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Ganarow
Unit
type: destroyer escort After remilitarizing the Artemis asteroid fortress in UC 209, the Atlantic Federation came into possession of another "gift" from the Old Earth Federation's former military assets: a surprising number of surviving space warships as well as documentation and equipment to ressuscitate those excavated at the underground dock facilities in Brazil. While less than "cutting edge" technology, the discovery of these vessels and the ability to quickly construct more enabled the relatively feeble Federation to establish a respectable space force in short order. The Ganarow is a small, lightweight escort ship, primarily intended to bolster the air and fleet defenses of larger Aoyagi and Amanesel vessels. It is lightly armed and has a relatively limited fuel capacity, essentially restricting it to fleet escort roles, but it is able to maneuver and accelerate well thanks to four powerful main engines supplemented by an additional pair on the back end of each outboard missile pod. The Ganarow's armor protection is consolidated around the midships area where the crew's duty areas and mobile suit hangar are located, while the bow and stern are essentially only protected enough to maintain structural stability. In anticipation of damage to the engine block, each individual engine and fuel tanks can be jettisoned to prevent a catastrophic explosion. Because of the vessel's small size and narrow hull, only the barest provisions for storing and launching mobile suits are provided. A small hangar below the command tower can fit two embarked units back-to-back, which much be depressurized before the mobile suits can launch. A magnetically-driven linear catapult is positioned on either side of the Ganarow's main axis, allowing it to quickly snare and launch its mobile suits once they've pushed out from the hangar. Three vulcan cannons, two mounted ventrally, are mounted latitudinally, allowing the direction of antiaircraft cover over essentially any angle, while a quartet of missile pods are installed in outboard pods that also mount the base of the ship's linear catapults. Four vertical launch cells are positioned between the forward vulcan cannons for additional missile capability, while six large rocket tubes are mounted on either side ahead of the docking ports, giving the vessel quite a punch against fairly large targets. The loss of the Artemis base effectively doomed the Atlantic Federation's space forces, or what remained of them at that point at any rate. While quite a few ships escaped capture when the asteroid fortress fell, and more than a handful were docked at various Federation spaceports on Earth, the space forces' chain of command effectively disintegrated without its headquarters. Perhaps in a foreshadowing of events soon to befall the planetside forces, the Federation's leaderless space fleet quickly fragmented, with the surviving vessels typically breaking down into small groups conducting raiding operations against civilian shipping and the surviving space powers. |
