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The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

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11–20 of 172 posts

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#11
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flying wraiths lack firepower, so they provide no real air support. Just fast transportation/communication.

The film does show them mowing down soldiers with their claws and inspiring terror in others: https://youtu.be/HX4KKkSKZAY?t=197

I seem to recall that one of the names for Angmar was "The Captain of Despair" - literally a terror weapon.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#12

Next up: How Gondor won despite a complete lack of air support (see: winged wraiths) and superior enemy armor (see: Mumakil).

They had ghost reinforcements that executed a textbook flank[1].

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanking_maneuver

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#13
post #5

Next up: How Gondor won despite a complete lack of air support (see: winged wraiths) and superior enemy armor (see: Mumakil).

Flying wraiths lack firepower, so they provide no real air support. Just fast transportation/communication.

I just rewatched the battle scene from the movie, and the wraiths took out a few trebuchets and a decent number of soldiers on the wall. They weren't effective against soldiers under any sort of cover, but picking up and dropping soldiers on the city would be a good psychological warfare technique. Gandalf is seen riding around the city telling soldiers to return to their posts.

And the communication and intelligence that flying wraiths would allow is no small asset. Part of the advantage of a walled city is a view of the enemy approach while hiding your own formation. Good areal surveillance eliminates that advantage for the defending side.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#14
post #10

It seems the author also missed the fact orcs are perfectly alright with cannibalism, which further alleviates the supply problem, perhaps even to the point of not requiring the supplies at all (a few thousand orcs eaten along the way wont make much difference). I doubt this has much precedent in history.

It does remind slightly me of Amundsen's approach on his south pole expedition of killing dogs and feeding them to the men and the other dogs.

Lord Curzon was rather rude to him about it.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#15
post #5

Next up: How Gondor won despite a complete lack of air support (see: winged wraiths) and superior enemy armor (see: Mumakil).

Flying wraiths lack firepower, so they provide no real air support. Just fast transportation/communication.

... And extremely effective morale suppression of their foes, which is an excellent force multiplier for the armies of Mordor

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#16
post #3

Next up: How Gondor won despite a complete lack of air support (see: winged wraiths) and superior enemy armor (see: Mumakil).

There's a lot of military SF (and, I guess, fantasy that I've never read as much of) that wants to mostly restrict the action to ground forces. The result is that they have to either just ignore the decisive power of air support or just come up with hand-wavy explanations for why air powerisn't effective in the hypothetical scenario.

The Nightmare Stacks by Charles Stross includes (spoiler) an assault on the city of Leeds in the UK by a combined arms Elven battle group. The elves have Battle-tested air-land integration doctrine that sees them using their dragons in a close air support role. The elves use other magical means for ISR of the deep battle. Stross’ elves are somewhat more waffen-SS than Tolkien’s

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#17
post #3

Next up: How Gondor won despite a complete lack of air support (see: winged wraiths) and superior enemy armor (see: Mumakil).

There's a lot of military SF (and, I guess, fantasy that I've never read as much of) that wants to mostly restrict the action to ground forces. The result is that they have to either just ignore the decisive power of air support or just come up with hand-wavy explanations for why air powerisn't effective in the hypothetical scenario.

Fictional battles that are worth to be described in detail might often directly involve the main characters or influential persons and therefore it might be out of question to bombard the battlefield and kill everyone. (wellll... at least as long as you are not G.R.R. Martin and turn everyone and their direwolve into a main character or do not care if a main character dies. When killing main characters, it certainly helps if you have enough of them which brings us back to the first point).

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#18
post #4
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of military SF (and, I guess, fantasy that I've never read as much of) that wants to mostly restrict the action to ground forces. The result is that they have to either just ignore the decisive power of air support or just come up with hand-wavy explanations for why air powerisn't effective in the hypothetical scenario.

Sounds a bit like things rendering Enterprise's transporters inoperative just when beaming up the away-team would have been the easiest solution. Oh, and to make it less obvious, you better announce a few minutes earlier that a plasma storm is forming in the upper atmosphere.

Or my favorite order never heard on the bridge of Enterprise "nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure". Fine, often it would go against the ethos of what they are trying to do. But sometimes, they could have beamed home the away team and proceeded to rain fiery death from above with photon torpedoes or whatever.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#19
post #13
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flying wraiths lack firepower, so they provide no real air support. Just fast transportation/communication.

I just rewatched the battle scene from the movie, and the wraiths took out a few trebuchets and a decent number of soldiers on the wall. They weren't effective against soldiers under any sort of cover, but picking up and dropping soldiers on the city would be a good psychological warfare technique. Gandalf is seen riding around the city telling soldiers to return to their posts. And the communication and intelligence…

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