House of Steel The Honorverse Companion - By David Weber Page 0,164

the inability of the shipyard workers to install the new systems without cutting through a significant amount of hull armor.

The difficulty in upgrades, during a time when the Navy was undergoing generational changes in weapons systems literally every few years, was a death knell for the class. The Andurils were one of the first ships decommissioned during the Janacek build-down, and a number of them were sold to Erewhon with the King Williams.

Victory-class superdreadnought

Mass: 7,781,250 tons

Dimensions: 1340 × 194 × 181 m

Acceleration: 409.6 G (4.017 kps²)

80% Accel: 327.7 G (3.213 kps²)

Broadside: 35M, 20L, 19G, 6ET, 29CM, 27PD

Chase: 9M, 5L, 5G, 11CM, 9PD

Number Built: 36

Service Life: 1892–1918

With the Victory class, the RMN had finally hit its stride in superdreadnoughts. The construction woes plaguing the King William were a thing of the past, and the new design was a capable, missile-optimized platform that was a perfect match for the doctrine BuPlan had been perfecting since the advent of the laser head.

The class wasn’t particularly large, as even at the time advances in capital ship design were progressing at breakneck speed. The entire series production run lasted no more than handful of years before it was superseded by the Sphinx class.

The disposal of the entire Victory class in early 1918 PD by the Janacek Admiralty was one of the most contentious decisions made by Second Lord Houseman. Every single remaining hull was sold to Grayson at scrap prices, despite the fact that the GSN couldn’t possibly provide the manpower for all of those ships out of its own resources.

Benjamin Mayhew’s decision proved to be fortuitous, however, as the RMN scrambled to reactivate every hull it had in mothballs after the resumption of the war with Haven. While the newer ships had been brought back into service first, BuShips has been negotiating with the GSN for the return of over half of the hulls over the next year. The remainder were crewed as GSN units with a higher than normal percentage of RMN “loaner” personnel.

Sphinx-class superdreadnought

Mass: 8,207,000 tons

Dimensions: 1364 × 198 × 184 m

Acceleration: 403.9 G (3.961 kps²)

80% Accel: 323.1 G (3.169 kps²)

Broadside: 36M, 21L, 19G, 6ET, 27CM, 31PD

Chase: 8M, 4L, 5G, 9CM, 12PD

Number Built: 67

Service Life: 1895–present

The Sphinx class was by far the largest SD class (in total hulls) when the war started. During the peak of the buildup these ships were entering service at an almost frantic pace of more than one every month.

In terms of weapons fit, the most visible feature of any warship, the Sphinx was merely an incremental update over the Victory class, with no truly revolutionary ideas. That was scarcely surprising given the pace of production and improvements in design and construction. The first Sphinx was laid down before the first Victory was even commissioned, so there was little time for lessons learned from one to propagate to another.

While the weapons fit was largely the same as the preceding class, the defenses were much different. In theory the RMN has always designed their capital ships to be able to survive their own fire; in practice, up until the war began, RMN simulation models were in an almost continual state of flux as the damage potential of the laser head warheads kept increasing, without actual real-world testing data to ground the sims.

The Sphinx class marks the turning point where enough real-world data had been accumulated for BuShips to fully understand the kind of armoring and compartmentalization a ship of the wall needed to survive the new environment. Weapon mounts were rearranged, internal bulkheads were strengthened, magazines were hardened, and compartments were arranged to protect critical systems with less critical equipment spaces, all leading to a ship that was far more survivable than any design yet in service.

Still, the speed of design and development had not slowed, and, in a short construction run of only six years the RMN built almost twice as many Sphinxes as the previous Victory class.

The Sphinx and follow-on Gryphon were the only classes spared in the Janacek build-down, though over half of both of these classes had been placed in reserve by the time the war resumed. They have been reactivated on a crash priority basis on the theory that any ship of the wall is preferable to none, especially with the loss of so many incomplete modern units at Grendelsbane.

Gryphon-class superdreadnought

Mass: 8,339,000 tons

Dimensions: 1371 × 199 × 185 m

Acceleration: 402.1 G (3.944 kps²)

80% Accel: 321.7 G (3.155 kps²)

Broadside: 37M, 19L, 22G, 8ET, 28CM, 30PD

Chase: 9M, 4L, 5G, 10CM, 10PD

Number Built: 163

Service Life: 1900–present

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