Sabaton and Firefly · 6:44pm Oct 30th, 2019
I've made no particular secret of the fact that a ponified version of my favorite band--a Swedish metal group who found their niche singing about historical war stories--is taking a direct role in the Firefly story, with avatars for them created in the form of Episilon's earth pony maintenance crew, who hails from the north Equestrian territory of Swheaten. Their songs have already inspired several scenes and I have others lined up for the future, much like "Resist and Bite" was already used with alternate lyrics
Why do I bring this up? For those who are unaware, the group recently released a rare single about the German WWII Battleship Bismarck, explaining that it was intended as a thank-you to loyal fans, and that they'd wanted to sing about the ship's tale for some time but it didn't really fit into any of their previous album themes. If you haven't yet heard it or seen the music video that accompanies it, here it is:
I would very much like the incorporate this song and story into Firefly as well. I have a few ideas about how to do so, but to at least roughly parallel the real story, it would have to involve a future Naval engagement. No worries there; plenty are planned. Work on Firefly will resume before the year is out, though I haven't quite decided what to do with November yet, as that's National Novel Writing Month and I'd like to mark it as such by working more on my languishing anthro novel... though another idea would be to work on creating an actual novel of the original Firefly story, as I earlier promised I would.
I am sensing a Griffin Battleship having a very bad day with the Equestrian Air Corps and Navy ;3
i fricken LOVE that band
I love Sabaton! I can't wait to see this navel engagement.
Ahh the Bismarck. It was truly an... okay battleship. It passed muster. It gets a solid C+. It was good enough for government work as far as German ships went with all the latest technogoodies though her broadside wasn't as mighty as legend has it. Her guns, as well as those of Tirpitz, her sister, were heavy, reliable 15 cm cannon built after the London Naval Treaty created a generation of godawful battleships and cruisers with poor armor and weak armament to limit their tonnage for purposes of conforming to the treaty requirements on both sides of the war. Hood was one such ship and was one of the most wretched chunks of flotsam to sail under the Union Jack. Having a shorter effective range than Bismarck and being equipped with inferior "belt armor" which breached under fire, the single shot from Bismarck breached a magazine and blew Hood out of the water and sent most of her crew down to Davy Jones locker.
Far from an epic battle, Hood's defeat and consequently the importance of Bismarck is an overblown relic of wartime propaganda. Regardless, I expect your version of it to be a much better-written affair and look forward to it!
Recently? I mean it's been a few months at this point, hasn't it?
(It's still stuck in my head though)
5148308
Wasn't the Hood penetrated by a round plunging through the deck?
The Bismark was a good battlecruiser. As in good not great. Hood was just a terrible ship.
Tirpitz was an amazing target, I think she killed more tonnage in aircraft (if you count the loaded weight) than she would have in surface ships... She certainly took a pounding before finally giving up.
5148379
Bismarck had the latest in fire control systems in 1941 giving it an edge over the entire Royal Navy but one of the weakest Total Gun Strength ratings of any battleships on the high seas at 120 caliber, a rating Hood shared. There are very many standards with which to judge the overall quality of any given battleship but Bismarck's strength lay in her modern engineering, quality of her engines, fire control, and accuracy. She was one of the lighter combatants on the ocean in terms of how much abuse she could put out or how much she could take.
You're correct about the deck being pierced. The killing shot was made at long range and so struck Hood at a parabolic arc meaning a deck shot makes the most sense. It did still pierce her magazine as I mentioned and Hood went down fast.
Tirpitz's combat record was less than impressive, only being used offensively a single time to shell Norwegian positions on the far northern islands of Spitzbergen in the North Sea. She took down a few aircraft mostly as an invalid seeking constant repairs in one port after another in Norway with her AA guns but all in all, made very little impact on the war.
Perhaps you were thinking of Bismarck or Scharnhorst? Both took a fantastic amount of abuse before succumbing to their battle wounds.
5148425
Never said she took battle damage, just damage. In port, drydock, floating drydock. She took hits from bombers all over European ports! lol... poor thing.
Might still be mixing up stuff with Scharnhorst but the number of aircraft sent to deal with Tirpitz would have been excessive if it weren't for the fact it took so many attempts to finally sink her.
5148933
Fair enough, Tirpitz didn't go down without a fight. None of the German battleships stood any real chance of having a long, happy life in the Atlantic, Baltic or any other sea. The array of naval power arrayed against her was such that she was living on borrowed time day after day, awaiting death at any moment.
5148081
Though I haven't worked out all the details yet, it's quite possible it's the other way around.
5148121
Join the club! Half the time I'm playing music, I'm playing them.
I need to get their latest album about WWI too.
5148278
A navel engagement? That would be a much different kind of story!
https://grammarist.com/usage/naval-navel/
Though seriously, I'm still trying to work out the details of the engagement right now, but I may make reference to it in the next chapter even though it would be some time before it could be described.
5149220
That's very true, it could go the other way around. I'm just saying from a historical standpoint it's easier and fairly more believable to put Equestria as England and the Griffons and Germany given the ships that took place in the drawn-out battle against the Bismark.
I mean, the museum ship that was being pulled out of mothballs and put back into service during the arrival of the remains of Epsilon and Loyalty at Royal Navy Base Ursa could very well stand in for HMS Hood, given the age and historic and cultural value of her at the time of her sinking at the hands of Bismark, along with the fact that it was a defensive war at that point in time.
But, whatever you decide I honestly look forward to reading it :D
5149220
eheheh i already have it MWAHAHAHH!!!!
hugs firefly