Nightingale Class Battlecruiser
In the early part of the second millenium, the McLeodian Royal Navy decided that their current class of aircraft carriers were coming to the end of their useful lives. A contract competition was launched for designing a new aircraft carrier. Several designs were viewed, until, on the last possible day of entry, a battered old saloon car pulled up outside the Admiralty building, and a bedraggled man in his late 40's appeared. He was an employee of a little known company called Nightingale Shipyards. In his hand he held a folder that would radically change the future of McLeod03.
His designers had created the worlds first supercavitating vessel. A small two man affair, it was capable of speeds in excess of 300 knots underwater through a process known as supercavitation. The Nightingale class battlecruiser was a vast step on from this small craft. The design submitted to the Admirality called for a submarine over 1400 feet in length, with a beam of more than 600 feet,and a height of nearly 300 feet. Displacing 330,000 tonnes, the craft had a theoretical top speed in excess of 1000 knots whilst fully submerged.
Despite the tremendous scale and cost of the project, the Admiralty was so taken by the idea of such a fantastic machine that they immediately placed an order for construction of the first ship, named the Monitor, in reference to the first McLeodian ironclad. Nightingale Shipyards worked in conjuction with the Clairmontian company Deep Angel Shipyards to create two of these craft, one for each government.
The final production took twenty years, and reached a cost of over $900,000,000. At the same time, seperate orders were placed with McLeodian Military Industries, later bought out by Nightingale Shipyards, for the design of theMonitor's submarine fighter craft, as well as modification of current designs for use as part of her air wing.
The end result however, was well worth the cost. The Monitor was a tremendous advance in naval warfare. 1457 feet long, 612 feet wingtip to wingtip, and 268 feet from the base of her hull to the tip of her tail, she could cruise at 850 knots underwater using twin hydrogen fuel rocket engines that used a fusion reactor to extract hydrogen from the water vapour surrounding the craft, giving her an unlimited range. Her air wing consisted of 72 aircraft,including 2 large transport craft, and her sea wing was made up of 69 supercavitating sub-fighters. On top of these craft, her own armament was formidable. 26 super-cavitating torpedo tubes, 24 SLBM/cruise missile tubes, 45 20-mm super-cavitating sonar-guided underwater CIWS cannon, and 18 remote operated 40-mm super-cavitating cannon.
Since the creation of the Monitor, four more Nightingale class battlecarriers have been built; the Rubicon, the Liberator, the McLeodia, and the Executor. Each of these ships now have their own battlegroups as Nightingale Shipyards designed and created numerous other designs, emulating the surface fleets with their frigates, cruisers, and patrol vessels. Inside of fifty years, the entire Mcleodian surface fleet, now under the command of the Senate of Atlantica Mcleodia, would be mothballed, and replaced with entirely submarine battlegroups, capable of responding quickly to a crisis anywhere in the globe.
