Solace-class destroyer
Osora's and Antara's effective demonstration of submarine warfare during the World War inspired many now smaller navies around the world to invest in their own submersible fleet. Progress was initially slow in the 50s and early 60s due to many former powers still recovering from the destruction of the war, as well as the advent of the guided missile temporarily drawing attention away from submarines in the 60s. The Haishing Conflict showed that Antara still ruled the surface and that a fleet capable of winning a missile trade-off would be too expensive for most navies. In the late 60s, submarines began to roll off Salian, Wesmere, Qing and Desnian slipways at an alarming rate.
This shocked the Antarans, who would respond swiftly with ASW conversions of many of their existing destroyers, as well as the design and construction of new vessels focused mainly on defending the fleet from submarine attacks, such as the Solace class destroyers. As the Syce and Shannon class ships were nearing the end of their life cycles quicker due to poor maintainence, most were getting scrapped or sold in the 70s. As such, the Solace and succeeding destroyers needed to be built in numbers to replace the older vessels. Constrained by budget from a still recovering economy, the Solace class did not receive as many members as was promised to the navy.
The Solaces were caught up in political trouble due to their size and cost. By then, destroyers had grown to the size of small light cruisers, and were underarmed for their cost. The final Solace design ended up being heavy and overarmed for its size. This thinking would continue to influence the way the navy ordered its fleet, preferring to keep destroyer designs small, but build them in larger numbers. What were thought of as light cruisers (really actually large destroyers) were ordered in smaller quantities.
Additional cost saving measures were also implemented into the final design, mostly notably its artillery armament using older gun mounts taken from a surplus originally reserved from retiring Shannon/Syce class ships. While there was some degree of modernisation with fire control, they were manually loaded like they were back in the World War.
While the Navy would initially only get four ships, additional vessels were requested to fulfull other roles, such as air defence and 'general-purpose' combining both ASW and AAW on a single hull. These would make up Solace's subclasses, and would be ordered throughout the 70s, albeit slower than navy's older vessels could be scrapped. Budget would increase in the lead up to the Nuclear War, allowing batches after the 1st to utilize the equipment the navy originally wanted.
Specifications
Tonnage - 3000 tonnes standard
Speed - 33 knots
Range - 8000 tonnes at 14 knots
Ships in class
1st Batch - Solace-class ASW destroyer - 1370
Solace - sunk as target, 1395
Zimmerman - sunk by submarine, 1378
E White - scrapped, 1393
McElfresh - scrapped, 1392
2nd Batch - Carter-class ASW destroyer, improved - 1373
Carter - scrapped, 1392
Hunt - sunk as target, 1391
Harding - scrapped, 1393
Doyle - scrapped, 1393
3rd Batch - Barton-class AAW destroyer - 1375
Barton - scrapped, 1393
Horne - sunk as breakwater, 1391
Schofield - scrapped, 1392
Scion - scrapped, 1395
4th Batch - Ayala-class General Purpose destroyer - 1377
Ayala - scrapped, 1395
Malone - scrapped, 1392
Ursula - sunk by submarine, 1379
Vaughn - scrapped, 1395
Sachiko - scrapped, 1393
Hartman - sunk as target, 1393
Clarke - scrapped, 1393