I’ve been play TIE Fighter for the past few weeks, and anyone whose played this game to campaign 7 knows that Admiral Zaarin decides to take the fleets under his control and turn againest the empire at large(the motives so far aren’t clear).
What bothers me…exactly how does one just run off with a fleet? Presumably it won’t be too hard to fool the average Enlisted crewmember. They only know what their officers tell them. Presumably the captains of the ships are handpicked by the Admiral to be loyal to him, but what about the other officers? Even the captains seems a bit much, particulary in a system that holds the greatest loyalty to National Leader(in this case, Emperor Palpatine).
You can’t replace all the officers on all the ships with loyal cronies, and eventually, you’d think somebody is going to figure out they aren’t taking orders from the Emperor anymore. And you can bet certain officers aren’t going to be happy about that. Mutiny is an ugly word. The fact they are fighting other Star destoryers is going to raise questions.
You can extroplate this to a real world scenario, like if an Admiral controlling a US Carrier battle group decided to take his fleet and become a pirate, perhaps hitting some US defense assests(ports, other battle groups) without warning to prevent pursuit. Obviously some things have to change for the star wars universe but the general priciple can stand.
But still, how does one realistically run off with a naval fleet?
You do realize that the helmsman is enlisted? You know, the guy who actually steers the ship. Think of it this way: if an officer and enlisted were in a room with a red button which could launch nukes, and the enlisted’s job was to keep his finger on the button and to push it when ordered to, who has control in the room, the officer or the enlisted?
Anyway, there is no way to steal a fleet. There are very few cronies in today’s military. Each member is well educated and aware of their rights. Specifically that one about following lawful orders.
Actually, it wouldn’t be all that difficult at all if you can coopt even some officers. The average low level flunky in any army is preconditioned to follow orders and the chain of command. Heck, we’re ALL (as humans) apparently preprogrammed that way. It actually takes training and education to be willing to go against someone you perceive as a superior. Look up some studies by a guy named milgrom (took place in the 70s I think). Scary stuff.
As for stealing half a fleet, a earth based example would be most military coups and attempted coups. Usually they involve a split within the military itself. Heck, many of the military coups in Latin America were started by the younger officer corps who were trying to overthrow the perceived corrupt older officers/dictators. Many of them lost and ended up going into hiding with whatever hardware they could get. As long as you’d have a place to take it to, such as a sympathetic government, don’t see anything stopping a naval unit splitting away.
I’m reminded of the early plot of ‘chaining the lady’, by Piers Anthony, which centers around an attempt to subvert the officers in charge of a small but powerful space fleet, in order to use the ships as leverage against a nearby capital planet. The bad guys had a technique which essentially allowed their top agents to be sent in as spirits (kirlian auras, whatever) taking over the bodies and brains of high-ranking officers.
A little melodramatic, but the ramifications were thought through pretty well. The enlisted personnel were generally kept ignorant of the whole thing and given their orders in a way that they sounded relatively plausible and lawful. (Though it isn’t clear how they would have kept that up if it actually came down to giving firing orders on Outworld, which was presumably the homeland of most of thoe sailors, and any particular area targeted might be where they grew up, had families, etcetera. I suppose “rebels/invaders have tried to take over the planet and we’re just driving them off” would be worth a shot.) Not all important officers could be taken over, even, with the number of qualified agents available, so some were decieved, held incommunicado, or possibly killed.
The main character is involved with counterespionage ops against this plot, capturing one of the taken-over officers to interrogate her for information about the scope of the takeover, nullifying co-opted officers as they can, and sending secret operatives of their own among the crews of enemy-controlled ships, to tell them that their officers are taking orders from the Andromedans. At one point it becomes clear that about a third of the fleet is loyal to the home team, two-thirds to the bad guys, and great space combat scenes ensue.
Don’t forget actual examples of naval units rising against their erstwhile masters:
The cruiser Aurora played a dramatic role in the Russian October Revolution, and the battleship Potemkin in the 1905 Revolution.
There’s also the mutinies in the German High Seas Fleet in 1918.
All of these generally are of men rising against their officers as well, but it’s not beyond the realm of imagination to think of hypotheticals where the officers would rise against authority. It’d be a bit unusual for it to happen in an entire fleet, but hey, fiction is supposed to be more dramatic than much of history.
