Durango Class

DangerousCook

Rear Admiral
Any idea on how many fighters the Durango class capital ships are capable of carrying? The BWS Intrepid was of this ship class I believe. Just wondering for the purposes of my fanfiction, thanks! Just wondering if you guys think that 26 fighters is plausible...
 
Duragno vs Intrepid

If I'm not mistaken the Durango had the hanger bay/flight deck added on by the Border Worlds. The WCIV novelization always read more like the Intrepid class destroyers was just the two arms and the central section, minus the bay underneath. Let me re-check my copy though and I'll get back to you.
 
26 should be fine. Going by the game (not the novel), it should probably be able to handle a squadron each of Banshee, Vindicator, and Avenger.
 
How about 32? Two full squadrons (10 fighters each) summing up to 20, 2 reserve fighters for each squadron (20 + 4 = 24), 4 prototype fighters and 4 stolen fighters = 32... does this sound reasonable for a ship of the type Durango to have? Does this seem excessive if there are only 20-22 pilots? I don't really know what the pilot to ship ratio should be considering that some pilots might eject and a reserve fighter will need to be brought online. Any thoughts?
 
WC AceNet has the Intrepid listed as carring around 48 fighters/shuttles in it's air wing. 12 Banshee's, 12 Vindicators, 12 Avengers, and 12 shuttles/utility craft. However 32 sounds like a more resonable number considering the size of the Intrepid.
 
Any number up to 40 craft would probably be reasonable for a Durango carrier conversion. If you are going with having only two squadrons, then one squadron should be fighter-bombers (Sabre, Thunderbolt, Vindicator), and the other should be faster, more nimble fighters (Rapier, Arrow, Banshee).
 
Star Rider said:
WC AceNet has the Intrepid listed as carring around 48 fighters/shuttles in it's air wing. 12 Banshee's, 12 Vindicators, 12 Avengers, and 12 shuttles/utility craft. However 32 sounds like a more resonable number considering the size of the Intrepid.
You can't trust a website that pretends all those fighters used on the Intrepid in the novel don't really exist.
 
DangerousCook said:
How about 32? Two full squadrons (10 fighters each) summing up to 20, 2 reserve fighters for each squadron (20 + 4 = 24), 4 prototype fighters and 4 stolen fighters = 32... does this sound reasonable for a ship of the type Durango to have? Does this seem excessive if there are only 20-22 pilots? I don't really know what the pilot to ship ratio should be considering that some pilots might eject and a reserve fighter will need to be brought online. Any thoughts?

According to The Price of Feedom novel, 10 fighters per squadron was a confed wartime number which was changed to 16 after the war. But I don't know what context you are writing in.
Also, reserve fighters would seem to cover ejections et al, until resupply became necessary/available. Unless there were some unusual circumstances, you probably wouldn't find significantly more fighters than pilots. But those circumstances do tend to crop up, don't they? ;)
 
There were also, at one point, 15 fighter squadrons, though that may have been specific to CVEs (Tarawa and kin in particular, since it was mentioned in End Run, and AFAIK nowhere else).

Also, what Confed uses may not be what the UBW or Landreich uses, though with the influence of Confed-trained pilots flying in their local militias it's not unlikely they use similar organization tables.
 
The problem is that you're trying to give the Intrepid a level of organization that it simply never head. It's beyond even something like the Tiger's Claw that was simply so engaged that the reality of losses never matched up with its official complement -- there's just no official complement to start with. It's a mishmash of militia units, abandoned obsolete fighters and bits and pieces collected wherever possible.

That said, you're undershooting significantly -- when Blair arrives on the Intrepid, she has 57 fighters (31 operational front line, 9 damaged, 17 obsolete in storage). She has four squadrons, one bomber and three fighter, but it's never more specific than that -- the bomber group includes Avengers, Thunderbolts, Broadswords, Sabres... and any one of the fighter squadrons includes half a dozen different classes.
 
I really appreciate all the input guys, your feedback has been insightful. I think though that some of you are making some assumptions that I simply did not state.

1. I am not writing about the Intrepid, merely a ship of the same class.

2. It is most likely going to be a Border Worlds ship taking place after the timeline of WC4.

That being said, as long as I am not overshooting the fighter capabilities of the Durango class, it is possible that activities taking place after WC4 may have made the possibility of ship refits and mass production of UBW craft capable so that some of the light carriers were able to maintain two full squadrons of Border Worlds fighters, and were even possibly inclined to sever their ties with flying outdated Confed ships. I hope this sounds reasonable, if not interesting to read about?

Please keep suggestions coming if you have them.
 
DangerousCook said:
1. I am not writing about the Intrepid, merely a ship of the same class.

The Intrepid was heavy destroyer modified to be a light carrier, so it should carry more fighters than the Durango.

According to the Encyclopedia:

"Fighter Complement: Light"
 
Well, what exactly does light entail? A "light" fighter complement in comparison to a heavy carrier can still be a whole lot of fighters.
 
LOAF has already gave the number of how many fighters the Intrepid did indeed have when Blair arrives - 57. So we know it's at least that. We don't even know if there's a fixed number of fighters the Intrepid should have, or what the maxium would be. Besides, it's not just about abstract number, maybe a Broadsword and a Dragon will use up more space than some ferrets. It was not very organized.
 
I think even 57 is too much for that tiny tiny ship... and we have NO idea if there were any other durango=>carrier conversions.

PS: Of course, if 57 is the canon number, than 57 it is... I just mentioned it because the Intrepid's situation is anything but "normal".
 
Well, it has to accomodate all those unseen novel fighters plus the grand UWB attack fleet of WCIV and some stolen dragons.
 
Recall that a lot of those fighters aboard the Intrepid (at least in the novelization) were WC2 ships, which by and large were... well, not so large as WC3/4 ships. I mean, you could almost fit two 19m Rapier II (WC2 edition) in the length of one 34m Thunderbolt VIII (Blair's fighter from his defection, in the novelization), and with those Rapiers touching nose-tail, exactly the same length as a 38m Longbow.

(And then there's the "obsolete and in storage" ships, which don't need to have a lot of space to move around like actively used fighters unless something is terribly wrong.)
 
I think that it would be safe to assume that a Durango carrier conversion would have similar capacity to a Ranger light carrier--forty or so WC3/4 era fighters.
 
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