, which didn't make sense because I knew that there were other Warships available.

If I remember the FOUNDING OF THE CLANS BattleCorp story right, it was the Mckenna's Pride itself that chased them down, so yeah, a Mckenna was likely present

[Colt Ward]

The problem I have with the quote extends into the real world, which I won't get into here. But the major, non-controversial, problem I have with it is that it's just a poor quote. You have to time to build the army you want before going to war. If you then suddenly realize that you want a different army and now have to fight it with the one you have, that's no longer a legitimate gripe but a lame cop out by a person they didn't really exercise much in the way of caution or foresight.

It's an ideological disapproval of a concept I find silly.

And I find your lack of historical perspective silly?  The reason its a quotation is that history has borne it out.  R&D goes into overtime when wars are on, just look at the development from the begining of World War 1 to the end, or the same for WWII.  You can sit here with perfect hindsight and say that cavalry should have been abandoned before World War 1 broke out, but it was still in use by some nations into World War 2 (enter Polish jokes).  Why?  Because no one tested massed cavalry charges against dug in machine guns before WWI, and in the previous centuries cavalry was the mobile shock forces that could break/rout enemies.

With the perfect knowledge of hindsight and the visuals from movies with black & white pictures of WWI and WWII we KNOW how deadly machine guns are . . . why would anyone race a bunch of men mounted on horses at a machine gun position?

Heck, American troops in the Revolutionary War showed the folly of marching in formation to stand in front of your enemy to fire . . . and yet a bit over 90 years later we were doing the very thing in many battles of the Civil War even though artillery had gotten much more dangerous and we had the precursor of machine guns and repeating rifles.

[Cerberus_02]

See, no one mentioned a McKenna.

Exactly.  I was expecting information that was a bit more specific than:

With faster ships and faster shuttles, and backup with heavy guns.

I was surprised it took two pages before Weirdo actually started giving ship classes, tactics, etc.  :P

Idk if it's just the quality of the sarna.net entry, but it implies that there were "only" 160 marines involved in the boarding action; IMO, 160 out of a much larger force would seem more realistic...

[Weirdo]

Wait, I had to be more specific than 'heavy guns'? ??? We already know we're facing down a Texas, what was your idea of minimum acceptable 'heavy guns'?

[jimdigris]

I have to agree with "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had." 
One historical example that comes to mind:  At the Battle of Midway in WW2, the American navy was using hopelessly obsolete torpedo bombers and lost them in alarming numbers.  They did so because at the time they weren't mass producing anything better.  America lost a lot of ground early in the war because the quality and quantity of equiptment (planes for example) was inferior to the Japanese.  That changed as the need arose.

[Dark_Falcon]

I haven't heard it either.  I'm going from memory here, but I thought when the Invisible Truth first makes an appearance (in Grave Covenant, IIRC?) Beresick or someone speculates that they were left behind because their lack of reliability.

Perhaps it was that bad power-distribution system the Cameron-class suffered from.  Perhaps it was during those two ships initial refit that Comstar developed its fix for the system (TRO: 3057r makes clear that Comstar was able to fix the problem).