On the 24th May 1864 Grant gifted Lee the kind of opportunity that rarely happens in a campaign: to wreck the other’s army.
After the bloodletting of May 5-12th, that cost Lee 22000 casualties and Grant 34000,'weakening both armies by 33% and 25% respectively, Grant again disengaged and moved South towards Richmond. Lee had followed and had been reinforced with 7 small Brigades from his capital.
Grant had inadvertentally straddled his large army across the North Anna river.
Lee saw the way to take advantage of his smaller numbers and punish the Federal II Corps, Grant’s best. He could throw 30000 men at the 24000 that were over the V in the river separating Grant’s two halves of his army. Hancock’s 24000 could not be reinforced, because of the V of the river, so he readied his assault.
On the afternoon of the 24th Lee fell violently sick with diarrhoea. He lay helplessly for hours while the opportunity to assault, before the Union commanders realised the sure situation were in.
The reason Lee’s defensive strike could not be undertaken was simple: the attrition of the last 19 days had robbed him of a subordinate able to manage it.
Time and opportunity passed. Grant and Hancock’s isolated Corps were extremely lucky.
We all know the loss of a quarter of Grant’s force would never have changed his resolve to “fight it all out, even if it takes all Summer”, but another battering would have diminished his potential to do so sooner.
A&A pieces on The Last Ship
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Yesterday I was watching The Last Ship, a post-apocalyptic tv series about a US destroyer, when I spotted that the characters were using A&A battleship pieces to represent ships during a confrontation with a Russian cruiser. :D
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Interesting.
While I may have at one time found a show like The Last Ship interesting, I now see them as the poor, superficial productions they are.
Granted, I have never watched a single episode of this show to confirm that suspicion.
Did they talk about A&A in the show, or just happen to have the pieces around and decide to use them?
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The Last Ship, a post-apocalyptic tv series about a US destroyer
Never heard of it, but about fifteen years ago I bought a post-WWIII-nuclear-apocalypse novel about a US destroyer which had the same title. Is the TV series related?
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@CWO:
The Last Ship, a post-apocalyptic tv series about a US destroyer
Never heard of it, but about fifteen years ago I bought a post-WWIII-nuclear-apocalypse novel about a US destroyer which had the same title. Is the TV series related?
Does this show address how the destroyer keeps operating in a post-apocalyptic world? I mean, I assume they can’t just pull into a port and refuel. Arleigh Burke class destroyers are conventionally powered after all.
I am also assuming the US is no longer a functioning country.
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Looks like I sort of addressed my own question, but show probably still ignores a lot of the realities of such a situation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ship_(TV_series)
Looks like you were correct Marc, it is based on the novel.
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Does this show address how the destroyer keeps operating in a post-apocalyptic world? I mean, I assume they can’t just pull into a port and refuel. Arleigh Burke class destroyers are conventionally powered after all.
I am also assuming the US is no longer a functioning country.In the novel the destroyer was nuclear-powered - which struck me as improbable for such a ship type, even allowing for the fact that some modern destroyers are the size of WWII cruisers. The US once operated a nuclear guided missile “destroyer leader”, the Bainbridge, but she was later reclassed as a cruiser.
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Oh no, WARNING! It is a Michael Bay production.
Now we know what we have gotten ourselves into.
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Well spotted Hobbes.
It is not a programme I know either. -
Did they talk about A&A in the show, or just happen to have the pieces around and decide to use them?
They just use the pieces while discussing a mission. It’s actually funny since I’ve just read that they are using CGI and the actual USS Iowa to represent the Russian Kirov-class cruiser present on the series and the A&A piece for the US battleship is modeled after the Iowa class.
@CWO:
Does this show address how the destroyer keeps operating in a post-apocalyptic world? I mean, I assume they can’t just pull into a port and refuel. Arleigh Burke class destroyers are conventionally powered after all.
I am also assuming the US is no longer a functioning country.In the novel the destroyer was nuclear-powered - which struck me as improbable for such a ship type, even allowing for the fact that some modern destroyers are the size of WWII cruisers. The US once operated a nuclear guided missile “destroyer leader”, the Bainbridge, but she was later reclassed as a cruiser.
Well, the US had the Long Beach, Truxtun, Bainbridge, California and Virginia classes of Destroyer Leaders, all of them with nuclear propulsion and later reclassified as cruisers. The Burkes are classified as destroyers but their displacement is about the same and they pack more missiles than those cruiser classes.
By the 4th episode they had to refuel twice, first from an abandoned cruise liner off the French coast and then at Gitmo.
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The Burkes are classified as destroyers but their displacement is about the same and they pack more missiles than those cruiser classes.
Thanks for the info. I once heard this phenemenon referred to as “weight/class inflation.”
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By the 4th episode they had to refuel twice, first from an abandoned cruise liner off the French coast and then at Gitmo.
Well that is good. At least they are addressing that issue. The might need to get pretty creative though.
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It is a good show, if you take it for what it is. I watch and like it. :-)