See Hell Rock. (Scroll down.)
When Ferune and his staff evacuate, he looks back. Hell Rock is cratered, congealed where it had run molten and in some places glowing. A hit on a site with defenses down would destroy the flagship outright. However, a sufficiently precise hit is unlikely so the Terrans do not waste their supermissiles against Hell Rock's remaining capacity to intercept them although they continue to snipe.
When Avalon strikes, Hell Rock is silhouetted against a fireball covering half the sky. Ferune at least takes a lethal dose of radiation so is he too killed by friendly fire?
In the case of Three Stars, a tracker torpedo bound for further out had detected the ship's emissions. Refinements like recognition circuits were not in place because the scale of the Avalonian response had sacrificed quality to quantity. Defending ships were not supposed to be as close in as Three Stars had become in her dog fight with Hooting Star which, having become an inert mass, was now safe from tracker missiles.
There are lessons in here somewhere.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I never noticed or that of that before, that First Marchwarden Ferune suffered a lethal does of radiation because of friendly fire! An important detail I missed in my previous readings of THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND. If Ferune had ordered an evacuation from HELL ROCK of his remaining crew and staff even just half an hour earlier, that might have been enough time to get a safe distance from the Avalonian barrage.
Ad astra! Sean
One of the lessons is "war is approximate".
Eg., when the "rolling barrage" was invented in WW1, it was discovered that attacking infantry were well advised to "hug the barrage", staying as close as fifty yards to the line of exploding shells that was moving ahead of them.
Being that close meant you'd take casualties from rounds that were "short" or from freaks of ballistics in the trajectories of shell fragments.
But you'd take a lot -fewer- casualties than you would if the Germans had time to get out of their bunkers and man their Maxim guns. The shells kept them from doing that.
A few well-placed Maxims could wipe out a battalion caught in the open, so it was better to suck it up and accept the odd man blown to bits or mutilated from your own shells.
In WWII, "friendly fire" caused between 5% and 15% of American infantry losses in any engagement with artillery support -- and American artillery was much better directed than anyone else's, because of better radios, more observers, and more airborne surveillance.
You still wanted all the artillery support you could get.
In large-scale combat, artillery is the big killer -- but that's because automatic weapons pin foot soldiers in place for the howitzers to chew on.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I appreciate how you made clearer, from real world history and experience, how losses from "friendly fire" simply can't always be avoided. The examples Paul gave from THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND might have been simply dismissed or ignored. The historical examples you gave vindicates Anderson's use of "friendly fire" (which can also be found in your own stories).
Ad astra! Sean
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