Thiaria: Reboot

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1.2. Conaire

Named for a hero of the independence wars, a former US Navy officer who emigrated to Thiaria in 1798 in order to keep fighting the English, LT Conaire was in a bad way when the first world war ended. Fourteen 343 and 305mm shells had hit her during the battle of Craigmiadh, where she and her sister ship LT Lormaic sunk HMS Emperor of India, and she was laid up awaiting reconstruction. The battlecruiser Aigean and the battleships Macanta and Lormaic, which were not as badly damaged, and the battleship Crionna, which was about to sink, all had priority on the repair schedule, and Conaire was still unrepaired when the war ended. After the war, the Thiarians were quite broke, and repairs to their two remaining dreadnoughts were performed rather leisurely. Conaire, which required less work, was recommissioned in 1922. Like the Crionna, the Thiarians restored her to her late-war appearance with very little in the way of improvements. When the Brazilians seized New Portugal late in 1923, Conaire was the sole operational Thiarian battleship. Some right-wing Thiarian politicians seriously suggested sending her against Brazilians super-superdreadnoughts Riachuelo and Aquidaban to defend Gaelic honour, but luckily for her, reason prevailed. During the late 1920s, Conaire received a modest modernization. The main and secondary batteries were fitted with director control. The locally controlled 65mm flaks were replaced with eight single 100mm flaks, also with director control. Eight 13,2mm machineguns complemented the AA outfit. The mainmast, which carried some of the new fire control gear, was stepped as a tripod, and the forward superstructure gained a new flag bridge for her function as fleet flagship. As her engines were in much better shape than Crionna's, they were retained, some of the coal-fired boilers were replaced with oil-burners for better endurance.

LT Conaire 1930
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Like Crionna, Conaire traveled a lot during the late twenties and early thirties to show Thiaria's flag. She travelled along the west coast of the Americas in 1927, visiting Valparaiso, Lima, Managua, Acapulco and San Francisco; in 1930, she crossed the pacific for visits in Japan, Koko and China; in 1932, she visited Lissabon, Cadiz, Toulon, Naples, Piraeus and Istanbul. By that time, she was relegated to training duties, as her direct-drive machinery, dating back to 1912, had become prone to malfunctions. As Thiaria had been re-admitted to the club of sea-powers by joining the LNT, Conaire could safely be discarded and replaced with something all new, but her hull still had some life in her, and in 1935, when the Thiarian government already expected that all treaty limits would soon disappear, a thorough reconstruction was approved, which went every bit as far as the Italian effort with the Andrea Doria class. The Conaire-class had been designed from the very beginning with the option to replace their 305mm triple turrets with 370mm twins as soon as these were available. Guns of this caliber were designed in 1913, and production started in 1916. Six completed barrels were scrapped in 1919 under the conditions of the Norfolk peace treaty, but the construction plans of these very advanced 45-caliber weapons were still available. Eight were ordered in 1935, and their design served as the basis for a follow-on 50-caliber version to arm the upcoming 1937 battleships. Conaire was decommissioned late in 1936, docked and completely disemboweled. Her machinery was replaced with geared turbines and six oil-fired narrow-tube high-pressure oil-burning boilers with a total power of 72.000 hp. On top of them a new armoured deck of 140mm was placed, and her 305mm triples were indeed replaced with 45-caliber 370mm twins, firing a 750kg shell over a distance of 36.000 meters at 35 degrees elevation. Four of her twelve 140mm secondaries were removed, but her heavy flak battery was upgraded to twelve semi-automatic 60-caliber 100mm guns of the newest make, with an astounding RoF of 18 rounds per minute. In addition, no less than eight individually director-controlled 37mm L/70 quads were installed, immensely powerful weapons with a RoF of 150 rounds per minute and remarkable accuracy and range. Six quad 13.2mm MG mounts - changed to 20mm HS.404 twins during construction - completed the AA outfit. The entire superstructure was reworked; Conaire received a pyramid-shaped tower mast forward with a hangar for two floatplanes in its basemnt, a single funnel mounted relatively far aft and a catapult on top of turret Q. The tripod masts were replaced with two lighter pole masts. To bear the weight of this mass of additional equipment, the hull was copiously bulged, giving her a very portly shape. Due to the added beam, speed remained at 24 knots despite the massively increased engine power; lenghtening her hull was considered, but not implemented, because the Thiarian navy had three other battleships of 24 knots, and no higher speed was needed to form a homogenous squadron. Rebuilding LT Conaire took nearly twice as long as building her had taken; she did not return to service prior to October 1941, having been fitted with a partial radar suite, consisting of an air search radar in top of the mainmast, a direction finder device similar to HF/DF on top of the foremast, a surface search radar immediately below it, main artillery control radars on the main directors and an AA radar set on top of each 37mm director. The secondary artillery directors on top of the main artillery directors still lacked radar, and so did the directors for the heavy flak. Standard displacement now was 28.800 tons. Although she shared many design features with Thiaria's upcoming fast battleships, Conaire did not present a very balanced look due to the huge gap between bridge and funnel which was occupied by turret Q and the catapult on top of it; as modernized, she was widely regarded as the ugliest Thiarian battleship.

LT Conaire 1941
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Conaire teamed up with the sole other surviving slow battleship LT Artacain in November 1941 and took part in the battle of Punta del Diablo. Thiarian airplanes, cruisers and destroyers killed two Brazilian heavy cruisers; the battleships exchanged fire with the Brazilian battleship Niteroi, but to little effect. Conaire and Artacain then supported the Thiarian land offensive along the Uruguayan coast during December 1941 and early January 1942 with gunfire against ground targets. They again were in action off the Brazilian coast in April 1942 to support the invasion of Cricriuma, which was a total success, not least due to the contribution of the battleships. They were in continuous action for three months, engaging Brazilian ground forces all the way from Cricriuma via Porto Allegre to Florianopolis, which was invaded in late July. The Thiarian slow battleships then returned to Abernenui and Noyalo for some urgently needed R&R; during this refit, Crionna received radar guidance for her 100mm flak battery. Both battleships were back in action in mid-September, narrowly missing the battle of Meanchiorcal on September 9th, where Thiaria's largest aircraft carrier met her fate. After a brief fire-support mission in early October during the battle of Blumenau, Conaire and Artacain were recalled to New Portugal to serve as strategic reserve while some of the newest Thiarian fleet units were off on the gloriously futile Panama raid. This period of inactivity took the best part of five months, during which the battleships were repeatedly attacked by US and Brazilian Liberators in New Portugal, eventually forcing them to return to Abernenui. They then joined the invasion fleet carrying Thiaria's sole fully trained Marine division, heading for its doom in the battle of Faoigabhar in early April 1943. They fought a losing engagement against vastly superior allied forces, but could not prevent them from sinking virtually all Thiarian transports. Conaire engaged the battleship HMS Drake and was hit by four 406mm shells, dealing seven hits to the British herself. Then the flagship HMS Queen Mary came in range and battered the Artacain so badly she had to retreat under Conaire's covering fire; this enabled HMS Drake to fire at Conaire with impunity and deal another four hits. When the small battleship HMS Africa came into sight, the fate of both Thiarian slow battleships seemed sealed. But then the Thiarian main force of four fast battleships and three fleet carriers, which had previously been decoyed away, re-appeared on the scene, too late to save the convoy, but just in time to save Conaire and Artacain. Conaire returned to Cathair Riordan for repairs, which took three months. Her radar suite was completed and modernized, and her light flak was doubled to 24 20mm barrels. When Conaire returned to service in late July 1943, she was assigned to convoy escort duty to supply Thiaria's ground forces during Patton's successful ground offensive against them. In September 1943, she struck an air-dropped mine just outside Montevideo, which was provisionally patched up; when the Americans tried to outflank the Thiarians in early October by a paradrop north-west of Montevideo, she steamed up the River plate and provided vital ground support gunfire enabling Thiaria's last mechanized reserves to crush the US paratroopers before they could be reinforced. She then escorted an empty convoy back to Cathair Riordan and was repaired till mid-December. On Christmas Day, she departed with another convoy and reached Montevideo unmolested. She then remained there for three weeks, expecting to be sent against an US invasion force headed for Porto Allegre. But this fleet could be turned away by concentrated air strikes. Conaire returned to convoy escort duty and visited New Portugl three more times under ever increasing air threat, once being hit by a bomb into the bridge, which was fortunatly a dud. When the Battle of Anfa Caolas was fought in April 1944, Conaire was R&Ring in Nuatearman. As the position of Thiaria's ground forces in Uruguay grew more and more desperate after Thiaria's forces on New Portugal were neutralized by the invasion in May, Conaire once more served as a convoy escort flagship on the Montevideo route. Twice she could repulse smaller surface raids, but on May 12th, her convoy was attacked by the planes of six allied carriers in the battle of Muirgiaid; no less than three Thiarian escort carriers and half the transports were sunk, and Conaire was torpedoed amidships. Her bulge saved her and she returned to Cathair Riordan, but even the most notorious optimists in Thiaria now had to realize that the war was lost. Conaire was repaired within three weeks, but did not leave the Bauaine again before the outbreak of civil war in August. Her crew was among the first to switch sides to the rebels, and her CO managed to persuade the commanders of several other warships to follow his example. On August 31st, the Conaire, a light cruiser, three destroyers, a minelayer and three sloops sneaked out of Cathair Riordan and sailed for An Trionaid, with the expressed purpose of defending the local Cardinal-Archbishop - who had just excommunicated Thiaria's prime minister - from retaliation by government forces. The crews of Conaire and the other ships helped rebel forces securing that city. During the next six weeks, Thiaria was at war against itself. With most of the fleet remaining loyal to the nationalist government, Conaire was kept ready to defend An Trionaid against a naval assault, but the repeated orders of Prime Minister Murchada to that effect eventually crushed the navy's loyalty to a government asking it to kill thousands of Thiarian citizens. On October 11th, most of the rest of the fleet joined the Conaire, and the civil war was pretty much decided. The new government asked the allies for an armistice, which was eventually granted on November 30th. The next picture shows LT Conaire as she looked when Thiaria dropped out of the war.

LT Conaire 1944
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Under the conditions of the armistice, some Thiarian warships were recruited into allied service; LT Conaire was too old to be of much use and remained at home. She was retained by Thiaria's post war navy as a training ship (just as the Italians were allowed to keep Andrea Doria and Caio Duilio) and served in this capacity till 1959. She was then turned into a memorial, but her hull rapidly deteriorated and started to leak. Plans to repair her were abandoned by the new leftist government after the 1966 elections, and she was scrapped in 1968.

Next: The 20.000 tonners allowed by the peace of Norfolk

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