Excerpt from a recently written letter, copied to this blog.
Star Wars: A/SF-01 B-Wing starfighter
This was harder to do than I thought it would be. What to compare it to? Part of the B-Wing lore is that they are notoriously hard to fly due to the odd gyroscopic nature of the thing – it swings its large gun around on the axis of the cockpit. Hera Syndullah (arguably a better pilot than Poe Dameron or Han Solo) obtains the prototype from a Mon Calamari designer by virtue of being the only pilot who could A: reach the location through the crazy winds and cliffs needed and B: perform the test flight. The designer had done the math and was sure it would work, but he wasn’t a pilot so he’d never flown it. : )
They aren’t fast – even slower than Y-wings which were the slowest starfighters up to this point. So even though they have the largest guns and most advanced targeting – the laser system would use a low power laser to track the target until it could lock in a shot – they aren’t really a good match 1 on 1 for any other starfighter unless the pilot had their plot armor fully engaged.
Ultimately Syndullah uses the ship’s giant laser (with the rest of the Star Wars Rebels “Ghost” and some other Rebels) to blast down a capital ship barricade to deliver food to a planet under siege by the empire. They show up in the background a few more times but they are never used very much – Great at what it does, looks awesome, but too specialized, too hard to use, too expensive to maintain. And there it is – great idea, even great execution, but too specialized. Iowa Class Battleships!
Real: Iowa Class Battleships
There were six of these built in 1939 and 1940 – that’s post WWI, leading into WWII. The original goal was to be able to intercept faster capital ships serving as a faster wing alongside more heavily armed but slower capital ships. They were in use from 1943-1948, again briefly in 1968-69, and from 1982-1992.
These are considered ‘Fast Battleships”. Naval classes are weirdly specific and still hard to nail down sometimes. What I’ve got here is probably wrong, but correct enough to give you a general idea of some of the classes that were in play.
- Battleship: Exactly what it sounds like. “All Big Gun” ships with names like ‘dreadnought’ (South Carolina Class) and ‘super-dreadnought’ (Wyoming or New York Class). Death Star approach – Big, heavily armored, slow(er) ships that could destroy big things from miles away.
- Fast Battleship: Battleship that can move over 25 knots without sacrificing the standard battleship armor or guns.
- Cruiser: Rangers – fast, murdery, but lower HP.
- Battle Cruiser: Cruiser with more armor (but less than a battleship) and with close to battleship size arsenal.
It’s a lot of variation and there’s a ton more…a lot has to do with mission. Same guns, same speeds, same armor…might still be very different ships if you have different objectives they need to deliver on. Guns don’t matter if your targeting sucks (unless you have Obi Wan to help), and all of those ships would have very specific targeting based on arsenal and objective. Logistics are a deciding factor in most wars in the end, and fueling, maintaining, supplying these things has a huge cost too.
This is going long isn’t it? I swear I tried to keep these to one page lol. Anyway…. round about cold war era the then Soviet Union decided to build the battle cruiser to end all battle cruisers – the Kirov Class. The requirements documents were apparently ‘bolt every gun we have on these things until we run out of room, then bolt guns on the other guns until we run out of bolts’. Described by some as a “floating weapons warehouse”.
These are nuclear powered and remain the largest surface combatant warships (not including aircraft carriers) in use today. Russia calls them “heavy nuclear-powered guided missile cruisers”. And by ‘them’ I mean “it” because That kind of thing is expensive, and the Russian Navy is spending it’s money elsewhere these days. 5 were planned, 4 were cancelled, 1 remains. One of anything is harder to maintain than two (two is one and one is none is the rule for anything you need to really rely on) so you can infer that it’s still in use more for political reasons than for operational ones.
That 5 planned is the key here – the US military is a bajillion times (that’s imperial bajillion, not metric) bigger than anyone else’s, and they try to stay that way regardless of the measure used. The Iowa class ships had been long decommissioned when these were announced…but they were the best ship the US had to compete with these, and the Kirov class played a key role in the decision to recommission the Iowa class in the 1980’s.
Also, getting real here…in 1982 Reagan probably could have sold the US on getting a death star built. There are a TON of terrible things that trace back to this time period – economic idiocy we still pay for today. But credit where it’s due, Reagan, like FDR, really knew how to appeal to people. He was also a rich actor from California trying to look like a ‘normal down to earth human person’. Above all he was a salesman –any President would be an idiot to not capitalize on the chance to recommission a ship named after the most Midwest of Midwest states, and especially this President.
True story – I inferred a lot of that based on what I know of the time and context, then looked it up to see if I was right. Here’s Reagan speaking from the USS Iowa on July 4th 1986…
- “Perhaps, indeed, these vessels embody our conception of liberty itself: to have before one no impediments, only open spaces; to chart one’s own course and take the adventure of life as it comes; to be free as the wind – as free as the tall ships themselves. It’s fitting, then, that this procession should take place in honor of Lady Liberty.”
FDR and Bush also did PR events from that ship. Most hilariously (no one was hurt) while FDR was on the ship in 1943 during a drill he ordered while on the ship, some poor soul on the the USS Willian D Porter Destroyer accidentally shot an actual torpedo at the Iowa. With The PRESIDENT on board. Talk about red cards.
Clearly this called for quick action. I quote…”after numerous attempts to signal the crew of the Iowa using blinker lights the Porter did opt to break radio silence to inform the Iowa of it’s impending doom. The Iowa swung a hard right (yay for the ‘fast’ in ‘fast’ battleship right?) and avoided the torpedo, which exploded when it hit the Iowa’s wake. Should you find yourself in a similar situation I recommend you go easy on the blinky light and heavy on the radio.
FDR is a complicated person as you know from hearing me go on about him in the past, I’m sure. But warcrimes and racism aside, never let it be said that he lacked style. His response when told of the mishap was to ask the Secret Service to move his wheelchair over to the side of the ship so he could have a better view.
Iowa class battleship specs – 860 feet long, 108 feet beam. 40 foot draft. Boiler powered (they’d be nuclear today, but boilers are impressive things). Piles and piles of guns and equipment that varied over the years depending on when and how they were used.
You’ve heard me talk about how important context is for almost everything, and all the stuff we’re talking about here is heavily mission / context dependent. There is no perfect app, computer, weapon, ship, or person. Flexibility and adaptability are the hallmarks of success – as expensive and specialized as these were, they also got a ton of use over 50 years of service and that’s impressive.