Whale Aircraft Carrier

**Key Features** |  » F-7 Hawk Air Superiority Fighters and Su-25 Tornado Strike Craft » Secondary 130mm guns, SAMs, and CIWS » Blackout missiles » Mess Hall (extensively stocked » Whale nose decal (Righteously Huge)

## Tactical Analysis

* *Pride of the International Navy*: The largest and most imposing SPAM built ship in the Internationale's navy, the Whale Aircraft Carrier is a titan of sea conflict, and its influence can decisively win campaigns. Not only can it launch up to six squadrons of aircraft at a time, it can also house up to four squadrons of land based aircraft. Attacking close up gets the attacker a faceful of various calibers of flak, secondary guns, and missiles. Durable and fast, the Whale is often thought of as the best class of SPAM built aircraft carrier in the world.
* *Light's out*: Whale Aircraft Carriers also carry a gamechanger up their sleeves that can completely change the tide of an engagement from a great distance, a cargo of blackout missiles that can be launched to disable all enemy units and structures in a large radius. Originally meant to make passage for air units safer, the blackout missile has found usage in just about every kind of engagement. Stopping a mass of tanks, mecha, ships, or structures in their tracks is a tremendously useful ability and even with the Blackout missile's expense, captains tend to be judicious about using them.
* *Filter Feeder*: Whale aircraft carriers are very vulnerable if caught without escort by other surface ships or submarines and absolutely cannot function without escort. Similarly, if the anti-air defenses of an area are too extreme; they can be shut down quite effectively, and given their heavy expense; it is very difficult to mass them in huge numbers to try and simply bulldoze past defenses, and carrier aircraft tend to be inferior to land based aircraft unit to unit.
* *Bug Zapper*: New Tesla secondary weapon systems are being trialed by the Comintern, and these devices will not only improve the acceleration of the Whale as its engines are refitted, but also make it considerably more dangerous to nearby ships and incoming aircraft as the Tesla bolts both hit instantaneously and hit harder, providing a minor EMP effect as well that can help the Whale make a get away or for help to arrive and destroy the attacker.

## Background

The pride of the Communist International's navy and something pushed hard for by Arleigh Burke, Kutnetzov, Nimitz and other naval doctrine thinkers of the Comintern in response to lessons learned in the second world war as the carrier traditions of America and Britain and those they influenced clashed. The Alliance frequently struggled to find naval aircraft that could compete with Comintern ones. Even in the darkest period of the war, the Alliance generally begrudgingly admitted that the International had better carriers and better planes on their carriers; though not for lack of trying on the Alliance's part. Comintern Carrier superiority was succintly displayed in the battle of Bear Island, where the Comintern had inflicted a crippling blow on the Alliance arctic fleet and made the arctic route to the Soviet Union considerably safer for surface convoys and prompting Fuller to forbid surface actions against the Comintern arctic fleets for fear of being drawn into a massive clash in the Atlantic or Arctic and having his navy, and thus his means of control over the Empire shot out from under him. Though the sea-hawkers launched from *Empire* class light carriers and *Victory* class Helicarriers were having an effect in keeping the Alliance navy in the game in the later half of the war; the overall consensus was that the Communists simply had better carriers.

In the cold war, the Comintern decided to continue on their preference for fleet carriers over light carriers with the *Great White* class Carrier that supplanted the WW2 era *Enterprise* class carrier, that entered service in 1958, which was in turn replaced by the *Bear Island* class in 1964, and then by the *Nurse Shark* class by 1970, which lead into the *Penguin Class* in 1976, which finally lead to the *Whale* class in 1980 with the development of the blackout missile as a system for the Whale class to carry into battle. The whale was constructed and crewed in large numbers in the two years leading up to the third world war, quickly joining its older siblings in the Comintern navy and the navies of the component nations of the Comintern. When war came on January of 1982, the Comintern's navy was put on high alert and many attempted port strikes were avoided as the Comintern planned its great trap for the Alliance to end its threat once and for all. However, even with the Stavka's plan in place, the international navy still repeatedly engaged its Alliance counterpart for control of the seas and to make sure the Alliance suffered for its advance.

The new alliance *von Esling* class fleet carriers were formidable opponents for a Whale class, but it was found that the remote controlled A.I assisted UCAVs struggled against the Drone intelligences of the Whale class' air fleets. While the von Eslings carried large numbers of Sky-Knight and Sky-Paladin UCAVs;

# F-7 Hawk Fighter

 **Key Features** |  » Sideswiper Air to Air missiles » 20mm rotary gatling cannon » ECM projector » Variable Swept wings, Twin Whitprat collective bureau F110 Engines » Profanity decals on missile

# Su-25 Tornado

 **Key Features** |  » Rebel Air to Surface missiles » 37mm revolver nosegun » ECM projector » Variable Swept wings, Twin Jupiter/Lyulka collective bureau F110 Engines LA-21E-3B Jet Engines » "Angry squid" decal