Thiaria: Reboot

Hello again!

I've played around with available hangar space for the escort carriers, but could not squeeze any more airplanes in, so I reduced the air group of the Conocht-Class to 18 and that of the Ghrianghaoth-class to 28.

Continuing with the last Thiarian aircraft carrier type of the WWII-era:

2.3. Feinics-class
Thiaria's pre-war long-term fleet building programme called for two 55.000 ton battleships with 9 420mm guns each and two 16.000-ton heavy cruisers to be laid down in 1940 and 1941; both projects had to be shelved when the war started, and they were replaced with another Chros-Deisceart-class fleet aircraft carrier and the aforementioned five escort carriers, plus a sizeable number of sloops and submarines. Although these projects did not need many resources compared with the two huge battlewagons, they ate up all the available manpower and shipyard capacity during 1940 and 1941, and serious plans about what large stuff to build next were not made prior to late 1941. At that time, it had become clear that aircraft carriers were the only ship type larger than destroyers whose construction could be justified for the duration of the war, the Thiarians did not have to wait for Pearl Harbour to realize that. At first, a repeat Realtbhuion-type was envisaged, but ultimately rejected due to the projected building time of over three years. Instead, an escort carrier design that retained as many features of a fleet carrier as possible, but could be built in two years, was specified. After a painful process of eliminating all non-essentials, an austere design with hangar capacity for 40 - 48 planes (depending on size) on a single level, twice the intemediate flak array and the same range as the Realtbhuion, but no DP armament and no armour protection except a box over the magazines on a standard displacement of 15.000 tons emerged, in many ways remarkably similar to the British Colossus class. Machinery was the same as on contemporary large destroyers and fast minelayers; at 72.000 hp, they were good for 28 knots, which was better than the Colossus. Although their primary purpose was escort duty, their speed was fully sufficient that they might reinforce the main strike fleet if necessary. They had flight deck arrangements generally similar to the Chros Deisceart with two lifts and a flight deck extension to the port side as a counterweight to the island. Although the design was doubtlessly superior to the Colossus on paper, there were some pay-offs resulting from the hasty and not very thorough design process that severely compromised its performance. The Feinics-class had one deck less than the Realtbhuion to give it a very flat profile, with the flight deck only 11,5 meters above the CWL, resulting in rather cramped accomodation arrangements. Seakeeping was expected to be a problem, owing to the low freeboard and the dangerously low placement of some necessary hull openings like mooring stations and UnRep ports; to counter this weakness, they received hurricane bows. The catapult was of the shorter type as installed in the Realtbhuion-class, and there was only one crane on the port side making both re-supply and evacuation more difficult. As these vessels had horizontally discharging funnels in order to further reduce silhouette, similar to the Ghrianghaoth-class escort carriers, part of their flak battery was incapacitated by smoke interference most of the time, and at low speeds or while building up steam, the main hangar ventilating door could not be opened because it was too close to the funnels and would have allowed all the smoke to enter the hangar. But all these weaknesses paled compared with their primary virtue: They could be built real fast. To ensure a steady flow of reinforcements, four carriers were to be laid down every year, all at private yards, and building time was to be two years per copy. This plan was somewhat optimistic; although Thiaria produced twice as much steel as during the previous war, yard workforce was a problem, and only three hulls were laid down in 1942 (two in July and one in October), with three more in 1943 (February, March and August). Two further units were postponed in July 1943 in order to concentrate on completing the first six, and only begun in February and April 1944. All 1942 units could be launched in 1943, but the first one was not completed for trials prior to April 1944; a building time of 21 months nevertheless was a remarkable achievement for the CSCA yard, better than any Colossus-class ship. This performance could however not be matched by the other Thiarian yards. The second ship was delivered by Boldisaire in August 1944 after 25 months, when Thiaria was already at civil war with itself; the third one, built by the Riordan yard, was completed a few days after the armistice. Only one of the 1943 batch, which proceeded considerably slower due to various shortages, had been launched when the war was over; building of all three ceased entirely after August 1944. Their projected air group consisted of 12 T6A and 12 T10C fighters, 12 F5N torpedo bombers and 12 F7S dive bombers, but as with the escort carriers, this theoretical loadout proved unmanageable, the actual figure according to May 1944 plans being 36 - 40 planes (12 T10C or 16 T6A fighters depending on mission, plus the planned torpedo and dive bombers). All ships were named for constellations: The three completed ones were LT Feinics (Gaelic: Phoenix), Ceintear (Centaur) and Uisceadoir (Aquarius), the three incomplete ones LT Peirseas (Perseus), Abhainn (Eridan) and Caiseoipe (Cassiopeia). The two units begun in 1944 were less than 10% complete at the time of the armistice; their names would have been LT Gabhar (Capricorn) and Aonbheannach (Unicorn).

LT Feinics 1944
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Only Feinics ever made an operational sortie, engaging Recherchean forces only weeks after commissioning; she had not even received camouflage. Her F7S dive bombers hit a Recherchean light carrier, which however survived; Feinics remained undamaged. Her sisters did not leave the Bauaine before the war was over. As the Bauiane remained reasonably safe from enemy air attacks throughout the war and was a deathtrap for enemy submarines as well (all attempts to sneak inside were thwarted, with 13 allied submarines sunk by mines, land based air attacks and small surface craft during the war), none of the three completed units was damaged. LT Feinics was the only Thiarian carrier which joined the rebels immediately after the bloody boarding of LT Tirghra and sailed with the fleet to An Trionaid, but at time she carried only a reduced air group of two fighter squadrons and no bombers. When the war was over, Feinics was handed over to Great Britain and scrapped in 1949 after some trials. LT Uisceadoir, manned only by yard personnel and a caretaker crew, was abandoned without making provisions to sink her; to make sure she would not be used against them or against civilians, the rebel destroyer LT Praitinniuil put four torpedoes into her on October 14th, 1944, sinking her in 120 meters of water off Noyalo. She was raised in 1958 and scrapped. Ceintear and Peirseas were ceded to the Soviet Union and the USA, respectively; Peirseas had just been launched and was little more than an empty hull, so she was scrapped, but Ceintear was operational and proceeded to Leningrad under her own power. She was used for extensive trials and taken in hand for a thorough rebuild in 1953, giving her a larger island, an angled deck and the ability to employ jet fighters. When Stalin died in 1956, work slowed down and stopped entirely in 1958; Khruschchev insisted on concentrating solely on nuclear weapons which she would not have been able to deploy. The hull was then converted for civilian use (she lasted till 1964, before she had to be scrapped due to structural deficiencies owing to her very hasty construction). The four hulls still on stocks were scrapped where they were from 1947 through 1949.

This post wraps Thiaria's carrier fleet. Next: Capital ships.

Greetings
GD

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