WC2 Era Escort Carriers

M

Mad Cow

Spaceman
Hello,

This is my first time posting on this forum, although I've browsed it and CIC for years. ::waves::

Anyhow, I was curious, what class of ship do you all think would be used in the escort/support carrier role in the WC2 era? The Bengal-class runs were obselete by this point, and I have to admit that I'm not familar with the Concordia-class and Jutland-class ships referenced on LOAF's Fleet Carrier chart.

My best guess is that Waterloo-class cruisers would be retrofitted to squeeze in an element of bombers or heavy fighters and a few fighter tenders. What are your thoughts?
 
Howdy! Welcome to the forums!

My list is of fleet carriers - which, by nature, are separate from escorts. Coupla comments:

* The term 'escort carrier' refers specifically to CVEs - which didn't exist until after Wing Commander 2 (with the Tarawa-style transport conversions and later the Eagle-style hull up ships.)

* I would certainly disagree with regards to the Bengals being obsolete - the Flight IIA design is only twenty years old circa WC2... which is significantly younger than the Concordia-class design that's used through the post-war era (Bengals aren't escort carriers, though.) We see Bengals on the front lines in End Run (2667).

* 'Concordia class' ships are the 'regular' carriers, like the Lexington and Princeton in Wing Commander 4. 'Jutland class' refers to a class of attack carriers referenced only in the novels.

As for actually answering your question - I agree regarding the use of Waterloo-class ships in an escort carrier role... we see the Gettysburg treated in this manner in End Run. There's also Ranger-class light carriers like the Victory from Wing Commander 3 - they're probably being used in the traditional role of escort carriers (convoy escort, fighter transport, etc.).
 
Welcome to the forums.

Bengals are strike carriers.

The Concordia-class carriers are a pre-war/early war carrier type. The first ship was the TCS Concordia described within Action Stations. The Concordia that everyone's familiar with from WC2 is another ship of the Confederation class of dreadnaughts. Depending on how you interpret the movie, the Concordia-class supercruiser there is likely in the same situaiton, _if_ you include it in the canon sources, which not everyone does.

Loaf, were the Ranger-class carriers in use during the WC2 era? I thought they brought back from the mothballs to plug gaps on the front lines after the Battle of Earth. You also missed a traditional role of the light/escort carrier: suicide missions, at least in WC. Most WW2 escort carriers were just that, light carriers built off merchant hulls for deployment in the Atlantic, though were some in the Pacific theater.
 
Moonsword said:
The Concordia-class carriers are a pre-war/early war carrier type. The first ship was the TCS Concordia described within Action Stations. The Concordia that everyone's familiar with from WC2 is another ship of the Confederation class of dreadnaughts. Depending on how you interpret the movie, the Concordia-class supercruiser there is likely in the same situaiton, _if_ you include it in the canon sources, which not everyone does.
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I'm not quite sure what you mean by "is likely in the same situation." Also, you shouldn't say things like the closing phrase of your last sentence there unless you want a thread to devolve into an idiot movie canon argument.

Loaf, were the Ranger-class carriers in use during the WC2 era? I thought they brought back from the mothballs to plug gaps on the front lines after the Battle of Earth.
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Confed was never in a position to mothball carriers during the active war period. Rangers were *probably* off on the flanks of the Confederation covering areas that didn't need a full carrier but needed some fighter availability when Carriers were slightly more abundant than they were circa WC3. Or they may have been used in support roles along the front lines, or somesuch. I can't think of any reason to think they would be mothballed, though. The lack of carriers was the primary limiting factor in both sides ability to gain the strategic upper hand. Retiring perfectly usable carriers isn't a great way to help this. Any carrier Confed could get was pretty important. This is even more pronounced post-Fleet Action.

You also missed a traditional role of the light/escort carrier: suicide missions, at least in WC. Most WW2 escort carriers were just that, light carriers built off merchant hulls for deployment in the Atlantic, though were some in the Pacific theater.
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This was one of the roles of Escort Carriers in the End Run and later era. Ranger class light carriers were comparatively large beasts following a more conventional design strategy that one would expect to require something much closer to the the commitment of time and materials needed for a full fledged carrier than that needed for the later Escort Carriers. One would expect something like a fighter carrying cruiser or a couple of destroyers to do any suicide style missions if they were required, before a Ranger was sent out.
 
In the same situation was fairly clear, I thought. It meant that the same naming conventions around the Concordia dreadnaught was probably at work for the super cruiser. I was trying to avoid arguing canon with that last part, simply stating that such is an option, but not everyone exercises it.
 
I'm still not really sure what you mean... Unless you mean it was called the Concordia, which it was.
 
_if_ you include it in the canon sources, which not everyone does.
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As much as I love having that debate, the existence of a 'second' (third) Concordia originates from the Kilrathi Saga manual - which has 2656-dated transfer orders moving various Austin pilots to a Concordia (2656 being five years before the Confed-class ship comes into being and 22 years after the Action States ship blew up).

Loaf, were the Ranger-class carriers in use during the WC2 era? I thought they brought back from the mothballs to plug gaps on the front lines after the Battle of Earth.
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I think they were around, just not on the front lines. The Victory herself was certainly in active service during the WC2 era, based on various 'few years ago' references in the novel.
 
On the obsolescence of the Bengal-class, I apologize. I had interpreted the various runs as a life-extending refits of existing carriers as opposed to construction of new ships (such as the Arleigh Burke IIA).

Another question, though, assuming that in the 2660-66 era that the Ranger-class was used in the escort carrier role, what do you figure the fighter compliment for such ships were? My guess, based almost on entirely on conjecture, would be something like this:

12 Epees
24 Rapiers
04 Broadswords
4-6 Shuttles, SAR, support craft

Granted, we never see SAR, SWACS, and ammo tender craft until Prophacy, but I would think that is more because of an omission due to lack of space in the previous games as opposed to saying such craft were not used prior to 2680. Then again, this has no base in canon whatsoever. lol
 
The Victory carried a compliment of 40 fighters organized into four squadrons as follows:

Red Squadron: Arrow Class point defense fighters
Blue Squadron: Arrow Class Interceptors
Green Squadron: Longbow class attack craft
Gold Squadron: Thunderbolt Class heavy fighters

Red squadron had less range than Blue Squadron, but had a heavier armed variant of the Arrow.

Confed certainly didn't seem to have craft capable of rearming fighters until post False Colours at least. The Victory did carry at least a couple of shuttles, including at least one with the capability to act as a refuelling craft. We didn't see any standardized specialized SWACs craft on Confed's side until Prophecy. If a ship like the Concordia had to use broadswords with various sensor packs to do SWACs types of roles in WC2, it doesn't seem likely that a light carrier would have anything fancy. Specialized SAR craft definitely weren't the norm either.

edit:

Also, remember, light carriers wouldn't be filling the escort carrier role completely. There definitely weren't enough of the things, and Confed was doing things like strapping fighters to the outsides of transports to try and give them some degree of protection.
 
I think his questions was in regards to era craft, how many era craft would make up a Ranger-class fighter wing? And not to nitpick, just to point out the specific number of fighters a Ranger-class holds is 44.

I wasn't aware of Arrows/Thunderbolts/Hellcats being online in the WC2 Era, though I could certainly be wrong about that...
 
Hellcats have been around for a while (I mean it is Hellcat V in wc3), longbows are also old. I forget where on the scheme arrows and t-bolts fall but I believe that they are also not very new....
 
Dundradal said:
Hellcats have been around for a while (I mean it is Hellcat V in wc3), longbows are also old. I forget where on the scheme arrows and t-bolts fall but I believe that they are also not very new....
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IIRC, we see Arrows in the Wing Commander: Academy cartoon. T-Bolts are probably the newest fighters in that list, at least according to files extracted from WC3.

Still, one of the roles of an escort carrier was to be expendable, which the Victory and her sisters were not - therefore the investment in the dedicated Eagle-class, and the Tarawa-class. However, the 'fighter transport/convoy support' roles could be filled by refitted Waterloo-class cruisers, and apparently were, though there didn't seem to be enough of them if one goes by the remarks in End Run.
 
When Bear first arrives on the Tarawa he and O'Brian take a tour around the ship and they discuss the roles for the CVE vessels. Suicide missions were not probably high on the list of things for these ships to do, although they did do them. I see it as be far more important for them to escort convoys or to deliever fully assembled fighters to the fleet carriers at the front. It saved the front line troops a lot of time in not having to reassemble the fighters, they say roughly how long it takes in ER but I forget off the top of my head, want to say something around 500-1000 hours...
 
Dundradal said:
When Bear first arrives on the Tarawa he and O'Brian take a tour around the ship and they discuss the roles for the CVE vessels. Suicide missions were not probably high on the list of things for these ships to do, although they did do them. I see it as be far more important for them to escort convoys or to deliever fully assembled fighters to the fleet carriers at the front. It saved the front line troops a lot of time in not having to reassemble the fighters, they say roughly how long it takes in ER but I forget off the top of my head, want to say something around 500-1000 hours...
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I don't mean suicide missions, though that sort of task does call for an expendable ship. I meant things like holding actions, where you've got a task force in trouble and it needs to extricate itself to regroup, or transports that have to escape; in situations like that, we tended to see destroyers, frigates, or sometimes cruisers holding the line while the fleet carriers or transports retreated. Situations where you HAVE to throw a ship away are when the escort carriers came in handy, since they didn't have the same price tag as a fleet carrier or perhaps a cruiser-carrier, and had enough fighters to handle the task unlike a destroyer.

But when you're escorting transport convoys and you don't have enough cruiser-carriers to do the job, the light or escort carrier's well suited to the role, since your heavy strike forces on the fleet carriers are better used elsewhere. As far as the fighter-transport issue's concerned, they only said 'several hundred man-hours'. It was when you did the thousand-hour refit and reinspection of fighters that it grounded a fighter for a month and cost a million in parts.

If Confed was reduced to strapping fighters onto transports to defend them, then we can probably safely say that they didn't have enough 'light' escorts to handle things, even with their fighter-carrying cruisers and obsolete Ranger-class light carriers.
 
I should've been more specific in my definition of WC2 era support craft. My guess is that in addition to the strike element of four broadswords, there would also be perhaps two more broadswords, one retrofitted as an SAR platform, the other as an SWACS. Then perhaps two basic cargo shuttles and two basic passenger shuttles.

On another note, are the Ranger-class carriers named for famous carriers of the past? Again, I don't have any of the books so I haven't the extra information to check any of my theories, but I'm guessing they are seeing as how the USS Ranger and HMS Victory were both WWII carriers.
 
Haesslich said:
T-Bolts are probably the newest fighters in that list, at least according to files extracted from WC3.
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Not sure about the files, but Blair in the novel refers to them as 'reliable, old fighters', though that might be just an endearing reference.

C-ya
 
The numerical designations after a fighter's name I assume is more something from the generation of fighters since whatever Confed considers to be its original namesake. Hence Hellcat V may very well be named as the 5th type to be called that since the F6F.

Just on a side-note.

The End Run novel specifically refers to the 4 carriers at Vukar Tag to all be part of the remaining 7(?) ships that Confed considers to be their fleet carrier force, with the Gettysburg being refered to as if she counted as a full fledged confleet carrier rather than a simple modified through-deck cruiser.

Could the 'burg have been more of a replacement model(Like the Austin in SM2) rather than intending to be a Waterloo?
 
I always found the reference to the gettysburg as a fell fledged carrier in ER as odd. Never quite sat right, but I guess when your ass is on the line you'll call it whatever, at vukar confed needed every fighter carrying vessel to take on 7 first rate kat heavy carriers. It's mentioned that it's the biggest gathering of confed carriers in quite a long time. Goes to show how badly the war was going for confed around that point.
 
FYI the only SWACs craft Confed used prior to WCIV were based on Corvette Hulls. In WCIV there is an SWACs TYPE craft (but not an SWACs that jams you, run by the black lance in one of the systems you engage in. And then in Prophecy for the first time we see the dedicated SWAC's craft, the Seahawk.

There weren't any broadswords retrofitted as SWACs craft, they had corvettes to do that job instead.

And if I may add my own question to this thread, Prior to the Tarawa raid on Kilrah, how much Behind-the-lines-raiding ACTUALLY occured? I don't recall every hearing of it, and the tone they take when discussing the Red Five Plan (I think that's it, From Fleet Action, it gets scrapped) seems to imply that the concept of behind the lines raiding was relatively new, they never knew how bad they could hit the Kilrathi transport forces before The Tarawa raid, I think one person says...just curious...
 
Speaking of carriers, though, anyone care to conjecture a lifespan date for Ranger-class carriers? The ships database here says that the Victory was slated to be retired in the 2660s, and going by the only standard I have (the U.S. Navy), the lifespan of a carrier is somewhere around 50 years (basing this on projections that the USS John F. Kennedy will remain in service until around 2018). So, I'm guessing that the Ranger-classes were being first built in say...the 2610s? Any thoughts?
 
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