Hellcat-V Designation?

It makes sense that, post-war the fact that these fighters would have had Confed designations doesn't mean that the Border Worlds would have used them; especially if Confed only tried the fighter out and didn't commission it for a production run. Separatist sentiment in the Border Worlds militia would probably have preferred F3V Banshee to YF-26 Banshee, as a way of asserting their independence.
I wouldn't try going as far as to explain why this was proposed. Separatist sentiment? Yeah, maybe - then again, you could also argue that with the Border Worlds intensively cooperating with Confed after the BL crisis, it would have been highly politically desirable to continue with a unified system of designations, to show how everyone's gotten over the troubles. All we know is that, as far as the writers behind these "did you know" thingies are concerned (and unfortunately just the writers, because it's not officially published, gosh darn it!), for unknown reasons the Border Worlds chose to go with a different system. It's cool, I'll run with it, but I won't try to explain it unless I have to :p.
 
When we finally make that patch for UE (and I am working on it... honest!), you can bet we'll adjust all our made-up BW designations to match this!
And yeah, I would definitely go with the F-42 designation for the Hellcat (of course, with the caveat that it's still unofficial and subject to change). This stuff was written by the same people who wrote the Star*Soldier manual, and they put a lot of thought into this stuff.

I really enjoy Threads about my favorite Wing Commander Fighter . Thats the first time I see this .F 42 ? Why dont we just go along with that ? F-86 was really out of place . Well the purpose of Star*Solider was to give answers to questions that bothered people for years here .What New UE PATCH ????????????????????
 
Actually I found F-86 quite fitting, but I would be almost equally happy with F-42.

What I think is strange about the 42:
Iceman refers to the Rapier I as "new" in WC1, and the Rapier II(?) is supposed to be F-44. I have a hard time imagining that the Hellcat V should be a design older than the Rapier.
Possible explanations include that the Hellcat I,II,III or IV could be F-42 and the Hellcat V has another designation. Or whatever.
Also I think somewhere it is hinted at that the Hellcat is supposed to be newer than the Thunderbolt and that one is F-66.

After all the fans who came up with the F-86 many years ago put a lot of thought in it. I like that number and I think it fits well (and not only because the real world F-86 was a pretty badass airplane I liked a lot :D ).
 
I have a hard time imagining that the Hellcat V should be a design older than the Rapier.

I generally have a tough time wrapping my head around the concept that the Arrow is older than pretty much everything else in the WC continuity fighter-wise, and yet......
 
Wait, what? Didn't it say somewhere that the Arrow replaced the Ferret and the Epee? I thought....
Also for the Arrow the same applies as for the Hellcat: The ones we see in WC3 may be newer design just having the same or a similar hull shape like an old one. I'm not sure now but I think I remember Arrow "V" from somewhere canonical. May have been the "Kilrathi Saga" manual.

EDIT: And the Arrow you fly in WC3 IS new, since the manual states that only the newest ships have shelton slide. F-27 tells us the original design is older, though. Also we know from Voices of War that at least one of the versions entered service in 2654, which is the WC1 year. And the Academy version only had lasers so there were quite a lot of different versions apparently.

...and I don't even want to mention that the Thunderbolt is the Thunderbolt VII but it is still bearing a higher number than most others. EDIT2: the Scimitar and other Rapier have even higher numbers, so they must have changed their naming pattern somewhere.
 
Wait, what? Didn't it say somewhere that the Arrow replaced the Ferret and the Epee? I thought....

Yeah, me too.

Also for the Arrow the same applies as for the Hellcat: The ones we see in WC3 may be newer design just having the same or a similar hull shape like an old one. I'm not sure now but I think I remember Arrow "V" from somewhere canonical. May have been the "Kilrathi Saga" manual.

I'd like to know that one myself; I didn't see the "V" applied to the Arrow until I started hanging around here. It ain't the Kilrathi Saga manual; I have the PDF of that one, and it ain't there (at least not with its stats).

EDIT: And the Arrow you fly in WC3 IS new, since the manual states that only the newest ships have shelton slide. F-27 tells us the original design is older, though. Also we know from Voices of War that at least one of the versions entered service in 2654, which is the WC1 year. And the Academy version only had lasers so there were quite a lot of different versions apparently.

I think that is mentioned somewhere; it's the spaceframe that's old, but it's versatile enough to keep getting updated rather than canned.
 
From Wing Commander 3 "Warbirds" manual
Arrow :
"This light, versatile fighter has balanced
weaponry and is best-suited for short-range
combat against light or heavy fighters. Its maneuverability
makes it a prime choice for escort,fleet
defense and reconnaissance missions, and an
emergency life-support system can sustain pilots
for up to 7 hours"

The V designation is in the fighter selection screen as well as the Combat tactics by Maniac and Flint.

The Armada Manual doesnt say anything about any Fighter , but whatever version that Arrow is , it is really a Light Fighter with 2 laser cannons and 4 Dumbfires. Its either a pretty old version of the Arrow or a more scout /patrol like version.

Even if we dont bother with the Academy Arrow , I cant find anywhere any proof that this is a new fighter .Same goes with the Hellcat V
 
Please look into the manual where the shelton slide is mentioned, I think it is there somewhere. Unfortunately I own only the original WC3 manuals, not the KS ones. I think there is a line saying something like "only the newest fighters like the Arrow and the Excalibur have this feature"

EDIT: btw, that the first versions of fighters are really old but upgraded versions are flown quite some time is not something unusual in real life as you know, the F-15 and F-16 have been in service almost 40 years now and upgraded versions are planned to be in service at least until 2020-2025. So no problem here. But that won't help us here unfortunately. But it might explain the high roman numbers of the Thunderbolt for example. If the USAF did that with the F-16 we would have at least a F-16 XI or something like that.
EDIT5: This is of course if those roman numbers are used for the purpose mentioned above, which I doubt. But otherwise I think the VII doesn't make much sense...

EDIT2: just downloaded the KS manual, and I can't find what I'm searching for either. I'll look into the original WC3 manual, perhaps it was in there. I am really really sure I read that.

EDIT 3: It must have been in Victory Streak! Can anyone look into that? The online version I knew seems to be down unfortunately.

EDIT4: Found it and looked into it. Didn't find anything. Now I'm actually wondering whether I am sane, I could have sworn it is somewhere in the WC3 manuals....
 
You may be confusing "shelton slide" with "autoslide". Shelton slide is a maneuver where you hit your burners and then turn to fire at the enemy's flanks. Autoslide is a flight mode that let's you keep your fighter's current vector while allowing you to change your fighter's orientation, and in WC3 it is only the Arrow and the Excalibur that can do it.

I too am having problems finding where it says this, unfortunately; it's not in the KS manual nor in the 3DO version of Victory Streak.
 
Ah, yes, autoslide was the thing I was talking about. I always mix those two up, I've always done that :D
 
Iceman refers to the Rapier I as "new" in WC1, and the Rapier II(?) is supposed to be F-44. I have a hard time imagining that the Hellcat V should be a design older than the Rapier.
Possible explanations include that the Hellcat I,II,III or IV could be F-42 and the Hellcat V has another designation. Or whatever.
Also I think somewhere it is hinted at that the Hellcat is supposed to be newer than the Thunderbolt and that one is F-66.
It has actually been explained before (though, admittedly, never in an official source - rather, the assumption is that if it looks just like the US designation system, then it probably works like that, too) that the Roman numerals after the ship name are not new versions of the same fighter, but rather new fighters bearing the same name as a previous fighter. So, the Thunderbolt VII is the seventh ship in the Confed designation system to be called the Thunderbolt. Each of the previous Thunderbolts, however, was a completely different ship. For a real world example, look at the F-35 Lightning II - it's a brand new plane, not even in service, but it's got a II, because the US already had a plane called the Lightning (back in WWII).

The specific version of a given fighter type is the letter listed after the designation number. So, the F-44G Rapier II is the seventh revision of the second Confed fighter called the Rapier.

The Rapier, incidentally, is something of a troublemaker in all this. The original WC1 Rapier was just the Rapier, not the Rapier I nor the Rapier II - though the WC1 manual did not have proper designations for any fighters anyway. WC2 introduced the Rapier II, and presumably the implication at the time was that the Roman numerals denote major revisions (similar to British, and the Kilrathi, who have the Dralthi Mk. whatever), while the letters perhaps denoted smaller revisions. At least, we can safely assume that was the idea - certainly, nobody had thought of the WC Movie back in 1991, so the "II" in the Rapier's name indicates that the WC1 version would have been thought of as the Rapier I. As you can guess, the Movie changed this, by introducing a far, far older Rapier. Strictly speaking, this is a big, glaring inconsistency in the WC Universe - but fortunately, because the WC1 manual did not include proper designations, were can just pretend that had it included proper designations, the Rapier would have been the F-44A Rapier II.

Ahem. Let's move along, shall we? ;)

Getting to the real point - can the Hellcat really be older than the Rapier? Yes, of course it can - if we see Rapiers in 2668, why can't Hellcats seen in 2669 be contemporaries? But does it make sense? In 2673, in the WC4 novel, we read about Border Worlders flying Rapiers, while Confed flies Hellcats, and it is implied that Rapiers are dreadfully outdated. As a matter of fact, it does make sense, and we see similar things happen in reality all the time. In WWII, there were numerous cases where the development of a given fighter was discontinued because, for example, engine production limits made it impossible to continue producing new versions... or, on the other hand, there were cases where a given fighter was just pushed and pushed onwards even though newer designs outperformed it, because shutting down its production line (a necessity, if you want to switch the production line to a new design) would result in gaps in supply.

Also - this is well worth considering - there were many, many situations where a fighter "older" by designation was newer in production. Imagine, for example, that the F-42 and F-44 designs were both developed at the same time, but the F-42 ran into difficulties. Maybe its designer needed to help out with another project that was having difficulties, maybe something wasn't working here, or maybe something changed in the meantime to make this project a lower priority. Whatever happened - suppose the design was delayed by a few months. When they got back to working on it, technology had moved on - so now they needed to update the design, rework parts of it, and this generated further delays. Or, alternatively - suppose the F-44 was so amazing, so promising, that additional resources were poured into the project, and it was completed months or years ahead of schedule. In either case, by the time the F-42 would finally see the light of day, the F-44 would have already been in service for a couple of years... all of this, of course, is made up on the spot as an example of what could have happened. I'm not saying this is what happened, I'm not saying it's even a reasonable guess - I just want to illustrate the fact that numeric designations do not necessarily mean age.
After all the fans who came up with the F-86 many years ago put a lot of thought in it. I like that number and I think it fits well (and not only because the real world F-86 was a pretty badass airplane I liked a lot).
I don't remember for sure who it was - I think it was the Fleet Tactics website. The trouble is, their claim was that you can make these numbers out on that WC3 video. They never claimed that this was a number that made sense for whatever reasons - only that they thought they could make it out on a video that nobody else can decipher. Did they actually have other reasons why F-86 made sense? Maybe, but since they never said so, we can't really assume they did...
 
Well, of course there are quite a lot of arguments that help explaining almost every number we can think of roughly between 20 and 120.
Btw: With the roman numbers... if it is like you seem to think (as it is in the USA in real life) that would be even weirder for me, because then I get the impression that the Terrans are not very creative with names. I mean: Seven ships called Thunderbolt? really? And in the same time there were five Arrows and five Hellcats? Ok, why not I guess, still weird. Also they don't seem to upgrade their fighter a lot or don't care for variants, because most (if not all) latin letters behind the designation numbers are fan fiction IIRC. That's why I originally thought that the roman numbers refer to upgrades/versions instead of new ships carrying the same name. I found it to be more fitting.

Also we don't know why the F-42 didn't become canon. Perhaps it was time or space, or they didn't like that number for some reason. That's why I am a bit reluctant to prefer it over any other number.
So whether it is really 42, 86, or whatever doesn't matter that much.
After all we don't know that much facts, most of it are theories. Which is a pity.

That's because as I pointed out in another thread last week there is a desire to make things fit, especially to have something that is complete, which is also the main reason why people are craving for those designations and other minor things.

That may seem ridiculous sometimes, but we have to always remember that we are Wing Commander fans, and fans tend to have that desire to fill in all the gaps in their universe. That's why there are canon discussions and very complex explanations just to make things fit (the animated series and the movie being the most obvious sources that contain things which are harder to make fitting, because we know from an out-of-universe perspective that they don't really try to fit into the universe, but followed the "rule of cool").
Sometimes I like that approach Star Wars has, sometimes I don't. I'm not sure, it can make things easier. Otherwise you will have long nights wondering how to explain the bigger inconsistencies (I have those sometimes, especially after watching the WC movie or the animated series.)
 
Btw: With the roman numbers... if it is like you seem to think (as it is in the USA in real life) that would be even weirder for me, because then I get the impression that the Terrans are not very creative with names. I mean: Seven ships called Thunderbolt? really? And in the same time there were five Arrows and five Hellcats? Ok, why not I guess, still weird. Also they don't seem to upgrade their fighter a lot or don't care for variants, because most (if not all) latin letters behind the designation numbers are fan fiction IIRC. That's why I originally thought that the roman numbers refer to upgrades/versions instead of new ships carrying the same name. I found it to be more fitting.
Both of those points are easy to explain. The reusal of names is pretty normal - the very idea behind names is to evoke something, to refer to the world. When we name a fighter the Lightning, or the Falcon, these terms bring with them specific images. They are a part of the fighter's power - any pilot out there will, at first, be more intimidated by a Lightning than by a Butterfly. And this is also why names are often recycled - because applying the same name a second time allows the new fighter to acquire some of the glory of the previous aircraft. You can see this taken to amazing extremes with naval vessels - the US has had eight Enterprises so far, and I bet that the moment the existing USS Enterprise is decommissioned, people will start organising write-in campaigns, petitions and rallies to ensure that one of the carriers currently in the works will be given that name.

...No, wait, scratch that. In fact, people have already started organising petitions to that purpose :).

As for the variant letters - we actually have quite a few of them every ship in WC2 has them. The books go on to do interesting things with those as well. In WCP, I think just about every ship we see also has them, but they're all As, the first variant in service. The big exceptions are WC1 (which didn't have any designations at all) and WC3/4 (where ships are virtually never mentioned in dialogues - a consequence of having unlimited ship choices). The WC3 novel went on to invent designations for most of the fighters, somehow skipping the Hellcat, but for whatever reason, the author didn't come up with variant designations. That's ok - I mean, I don't even know what the currently-used variant of the F-16 is called.
 
Various F-16s are still in use, the newest one of the C/D series being the "Block 52" IIRC.

Reusing ship names is not the same as reusing ship class names. ...On the other side it is the year 26xx so if they have a new Thunderbolt every fifty years... ok, maybe.
I'm still not fully convinced of your argumentation but I think we will start going in circles from now if we go on :D .
 
Various F-16s are still in use, the newest one of the C/D series being the "Block 52" IIRC.

Reusing ship names is not the same as reusing ship class names. ...On the other side it is the year 26xx so if they have a new Thunderbolt every fifty years... ok, maybe.
I'm still not fully convinced of your argumentation but I think we will start going in circles from now if we go on :D .

. The reusal of names is pretty normal - the very idea behind names is to evoke something, to refer to the world. When we name a fighter the Lightning, or the Falcon, these terms bring with them specific images. That's ok - I mean, I don't even know what the currently-used variant of the F-16 is called.


Example F-16. The current model is the Advanced Block 52+ (plus) (Hellenic air force) which is the same model except the radar and some electronucs with the E Block 60 (Israel).F1-16 XL program scrapped in favor of the F-15 Strike Eagle but they are all Fighting Falcons.The new F-16 V 2012 is still a Falcon.

But check this , with F-5A you got Freedom fighter and with F-5E you got Tiger II (cause a F-11 Tiger existed )
If that was in the WC universe everyone would panic F-11 Tiger and F-5E Tiger II ???

F-16 is called Falcon through all its variants , F-5 switched name completely (unlike Super Hornet, Strike Eagle)

Now during WW2 there was P-75 Eagle .Shouldnt F-15 called Eagle II ? Its not!
The famous Curtis Falcon(s) ,observation planes and the scrapped WW2 Falcon (cant remember designation now) along with the nowday`s F-16 Falcon are not distinguised with roman numbers.All Falcons
There was even a WW2 Nighthawk,same story, F-117 Nighthawk without "II"

BUT P-38 Lightning -------->YF-22 Lightning II ,even if it didnt last for long

P-61 Black Widow ----------->YF-23 Black Widow II ,I wonder if that name would change too if they chose that instead of F-22

F-4 Phantom II is a "II" without a Phantom I ,it never existed .odd?

Finally the famous RS-71 mistake...it is known as SR-71 by accident.Iam sure hundreds of years in the future even Politicians or high military personel will make such designation mistakes.

I hope you understand my points.It doesnt matter if Hellcat is F86 or F42 or V or II ,different variant etc, the possibilities are endless ,even nowdays sometimes these things are confusing!During ww2 were even more and in the far future fighting an alien race are confusing as hell!
 
Im kind of curious how the other not so prominent ships fit in into timeline, take Talon & Stileto for example or Phantom.
 
Various F-16s are still in use, the newest one of the C/D series being the "Block 52" IIRC.

Reusing ship names is not the same as reusing ship class names. ...On the other side it is the year 26xx so if they have a new Thunderbolt every fifty years... ok, maybe.
I'm still not fully convinced of your argumentation but I think we will start going in circles from now if we go on :D .

It took us 31 years to go from the Thunderbolt (P-47) to the Thunderbolt II (A-10). By that progression, the year 2669 would be up to the Thunderbolt 24 :D
 
Interesting points. You are wrong in at least one though. There was a Phantom I:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_FH_Phantom

And while most of those lower numbers on newer airplanes can be explained by the change of the US designation system in the 1960s, the F-5 Tiger II is really an odd thing.

Hmm I missed that , what I posted was by memory I never use Wikipedia because it is full of mistakes, I didnt even know a Phantom 1 existed though ! nice find!

What I am trying to say is dont bother much about Designations or Marks .Maybe it depends on the Fighter , or the Company that manufactures them. Generally Confed is similar to the USA system but dont forget they are not USA.It is a Confederation so maybe Thunderbolt VII is the same as Thunderbolt I ,like the WW2 British System , but eg Rapier I with Rapier II is a completely different fighter .As I said the possibilities are endless ,believe what suits you better thats what I say ,since we dont have enough data.
 
Interesting
And while most of those lower numbers on newer airplanes can be explained by the change of the US designation system in the 1960s, the F-5 Tiger II is really an odd thing.

I dont point out the lower designation numbers at all (the F-11 / F-5 example is about the Tiger mark not designation) .
What I am pointing out is even today they dont fully use roman numbers by the book , there are no Guidelines at all
 
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