Ship Names, Political Ramifications

C

climber

Spaceman
I thought about it and it strikes me as a little odd. The ship names in WC for the most part are taken from current or past ships for example the Lexington, Coventry, or after famous battles, Wake Island or Tarawa. My only problem really seems to be the distribution of the names.

Lexington, Big carrier in WC, big real American life ship
Victory, Arguably the most famous British battleship ever commanded by arguably the best admiral ever, in WC, old, decrepid and obsolete.
Coventry and Sheffield, lost trying to liberate the Falklands, British ships, Obsolete destroyers for obsolete carrier
Intrepid, somewhat dodgy old British carrier. Somewhat dodgy old Borderworlds carrier
Moskva, nice russian place, lost in the books.
Tarawa, famous ww2 pacific battle place, amazing carrier in the books Ditto Guadalcanal

Granted I understand it was an American made game, can anyone else think of any more of the names that hold true to this trend?
 
climber said:
Lexington, Big carrier in WC, big real American life ship
Victory, Arguably the most famous British battleship ever commanded by arguably the best admiral ever, in WC, old, decrepid and obsolete.
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The Victory wasn't always old and crappy.

climber said:
Coventry and Sheffield, lost trying to liberate the Falklands, British ships, Obsolete destroyers for obsolete carrier
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I had the impression of the destroyers being rather new.AFAIK only the Victory was really old.

As for the rest I can't see anything wrong with that.
 
Chris Roberts is English isn't he? I doubt the names have political ramifications but it's an interesting way of looking at it.

Besides, the Victory is also argueably the most famous vessel in the Wing Commander universe since it played a big part in ending the Kilrathi war. I wouldn't say the Victory name was negatively placed.
 
The thing is that you can stretch any example to fit this mold.

Take your account of the Victory and the Tarawa. You've attributed both ships opposite 'intents', while they actually have very similar backstories. They're both 'low quality' ships that end up achieving greatness.

Similarly, the Moskva -- is it "insulting" that a warship is destroyed (alongside dozens of 'American'-named ships)? Or is it a complement that Confed gave one of their few fleet carriers a Russian name?

Consider that no ship is *built* obsolete. The Sheffield and the Coventry were, at one time, top of the line warships. (Also, consider that the backstory about them being thirty years old comes from the novel -- the people who named the ships and the people who made their backstories were separate groups.)

You do hit on an interesting topic, though -- because there *are* some names that perplex me.

* In the TPoF novel there's a "TCS Dornier". The only reference I can think of is that Dornier was a company which build aircraft for the Germans in World War II.

* Action Stations has a "TCS Soryu". IIRC, the Soryu was one of the Japanese carriers which attacked Pearl Harbor.

* TCS Manassas - a class of light cruisers from the TV show... named after an important battle the Union lost?

Chris Roberts is English isn't he?
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He was born in the US and grew up in England, I believe.
 
There were two aircraft carriers in US navy service named Lexington. The first was sunk by the japanese at the Battle of the Coral Sea. The second was an Essex class carrier that was later used for training duties and is now a museum in Corpus Christi, Texas.

There was also a American Essex class carrier named Intrepid which served in the later part of WWII and in Vietnam. This carrier is now a historic landmark by New York City.

The US also had a Essex class carrier named the Tarawa, and later the name was used for the lead ship of a class of Amphibious Assault ships.

There was Russian Helicopter carrier (i think it is classified as a Helicopter or ASW cruiser) named the Moskva.

It seems to me like a number of the ships are named after warships from our history, and WC ships named after one of these ships tend to be of the same or similar type. A carrier from our time is a carrier in the WC universe.
 
Carriers built hundreds of years from now would for the most part have names that would not be familiar to us in the 21st century. They would be named after famous battles that haven't happened yet and great people who are yet to be born.
 
I don't think we can really say how ships in the future will be named. Some ships may be named after new battles and people. Other ships may be named after people/events/and ships we know of, through a particular name being passed from generation of ship to generation as time progresses. However WC and other sci-fi is a fictional universe, and hasn't happened (yet?), which means that these battles haven't taken place and these people haven't been born. Authors and writers in sci-fi, not just wing commander, seem to fall back on names they know rather than creating a entirely new name for a ship.
 
a little off topic...

i myself have been to the intrepid museum in nyc a few times, exceedingly fascinating.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
In the TPoF novel there's a "TCS Dornier". The only reference I can think of is that Dornier was a company which build aircraft for the
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Claude Dornier was an engineer who pioneered in the construction of heavy flying boats , but also designed the fastest prop-driven plan for its time in 1943, and contributed in the development of the VTOL and Alpha Jet.

After WWII he founded a company, which existed as Fairchild-Dornier GmbH in Germany until 2002.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
(...)

You do hit on an interesting topic, though -- because there *are* some names that perplex me.
(...)
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I always found the TCS Weisbaden and TCS Blitzkreig to be weird as well.

The Weisbaden mostly because I presume it's the name of the city I live (Wiesbaden actually) and if that's the case then I really don't know why it had been honoured by having a ship named after it. While I like Wiesbaden very much, I don't know anything special about it that'd justify such a name. But who knows, maybe sometime in the future...in the meantime, I'm happy. :)

And I can't imagine why Confed would name one of its destroyers Blitzkreig (which I suppose should be Blitzkrieg).
 
climber said:
...Intrepid, somewhat dodgy old British carrier. Somewhat dodgy old Borderworlds carrier...
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Pardon me, but the USS Intrepid CV-11 was one of the United States most decorated Essex class carriers that took tremendous battle damage durring World War II and participated in Vietnam. Britain never had a HMS Intrepid as an aircraft carrier.
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Climber said:
...Intrepid, somewhat dodgy old British carrier. Somewhat dodgy old Borderworlds carrier...
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Pardon me, but the USS Intrepid CV-11 was one of the United States most decorated Essex class carriers that took tremendous battle damage durring World War II and participated in Vietnam. IINM, Britain never had a HMS Intrepid as an aircraft carrier.
 
Ah yes, I know all about the USS intrepid. The HMS Intrepid was another story though. It still exists now as an amphibious attack vessel. Either way, as loaf says we can stretch the mould as much as we like.

Blitzkrieg, now I like that one. Form of warefare as pioneered by the Nazis demonstrated in Poland. It fits Krugers way of fighting though, powerful and trying to overwhelm the enemy.

Moskva is indeed Moscow just a copy of the Russian for it using the roman alphabet instead of the cyrilic
 
Mekt-Hakkikt said:
I always found the TCS Weisbaden and TCS Blitzkreig to be weird as well.

The Weisbaden mostly because I presume it's the name of the city I live (Wiesbaden actually) and if that's the case then I really don't know why it had been honoured by having a ship named after it. While I like Wiesbaden very much, I don't know anything special about it that'd justify such a name. But who knows, maybe sometime in the future...in the meantime, I'm happy. :)

And I can't imagine why Confed would name one of its destroyers Blitzkreig (which I suppose should be Blitzkrieg).
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I too always got a chuckle out of the Germanisms implied.
My guess is that Wiesbaden is remembered because there is a very large American housing area, and one of the main air force bases in Europe just next to the city. There used to be two barracks (one closed now), and also the AAFES and AFN headquarter, plus a large hospital. I have lived for quite some time close to Wiesbaden and had a lot of friends in old Camp Lindsay, and they and their families (and generations back until the war) will have taken the city's name home, along with Ramstein, K-Town (Kaiserslautern), Hanau, Heidelberg - and so on...

For the "Blitzkrieg" (mixing up ie and ei in German words exported into English is a frequent mistake); it's one of the words that actually made it into English by overuse in WWII. The strategy of rushed attacks with large motorized forces was something new for the time, so it kept its name.
Naming a carrier after it would ensure to give the game some multiculturalism without using an unknown foreign word, and the military aspect makes it all the more fitting. Capships named "Kindergarten", "Angst", or "Vorsprung durch Technik" just don't cut the cheese. ;)
 
Another one: The first Intrepid goes back as early as the 1800's - it was a ketch rigged up as powder ship destined to blow up the captured USS Philadelphia in 1804, in Tripoli harbor. Unfortunately something went wrong, and the ship went up while sneaking into the harbor, achieving nothing.

The history of three more Intrepids up to the famous CV-11 is here: http://www.wa3key.com/cv11data.html

Side note: After listening to that story years ago in a lecture, every time when I passed a Dodge Intrepid, i thought "BOOOOM...". Evil me.
 
criticalmass said:
For the "Blitzkrieg" (mixing up ie and ei in German words exported into English is a frequent mistake)
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American people in the internet do that kind of mix up in english too. I.e. sheild, caffiene, diety... No US bashing here, just pointing something I observe a lot.

Naming a carrier after it would ensure to give the game some multiculturalism without using an unknown foreign word, and the military aspect makes it all the more fitting. Capships named "Kindergarten", "Angst", or "Vorsprung durch Technik" just don't cut the cheese. ;)
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I'd love to see the TCS Angst, lots of Emos and goths in the crew, eheheheh...

Well, I figure the original poster wasn't refering to IN-game politics (to which LOAF answered very properly). I personally see no hidden agenda, but the crappy old ships he mentions were crappy already wehn the OSI crew made them up.
 
d3r3k said:
a little off topic...

i myself have been to the intrepid museum in nyc a few times, exceedingly fascinating.
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The old-timer tour guide at the Essex class USS Hornet museum took a liking to my girlfriend and we got to explore the off-limits parts of the ship that didn't have all the asbestos and stuff removed yet.

Helluva killboard
 

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climber said:
The HMS Intrepid was another story though. It still exists now as an amphibious attack vessel.
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It's in Mothballs I believe, it was lauched in the 60s.

It was the first of the Intrepid-Class (her and the Fearless) of Amphibious Vessels
 
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