The Grand Old Queen of the FleetClass – Dreadnought Class Battleship.
Length – 890 Meters
Displacement – 960,000 tones
Crew Compliment – 1160 with room for 70 passengers
Birth“To the men and women of Humanity’s cradle: Attention. This is Fleet Admiral James McKenna aboard the warship
Dreadnought. The destruction of the islands near Scotland and Australia was accomplished by the combined fleets of the Alliance Global Navy. I gave the order to open fire and I am just as ready to give similar orders should anyone on Terra attempt to jam my message to its people…. Fellow Humans, it is time that we cease to behave in the violent ways of Homo Sapiens and begin to behave in the ways of Homo Stellaris, men and women of the stars…”
Those words said on the bridge of the
Dreadnought on June 2nd 2315 were part of the speech that marked the beginnings of the military coup by Admiral James McKenna that replaced the old leadership of Terra. Marking the birth of the Terran Hegemony and it was the battleship
Dreadnought that saw the Hegemony’s birth; on the 27th of December 2766, she witnessed its death.
The TAS
Dreadnought was the first ever true Warship class built and had her keel laid down in 2300 in the Sol System. A vessel of her size and type had never been built before, whilst some merchant ships had been armed, there had not been a dedicated platform to carry weapons and be strong enough to resist them. Commissioned by Admiral James McKenna and with the resources of the Terran Alliance at his beck and call he brought together scientists, engineers and dozens of companies to bring his vision to life.
At 890 meters in length the
Dreadnought was huge for the time and combined with her 960,000 tonne mass she was the largest spacefaring craft built by the hand of man. Her hull plating was capable of withstanding naval weapons and nuclear attacks but despite her great size she was capable of generating 2.5g of thrust at full speed, making her fast for her size.
The class was designed to patrol and protect the Terran Alliance and 5,000 tonnes of fuel and a massive 172,316.5 tonne cargo bay gave her considerable range although because of her weapons loadout a huge chunk of this cargo was taken up with ammunition for the classes’ weapons as well as the parts for the guns themselves.
For weapons the
Dreadnought relied entirely on ballistic weapons, with NAC-20’s in triple turrets and NAC-10’s in quadruple mounts covering every approach although she was better at fighting broadside on where she could bring 8 x NAC-10’s and 6 x NAC-20’s to bare on a target. This preference for broadside fighting also set the tone for Terran Alliance vessels and in turn the Hegemony and finally Star League’s battleships all of whom can trace their ancestry back to the first Warship and first space going Battleship, the
Dreadnought.
Designed at a time when aerospace fighters as we understand them didn’t exist, and the ‘fighters’ of the time were armed shuttles with nowhere near the performance of Aerospace fighters that would replace them. The
Dreadnought was also armed to counter these threats and every single arc of the
Dreadnought had a pair of quad turrets with AC-5’s and a pair of quad turrets with AC-2’s. By todays standards this is laughably light anti-fighter weaponry, but at the time it was more than enough and throughout her long years of service the weapons battery was never altered even as she slipped further and further into obsolescence.
Unfortunately this ballistic heavy weaponry whilst impressive when firing also consumed a huge amount of ammunition and this was the biggest drawback to the class as they had to carry a considerable amount of ammunition on board with all the dangers associated with that.
Finally the
Dreadnought could carry 24 small craft or combat shuttles herself, but she was built before Dropships and docking collars had been developed. These small craft would be replaced with fighter bays during refits but the
Dreadnought never carried dropships.
For her size the
Dreadnought has a very large crew compared to later vessels, this though I personally feel is due to a lesser degree of automation as well as her in essence prototype nature. One thing of note is that unlike later SLDF ships the
Dreadnought carries a large compliment of Marines on board for defence and boarding actions and add another weapon to her arsenal. Indeed the 270 marines she carried is rather unprecedented and isn’t exceeded until you start looking at the
Leviathan Class, and with her mass of shuttles the
Dreadnought could probably launch a very dangerous boarding operation.
Service to the Hegemony and beyond.Fifteen years after her launch Fleet Admiral McKenna ordered the destruction of two uninhabited islands, one of the coast of Scotland the other off the coast of Australia and threatened to bombard the planet with his fleet unless the leaders of the warring factions on Terra stood down and surrendered. With his passionate speech broadcast across the Sol system the Admiral swept the old leaders of Terra from power and began the formation of the Terran Hegemony. The
Dreadnought and her six sister ships were the most powerful black water vessels in space but the
Dreadnought was replaced as Fleet flagship by the brand new
Black Lion a battlecruiser that entered service in 2315. The
Dreadnought class went on to serve the nascent Terran Hegemony well, securing their borders, crushing any who still wished to follow the old leaders on Terra or who sought power for themselves in the Admirals Campaigns of ‘Persuasion’.
During this time the
Dreadnought herself saw heavy service and fought in battle after battle as part of the Hegemony navy, both giving and taking tremendous damage. The
Dreadnought was nearly lost to a massive on-board fire when a crippled DCMS aerospace fighter did kamikaze into the battleships primary cargo decks during a battle over Cylene during the Age of War. For her part the
Dreadnought earned more battle stars on her pennant as well as suffering more battle casualties than any other ship in the fleet and the hard fighting
Dreadnought would spend in total nearly 40 years undergoing battle damage repairs in dry dock from her various actions during her centuries of service to the Hegemony.
Despite their constant battles though, no
Dreadnought class ships were lost in combat but two were lost due to navigational errors or misjumps whilst a third was decommissioned and scrapped due to engineering faults that crippled her. The survivors of the class saw repeated overhauls and refits that kept their computer systems equal to modern vessels whilst keeping their armament, layout and hull the same, but these refits could not stop the march of time and the formation of the Star League saw the constant series of Service Life Extension Programmes come to an end.
By 2571 the
Dreadnoughts were quite simply obsolete, replaced as the premier battleship of the Hegemony by the
Monsoon class in 2368 the surviving
Dreadnoughts soldiered on despite their growing obsolescence and the class was consigned to the Reserve fleet, the first step towards being decommissioned and scrapped. The Reunification War helped save the class and three of the
Dreadnought’s sisters were reactivated, given a SLEP and sent off to war alongside the Hegemony’s fleet, but this was the last hurrah of the class and the survivors when they came home were decommissioned and slowly scrapped or used as target hulks.
But fate was kind to the
Dreadnought her fame as the flagship of Admiral McKenna, founding father of the Hegemony saved her and instead of the breakers fusion torch she was moved into the Terran system to become part of the Luna Air, Space and Stars Museum.
Unlike many museums ships though the
Dreadnought was kept in front line condition and fully crewed by veteran starsmen who would be assigned to the battleship for their last tour of duty before finally retiring and she was always commanded by a Rear Admiral. Despite having some of her launch bays turned into display areas the
Dreadnought also maintained a mixed air wing of aerospace fighters from different eras and these would take part in displays around the vessel for visitors. It was perhaps not a fitting end for a ship that had fought so hard and expected to die in combat, but it was an honourable retirement for the Grand Old Queen of the fleet.
Blaze of GloryOn December 27th 2766 the Star League died, betrayed from within and caught by surprise the Sol system was consumed with fire as the Rim World navy fought the surprised and outnumbered Star League Defence Force ships in the system. Because of her age and that she was ‘merely’ a museum the
Dreadnought was ignored in the opening hours of the battle, but even as nuclear fireballs surged to life on Terra the fully manned and operational
Dreadnought under the command of Rear Admiral Marin Castillo started to move. The ship whilst fully manned did not have a full ammunition or fuel load aboard and with her guns empty the
Dreadnought could contribute little to the battle except be another target for a nuclear missile.
Instead Rear Admiral Castillo took on as many refugees as the
Dreadnought could carry before moving out of Luna orbit and away from the battle. Her destination was Tranquillity Base where she docked and started taking on fuel whilst also jettisoning everything not of use like gift shops and display pieces. At the orbital station, dozens of unarmed and defenceless civilian dropships and jumpships, caught up in the fighting had flocked round the base and the scarred old
Dreadnought for protection and under the watchful gaze of the Grand Old Queen the small ad-hoc fleet moved towards Jupiter where they docked with the Deep Range Gunnery Station, a huge ammo dump and firing range for the SLDF to take on ammunition. Fully armed and fuelled up the
Dreadnought and her convoy jumped out of a pirate point near Jupiter as Terra fell to the forces of the Rim World Republic and ‘Emperor’ Stephan Amaris, the convoy though carried thousands of civilians and military families to safety. Or so they presumed.
What followed was a three week long odyssey, the
Dreadnought and her charges would jump from system to system trying to get out of Hegemony space, eventually heading towards the Lyran border. During this time the
Dreadnought and her veteran crew also launched attacks on weak Rim World forces at jump points in an attempt to help more civilians escape the chaos consuming the Hegemony.
After nearly three weeks the
Dreadnought’s convoy had swollen to nearly 30 jumpships and over sixty dropships, all packed to the gills with civilians and the wounded. But their luck could only last so long. In the Wyatt system the
Dreadnought and her convoy were engaged by a superior force of Rim World warships that outgunned the old warship. Despite this Rear Admiral Castillo ordered the
Dreadnought to engage the Rim World forces whilst the civilian vessels headed for the jump point.
In the ensuing thirty minute long battle the
Dreadnought gave all she had, but was overwhelmed by the forces arrayed against her. With her engines gone, her jump drive dead and most of her weapons batteries silenced the Grand Old Queen finally succumbed to her wounds as her magazine exploded, although it is believed that Rear Admiral Castillo ordered her scuttled. If she was destroyed by enemy action or in an act of defiance by her crew remains unknown as there were no survivors from the battleship. But her sacrifice enabled her civilian charges to escape to Lyran space and bring word of what was happening within the Hegemony to the worlds beyond its borders.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Old age should burn and rave at close of day.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
And the TAS
Dreadnought did not go gentle into her long good night.
DesignGame wise the
Dreadnought by modern standards is certainly nothing amazing, she’s more a big cruiser by later standards but is still surprisingly ‘fast’ capable of generating as much thrust as a
McKenna or
Farragut class battleship, making her ‘faster’ than the common cruiser of the final period of the Star League the
Sovietskii Soyuz class. Built for a time before bracket firing was a thing the
Dreadnought class is built for close in slugging matches and her NAC batteries give her a fearsome punch whilst allowing for bracket firing in later years as her computer systems would have been updated to take this into account and her triple and quad batteries of guns allow for some bracket firing much like the
Lola class destroyers.
Covered by 1,147.5 tonnes of standard armour the
Dreadnought’s armour is equal to later heavy cruisers but is outclassed by the ships that succeeded her whilst her structural integrity of 60 makes her rather lightly built for a battleship but she is fairly hard to threshold because of her protection if you’re a fighter or dropship.
85 – Bow and fore sides. (9 to Threshold)
80 - aft sides and aft (8 to threshold)
Unlike many SLDF ships the
Dreadnought can engage fighters with her AC5’s and 2’s but this is really little more than harassing fire and should not be relied upon to kill fighters, leave that to friendly aerospace assets.
The
Dreadnoughts AA defences are weaker than the later
Aegis and
Black Lion I classes, the
Aegis boasts thicker protection to protect her against fighter weapons whilst the
Black Lion I featured long range missiles to engage the fighters as they came in. But compared to later vessels, she’s not actually that bad considering that light AA weapons were rarely a thing on SLDF battleships. Sure compared to 3067 and onwards vessels she’s got a weak flak battery, but against SLDF ships, she’s above average for all of them.
Really the
Dreadnought is a simple ship, get in close and smash apart anything that looks at you, when introduced there was nothing that could match her and even her successor the
Black Lion I class had less protection. The closest competitor to the
Dreadnought was the Davion
Defender class Battlecruiser which you can read about here -
http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,38802.0.htmlThe
Defender has a heavier punch but has horrifyingly weak structural integrity and paper thin armour, against a
Dreadnought it’s a case of who shoots and gets a good solid hit in first wins as both ships are quite fragile with the
Defender being even more lightly built.
Other contemporaries include the Flight I
Aegis cruisers who boast better protection and roughly equal firepower but are far slower and produce less thrust than the
Dreadnought, allowing her to control the engagement more and of course the
Black Lion I. The
Black Lion I is arguably a superior vessel with slightly heavier throw weight and the same AA defences but being able to throw six Killer Whale missiles at long range at a target is invaluable in a time when ships are defenceless against them.
And whilst no longer a battleship in terms of her mass by modern standards, she’d still be a nasty ship to face purely because of brute firepower making her a potent if, admittedly rather dull NAC beatstick.
One mildly interesting thing of note is that the fleet that threatened to bombard Terra was apparently 14 ships strong, but I do not know what ship classes these were save the
Dreadnought. I don’t know if any of her sisters were in service at this point, there was probably some
Dart Class light cruisers and other unknown vessels. We’ve also never had any stats or details on the ‘armed merchant ships’ that get mentioned a few times, like those that engaged the
Cameron class battlecruiser SLS St Joan for example, but we can imagine that these armed merchantships would have been part of the Alliance’s fleet.
Regarding the eventual fate of the class, we know that two suffered miss-jumps or ‘navigational errors’. It could be possible that out there somewhere, cold and dead in some unknown system far from the light of the Star League and Hegemony a
Dreadnought class ship hangs in space a tomb for its crew who died in the service of the Hegemony and Star League.
The history of the
Dreadnought is CLEARLY inspired by the modern TV show of Battlestar Galactica which tells the tale of an old ship set aside for retirement as a museums leading a convoy of civilian ships to safety. Add a healthy dash of HMS
Warspite and you have TAS
Dreadnought. Whilst the ship itself is a bit dull and simple really, it’s her history and legacy that makes her who she is. It makes her a part of the history of the Battletech universe and not just some warship, instead, she’s a legend.
Art by -
http://stephenhuda.deviantart.com/Suggested music for the Dreadnought;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o40JlfPou20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlcUwUwjLrsAs always comments and thoughts are most welcome.
