Why Weren't Fly-Through Flight-Decks Designed With...

M

Miracynonyx100

Swabbie
Banned
Why weren't fly-through type flight-decks designed without a pair of armored doors that could swing shut and cover the flight-deck at either end thus preventing the flight deck from being attacked from the front or the rear.

Such an armored door would not necessarily have to be slow and clumsy to close either. On the Trident Ballistic Missile sub, the SLBM launch tube doors could open and close in around 2.5 seconds. Even with a large armored door, the 27th century-designs would almost certainly have motors powerful enough to open and close such doors reasonably fast.


Victoria Kent
 
An excellent question... and one we may never know the answer to, unfortunately.

We can hypothesize -- was it, perhaps, not considered during the original design? Most fly-through decks we see are older ships (Yorktown or Concordia-class carriers), dating from the period when the battleship was supposedly Queen of Battle, and the carriers were supporting craft.

Perhaps it was an economy problem -- build 'em quick, and get 'em rolling, and every corner that could be cut to get the flight deck-with-an-engine was cut.
 
To continue the WC-WW2 analogy it could be similar to the armoured decks of the british carriers. The space taken up by the doors and attendant machinery would cut down on the number of craft you can carry. Better that a bigger CAP stops the attacker rather than having to rely on armoured doors that will likely need replacing after the impact.
 
not to mention a single missile could disable the doors long enough to cripple a carrier in the heat of battle.
 
Miracynonyx100 said:
Why weren't fly-through type flight-decks designed without a pair of armored doors that could swing shut and cover the flight-deck at either end thus preventing the flight deck from being attacked from the front or the rear.

Such an armored door would not necessarily have to be slow and clumsy to close either. On the Trident Ballistic Missile sub, the SLBM launch tube doors could open and close in around 2.5 seconds. Even with a large armored door, the 27th century-designs would almost certainly have motors powerful enough to open and close such doors reasonably fast.
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We do see them on the Tiger Claw in the movie. Asside from the port that the Diligent uses to dock there are a set of doors that close over the end openings too. We see them in the decompression scene. The novelization adds a secondary use for the doors as their power was so low that the force fields weren't working.
 
Miracynonyx100 said:
Why weren't fly-through type flight-decks designed without a pair of armored doors that could swing shut and cover the flight-deck at either end thus preventing the flight deck from being attacked from the front or the rear.
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Because Wing Commander didn't support "idle" hull animations until Prophecy.
 
The Karga/Mjlonir (Bhankara class, didn't want to look up spelling at moment) has armored doors exactly like what you are talking about. There's actually a part that talks about them quite a bit during the refit.

EDIT: In False Colors that is.
 
Wasn't there also mention in the books of the forcefields being able to effectively block a craft without the correct IFF code?
Also, I thought there was also mention of launch doors on the Lexington, in addition to dual launch bays.
 
But the newest Vesivius still had that vulnerability...
Arrogance of constructors - "nobovy will harm the Death Star".... I mean, "our proud invincible carrier"?
Or some other reason?
Lexington wasn't very old too, I think...
Why else would Blair say "...puts old Victory to shame" ?
 
Shaggy said:
Wasn't there also mention in the books of the forcefields being able to effectively block a craft without the correct IFF code?
Also, I thought there was also mention of launch doors on the Lexington, in addition to dual launch bays.
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That's how Big Duke's assault is able to occur during FA. The landing craft switch IFF codes at the last second to fool the shields and can pass through them.

False Colors talks quite a bit about these type of shields as their operation was something that was of concern for a while during the refit.
 
I don't think the doors would have a major effect on standard fighter capacity. And considering this has been covered in the novels, I think it would be a good idea.

V Kent
 
MjavTheGray said:
But the newest Vesivius still had that vulnerability...
Arrogance of constructors - "nobovy will harm the Death Star".... I mean, "our proud invincible carrier"?
Or some other reason?
Lexington wasn't very old too, I think...
Why else would Blair say "...puts old Victory to shame" ?
Click to expand...

Because the Vic was even older??

I theorized that maybe after the Victory's accomplishments that Confed decided to re-examine how they built carriers and geared it toward what supposedly worked.

A second possibility is that these super carriers were a post war design. It is possible that Confed wanted a powerful ship for a cheap price and went back to a rather inexpensive base design for the Vesuvious.
 
A third possibility is that all carriers do in fact have armored bay doors, and we never see them used for technical, gameplay, or aesthetic reasons.
 
Didn't Chris and I go through this with you for almost an hour on #wingnut yesterday, Miracynonyx100? We explained it to you then and you're getting the same answers here.
 
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