Ship Confusion: Gettysburg and Waterloo

Last week, we took a look at some Civil War-related Wing Commander references… and we forgot a pretty big one: Special Operations 1's TCS Gettysburg, named after the dramatic Pennsylvania battle that marked a turning point in the war. To cover our mistake, we've decided to took a very close look at some of the confusion surrounding the TCS Gettysburg and the confusingly separate Gettysburg-class cruiser referenced in Freedom Flight. And in order to tell that story, we're going to have to start by taking a look at the TCS Austin.

Gone to Texas

The Secret Missions 2: Crusade (1991) introduces us to the Austin, another Confederation capital ship which is working alongside the Tiger's Claw during the treaty signing at Firekka. The Austin transfers Jazz and Doomsday who serve as new wingmen during the game and it is mentioned throughout the story. The Austin is named after the city of Austin, Texas, home to Origin Systems and where the Wing Commander series began. The city was, in turn, named after Stephen F. Austin a 19th Century politician who played a major role in Texas' secession from Mexico.

To begin this journey we must first answer this question: what class of ship is the TCS Austin? The ship appears in only one mission, Firekka 6, where it is attempting to retreat from Firekka under fire from a group of Gratha. The game uses the Exeter destroyer to represent the Austin but the mission layout is intentionally designed so that you can never get close enough to see or target it; it jumps out while it's still a tiny line of pixels in the distance.

You can, however, use the object camera to see that the ship in the distance is an Exeter destroyer.

A revised version of The Secret Missions 2 included with Wing Commander Deluxe Edition (1991) seems to echo this. New introductory dialogue is added in place of the first Iceman bar conversation. Instead of challenging anyone to a game of pool, he instead explains what's going on in Firekka and introduces the other ship: "A good ship, the Austin...an Exeter-class destroyer." This seems pretty decisive, although it's worth noting that the SNES port of The Secret Missions did exactly the same thing to the Gwenhyvar, changing it into a Venture-class corvette (for storage reasons).

Wing Commander Freedom Flight (1992) throws a wrench in a mix and instead establishes what has become the popular continuity: the TCS Austin is a Gettysburg-class cruiser. This is appealing for a number of reasons: the Austin's role in the story does imply that it's something larger than a destroyer… as does the fact that the Secret Missions 2 developers went to some lengths to try and keep players from seeing the actual ship.

• “Lord Ralgha! I’m detecting old jump traces in our vicinity. Computer confirms them as the jump-system emissions of a Gettysburg class ship and another ship, the readings are difficult to distinguish.”
• Aside from a few minutes of conversation and bad dirty jokes with the Deck Officer of the TCS Austin, as their patrol path brought them within sight of the smaller Gettysburg-class ship, the patrol was totally uneventful.
• The other Gratha banked close to the huge Gettysburg-class cruiser in an attempt to escape the Rapier.

Freedom Flight further notes that the Ras Nik'hra is "nearly the size of" the Austin and that its hull is "silvery". Note that these references are clear that the Austin (and the Gettysburg-class) are smaller than the Tiger's Claw! Super Wing Commander (1994) contradicts this directly by adding a conversation with Jazz in the Tartarus series where he claims the Austin is actually LARGER than the Tiger's Claw:

Jazz: Hi there, Maverick. Getting used to life aboard the Tiger's Claw has been easy. It's a smaller ship than the Austin. You know, a man could get used to this.
Maverick: We like it, Colson.
Jazz: Yes, well, I wasn't used to it. The Austin is so formal, and everyone here is so laid-back. And Colonel Halcyon is much more easy-going than Admiral Tolwyn. I don't see why the Admiral doesn't like him. He seems fine to me.

Finally, the update to Claw Marks done for Super Wing Commander and Wing Commander Sega CD (1994) adds an article about Jazz and Doomsday visiting the Tiger's Claw, All Aboard, Austinites, which refers to the ship as not a cruiser but "our sister carrier assigned to a first-response patrol in Enigma sector." The phrase 'sister carrier' seems to suggest that the thought here is that the Austin is another Bengal-class carrier. That said, Freedom Flight also refers to the Austin as the Tiger's Claw's sister ship, so it may be that the phrase has another meaning in the 27th Century navy.

So what is the Austin? While all three interpretations are valid, Wing Commander fans have overwhelmingly adopted the idea that it is a Gettysburg-class cruiser which is an otherwise unseen Exeter-looking cruiser that is roughly the same size as the Bengal-class. This is also a great example of the 'fan lensing' you can see with this kind of lore; because the reference to the Gettysburg-class is so esoteric it becomes especially celebrated by fans resulting in something barely ever seen or considered by the series' creators to show up frequently in fan works!

Having decided this, the next question to address is the authorial intent in the Freedom Flight. Did Ellen Guon and Mercedes Lackey intend for the Austin to be something called a Gettysburg-class ship or did they intend for it to be the same class of cruiser, Waterloo, as the TCS Gettysburg from the recently-published Wing Commander II Special Operations 1 (1991)? We think the answer is that they did indeed intend for the two to be distinct because, as mentioned above, the Gettysburg-class is identified three times in the book and because a Waterloo-class ship, the TCS Leningrad, also appears in the story:

He remembered that conflict with a small warmth of pride, pride he cherished against the anger that sought to consume him. He concentrated on his memories of the hours of maneuvering against the Terran ship, waves of fighter assaults, culminating in the glorious explosion of the Waterloo-class ship, the blossoming fireball and drifting debris. The ship had been named the Leningrad, he had learned later, and over five hundred humans had died when it had been destroyed. Five hundred enemies. Five hundred gifts to Sivar, the War God.

That brings us to the second part of our investigation: Wing Commander II's Waterloo-class cruiser.

Carrying Waterloo

The Waterloo-class cruiser was introduced in Wing Commander II as the Terran Confederation's cruiser in the game. The design is stunning and well displayed in-game, a sort of smaller carrier with two landing bays and a submarine-inspired forward hull. Thanks to Freedom Flight and a similar reference in the Wing Commander movie novelization we know that the Waterloo-class has been around since at least the time of the original game (2654).

Historians will tell you that the Waterloo-class is named after the famous 19th Century battle that saw the defeat of Napoleon and it's likely that, internal to the Wing Commander universe, they are correct. But there's a bit of an extra layer here that actually ties the design even closer to our earlier subject: Waterloo is the original name for the city of Austin. And much like how New York is sometimes still called "New Amsterdam" in a hip sense, Austinites still shop at "Waterloo Records" and play frolf in "Waterloo Park".

Before the appearance of the Gettysburg, the Waterloo is most notable for its role as the TCS Agincourt in Wing Commander II. The Agincourt is a Confederation cruiser that is fighting in the same areas as the Concordia. You fly a mission to transport an ordinance freighter being protected by the Agincourt at one point and Blair communicates with the ship. Later, Jazz's treason is revealed when he accidentally mentions that he knows the classified fact that the Agincourt will be joining the Concordia to attack K'tithrak Mang. In one of the game's losing endgames, the Agincourt returns to Caernarvon after Novaya Kiev is captured and the Concordia is destroyed!

The TCS Agincourt is referenced again in the Wing Commander TCTG; this time, it's a Tallahassee-class cruiser! Must have been destroyed between Wing Commander II and III…

If you feel that the Agincourt seems pretty important for how little we see it in Wing Commander II, you're not wrong! In the original design for the game the Agincourt was the TCS Robert Peel, a patrol carrier that Blair spends the first half of the game aboard. That's why the flight decks are so prominent and why there was so much leftover art of the cruiser which was then used for the Agincourt encounter and the TCS Gettysburg in the first mission disk. Unused footage of the landing scenes created for the Peel also appears in early Wing Commander II marketing.

Which brings us back to the TCS Gettysburg, a Waterloo-class cruiser from Wing Commander II Special Operations 1 (1991). The Gettysburg is a Confederation cruiser whose crew mutinies when given an illegal order. Blair must reach the Gettysburg and convince its crew to surrender in the first half of the game. It's there that he meets Bear Bondarevsky, who will go on to be the hero of several Wing Commander novels. Special Operations 2's dialogue repeatedly confirms that the Gettysburg is a cruiser although you alone encounter and destroy over forty fighters supposedly based on the ship during the course of the game. You are initially told that the Gettysburg has a complement of Ferrets and Epees but later discover it is also testing new Crossbow bombers.

It's this last fact that leads to some confusion about the Gettysburg and her class. In the second Wing Commander novel, End Run (1992), the Gettysburg makes a cameo appearance and it is routinely referred to as being a carrier rather than a cruiser. Not only is it directly called a carrier but it is also considered in all of the book's talk of how many carriers the Confederation has ready for battle.

“Don’t give me that bull,” Banbridge snapped. He stood up and came around from behind his desk, coming up to Tolwyn and putting a finger into his face. “We won Vukar by the skin of our teeth. We lost the Trafalgar and Gettysburg will be in dry dock for a year. That just leaves Wolfhound and Concordia for this entire sector and you take half of our assets and go gallivanting off. Damn it, man, you almost took our victory and turned it into a disaster.”

Here's the missing link: unbeknownst to anyone in the fandom, the 1992 Wing Commander licensing bible that Dr. Forstchen was referencing attempted to explain the Gettysburg's fighter complement by establishing that Waterloos can be configured as "Jutland-class carriers" instead of cruisers by removing antimatter guns to support a greater fighter complement. This follows the precedent established for the Fralthi light carrier in Claw Marks and makes all around sense… except that their explanation for the names of the ships still leaves the Gettysburg as a cruiser!

But then the final two Waterloo-class ships, which we see in Special Operations 2 (1992), don't seem to fit the bible's naming schemes at all, either. Jazz's court martial is held aboard the TCS Centurion and then you are ordered to escort him to the prison ship TCS Alcatraz. The Alcatraz herself is something of an Easter egg; you have to manually select its nav point and if you fly there you'll discover it under attack by (completely ineffective) Sartha!

Next time on Ship Confusion: Meet the Concordias!

Appendix I: Fighter Complements

Secret Missions 2 and Freedom Flight both refer to the TCS Austin as carrying a fighter squadron rather than a fighter wing, suggesting that the complement of a Gettysburg-class cruiser is somewhere in the ten to twenty area.

The original Joan's update lists the Waterloo as having a light fighter complement which the Kilrathi Saga manual specifies to be 40. You fight forces from the Gettysburg (and the captured supply depot) in six missions in Special Operations 1. You encounter a total of 16 enemy Ferrets and 28 enemy Epees in those missions (breakdown below) as well as six friendly Epees (Bear and Bodybag in Rigel B and then the Gettysburg CAP in Rigel C). There are also at least ten Crossbow bombers: one that Colonel Ransom used to escape, three that are flown by Blair and his wingmen in Rigel D and then six that defend the supply depot in Rigel E, the optional losing scenario. Unless some of these fighters were recovered from the supply depot and flown by recovered pilots, that's at least 60 fighters aboard the Gettysburg! Which seems to agree with End Run that she must be configured as a Jutland-class carrier rather than a Waterloo-class cruiser.

Appendix II: Fighter Compliments

Those are some really nice fighters!