• Published 28th Jun 2019
  • 2,905 Views, 206 Comments

H-44 GERMANIA - Sanguine Blade



An admirals soul trapped in his ship

  • ...
7
 206
 2,905

The E Plan

After the attack the Princesses and Hanz decided to reconvene in a meeting room at the Naval Yard Office. Once they had all taken seats Hanz spoke.

"I'm going to be honest with you. The fleet is not terrible, but it definitely needs major reworking in terms of armor and weaponry." He paused to see if the Princesses would interrupt, but they did not. "However We don't have the time to suddenly take every warship out of service so, We have to work with what we have." Hanz continued.

"What do you propose to do to improve the fleet?" Celestia asked. "Well Your Majesties, the first step is the removal of any dead end designs or the selling of the eldest ships in the fleet." Hanz said. "Although any ships of significant historical purpose can be kept as museum pieces or training ships. I will give you my proposal within the week on how to fix the fleet." He said bowing to both mares before leaving. It would be from the tour of the Yard that the E Plan would be created.

Article 1- Vessels deemed inefficient by the naval command, shall be sold or scrapped unless the vessel holds high significance. In this event, the vessels shall be reassigned to training, transport duties, or become museums whose funds shall be used to add to the naval budget.
Article 2- All ships currently under construction are to be fitted out with steam engines and given iron plating to increase ship survivability. Any new designs shall be redesigned with iron plates and steam engines only. A new naval board shall be set up to oversee all new ship testing and research.
Article 3 - All current vessels shall be retrofitted with steam engines and armor plating(minimum of 2 inches), but in small groups so as to keep a large force still in service. Any vessels unable to perform, or cannot be given retrofits shall fall under the options given in Article One.
Article 4- A New squadron of eight ships shall be place under the command of Admiral Hanz Von Ravenmark to act as a raider force and anti-piracy patrols.

The fleet size would stay as usual, but the fleet would be brought to modern standards. After a week, the E Plan was put into action under the Equestrian Naval Act. There were some who opposed the bill in favor of tradition, but they were too few to stop the act form being made law. Thus Hanz was given the record of what the ships in the Equestrian Royal Navy in order to decide what ships would form his new squadron. It took several days, but he selected his escorts.

First was the Crimson Jewel. She was a Skywarden class airship that was designed to attack from the air. While Germania did have her Arado Aircraft, only one could be in the air at any given time. Therefore, having the aerial superiority maintained by the Crimson Jewel would give the squadron an advantage, and when the ship need to land to refill its gas bags, it was designed to sail like a normal sail-ship.

The next vessel was the Princess. This ship was to act as the second "Ship of the Line" and provide main line support to the Germania if needed. She was a beautiful sail ship, but she was going to undergo the refit as soon as possible in order to be a better vessel. still her 92 gun broadside was no push over considering some of them were 60 pounder guns. However, Hanz had made sure to have the cannonball ammunition with his new "Shell" ammo that he had designed. The shells were not that advanced, just iron fashioned into a shell with a more pointed front.

Third was the Element of Loyalty. The ship was the youngest of the Equestrian made ships. It had been one of the few vessels to far finished to simply convert it on the slipways. However, it was still given some improvements such as fewer, but larger cannons to increase her effectiveness in combat.
Fourth was the Equestria. She was built with many small cannons to go with its larger ones in order to keep up continuous fire. However, the smaller canons were stripped to make way for more main cannons, and to increase the ship's speed ever so slightly by removing some of the guns.

For smaller combat there were the twins ERS Sun and Moon. the two weren't nearly strong enough for front line combat, but they did work well when fighting together, and were able to sail circles around most other ships. They were given slightly better guns but speed was kept priority.

The Eldest vessel in the fleet was the Kirin. She was an armed cargo vessel gifted to the Equestrian Navy by the Kirin Empire in order to cement an alliance. The vessel was to act as the munitions ship as well as carrying other supplies. She was still to be left out of the main line of battle due to only having 20 cannons and to up the guns or add more would take away carrying capacity. With the squadron ready, the group sailed out of the harbor for their first patrol. Ready for whatever may come.

Author's Note:

Credit goes to Xblaster for the Crimson Jewel
Samurai Arashi for the Kirin
Comrade Cheese for the Princess
Myself for the twins and Equestria.
And all other submissions. Thank you all for the beginning of the 1st Raider squadron