The Terran Northern Campaign
Since the beginning of the Naplian wars it became obvious that the vast majority of Terran commanders were not prepared for the style of warfare waged by their enemies. Most of the problems with the Terran commanders arose because they were still adhering to the principle of warfare used during the consular wars. The most notable Terran commander was Adm. Tanaka, whose victories in the northern Terran campaigns caused some of her contemporaries, and later many historians, to consider her the greatest Terran commander of the Emperors’ War. Adm. Ubomo thought Tanaka to be the best among all Grand Alliance commanders. To be sure she was the most popular admiral among the Terran forces.
Although admired by the military, Tanaka was not popular with the government. Within the circles of power Tanaka was considered a radical whose ideas were far too removed from the traditions established before the time of the consular wars. It was feared that Tanaka might use her popularity to turn the military against the government. Such distrust could not, however, blemish Tanaka’s military talents, and in 2675, the government reluctantly appointed her as commander-in-chief. Tanaka struggled against conservatives in an effort to reform and modernize the military. Despite her work, only minor administrative progress was made prior to 2678. The largest creation by Tanaka during that time was the reform of the quartermaster branch, which had become a bureaucratic nightmare of incompetent management and red tape. Seeking reform in every area, she sought to reduce the term of service to six years for all branches, thereby encouraging more volunteers. While her blanket request was denied, she did succeed in reducing the enlistment term to 6 years in the Terran Army, and 8 years in the stellar navy branches, aircraft components and technical ranks.
In her position as Chair of the Joint Services Chiefs of Staff, Tanaka strongly opposed joining the Grand Alliance in 2678, probably because she, as no one else, could see that the military was not ready to meet the Naplians on equal terms. Her opposition to the war caused the government to name General Ubomo as co-equal commander of the Terran forces in the north. Tanaka retained her position as overall commander but with only a support and consultation role in the northern theater of operations. However, in actual practice, Ubomo deferred to Tanaka’s directions and in instances where Ubomo was unavailable or incapacitated, Tanaka would take up overall command. After Ubomo was cut off and the rest of the northern fleets decisively defeated in the Bara Nebula campaign, Tanaka assumed command of all the remaining elements of the Terran military.
Her stand against hostilities and good military performance in salvaging the remaining Terran elements in the northern theater of operations prompted her brother joint chiefs to elevate Tanaka to Admiral of the Navy status in 2690. With this new rank Tanaka expected to make all the necessary reforms so desperately needed by her military forces. When compared to other Terran general grade officers of the day, Tanaka appeared to be extremely liberal. However, Tanaka was also an old-fashioned officer with many conservative traits. She retained a ludicrously huge and cumbersome supply fleet. She objected to the proposition that, in war, one should annihilate the enemy, and thus lacked the conviction to crush her opponent. More importantly, believed that the military should always be kept as intact as possible since it was the symbol of Terran power and therefore the guarantor of the Republic. This belief caused much hesitancy and the inability to take military risks necessary for success during the Emperor’s War.
Tanaka was different from most other Terran commanders in two distinctive ways. She carefully studied the Naplian military and its tactics, and as a result of that study, was an extremely able tactician, capable of deploying her troops and starships to the greatest advantage. Secondly, her personal courage was beyond reproach. When considering her rank, how she exposed herself to danger and combat could be considered reckless. Nevertheless, her appearance on the bridge of a battlecruiser or in the headquarters of an orbital jump army was often required since very few other Terran admirals and general grade officers were willing to take the risks necessary to inspire their troops.
Although other officers rarely acted in bravado, they considered themselves tradition-bound, proud professionals. This feeling of tradition, which prevailed upon all phases of Terran military life, bedeviled and confounded Tanaka’s reform efforts. Since junior officers were content to perform functions in their customary way rather than executing the new regulations, very few of Tanaka’s reforms remained in use after she retired.
Tanaka reorganized the stellar navy into the old system of squadrons, naval divisions, task forces, and fleets. Each fleet was a miniature navy, much like that of the Naplian Naval Corps, including its own ground and air forces. Tanaka wished for all heavy warship squadrons in her command to be concentrated into a massive reserve fleet. Personally supervising these squadrons, Tanaka would commit them at key points to achieve maximum results. However, such formations proved to be extremely difficult to maneuver and maintain to come to grips with a more mobile adversary. These formations proved vulnerable to the enemy. The formations often proved ineffective when confronted with agile enemy cruisers who could pounce on the ships of the line before completing their evolutions. Therefore Tanaka invented the squadron mass and the fleet mass, both of which could engage cruisers as well as maneuver in the face of destroyer screens. Of all of Tanaka’s reforms, the squadron mass proved to be the most lasting.
For the Republic to successfully wage war against Naplia in the 28th century, many reasoned that the number of men and women under arms would have to be increased. The logical solution was to develop an expanded colonial force to support the regulars. On this issue however, Tanaka agreed with the minister of war that a strong colonial military was undesirable, and she remained opposed to such a plan until the spring of 2680 when it became clear that expanding the regular military would drive the Republic into bankruptcy. As a result, many colonial units and “free” corps served alongside the regulars during the battles of the 2680s and ‘90s.
While most of the changes instituted by Tanaka improved the fighting capabilities of the military, the effect of those reforms upon the leadership of the military was minimized by the stultified culture of the various Terran Officer Corps.
In the 2690s, the regulars of the Republic were usually conscripted into the military whereas the colonial formations were supposed to consist entirely of volunteers. However, rarely were volunteer quotas filled and local authorities had to resort to all forms of trickery, blackmail, and deceit in order to fill the ranks.
Summary
The Terran forces which took the field in the 2680s did so with confidence in spirit not shown in the past generation. The officers seemed to take more initiative on the tactical level than had been taken in previous campaigns. Discarding their characteristic tendency to perverse survival before other duty, both the officer corps and the rank-and-file were animated by the prospects of victory under the inspirational leadership of Admiral Ubomo.
Though a better commander than almost every other Terran admiral, Ubomo was not without her faults. In addition to her conservatism, as previously discussed in this chapter, the Adm. was prone to serious bouts of depression. When these attacks occurred, the entire fleet seemed rudderless as her staff and Corps commanders proved incapable of making decisions in her absence. The Theater commander-in-chief was confronted with the problem of a diminutive staff manned by personnel uneducated for such important duties. As a result, Ubomo couldn't issue battle plans to her corps and divisions and have them carried out with speed.
Therefore, the supreme commander Admiral Tanaka needed to prepare the Terran plan of battle well in advance, estimating as best she could the possible enemy courses of action as she might be unable to change operational orders if one of her formations could not or did not follow the prescribed plan of battle as was the case when Ubomo failed to appear in the second month of the Bara Nebula campaign. In an attempt to retain flexibility, Tanaka usually issued instructions only to the forward starship divisions, thereby keeping at her disposal for immediate commitment, the formations of the stellar naval reserve.
The system of command devised and implemented by Admiral Tanaka, though better than that of prior campaigns and even superior to that employed during the Second Consular War, proved to be inadequate, especially for offensive operations. Once plans had been issued, the conservative squadron and task force commanders either attempted to carry them out, found them unfeasible, and assumed the defensive, or found them impossible to implement and withdrew. Due to the frequently changing circumstances of battle, the more competent field commanders often had to deviate from their set operational orders, placing themselves at the head of starship formations and personally leading them into action. When such a situation arose, those leaders could not function in their other capacities. It was the most inefficient way to command a large force. Hence the Terran sailor’s turn of phrase “An admiral’s ensign in his duffle bag.”
The problems that Adm. Tanaka faced were typical of the difficulties inherent in the Terran military system. Perhaps the root of these problems lay in the highly conservative social and political structure of the Terran Republic, where upward mobility was stifled and military rank seen as a kind of birthright removed most incentives towards military proficiency.
