Ships of the Sun Empress.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

An introduction: Though nominally modern, this is still fantasy, just like the "new island" Tarrantry project I was involved in on the Warships1 board, and that recognition led me many years ago to an idea of my own--why not, and then I was infected by a 1990s MBA's ghost, take it to the next level?--that was initially largely unrelated: I'm not the sort of person who finds feminist utopia to be anything other than a pathetic collection of delusions by very delusional people, and I more or less had the idea that I'd create a feminist state and systematically work out all the ramifications of that in a realistic and plausible fashion, rather than to make a political statement.

First Postulate: You need to get rid of the men; it'll never work if they're around. Accepting reality for what it is, men simply end up in charge in primitive society for a myriad of reasons we don't need to go over here. So we need to get rid of the men. The easiest way to do this is with some kind of disease. This conveniently presented itself--M. wolbachia, a charming bacteria which can render males sterile and cause females to reproduce parthenogenically (yes, it actually exists, I jest thee not), which infects no less than 9% of neotropical insect species and a bunch of Protozoans--it's why you can treat Malarial fever with Doxycycline, as it kills M. wolbachia and then the protozoan causing Malaria can't reproduce. And even things as sophisticated as a shrimp. Okay, so we've got one requirement now. This leads to a problem--if you have a virulent plague, why didn't it just keep spreading?

Second Postulate: I need somewhere reasonably isolated from the rest of world history to put these people, or else you can forget the whole Tarrantry comparison, because the whole world will be infected. Oops. The solution was proposed by a kind friend of mine, Drake Irvine, who suggested that there was an easy location called Zealandia. 93% of Zealandia is submerged today; the other 7% is above the water and called New Zealand and New Caledonia. It's a continental fragment of Australia and has basically the same mineral geology as eastern Australia. Google it if you don't believe me. It's been underwater for 25 million years OTL, but it's at least continental landmass. That disturbingly makes this scenario more plausible than Tarrantry, despite a parthenogenically reproducing female society, because at least I'm using a continental landmass, so the massive a-historical changes only start 25 million years ago instead of 1 billion. Seriously. We'll just mess with Sahul (the continent of New Guinea--Australia) while we're at it...

Third Postulate: Dear God, if I want to avoid a bunch of colonial massacres, I have to make them as successful as Japan, or at least less stupid than China--either one works. That means we need a civilization there--can be multicultural, they'll have good reasons to stick together. Okay, so, we need Indonesians--Hindus, of course. Let's start settlement around 1000 in Sahul and move them east.. Muslim raiding and refugees in the 1300s/1400s will help. Toss in Chinese settlers brought by the treasure fleets of Zheng He, and the overrun populations of Lapita and their Maori overlords who were native to Zealandia, and we have something we can work with.

Enough background, I trust? Well, hardly; but enough background for the background. The first things I'm going to post in this thread are the period Encyclopaedia Britannica Eleventh Edition articles; then we'll go on to ships. For convenience, I'll place all the designs here. Presently, since I'm using a Mac, I haven't started cracking at them with SpringSharp (Anyone know of a free emulator?), so I've been limited to post-1945 missile ships and carriers, of which a fair number of them in their fleet have been fleshed out. They are a large country by that point--inadvertently, the whole rearranging continents mess dumped enough water on eastern Australia and gave them enough resources to make them quite rich, once I started studying both the geology and the ocean current changes. So it rather radically alters the post-WW2 naval landscape (the interwar period, less so, but still in an interesting fashion). So though I know they're not as popular, we'll start with the missile ships, and move out from that.

My original collaborate in this was Alexia but she and I hadn't talked for several years and she went and developed the whole idea in the opposite direction. So there's actually two Kaetjhastis, unrecognizably different from each other--and with extremely, extremely different fleets. Both, however, will be placed here, with her's under the alternate name East Amazonia, which is what the nation was frequently called before the late 19th century.

I'll get around to starting with the Kamunashjhad-class CBG of mid-1950s vintage (hulls laid down in 1942-43) sometime tomorrow/later today, so for the moment this post will just be followed by the fake EB1911 article segments for Kaetjhasti; we'll get into the meat of it tomorrow, and, as noted, to avoid clutter I'm keeping this all in one thread.

KÆTJHASTI, EMPIRE OF. A nation of Australia and Oceania, and one of the great powers of the world. The article is for convenience divided into ten sections: I. GEOGRAPHY; II. THE PEOPLE, III. LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE; IV. ART; V. ECONOMIC CONDITIONS; VI. GOVERNMENT AND ADMINISTRATION; VII. RELIGION; VIII. FOREIGN INTERCOURSE; IX. DOMESTIC HISTORY; X. SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS.

1. GEOGRAPHY. The Empire of Kætjhasti sits astride two continents, Australia and Zealandia, of which it possesses entirely the later, which is often, however, considered to be a section of Australia which was detached from the main part by a terrible cataclysm which caused sections of what is today the Coral Sea to subside so that it could be submerged. Though commonly thought as a point where Australia and Zealandia may have once been connected, the Strait of Samadare is a deep water extension of the Tasman Sea, and has likely always been submerged. The Empire also consists of the Tasman Islands to the south, consisting of the North and South Islands, and the Effingham and Forbisher islands which are next largest in size along with 26 lesser islands, which form an extension of the southern promontory of Australia; the Auckland or to the natives Trilajh islands which form an extension of southwestern Zealandia in the shape of rocky, mountainous islands extending to 59º52' South; the island of Tar'ek off the southeastern coast of Zealandia; the Kermadec Islands to the east, volcanic in nature and properly part of Polynesia; the New Hebrides to the north, predominantly the same; and the Solomons to the extreme north, volcanic extensions to the south of the rocky mass of Papua which terminates in the great islands of New Britain and New Ireland. In all, it may be said that the land Kætjhasti possesses completely engulfs the large and hot Coral Sea in the north, and through the narrow Strait of Samadare passes into the Tasman Sea, bounded on three sides by the Empire's landmass and partially to the third, opening only to the southwest and the inhospitable waters about Antarctica. This has naturally allowed for ease of commerce within the nation, and prevented easy access by foreign fleets in modern terms, considerably aiding the defensive task of the country.

The continent of Australia, divided into Australia Major and Australia Minor, the later commonly called the Great Peninsula or the Peninsula of Papua, after a Portuguese appellation for the wooly hair of the Negritoid natives who remain predominant in the interior and north shore, comprises the more populous and fruitful portion of the country, though it is generally less habitable to whites than Zealandia. Of the continent's territory, 1,050,000 square miles forming the western section of Australia Major is in the possession of the British Empire as West Australia Colony. The northern half of Australia Minor is divided between the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the west (80,000 square miles) and the German Empire in the east (83,000 square miles). The remainder of the territory is universally recognized as that of the Empire of Kætjhasti, some 2,087,000 square miles. Of this territory, at least one third is virtually uninhabitable desert, populated mainly by Negritoid primeval inhabitants who maintain a subsistence lifestyle without settlements and are regarded justly as inferior by the ruling Malay race of Kætjhasti, though these deserts have recently been pierced by several railroads which shall be considered later. The southern coast of the desert regions is hospital, though separated from the barren interior by a series of salt-pans. The Gulf St. Vincent provides a predominant feature here with the city of Sammjhi located upon it to the north of the Fleurieu Peninsula. The climate here is distinctly mediterranean, with wine being produced in some quantities, while extensive herds of sheep are driven in for the slaughter from the interior where marginal grazing land exists.

Further to the east, the Tasman Peninsula, or Caladar Country to the Kætjhasti, forms the main area of settlement for the dominate peoples of Kætjhasti in the south. This region has a warm and temperate climate along the coast and a cooler and pleasant climate inland, providing for extensive cultivation of grain. Significant quantities of coal and iron ore have also been obtained in the region, as well as the only significant quantities of opals known in the world to be mined. The great dividing range begins in these lower hills and continues north as the spine of the continent until it sinks to low hills along the Torresian Isthmus. The narrow band of coast to the south consists of dry forces of eucalyptus trees and has been populated by Kætjhasti's principle residents since the formation of the Empire. Further north the broad Kætjh plain, drenched in extensive warm rainfall from the currents of the Coral Sea that are compressed to the south through the Strait of Samadare, contains the immense bulk of the present Malay population and is entirely given over to the cultivation of rice, the jungle having been industriously cleared to effect the maximum production, and numerous lesser cities and industries situated near the Imperial Capitol of Kænahra. The great torrents of rain which make the Kætjh plain suitable for rice crops in its entirety, and riven with canals, are not entirely dissipated by the Great Dividing Range, and here in this area alone does significant quantities of rain penetrate beyond it into the interior, irrigating an area called the Italjhid plateau to the point where extensive grazing is possible.

The northern coast is provided in plentiful rainfall from both the Indian Monsoon in the west, and rain clouds passing over the lowland of the Torres Isthmus which the Great Dividing Range declines to, with average heights in some places only a hundred feet above sea level across the Isthmus. This guarantees an extensive range of the northern coast the same capability as the Kaetjh plain to support extensive cultivation of rice, and the landscape has been considerably reworked for even greater lengths of time than the Kaetjh plain, so that little of the original forests remain in places. However, overgrown, later forest developments over what were once rice paddies show that in previous times cultivation was still more extensive. A similar pattern extends to the southern coast of Australia Minor. The highlands of Australia Minor are heavily forested and filled with natural bounty, with the local negritoids having been progressively driven deeper into the high mountains which form the border. These mountains, forming the northern extent of Australian Kætjhasti, reach altitudes that despite being very near the equator afford them year-round snow in some places, and made both the advance of Kætjhasti to the north, or of the European powers to the south, entirely impracticable.

Of Zealandian Kætjhasti the immense distortion of the continent, or great island, may immediately be noted. Extending across 33º37' of latitude, extending from almost 7º above the Tropic of Cancer, or 17º South, to 54º South and with its further promontory islands extending into the furthest southern seas, the size of the landmass is a comparatively small 1,600,000 square miles, thought to be about twice the size of the island of Greenland, and purely continental in geologic makeup. The continent is shaped like a triangle arranged north northwest, with a bisecting spine approximately two-thirds of the way south down the landmass, known as the Zealandia Highlands, consisting of two immense plateaus with higher mountains of volcanic origin rising from them in turn, including the highest peak in Kætjhasti, the Mount Aoraki, reaching 16,916 feet above sea level. Much of the rest of the continent is very low-lying land, though sufficient variation in elevation provides for acceptable drainage, but makes for extensive networks of broad and slow running rivers ideal for canals. This terrain makes malarial fever and breakbone fever constant threats for the population, and extensive efforts to engage in the drainage of the land have been required by the government to facilitate further habitation.

Though the central plains have found themselves to some degree inhospitable due to the poor drainage, four regions beyond the highlands offer themselves to ease of habitation. The first of these is the western part of South Zealandia, comprising fourty percent of the land area of South Zealandia State. This area is rendered incredibly bountiful by the cool rainfall delivered continuously by the great easterlies which sweep around the Antarctic continent, and deliver rainfall in excess of 140 inches per year along the coasts, and considerable amounts in areas of the interior. But due to the height of the land, and the drainage afforded to the east by the Sambuhl swamps, the land lacks extensive swamps or marshes. Immense forests of coniferous trees of family Podocarpaceæ and broad-leaf evergreens cover this whole reach, and many of the lower-lying areas of the Zealandia Highlands as well. In this profusion of primeval bounty, an immense number of large bird species and unusual forms of mammals have prospered, as well as some of the rarest known reptilian species. Many have gone extinct due to the prodiguous spread of humanity; many remain. The Auckland islands to the southwest of this promontory show a trend from temperate rainforest to subarctic conditions over their full reach, and are a volcanic extension of the Zealandia Highlands chain.

To the immediate east, and before the Rehanoaka hills which split the centre of the southern continent, is the Sambuhl swamps. This immense concentration of swampland is twice the size of the Pripet Marshes of western Russia, and broadly comparable in diversity, being only very lightly habited. Beyond the Rehanoaka hills in turn is lowland near the coast which, being better facilitated in their drainage, and situated at a higher latitude with less rainfall, though still sufficient, affords an area of particular bounty, which has seen extensive colonization from the central parts of the Empire in recent years. To the northwest of this region is the very large Unohak Depression, which at one time was certainly an arm of the sea which was closed by volcanic activity and lays well below sea-level. It is now filled with a series of three major lakes, which will no doubt ultimately rise over æons to combine and form a new and great river to the sea, as no present means of drainage exists.

Now traversing the Zealandia highlands the Kra'taoi plateau affords itself an excellent position, being similarly afforded with quantities of immense rainfall, though not as great as the extreme southwestern reaches, with averages recorded in the range of 70 - 90 inches per year at the most, as the Tasman Islands serve as a barricade to these atmospheric concentrations. This area has long been the habitation of the Maori people who conquered the less sophisticated natives, though in this case the area has been given over entirely to the Maori variants of the Australis subspecies. Their tendency to adopt more to the farming of grains, introduced in quantity by the Chinese in the 1300s AD, has considerably changed the landscape and seen the felling of much of the once dense forests which covered this area. Directly below it, and comprising the rest of the central part of the continent, is another vast swamp, at least the size of the Sambuhl swamps and estimated to be somewhat larger, pinned between higher land and draining slowly to the east through broad coastal plains. Aggressive draining of this area has been commenced, in comparison to the pristine nature of the Sambuhl swamps. Though all directly connected, it bears no particular name, the Kætjhasti peoples having various appellations for different regions. The presence of this swamps and their easterly drainage means that the populations of central Zealandia are concentrated on the Kra'taoi plateau and the western coast.

The rest of the continent to the north is divided into two enormous peninsulas, the Tingfu'eh and the Enahouae. They are divided by an enormous bay formed by the subsidence of land in æons past, usually called the Orangetua Fjord, though the later term is incorrect, as it was not formed by glaciation. In both cases the land rises considerable, though there is more variation in the Tingfu'eh peninsula, which contains an extensive depression similar to the Unohak, though largely and only narrowly closed off from the sea, named the Willem Endracht, after the Dutchman whose exploration of the Orangetua afforded him the first sight of the depression. A myriad of thirty-one small lakes exist on its bottom, with high hills most prominent to the north and west. The Government has lately proposed studies into the feasibility of constructing a canal into depression, creating an artificial waterfall of a vast scale which would enable the generation of electric power, but these seems far beyond the present engineering capabilities of the Empire. The Enahouae peninsula affords a more generally high and less broken visage, rising in the far north to a plateau some 4,600 feet above sea level which contains on it Mount Paniae, reaching an elevation in turn of 9,972 feet. In this area the diversity of reptiles and birds is at its most extreme, and at least one species of giant birds persist in the highalnds. There is a sharp and strong divide between the western side, which is rain-shadowed by the high plateaus, and the eastern side, which is rainforest of a tropical nature, though with distinctive flora. In comparison, the Tingfu'eh peninsula has predominantly similar conditions to the Kætjh plains in the lowland, and the Great Dividing Range of Australia Major in the highlands, presumably from species having crossed over the narrow straits over time and establishing themselves strongly in the area, but also due to the Chinese and Malay colonists introducing all characteristics for the intensive cultivation of rice over many centuries.

The eastern territories of Kætjhasti, annexed as late as the early 1890s in the case of the New Hebrides and southern Solomons, are in those cases of volcanic origin and have a tropical or sub-tropical climate, though the only examples of the later are in the New Hebrides. Major eruptions have taken place, and the archipelagos are known to be extremely hostile in climate to whites, though the Malay populace of Kætjhasti has proved hardy in their efforts to administer and conquer the resisting tribes of the area despite the natural opposition provided by the usual jungle fevers. Further to the south are the Kermadec Islands, forming to the northeast a volcanic extension of the Zealandia Highlands as the Auckland Islands are a volcanic extension to the southwest. These islands are considerable in number and size among all those of Polynesia, but vary considerably in climate over their rugged and folding surfaces. Many of the southern islands have been populated by species from Zealandia, though the northerly islands have a predominance of the palm, and the introduction of the Polynesian pig is universal.

2. THE PEOPLE. The people, or peoples, of the Kætjhasti nation, provide an immense cross-section of the Malay and Pacific races beyond their more peculiar traits. Of the population as a whole, a plurality is of the Malay race in origin, numbering approximately fourty-five percent, and they are the dominant among the peoples to be discussed in their influence on culture and in the government of the state. More importantly, however, is the due consideration attended to the nature of the Kætjhasti. They have been previously argued to exist as the sole living subspecies of homo sapiens; recent evidence has however confirmed that they exist as a part of the human species, but one in a fundamental and irrevocable symbiotic relationship with the Kingdom Bacteria.

One of the most fundamental and immediately noticeable results of this symbiosis is that the primary races of Kætjhasti (irrespective of those on the fringes of the Empire who did not suffer infection) are entirely female. This peculiar social order was the result of the symbiosis in the form of a very well documented plague of the 1480s - 1490s AD, apparently introduced from the Tasman Islands by sailors, and attributed in the local Hindoo superstition to the wrath of Kali for the men having eaten meat. As the fantasy goes, a priestess offered herself up through immolation to Kali, and her wrath was relented, with the females of the sinful lands being allowed to survive through self-reproduction (See PARTHENOGENESIS). In general this has completely reordered all infected cultures, and created unique bonds over and above those of typical national identity which have allowed the Kætjhasti to form as a strong and unitary state body.

This relationship has only been very recently discovered. In 1908 in the southern city of Sahmunapura there was a case, discovered only a year hence after an investigation by local European-trained doctors into a strange malady affecting the women of the area, of workers at a local dye plant that had been recently established having been made sterile by contact with Sulfonamide dye compounds (See SULFONAMIDES, Medical Applications). This discovery at once provided the world with indications of the potential use of Sulfonamides in the treatment of infection, and provided a clear and cognizant theory of the development of the Kætjhasti which laid to rest prior proposals of a Homo Sapiens Australis, long argued against due to the extensive racial mix present in the Empire, but remaining the foremost proposal, heavily championed by supporters of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's Theory of Evolution, as to the existence of the Kætjhasti. In the same way, then, that the return of sailors from the Americas brought with the scourge of syphilis, so was Kætjhastian society permanently reordered.

In biological results, the foremost is that pregnancy becomes a random act, rather than one associated with the act of copulation. This yields a tremendous pressure on the society, in which the inferior woman must already absorb all the tasks of the man, to deal with and mitigate the costs resulting from an essentially random disabling of all individuals in the society at some stages of their lives. Kætjhasti women have adapted, and proved hardy, to the necessity of working until the third trimester of pregnancy, and children are never raised individually, but by the communal blood family, called a term in the Kaetjh Javanese which best translates as 'Motherline'. Inheritance is direct from eldest to eldest along the Motherline, with an absolute social commandment toward the eldest providing for her sisters, with each generation usually numbering only two to three daughters on account of the immense number of miscarriages and spontaneous abortions that result from the imperfect method of Kætjhasti reproduction.

Firstly among the prominent results is the incredible arrangement of the family structure. Though approximating the great homes of the Sumatran family, encompassing many generations, the crucial component of Kætjhasti home life is that the family is all related by blood, and permanently so. As each woman is the descendent of one ultimate infected individual, these continuously spawning lines of clones form the only family possible to the Kætjhasti, and are their fundamental social organization. Though a mockery of marriage exists in the sanctifying of relations between women as an ostentatious display of their Sapphist affection, it has no bearing on the actual composition of the family. Rarely do such 'married' couples even regularly cohabit, with children inevitably remaining attached to their extended family throughout life, regardless of their accomplishments. That Sapphist attractions have become the norm is not considered surprising in a country where only twelve percent of the population is male; they have certainly contributed to the deplorable state of Kætjhasti morality when supplemented by the lax doctrines of the Kalist Hindoo and the fanatical devotions of the Tantra. This erotic love for the same sex is predominant in all portions of society from the Empress to the lowliest peasant woman, and is the subject of a great deal of high Kaetjhasti literature.

Frequently in youth this Sapphist attraction takes the forms of casual relationships between those of similar social status, caste, and occupation, not dissimilar to the institution of the Spartan Mess. These barbaric customs serve as the fundamental basis of all future interactions between individuals in Kætjhasti society, lending them immense social cohesion even at the same time that their government is oft-crippled by an extreme sort of sororal nepotism. At the same time, as a force for discipline in their military in the very same fashion as the Spartan Mess, it has giving them unit cohesion which provided a sound basis for the establishment of European discipline in their armies and a fierce loyalty to their comrades which makes the average Kætjhasti woman, however individually weak and incapable in combat, ferociously committed to standing her ground to the point of overwhelming even the hotheaded characteristics of many of the races which compose the Kætjhasti. It is this trait which earned them the respect of the Dutch in the War of 1890 over southwestern Papua, where the Dutch officers found the Kætjhasti soldiers willing to die in their places 'like stones', refusing to retreat no matter how many were killed and returning fire to the best of their ability, such that the Dutch were not once able to overcome a Kætjhastian defensive position held by their regular army instead of local militias.

In cases of labour, the Kætjhasti female proves herself dogged in all efforts to match western productivity. The chewing of the coca leaf and consumption of caffeine from coffee (brewed in the usual Asian fashion) and tea (of the Chinese variety) serve to aide the Kætjhasti where unassisted strength alone would not provide. The natural tendency of women toward hard and unstinting labour as part of their family duties has been expanded into the realm of the farm and industry with longer hours, more workers, and more than a bit of canny Malay ingenuity having proved sufficient to build their society on industrial and western lines. A love for education and a preference for a respect for hard work more similar to that of the Japanese than the absolute slothfulness of their original races has allowed the state to modernize with surprisingly little difficulty.

One finds the Kætjhasti in all their breeds to be a particularly emotional people. They laugh and cry openly, in all castes of society. Their personal emotions are readily talked about in the fashion of women, and they openly admit their weaknesses. Universally, such conversation is attended by physical closeness, and embracing and kissing in the fashion of Russians and much more intensely beside is completely normal for them, conveying no implication of Sapphist indulgence, though it may soon be given, with such affections indicated most uniquely by the brazen licking of the object of one's desire. No personal space exists among the Kætjhasti, and bathing and toilets lack entirely in privacy, with certain circumstances attending to sustained embraces between even those who were before absolute strangers.

With foreigners they retain a particularly cheerful demeanour, their highest respect being reserved for Germans and Austrians, for they associate with the German language all high culture, and admire in full the accomplishments of the German Empire. In no way do the Kætjhasti fail in their unstinting admiration for the German race, and extensive developments by major companies such as Krupp and IG Farben have taken place at the eager behest of the Kætjhasti government, while the consumption of German lager and schnapps is now a universal affection. The Kætjhasti, being incapable by their racial descent of fully appreciated the totality of German culture, have nevertheless proved quite able to assimilate all the most practical benefits as well as the traits they find at a facile emotional level to be the most endearing. For all Caucasians traveling through the country, however, universal warmth may be assured, and the Kætjhasti are exquisitely and unfailingly polite. They, viewing themselves as orthodox Hindoos, also retain particular favour for visiting coreligionists, and a guest will not lack in comfort, nor the provision of the immensely popular East Indian 'kretek' cigarette, though other forms of tobacco are usually lacking from their consumption.

Kætjhasti society, being a derivative of the ancient Hindoos of the Malay archipelago in the respects of its dominant race, is fundamentally polytheistic and superstitious. The nature of their society and their relations amongst themselves has rendered the spread of Christianity impossible, and the character of the Empress as a living goddess has not been touched by the reformers of the 1889 military coup who introduced a western style constitution, in this respect similar to Japan. The killing of beef cattle is universally prohibited, though consumption of lamb, seafood, and pork are unrestrained as well as fowl, save amongst those who for reasons of Hindoo religious practice abstain entirely from meat. On account of the innumerable raids conducted against them by the Muslim conquerors of the East Indies, from whom their ancestors formed refugees in more distant times, they hold an especial hatred for those who profess the faith of Mahomet. Both the Mahayana and Theravada strains of Buddhism, from Chinese and Malay sources respectively, combine with the Chinese introduction of certain Taoist elements to create a variant branch of Hindoos who by their exception syncretism have succeeded in largely integrating the heathens of the state.

Another component of the nature of the state is the caste system. As in the inhabitants of the Hindoo island of Bali, there are only four castes, the Dalits or Untouchables have been sensibly and mercifully eliminated from the Malay system, and their occupations integrated into the society as a whole. The castes are therefore only four in number, firstly the ubiquitous Brahmin or priestesses, who are ranked virtually equally with the second caste of Kshatriya or warriors, from whom come the majority of the nobility. Though both castes are almost universally Malay in race, they have comfortably integrated the chieftanesses and priestesses of the other infected peoples into their ranks, the caste system overall being much more fluid than in India, viz. the successful dominance of the Chinese colonists in comprising the greater part of the Vaishya caste of merchants. All farmers and workers not consisting of impoverished families (who nonetheless always freehold even in such cases) of the other castes are considered the Shudra or peasant caste.

The racial breakdown of Kætjhasti reflects the nation's diversity and divergence in no less fundamental ways, but these are secondary to the sexual considerations. In demographic terms, the infected population has an average total fertility rate of only 2.3, with the highest being that of the ethnic Chinese at 2.5, and most of the rest at 2.2. This tiny figure per woman belies the nature of Kætjhasti reproduction, where all individuals reproduce at this rate: A more accurate figure is therefore a respectable total fertility rate of 4.6. The uninfected population conversely has a more normal total fertility rate for primitive peoples of about 6.2. The ratio of infected to uninfected is only approximately 4:1, yielding 40 million infected Kætjhasti and 10 million uninfected. In this fashion the fundamental weakness of parthenogenic reproduction is shown due to the greater fecundity of the uninfected to the point of wiping out even the gains the Kætjhasti may have from their whole population being female. This is however not the only likely factor; it is certainly true that the Chinese, forming an extensive part of the merchant caste and thereby seeing little great physical exertion, have the highest birthrate, and certainly some improvement could be obtained.

Of the races, about 40% of the overall population, or 20 millions, are infected ethnic Malays who first settled the area of the Torres Isthmus and the Kaetjh plain, along with the northwestern coast of Australia Major and southwestern coast of Australia Minor, in the 1100s and established themselves as an eastward extension of the rice permaculture of the Indies, easily displacing the primitive and inferior Negritoid inhabitants. Some remnants in the far west and scattered through the great bulk of the Kætjhasti cultural areas remain uninfected to the number of perhaps 2 millions, for 22 millions in all being of Malay heritage. Though it at first may seem remarkable that the Malay race has succeeded, particularly considering the limited capability they show elsewhere in less trying circumstances than those the Kætjhasti state faces with its lack of men, on a more careful consideration it must be noted that the Malay is first oppressed by Islam in his normal circumstances, while the Hindoo faith does not provide such an impediment to modernization, nor such an inducement to fanaticism. Secondly, the Malay is certainly to be accounted intelligent among the races of the world, his principle fault being a base cunning which overwhelms all moral sense.

However, what is certainly to be accounted the most important point is that the upper classes, the high Brahmin and Kshatriya, are for the most part not pureblood Malays, but hold in them an admixture of Aryan blood. The intrepid Aryan conquerors of India, having subdued the Dravidian races of the south, journeyed further afield in the introduction of the Hindoo belief system to the East Indies. There, they unquestionably established themselves as the rulers and priests, and the successive waves of invasion from the Khmer, a debased Aryan race of Indochina, further served to strengthen the effect. It has been conclusively proved through analysis of the skulls of upper-caste Kætjhasti women that they are in the better part heavily Aryan, and tend to be an inch to two inches taller than the average population. Though debased, this connection with superiour faculties means that the traditional leadership of Kætjhasti, descendants of those upper-caste Hindoos who inevitably formed the break bulk of the flight from the Muslim conquest of the Malay archipelago, has long had the intelligence and capacity to guide the state and aid in modern industrialization, and enough of a semblence of martial commitment, aided by their ubiquitous barrack-room culture, to prove capable leading their troops in battle against even European armies.

Second of the races in Kætjhasti are the Maori. Comprising 6 millions of the infected population, they are the descendants of Polynesian conquerors of the native Lapita people of Zealandia. Falling easily upon the Lapita and defeating them, they adopted iron through trade with the Malays of Sahul and maintained to the present a warlike culture even when all the males in their society had been lost, defending the high mountains of the central plateau from the uninfected Maori to the south and causing much trouble for the government, with the first Empress, Yashovati I, said to have been sufficiently impressed as to take a chieftaness as a lover from among their number in a rare expression of her perversion for the otherwise upright and brilliant founding monarch of the Imperial line. Being taller and physically stronger than the weak Malay women who nonetheless dominate the state, they are considered among the best of the infantry that Kætjhasti can field, though only when led by Malay officers with the highest admixture of Aryan blood, their proving too hot-headed and given to emotional frenzy and panic to properly govern themselves in war or peace, but a valid contribution to the state under the guidance of their conquerors.

The uninfected Maori of the southlands of Zealandia and the Kermadec Islands provide the largest uninfected group, and the most open to Christianity, with not less than a fourth of their number having been converted since the Imperial government was compelled to open its borders. The Maori man is naturally honest and honourable, and has proved willing to fight for his alien sovereign with surprising aplomb and typical ferocity, and they are prized as great seafarers and whalers. Combined, the southlands Maori and Kermadec islanders comprise 4 millions of the population, and one which has maintained substantial independence from the tendency toward unity in the Kætjhasti state, almost entirely due to the continued guiding influence of men in their society. Several lesser Polynesian cultures exist in Kætjhasti, but are insufficiently documented to be included.

Chinese comprise the third largest population. Settling in the northwest of Zealandia in the 1380s through 1450s and growing constantly right up until the moment of the plagues, they were introduced by the great Chinese eunuch-Admiral Zheng He at the behest of the Ming Dynasty, who developed extensive ties with the Kætjhasti and provided for them to knowledge to build the immense Star Rafts which fatefully brought to them the plagues of the Tasman Islands. They thoroughly dominate the merchant classes and are universally wealthy, causing no small amount of resentment, though their working relationship with and loyalty to the Imperial government is absolute, and their cultures have largely integrated, to the point where most identify themselves as Hindoo, though the Buddhist and Taoist influences remain predominant; the teachings of Confucius have proved sufficiently unable to cope with the situation of the Kætjhasti as to see them generally discarded.

The Chinese inhabitants of Kætjhasti are universally infected, and their racial descent is of the lowest form of Chinese, being predominantly Cantonese and Min speakers from the south of China who never benefited from the infusions of noble Manchu blood. They comprise not less than 4 millions of the Imperial population, and though only one-tenth of the infected population, dominate the upper echelons of commerce thoroughly and are greatly prominent as industrialists and scientific professionals, also being very visible in the universities and in the Kætjhastian branches of many German corporations that have been established in the past two decades. In this fashion, the Chinese have access to the halls of power, primarily on fiscal matters, and have produced many ministers for the otherwise largely Kshatriya government, with their innate capacity for fiscal matters well compared to that of Jewry.

Of the next largest infected race, the Lapita, it may be said that their culture has been obscured in all areas except the northeast peninsula, which remained a stronghold until captured by the campaigns of Sridarnya I and integrated into the Empire. The infected population of Lapita consists of 4 millions, primarily concentrated in the northeast and otherwise spread through the areas of Maori population. They do, however, have uninfected counterparts to the number of about 3 millions in the southlands, where the Lapita and Maori, other than in the northeast, remained the most separate. The antagonism between the Lapita farmers and the Maori conquest class here has considerably aided in Imperial control of the southlands and the tightened grip of the state on its uninfected minorities.

The remaining infected population is divided between about 4.5 millions of those of mixed race ancestry, predominantly Maori-Lapita or Malay-Chinese, though also some Maori-Chinese and Maori-Malays, who are spread throughout all levels of society and well integrated with the Imperial state, largely adopting the culture of the region that they inhabit, and a series of minor cultures on the other hand. These minor cultures include in their numbers about 250,000 each infected Papuans and Australians, the two principle branches of the negritoid race in Australia and much marginalized in Kætjhasti society, and the 500,000 strong Zealandia Highlanders, the Chomo, whose martial ferocity has given them a reputation as the Amazons of the Empire, only matched by their absolute and fanatical devotion to the Empress as the Sun Goddess. Extremely primitive, they are nonetheless the most interesting race, being unknown in their primordial origins. Analysis of their skulls and consideration of their great height suggests their original ancestors, per the theory of M. Chistyakov of the St. Petersburg institute, were related to the Ainu and in ancient times were universally present on all the islands of the Pacific. Their language is however isolated, with no known related tongues. The last group, of several hundred thousands, are the Torres Islanders, who inhabit islands off the Torresian Isthmus in the Coral Sea and are believed to be of Melanesian ancestry.

A last infected population, and of special note, are the Thousand Families. More precisely comprising of two thousand families, they are commonly called the Thousand Families due that being the number of European origin. Consisting of the descendants of numerous shipwrecked unfortunate women and children, including the unfortunate survivors of several penal ships to West Australia which went off course in the late 18th century, but stretching all the way back to the famous Portuguese Fernandez family of the early 16th century, these families are entirely integrated into Kætjhasti society, infected with the parasite or symbiot through unknown means (their existence was one of the prime arguments against the theories of Lamarck), and sharing in the vices of their forcibly adopted culture. They are in all cases true to their Aryan blood and, adopted by Hindoo religious custom into Kshatriya families and caste, remain extremely prominent out of all proportion in the government and military. The other thousand families include those of Thai, Khmer, and Vietnamese heritage, as well as many Japanese and some Indians, along with at least one family of Arab origin; of these the Japanese and Indians are the most prominent, though those of Vietnamese ancestry are the largest group. They are less successful in general, however, than those of white ancestry, but equally revered as 'gifts from deities of the sea'.

A final note may conclude our consideration of the peoples of Kætjhasti. Over the course of the past seventy-five years, as trade became fully normalized and extensive with Kætjhasti, there has been a continuous number of European, and some women from European colonies or Japan and other Asian states with a capacity to trade with Kætjhasti, who have intentionally sought out the nation. These deranged women, usually with Sapphist tendencies, have tended to be less integrated into Kætjhasti society, but usually also more fanatical in their loyalty to the Empire, and frequently completely abandon their prior religion and wholeheartedly adopt the most perverse and lewd elements of Kætjhasti society. The Kætjhasti accept them, and their numbers are now thought to reside in the tens of thousands, with many of them infected by the same bacterial parasite as the main population. The government has cooperated in the banning of provision of visas for single women, but as a matter of policy has approved all requests for asylum by those who manage to find Kætjhasti shores illicitly, and so this strange form of immigration continues, albeit at a trickle.

3. LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. The languages and literature of the Kætjhasti reflect their position as a multiracial Empire systematically. Until recently there was no formal standard on language, though Imperial Rescripts were posted in Kætjh Javanese, the native language of more than two fifths of the population, including all the governing Kshatriya classes (even those not racially Malay have generally adopted the tongue).

Kætjh Javanese began to diverge from Old Javanese in the 1000s during the height of usage of that language. The divergence however became extreme in the 13th century when the rise of the Majapahits in the western Malay Archipelago caused significant changes between the two languages. The later fall of the Majapahits in favour of the Islamic traders and conquerors who have completely changed the history of the archipelago left a permanent split between the two languages. The refugees from the fall of the Majapahits brought to Kætjhasti some of their linguistic innovations, but being of the highest Brahmin classes for the most part they were most interested in religious works. Already of Old Javanese, of the 25,500 known words of their vocabulary, 12,500 are borrowed from Sanskrit. This is certainly not the case in every-day speech, but heavily influenced the language and influenced Kætjh Javanese moreso.

With the basic genesis of the language established, the number of loan words from Sanskrit in the early Kætjh dialect was on the order of 13,000 and the use of Sanskrit as a religious language in Hindu devotion never completely ceased. The language diverged heavily from here, however, with the extensive addition of loan words from the local Negritoid peoples and Melanesians. The Lapita and Maori of Zealandia further added numerous words to the tongue, and the arrival of Chinese settlers in the late 14th century lent further to a polyglot tongue which due to these extensive loans already was likely unintelligible with Middle Javanese.

The great collapse of their society, and their descent into an entirely female people, completed for the Malays of Kætjhasti the evolution of their tongue into a distinct and different form of the Malay languages. It may be best described that if the present Javanese tongues are the Romance languages of western Europe, Kætjh Javanese is the Rumanian: Still clearly recognizable in its descent and yet substantially different in most respects and with extensive foreign influence.

With this background the language has subsequently been elevated not merely as the court tongue (though superceded in religious roles by Sanskrit) but as the common discourse for most government transactions and as a second language necessary in almost all arenas except commerce, where the dominance of the Chinese has guaranteed the Cantonese tongue parity with Kætjh Javanese.

The 4 January 'Bayonet Revolt' of 1889 brought the reformist National Union Party into power, and their interest in linguistics was marked. Since taking power over the government, in the interest of concepts of the fundamental Hindu identity of the State, they have launched a concerted effort to incorporate more concepts and words from the Sanskrit into the modern Kætjh Javanese tongue, while preserving the traditional abugida script on the Indian form which Old and Middle Javanese were also composed in, against competing proposed romanizations. The National Union Party also formalized the state languages, providing for publication of government documents in both Kætjh Javanese and German, while allowing each different lander or state under then new constitution to declare an official state language in which official documents and parliamentary debate may also occur.

The official state languages comprise the majority of other tongues spoken in the Empire's core territories. These are Cantonese, Maori, Lapita, and Chomayu. All correspond with an infected ethnic group and a state government (or several) and are the languages of the commoners in that region in general, though usually local notables will have learned it as children. In general the upper classes know Kætjh Javanese and at least one European language as well, however, and only Cantonese enjoys status as a full second Imperial language by the ubiquity of its use in commercial transactions. For a woman of refinement of Maori or Chomayu background, for instance, the knowledge of her native tongue as well as Kætjh Javanese, Cantonese, and French or German is virtually universal. Malays and Cantonese, however, frequently learn not merely but two foreign languages; the most common are German (after recent propagation efforts of the Kætjhasti-German League, it is now mandatory in schools), French, Dutch, and English. Portuguese and Spanish are also sometimes taught; other languages are uniformly absent from the curriculum of even majority universities, though plans exist to change this.

Competing Abugidas and Romanizations exist for Maori, Lapita, and Chomayu, with Cantonese still relying on the Chinese character system, though the Standard Romanization was recently adopted, as Cantonese has proved relatively conservative in the Kætjhasti usage. The government has not sought to regulate these languages.

Kætjh Javanese is spoken as the primary language in twelve lander of the Empire. Cantonese is spoken as the primary language in only three, Tingfu'eh, Wuna, and Zhujiang, but they are very densely populated. Maori is predominantly spoken in six states, though these are lightly populated.

Among the lesser tongues of the Empire, Teouma and Xaapeta States are the only states with a majority Lapita population; Chomo State is almost exclusively Chomoi in population and therefore speaks the Chomayu language to the rate of 90%. Aeroaki State, usually called South Zealandia State, has co-officiality of a variant Lapita dialect and Maori. Of the two incorporated territories, both narrowly speak Kætjh Javanese over the native Aboriginal dialects, being lightly settled, mostly by
railroad workers.

Uniquely among the tongues, Chomayu is a language isolate with no known relations, though it has been conjectured that the Chomo peoples are related to an antediluvian universal Pacific population related to the modern Ainu. This classification, and hypothesis, based on analysis of the similarities in the skulls of Chomo and Ainu, has naturally led to efforts to prove a relationship between the two languages, but as the Ainu tongue has been rapidly displaced by Japanese, the efforts have proved difficult due to the lack of an extensive Ainu vocabulary or knowledge of any ancestry for the language.

Tongues without formal representation exist in the Empire proper. Two minor Polynesian languages exist in the Zealandia Highlands with spoken populations of a few tens of thousands at the most, related to Maori but notably divergent. They are divided between infected and uninfected populations based on the village. The Min dialect of Chinese is very prominent as a local tongue in Tingfu'eh state to the point of competing with Cantonese, and the Hakka dialect is spoken by a small percentage of the population in Zhujiang state. The small Melanesian population on the Torres Isthmus maintains a distinct language. The Negritoid settled inhabitants of the Empire's territories on Australia Minor display countless languages, with many thought to be undiscovered and all spoken by very; the same is true of the aboriginal Negritoids of Australia Major.

Of the external territories, the entirety of the Kermadec Islands speak a profusion of Polynesian tongues, estimated as many as seventeen, their descents traced to the Rarotongan, Tongarevan, Rakahanga, and Pukapukan languages of the Cook Islands. The New Hebrides, however, feature a greater profusion of tongues; Kætjhasti ethnographers have documented more than a hundred of Melanesian origin and three of Polynesian origin. At least a further fourty languages exist in the South Solomon Islands, though few details are known about them despite extensive Kætjhasti efforts to seize control of the interior of the islands.

The literature of Kætjhasti is almost entirely produced in Kætjh Javanese or outright in old Sanskrit, which has seen a major revival at the hands of the National Union Party and recent concepts of a distinct and Hindu national identity. An epic poem, The Self-Immolation of the Brahmin Purani is the principle native religious work, compiled from oral sources in the 1840s by Samijha sri Wanava. It purports to explain the all-female nature of the Kætjhasti through the legend of the priestess of the great temple of Kali at Retangapura, by the name of Purani, who discovered that a plague had rendered the men who came to her over matters of fertility sterile. She launched on a dream-quest, a unique feature of Kætjh Hinduism related to the native Aboriginal beliefs, which led her to know that it was the punishment of the Gods for sailors having butchered cows in the southlands and eaten them.

Turning to her patron Goddess, the Brahmin begged that they should not be extinguished, that the women of the nation might survive out of their piousness to the Gods, in contrast to the sin of the men. She ascended to a holy place to the dread Goddess, and commanded the villagers to build a pyre for herself which she climbed and lit with a torch and pot of bitumen, kneeling in supplication to Kali as she burned. The goddess acknowledge the supreme sacrifice of her appeal, and took it upon herself to provide the Kætjhasti women with the means of reproducing themselves, while she exacted a particular further price from Purani herself, elevating her soul, given up by the Brahmin as her sacrifice to Kali, into a Rakshasas tasked with reaping horribly of the children of the women of the land, that they might survive, but never again enjoy bountiful fertility.

In general the old literature of the Kætjhasti is religious in this fashion, both to explain their unique situation, which they tended to recognize through contact with the outside world at a fairly early period, and to justify the masculine components of the Mahabharata and Ramayana and the other principle Hindu epics which comprise the bulk of their religious literature, and explain how the allusions and examples still have particular relevance for their society and the comportment of the Kshatriya and peasantry alike. Early works diverging noticeably from this scheme include the famous Commentaries of Yashovati the First, which she composed after being introduced to Caesar's Commentaries by her principle European advisor, Martin van Heerskomp. The writing is however poor in its imitation of Caesar; though the detail is excellent and language crisp by the standards of Kætjhasti composition, it is clear that the work is pseudo-religious in nature, and self-justifying toward the creation of the Imperial Cult, which makes it serve virtually as an additional religious text among the Kætjhasti but considerably lessens is value as an historic document to European world.

Of greater interest from the period, however, is the Travels of Princess Sridarnya, the Kætjhasti account of the Empress' younger sister's travels through Europe in the 1660s, including her famed audience with Louis XIV of France. The work presents a lively contrast to the stories of the European observers, and the princess, herself a trusted aide of her older sister, provided evaluations of the foreign rulers for the Empress to consider, which present a remarkable series of impressions of Europe's sovereigns from the alien perspective of the Kætjhasti in the era of the Sun King. The work is however risque in many respects; the inhibitions of the Kætjhasti writer are few.

Travelogues of this sort have vied with the recent development of novels, generally Romantic or Historical, in native Kætjhasti literature in imitation of Europe in the later part of the 19th century. Within the past twenty years, however, there has been a marked tendency to the composition of historical poems and epics based on existing peasant fables to create a distinct national corpus, much at the behest of the National Union Party. These sorts of tales have been supplemented by the thoroughly competent accounts of the Dutch War of 1890, usually from the officers who served, representing a European interest in the historiography of the battlefield and the lessons which might be learned from it.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Kaetjhasti fleet escorts 1945 - 2008.



The Imperial Kaetjhasti Navy (often misinterpreted as Royal Kaetjhasti Navy, but the R in common use stands for Raihiranya--Empress who is the Sun) was left in a position that its planners considered difficult at best in the postwar world. The surviving main combatant fleet at the end of WW2 consisted of 8 battleships, 1 battlecruiser, 1 very large strike carrier, 4 fleet carriers, and 5 light carriers and one old, early 1930s vintage fleet carrier the same size as the light carriers. The escort carriers they had constructed were all necessarily converted back to freighters to deal with the world drought of shipping considering the success of Japanese submarine attacks throughout the war. Of the ships, 4 of the battleships and the battlecruiser, obsolescent in every way (one even being a reconstructed semi-dreadnought!) were immediately sold off and, with the exception of the battlecruiser, the famed Prithvirani (preserved as a museum), scrapped. A second strike carrier finished in 1946, and at that point the active fleet was reduced to six fleet carriers and two battleships, with the five light carriers in reserve as well as two battleships; the oldest of the fleet carriers was ultimately also preserved as a museum, and decommissioned at this point.

The cruiser force was in only slightly better condition. 7 modern heavy cruisers commissioned during the war survived, as did 3 large light cruisers of the London treaty type from before the war, and 4 smaller light cruisers from during the war of 9,000 tons, + 4 ordered before the war and completed during it, of 8,000 tons; all the other light cruisers had been sold off except for three of the same type, pre-war design, as being quite obsolete (the oldest were very similar to Emden and a few had seen service in the first world war). Adding to this 4 surviving CAs from before the war, the active duty cruiser force ended up 7 heavy cruisers, 8 light cruisers, with 3 heavy cruisers and 6 light cruisers in the mothball fleet. Six Spahkreuzers of 1930s vintage had survived the war and remained in active service as destroyer leaders.

The active-duty fleet was soon cut further. The escort forces were however the greatest concern; ASW in the next war would be a pressing need, and the demands of anti-aircraft fire in the dawning jet age were daunting. The main class then in service were the 3,000 tonners, very large destroyers with 8 x 4.1in/65cal multipurpose batteries, basket-fed designs based on the German C34, though considerably simplified, and their smaller and older cousins of 2,700 tons (the 3,000 tonners being but lengthened 2,700 tonners for wartime design analysis).

80 3,000 tonners had been ordered, of which 60 had been laid down before the end of the war, and 39 completed with 2 lost. Another 6 were completed slowly over 1946 - 1947 to keep the yards busy; 12 were laid up incomplete for future use, and 3 unfinished hulls were scrapped on the ways, the other 20, of course, cancelled. The 2,500 tonners were entirely decommissioned and sold off; the 2,700 tonners were slashed in numbers again and again; at first, only 48 were retained, half in reserve, and then the number was reduced further, the reserve fleet lowered to 12 ships for 36 still in the fleet; even 7 of the 3,000 tonners were placed in reserve, bring the active-duty destroyer force to 60 ships; the 1,800 ton emergency warbuild "light" destroyer, armed with 4 x 4.1in/45cal, saw its numbers slashed to 30, all in reserve, and then just 24, while in the meanwhile of the 2,700 tonners, 16 were transferred to the Marine Gendarmerie.

Though the Kaetjhasti were universally pessimistic about conflict with the United States, and went out of their way in the postwar era to align themselves with the Western bloc then coalescing (as was natural for a still rather conservative quasi-constitutional monarchy, regardless of SCP political reforms); their primary military focus was however the prospect of a renewed conflict with Britain or the Dutch, over West Australia or Indonesia respectively, where the Kaeties aided Sukarno's independence movement, a level of assistance which included a recognition of the independent government, though a proposed transfer of destroyers was scrapped with US pressure. Building to face the Royal Navy was however possible, and the need to do so was proved to the Kaetjhasti by the border incidents of 1956 in which several skirmishes took place between the RAF and RKAF following the RKAF's engagement of a Canberra apparently violating Kaety airspace near a nuclear testing site--the details of which are still disputed to this day, and the incident which gave rise to Eisenhower's famous quote that "the principle job of the President of the United States these days seems to be preventing schoolyard fights between Britain and Kaetjhasti." The incident leveraged Kaetjhasti popularity--as a nuclear armed, anti-colonialist state of asiatic descent, regardless of their peculiar nature--into a leadership position in the Non-Aligned Movement and thereby led to increased military spending, especially since the development was not unencouraged by the United States, which hoped to see the Kaetjhasti lead the NAM to a stance more hostile to communism.

Building was however a misnomer; between the end of the war and 1957, only 4 ships were laid down for the Kaetjhasti navy, all in 1949/1950. These were all large, prototype vessels based on the 1935-Spahkreuzer series and of about 5,000 tons each. Two were optimized for ASW, with heavy batteries of forward-firing rockets and several other experimental weapon systems, most of which were not successful (though one ultimately led to a Kaetjhasti equivalent to RAT), and somewhat different armament arrangements. The other two ships tested experimental extremely rapid-fire 88mm guns and a more modest evolutionary improvement over the 4.1in/65cal twin with a full automatic loading system, respectively; the later were chosen for further development and ultimately became the 4.1in/70cal twin fitted to the Savurnapura, Najrah and Jhamra classes, which in a redesigned and improved arrangement were fitted to the Lanakh class, a Maritime Gendarmerie class of heavy cutters, and later with an improved fairing to the Kris class DDGNs. As a practical matter, however, the four new ships in their varied configurations were simply reworked into destroyer group flagships, allowing the decommissioning of the Spahkreuzers. They were later rebuilt as Helicopter Destroyers in the early 1960s.

The next new construction did not take place until 1957, and it was governed by the considerations of the missile age. This first ship used the same basic hull as the Spahkreuzer 1935 and the prototype destroyer leaders, but was intended from the start as a missile ship--though worries over the effectiveness of the Srimarta and Kulkarna missiles then being developed led to their retaining a fairly heavy gun armament. In 1957 the very first of the Kaetjhasti missile-armed ships was already soon to commission, however; it would be the first of two CBGs and a total of six CLGs that the navy would commission between 1957 -- 1960 and, armed with heavy Kulkarna missiles and supporting Srimarta batteries, would unquestionably catapult the Imperial Navy to the second rank in the world, a suitable position for the postwar developmental bounty of the State.

Before this class was laid down, however, a series of modifications were undertaken to the 2,700 / 3,000 ton destroyers, and the unfinished hulls of the later type were reordered to be finished as guided-missile destroyers. These are the first series of postwar modification and construction in mass to be considered, requisite for the powerful new carrier force then being finished, with two unfinished strike carriers completing to an angled-deck design, and the other two, and four fleet carriers, being modified as quickly as possible while the first full (rather than mixed) jets were introduced into the Fleet's Air Arm. A total of 36 of the 3,000 tonners were rebuilt as ASW dedicated ships, as were 24 of the 2,700 tonners; 12 of the 1,800 tonners were reactivated as patrol ships, and the 12 unfinished 3,000 tonners were completed to a missile destroyer design by 1960 (armed with 1 x twin Srimarta, 2 x twin 4.1in, and 3 x twin 3in/50, one of the later being removed for a DASH hangar, and later on, the other two in favour of ASW torpedo tubes as the need for gun-based anti-air fire receded in the 1960s).

This left the navy, as the first new DDG class, built from the start for this purpose, was commissioning, with a force in escorts of 12 x 3,000 ton DDG, 4 x 5,000 ton DL, 36 x 3,000 ton DD, 12 x 2,700 ton DD in active service along with the 12 "light" DDs which were quickly re-rerated as 1,800 ton frigates; the reserve fleet's escorts was cut all the way back to twelve of the modified 2,700 tonners and twelve unmodified 2,700 tonners. Increasingly, however, the surviving cruisers were also being seen as escorts--excepting the four CACs, the eight cruisers of the navy in regular commission in 1961, two CBGs and six CLGs, were all modified as air-defence missile ships that would spend most of their lives covering carrier groups, but they will not be covered in the escort section for reasons of their design.

The Savurnapura class ultimately reached 5,600 tons full-load displacement, and were broadly comparable to the USN's contemporary Farragut class DLGs. Srimarta, though often called a clone of Tartar, had 8% longer range at 5% larger physical dimensions and 10% greater weight with about the same maneouvrability; Kulkarna, conversely, was about 10% smaller than Talos in physical dimensions, and had only about 85% of the range, or 80km for the original version (1957) and 160km for the final version (introduced in 1963), though it was able to carry a warhead of the same size as the RIM-8. No missile equivalent to Terrier was ever attempted by the Kaetjhasti and the Kulkarna/Srimarta combination remained their fleet missiles until the Lanakh class began to enter service in 1976 and several rebuilds were commenced, all incorporating the Samandha SAM with medium/long range variants that continues in service to the present in a much-upgraded form; the 1960s did however see the modification of license-built AIM-9s for a programme similar to Sea Chapparal, which was superceded by the Slikha, a missile which ultimately evolved into a form similar to ESSM but was designed from the start for naval use and was initially a more capable missile than Sea Sparrow.

The twelve Savurnapuras were armed with 2 x twin Srimarta, 4 x 375mm quad ASW RLs, and 1 x 4.1in/70cal twin, along with 4 x twin 3in/50cal and ASW torpedo tubes (both trainable, and fixed large tubes in the stern); two of the 375mm were subsequently replaced by ASROC, which the Kaetjhasti had signed on to as their collaborations with the west in the pacific became more important, and after the generally mediocre performance of their own RAT mountings. The ships were the bulk of the early 60's production, the rest of the naval budget eaten up by the prototype SSN and the construction of two Te'ke'ora class super carriers comparable in size to the Kitty Hawks which served to replace the four Essex-equivalent WW2 vintage carriers in the fleet when they ultimately finished in the late 1960s. To provide additional escorts for this force a follow-on design was issued, ultimately evolving into the extremely powerful, and with a completely new hull form and COSAG instead of the traditional steam firing of the Savurnapuras, 7,000 ton Jhamra class, fitted with a twin Srimarta launcher forward, twin Kulkarna aft, and a 4.1in/70cal twin and ASROC. Though initially designated DLGs, the ships were later redesigned DDGs as the Destroyer designation in Kaety use began to be used to refer to numerous ships in the 1970s that approached 10,000 tons full load displacement.

In the mid-60's the original 3,000 tonners were also rebuilt to their most extreme form, all the turrets except one being removed and ASROC being fitted amidships; a provision on these 36 ships for robotic drone helicopters for use against submarines was also made, which had been added to the 3,000 tonner DDGs as well. Notably, none of the Kaetjhasti ships of the period were fitted for helicopter operations, these being reserved for four CVLs which had been reactivated as ASW assets and the four DDHs, and the CACs, though they did have hangars, did not normally fly ASW helicopters. The Jhamra[/] class was ultimately rebuilt with a helipad and refueling/rearming capacity; the Savurnapura class followed only in the early 1970s with the removal of the super-heavy ASW torpedo tubes aft. The drone ASW helicopters on the 3,000 tonners were however retained in service until the last of the 3,000 tonners themselves were decommissioned in 1979, and with substantial upgrades some continued to operate on the Trivandhai-class CLGs through 1990 when those ships operated some out of their old Kulkarna magazines after 1978.

They had been built with far better electronics than DASH and had commissioned officers with helicopter ratings as their operators and warrant officers as their maintenance crew leaders, and consequently had an 80 to 85% reduction in accidents, making the drones--usually operated in pairs, one with torpedoes and one with sonobuoys--actually extremely popular in the Kaety service. The 2,700 tonners were not rebuilt and the 1,800 tonners pulled from service; the fleet dwindled to 48 active-duty ASW/patrol destroyers and, with the completion of the Jhamra-class, nonetheless had 28 powerful AAW destroyers. This was still considered insufficient; as a result, most of the UNREP ships in the fleet were modified in this period to operate one small ASW helicopter as well as one general utility helicopter for VERTREP.

The goal of producing a force substantially more powerful than the British had been achieved; a comparative ratio of forces in 1970 showed the British with 10 AAW destroyers of the County class plus two guided missile cruisers, all armed with Sea Slug, and the only other embarked missile being Sea Cat. The Imperial Navy, conversely, possessed an even greater imbalance in guided missile cruisers with eight in service, not counting the strategic cruise missile armed CACs. The escort force was still however considered substantially inadequate; there were now only six carrier groups, but the need to defend them against air attack was pressing; there were only two Kulkarna-armed ships in total per carrier (all with Srimarta), and four Srimarta-only ships per carrier. The Soviet Union appeared more threatening, and Kaetjhasti's flirtation with a more western oriented leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement had largely failed, their friendship with the leftist Sukarno--whom they had helped seize the Netherlands' quadrant of Papua to avoid the region becoming independent and threatening control of their own UN Mandate over the former German Papua and the Solomons--had reversed, ironically, to hostility with Suharto, who as a result of the Kaety threat tended toward a more neutralist course like India and thereby retained the ability to command some Soviet weapons purchases, which did not stop British rapproachment, as both nations put the Konfrontasi behind themselves and closed ranks over Kaetjhasti.

A new frigate design was the real need. Drones were seen as insufficient; actual helicopters were needed. The aging hulls of the WW2-vintage destroyers were a quarter of a century old and had been run hard throughout their lives, and were after their final modifications overloaded and overweight. What ultimately evolved was a 3,850 ton vessel, the Najrah-class frigate, which could be built in sufficient numbers to replace the old destroyers in the fleet. The design, initially intended to incorporate Sea Chapparal for defence, was modified with the native Kaety Slikha missile of much improved performance, and in combination with ASROC promised a frigate whose capability was quite similar to the USN's Knox class, albeit with COSAG instead of pure steam propulsion, on two shafts and capable of 30kts to keep up with Carrier Taskgroups. A total of 40 were ordered, and designed for the start with a helicopter hangar, it was felt these 40 hulls could finally provide as an active-duty force enough ASW for the fleet to replace the 48 ASW-rebuilt destroyers then in active service. The ships were commissioned at a steady rate from 1970 -- 1977 and on the completion of the last, the remaining 24 3,000-tonners were comfortably in the reserve fleet, and indeed by this point composed the entire reserve fleet; eight of the others had been sold, one sunk as a target, and three scrapped, and the 2,700 tonners and cruisers were long gone from the early 70's forward.

It was not, however, enough. The Kaetjhasti found their naval escort problems were if anything not improved, while the threat had substantially increased. Early model Soviet SSGNs and SSBNs rebuilt as SSGNs were now being tasked with attacks on Kaetjhasti using nuclear cruise missiles, due to the commitment of the main Soviet deterrent force against the United States and Europe. The government invested huge sums of money into proactive nuclear defence by deploying nuclear depth bombs, torpedoes, and other special weapons to the ASW forces of the navy and even making provisions for ASW helicopters armed with nuclear depth bombs to operate off of Maritime Gendarmerie vessels in wartime (!), while more money still was spent on sonar lines to prevent entry of Soviet SSGNs into the confined waters of the Coral Sea and Tasman Sea, the two inland seas of the Kaetjhasti Empire, from whence they could launch attacks with little notice against the main population centres of the Empire; other efforts included the provision of the navy's ground-based aviation with more and more very large TKhR-148 turboprop maritime patrol craft and the retention of flying boats for ASW patrol. The tendency to provide ASW helicopters on UNREP ships continued throughout the entire cold war, and the old CVLs were replaced by four new CAHs for anti-submarine operations, but these simply added to the escort demands.

The 3,000 ton DDGs (though their full-load displacement was substantially more by that point) were now in need of replacement, and the proposed class quickly took on monstrous proportions. The Lanakh class ended up displacing 9,150 tons and was, in a concession with the need for more ASW, fitted with helicopter hangars despite being intended mainly for AAW. Two twin launchers for the new Samandha missile were provided as well as two twin 4.1in/70cal guns; the twin launchers could also handle ASROC, and the ships were the first to be fitted with the Nakama SSM, a very sizable cruise missile--for the light range of Exocet, Harpoon, etc, that it competed with--with a range of 175km, speed of Mach 0.95, and 250kg warhead, approximately the size of a Tomahawk. This missile was declared fully operational in 1977 after a trials period lasting several years in which electronics issues and the rather sophisticated motor required for the performance on the dictated weight were worked out. The twelve ships were commissioned between 1976 -- 1979 and remain in service to the present, having received extensive modifications in the late 1980s and early 1990s amounting to an electronics capability similar to New Threat Upgrade in the USN. Two modified versions of the Lanakh class were built as follow-ons. One had all-gas-turbine propulsion, the first step of the conservative Kaetjhasti engineers away from mixed use of gas turbines with steam (though the later flights of the Najrah class used CODAG), and the other was a radical departure, indeed--the first surface ship in the Kaetjhasti navy built for nuclear propulsion. Both commissioned in 1980, and in addition to their changed powerplants had room for two larger helicopters, further improving ASW capabilities.

This brought the fleet strength, in 1980, to 30 guided missile destroyers and 40 frigates in active duty service supporting the 12 now aging cruisers as the surface combatants, with six fleet carriers still operational, assisted by four ASW-helicopter oriented CAHs; the Imperial Navy could still boast the second most powerful fleet in the world, and NTU for the Savurnapura-class followed in the early 1980s, followed by the cruiser replacement programme which provided the Kaeties with first-class nuclear powered CSGNs (though in substantially smaller numbers to the old cruiser force), which will be covered elsewhere. This carried the fleet through the 1980s, the Jhamra class receiving NTU in the mid-1980s and thereby the last of the now thoroughly obsolete Kulkarna and Srimarta missiles left service in the Kaety navy. In the late 1980s, the Deralis Government grew particularly close to the United States, bringing some free-market reforms to a nation which had largely operated on the style of French-style dirigisme, carrying the conservative National Union Party away from its traditional xenophobic nationalism and isolationist stances as well as protectionist inclinations and toward a more free-market, Anglo-saxon conservatism; though there was ultimately a backlash to this process, to the moment it resulted in warm relations between the Reaganite government in the United States and Chancellor Deralis' government, culminating in the 1985, 1986, 1987 and 1988 joint exercises in the Pacific that brought the Kaeties--whose status as the number two navy in the world was under threat by the huge Soviet buildups of the 1980s that prestaged their abrupt collapse--together with the USN to overawe the Soviet Pacific Fleet on a vast scale.

One result of the Deralis government and the Reagan Administration's desire for the Kaeties to take over more of the defensive commitments in the India and Pacific oceans as an ally, rather than merely friendly state, was the need for further military buildup. The plans were to replace the Savurnapura class with no less than twelve brand-new nuclear powered 'destroyers' of 10,000 tons, oriented extensively for AAW to the point of abandoning a hangar, and fitting phased radar arrays. The Kris class did indeed appear, the first ships commissioning in the Kaetjhasti embrace of nuclear surface power at the very end of the Cold War, which brought with it the cancellation of two ships of the class; production proceeded extremely slowly for the rest, but ten ships were ultimately in service by the mid-1990s, while the Savurnapura class had been decommissioned early with the general world defense drawdowns. The Jhamra class remained in service until 2000 / 2001 when they were rebuilt and sold to Brazil where they are projected to remain service until 2017 - 2020. The strength of the navy's escort forces thus declined to 24 AAW destroyers and 40 ASW frigates by 2002; in that year, however, the bombing of Bali--a popular pilgrimage destination for Kaety Hindus who still feel a close affinity with the island--by Muslim fanatics prompted an extreme response from the still rather xenophobic Kaety government, and a breakdown in relations with Indonesia. The NUP government returned to power in elections in early 2003 followed a pre-Deralis line and promised extensive defence investments; five improved-Kris type DDGNs were ordered (with helicopter hangars) and a commitment to a five carrier navy reaffirmed.

A more pressing problem, however, was the need to replace the Najrah class. To keep costs down in an age where even the NUP could not justify the development of their own modern FFG (defence spending in the rather xenophobic Kaetjhasti runs at higher than 4% of the GDP of a prosperous nation of 109 millions which has surpassed Japan in per-capita GDP), the government chose to make an agreement with Germany--the German arms industry having supplied almost all Kaety army weapon designs (then produced under license) throughout the past century with the only interruption being WW2--for cooperation on the production of a frigate, taking the form of what would become 30 orders for the German F-124 Sachsen class, the combination of the Kaety and German orders (5 of the Kaety ships to be built in Germany, and 25 in Kaetjhasti yards) providing a substantial reduction in amoritized cost and allowing the Germans themselves to afford a fourth unit. These 5,680 ton ships, destroyers in all but name, would be armed with Kaety weapons where possible but otherwise identical to the German ships; they would be supplemented in the fleet by a class of ten 4,000 ton patrol frigates built to a minimal cost design. The first of the F-124s, named the Kranasi, commissioned only in February of this year; two more have since followed, all built in German yards to date. This commits Kaetjhasti ultimately maintaining a fleet of 75 surface combatants of all types vs. the United States Navy's planned 157-surface combatant fleet; the American ships are however for the most part noticeably larger and more capable with only a few exceptions, and supported by much more powerful submarine forces, three times as many carriers, and seven times the amphibious group strength of the RKN--but the Imperial Navy nonetheless maintains itself second only to the USN (with third place either going to Lukachenko's Confederation of Independent States or Britain) and its commitment to nuclear power has substantially improved its power projection ability.

The classes of destroyers outlined by this document, along with their illustrations, will be provided in posts as responses to this main introductory post.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Aindraastra-class Destroyers (Magic weapon of Indra--"Indra's Dart").



(shown in 1944 arrangement without Oerlikons displayed. --credits for the picture to Alexia with modifications done by myself.)

Dimensions:
Length: 121 meters overall
Beam: 12.5 meters.
Draft: 4.5 meters at full load.
Standard displacement: 2,700 tons.
Maximum speed: 35.5kts.
Armament (as designed):
8 x 4.1in/65cal in four twin turrets.
1 x quintuple 27.6in (70cm) TT.
18 x 15mm super-heavy MGs in triple mounts.
12 x 12.7mm HMGs in twin mounts.
4 x D.C. throwers; aft D.C. racks.
Armour: Splinter armour only.
Armament: (1944)
8 x 4.1in/65cal in four twin turrets.
1 x quintuple 27.6in (70cm) TT.
12 x 40mm in six twin mounts.
12 x 20mm in six twin mounts.
4 x D.C. throwers; aft D.C. racks.
2 x Hedgehog.

Design history:

The Aindraastra class was the ultimate peacetime evolution of the Kætjhasti Zerstroyer type, first based on shared German designs in the First World War; the ship was, for that matter, built primarily around the massive 27.6in J9 torpedo the Germans had proposed but did not build in the First World War. As ultimately refined and tested until it finally entered service in the 1930s, the J9 reflected the same basic goals as the Long Lance but without the dangerous use of LOX; instead it featured a range of merely 12,800 meters at 48 knots without the use of LOX, despite its enormous size. It had, however, an 800kg (1,760lb) warhead of some of the very best chemical explosives available; this warhead, perhaps the most powerful ever fitted to a torpedo, proved capable of sinking any of the overstressed Japanese cruisers of the Second World War with a single hit. It was of course impossible to carry reloads, but a single massive quintuple launcher was designed and successfully made to work after some five years of experiments.

The ship's design was also reflected by the increased threat of aircraft. Designed in the early 1930s, the ship was a follow-on to the 2,500-tonner class armed with 8 x 4.1in/55cal guns in semi-open twin mounts. These were single-purpose guns, and they had replaced the open mounted 4 x 5.9in/45cal of the earlier 2,500 ton Zerstroyers built in the postwar recovery era and based on the WW1 German designs (and several copies the Kætjhasti had laid down and slowly completed after the war). The 4.1in gun had been chosen due to the problems with sustained rate of fire the 5.9in had as a destroyer weapon; Kætjhasti sailors were simply not up to the continuous manhandling of such shells over long periods of time, and rates of fire were extremely poor.

The idea of the 2,500-tonner was therefore to smother the enemy in the rapid-fire of eight 105mm guns. Armed with two quadruple 21in torpedo mounts of a very conventional design, they were decent ships which served ably in the early years of the Second World War, but they were also clearly obsolescent against the threat of aerial attack, their heaviest anti-air weapon being the Kætjhasti native-designed 15mm machine-gun, which had been developed specifically as a very high velocity weapon for anti-aircraft work in the late 1920s (ironically conceived of as the "ultimate" AA weapon) but was rapidly outpaced in effectiveness by the growth in aircraft capabilities. The design had been intended to be supplemented by continued production of the 1,700 ton Großtorpedoboot, but only a few of the penultimate version of this design (armed with 4 x 4.1in on open mounts and an identical 21in torpedo battery) were built; they would, however, be revised and put into production as the 1,800 ton wartime GTB to supplement the rather slow production of the huge Zerstroyers; the Spahkreuzer of 1935--built to provide a heavy-hitting counterpart to the Aindraastra class--is, regardless of its designed intent to serve as a Destroyer Leader, better considered a cruiser, though its development must be covered heavily in the history of the Savurnapura class DDG which owed its hull design to those ships.

The Aindraastra class was, regardless, therefore conceived of from the start to mount a 4.1in dual-purpose gun to correct the anti-aircraft deficiencies of the 2,500 tonner design (of which thirty-six were ultimately built). Fortunately for the Kætjhasti, presently in a series of joint weapons-testing arrangements with Germany as she sought to circumvent the treaty regulations, the Germans themselves had recently completed the design of an incredible weapon to those specifications, the C34 with its triaxially stabilized mount. With the Party of Hindu Integralists (the "Brownskirts" of period satire) having recently gained enough power to force the National Union Party (which had ruled the country with only one period of National Unity Government in the post-WW1 period, since 1889) into a coalition government, the apparent alignment of Kætjhasti toward the Nazi regime seemed plausible to the whole world and likely to more than a few Kætjhasti themselves, regardless of the prophetic warnings provided by the Baroness von Salmuth. The alliance of the new Black Swastika in Europe and the old Red Swastika in the Far-East seemed natural, and the flow of German technology to Kætjhasti in exchange for treaty-circumventing testing regimes continued until the treaties were a dead letter, with production orders, due to the uncaring way in which the Germans went about mobilization, continuing right until the beginning of the war in Europe.

The C34 was found to not however be very suitable in its present design for Kætjhasti: The gun was simply to complex for their industry to produce, a feature they were extremely used to in German designs; they were already excellent at simplifying them, and though the first twelve ships of the class were fitted with the semi-open C34 mounts themselves, by the time the second batch came down the ways, a full turret with a massively simplified parts scheme had been successfully produced, complete with a basket-feed for the guns allowing them to be, in a very limited fashion, automatic, crucially for the Kætjhasti. The guns were never as reliable as their American counterparts, but when they were worked they were the most devastatingly effective anti-aircraft weapons in the Pacific theatre. The first batch was retrofitted with the newly designed turret mounts before the start of the war. In all, 24 had been completed before the start of the war; 24 more were under construction at the start of the war, and 42 were immediately ordered in the wartime emergency programme, of which 38 were finished with the last four being cancelled in favour of the succeeding 3,000-tonner class to be covered next. With eighty-six ships completed in two subclasses the Aindraastra class were the dominant destroyers of the Second World War in Kætjhasti service; they also bore the brunt of Kætjhasti's holding the line in the early days of the war, and the heavy attrition rates that typified the RKN; nineteen were lost in action, with three of the oldest surviving ships sold off immediately after the war, too worn for any further service. Another sixteen were transferred to the Maritime Gendarmerie, to replace their cutters which had been butchered in the fighting and the survivors of which had been thoroughly run to pieces.

Of the remaining 48 ships, 24 were ultimately found suitable in the mid-1950s for extensive rebuild and refitting toward a more ASW-dedicated armament fit, and the general rehabilitation of their hulls and machinery to last another 20 years in service. This design was a similar counterpart to the 3,000-tonner ASW fit, though the smaller tonnage resulted in reduced anti-aircraft armament. The ultimate design produced is rendered below:



(as drawn by Alexia, with modifications by myself.)

As refitted, the WW2 autocannon armament was removed from the ships and the 27.6in torpedo tubes were replaced by 21in heavy ASW torpedoes in an early homing design by the RKN. B turret was removed, and A and D turrets fitted with Rocket-Assisted Torpedoes, here represented by ASROC, for a total of four single launchers, two per fitted turret. Forward, four quadruple 375mm ASW RLs were fitted. In this configuration twelve ships remained in active service and twelve in the reserve fleet through 1970 when they began to be replaced by Najrah-class frigates; by 1974 all had been decommissioned, with only one preserved and the rest scrapped, though one of the sixteen ships provided to the Maritime Gendarmerie was also preserved (a total of 5 WW2 veteran GTBs/Zerstroyers have been preserved, 1 also a veteran of WW1). The maximum speed fell off to about 34kts, but due to the extensive reconstruction this was maintained throughout the remaining service life. Two vessels of this class in total are preserved.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Salabhat-class Destroyers.



(shown in arrangement as completed without Oerlikons displayed.)

Dimensions:
Length: 126.75 meters overall
Beam: 12.9 meters.
Draft: 4.6 meters at full load.
Standard displacement: 3,000 tons.
Maximum speed: 35.5kts.
Armament (as designed):
8 x 4.1in/65cal in four twin turrets.
2 x quintuple 27.6in (70cm) TT.
12 x 40mm in four twin and one quad mounts.
8 x 20mm in four twin mounts.
4 x D.C. throwers; aft D.C. racks.
Armour: Splinter armour only.
Armament (as completed):
8 x 4.1in/65cal in four twin turrets.
1 x quintuple 27.6in (70cm) TT.
16 x 40mm in six twin mounts and one quad mount.
12 x 20mm in six twin mounts.
4 x D.C. throwers; aft D.C. racks.
2 x Hedgehog.

Design history: The Salabhat class was a wartime measure based on initial experience in the opening months of 1942. The Kætjhasti Navy found itself suffering from severe losses in its destroyer forces, and the initial order of 42 emergency war-build Aindraastra class ships was seen as very insufficient, even with the 24 ships of that class still under construction from pre-war orders that would now being rushed to completion. Therefore, a further and larger destroyer programme was conceived. The number of ships was fixed at 60 with further orders to follow if necessary. It was initially proposed that these ships be Aindraastra class vessels with only minor modification, but the experiences of the early part of the war showed a particular need for a heavier torpedo armament when facing the deadly Japanese Long Lances, and to counter the use of their cruisers in the confined waters of the Indonesian archipelago and the Solomons where most of the fighting was taking place.

The design of the ship, necessarily heavily based on the Aindraastra class, therefore evolved into a lengthened, slightly beamier ship with improved structural strength and provision for a second quintuple 27.6in TT mount, to give them an incredible battery of ten J9s. The ship was also designed for the first time to explicitly mount the Bofors guns that the Kætjhasti had licensed for production somewhat before the commencement of the war, and featured a provision for a quadruple mount above turret C to keep the battery at 12 as it was currently being planned for modifications to the Aindraastra class despite the increase in torpedo armament. The rest of the design changes were primarily detail work for ease of construction.

The ships proved rather late in entering the war due to shortages in necessary materials. In particular, the turbines required for such enormous destroyers were difficult to come by in sufficient numbers. This is why the 1,800 ton GTB was conceived of, with no less than 80 ordered during the war (though only about half that number were completed), to make up deficiencies in destroyer numbers. Also, the ships were redesigned: As the tide of the war in the Pacific turned, it was clear that torpedo batteries were far less important than anti-aircraft fire. It was found that the retention of the deckhouse between the one and two funnels would be necessary to avoid extreme cramping (and Kætjhasti ships were already notoriously cramped for their crews, though in one of the few advantages of all-female manning this was a much less severe morale issue), and the placement of two more 40mm twin mounts en echelon could be provided there, regardless, giving the destroyer a very powerful 16 x 40mm and 12 x 20mm autocannon battery to support the dual-purpose 4.1in guns.

In total, 39 ships of the programme were completed before the end of the war. Of these ships, two were lost, both to kamikaze attacks, one with gas and the other conventional. Another six ships were ordered completed during 1946 to wind down the shipyards to help avoid major economic crisis. Of the remaining 15, the 12 closest to completion were decked over and retained as future mobilization assets; the other three were scrapped on the ways. The class remained in service in this fashion with few modifications until the mid-1950s.

By the mid-1950s the Kætjhasti navy had gained experience from a series of four trials destroyers of very large size laid down in 1949 -- 1950 and was actively pursuing the developing of missiles. The need for missile platforms was apparent, and so authorization for the completion of the twelve unfinished hulls of the Salabhat class was given, to be armed with the Srimarta missile. The first of these ships was ultimately completed to the initial new design in 1958.




The armament as initially conceived showed their focus on AAW warfare: Only two quadruple ASW RLs were fitted as an anti-submarine armament, and three twin 3in/50cal guns of American design were fitted as well as 4 x 4.1in/65cal retained for gun anti-aircraft, on the fears that the Srimarta missile would be less than successful.

Armament (DDG initial):
4 x 4.1in/65cal in two twin turrets.
1 x twin Srimarta SAM with 48 missile magazine.
6 x 3in/50cal in three twin mounts.
2 x quadruple 375mm ASW RLs.

The class proved to have some problems; due to missile exhaust, the 3in/50cal mount could not be worked while the missiles were engaged, which was not a problem in the design due to the fears of Srimarta's reliability, but once the missile was successfully declared fully operational, rendered the mount more or less unusable in many circumstances. The lack of ASW torpedoes was also criticized, and by 1962 with the use of ASW drones having been pioneered by trials on the Kamunashjhad class and the prototype destroyers (refitted for various trials tasks), a decision was made to refit the ships with a two-drone hangar aft, deleting the third 3in twin. Provision was also made for lightweight ASW torpedo tubes, but these were ultimately not fitted until several years later, when the remaining two 3in/50cal mounts were also removed to deal with increasing topweight from additional electronics.




Armament (DDG first mod):
4 x 4.1in/65cal in two twin turrets.
1 x twin Srimarta SAM with 48 missile magazine.
4 x 3in/50cal in two twin mounts.
2 x quadruple 375mm ASW RLs.
2 x ASW drone helicopters in aft hangar; parts to assemble a third stored belowdecks should one be lost.

The DDG type of the class served largely in this configuration, with the addition of ASW torpedoes and loss of its 3in/50cal guns, for all of the late-1960s and then through the 1970s. They were ultimately replaced by the Lanakh class; the last of these ships were decommissioned when the last of the initial batch Lanakh class was commissioned in 1979. Eight of the vessels were supplied to Ethiopia and Tanganyika (half each) to give their navies anti-air capability; at least three served in each of those navies through about 1993 when they were replaced by Savurnapura class DDGs also sold out of Kaety service. Their dispositions are not entirely known; of the other four ships, one was preserved as a museum, one scrapped, and two sunk as targets.

The fourty-three ships then in service in the 1950s, however, had different endings. ASW was seen as their primary function. To that end, their massive 27.6in torpedo tubes were replaced with heavy 21in tubes (though focused on firing homing missiles for anti-submarine work), the old cannon armament was stripped for two 3in/50cal amidships en echelon, and B turret removed. This allowed the placement of no less than four quadruple ASW RLs firing forward, creating, in combination with the ASW tubes, an enormously powerful anti-submarine armament that was only improved by the provision for four rocket-assisted torpedoes, two slung each to A and D turrets (more were carried, but the reload process was sufficiently awkward that it was not really possible in the same engagement).

A total of thirty-six ships were upgraded to this configuration; the admiralty chose to retain seven with their full gun armament, upgraded with the same 2 x 3in/50cal twins amidships in place of the cannons and usually a third further aft, as AAW ships until the arrival of the missile destroyers in sufficient numbers to provide fleet defence against air attack.



Armament (DD mod one):
6 x 4.1in/65cal in three twin turrets.
4 x RAT launchers, two attached each to A and D turrets.
4 x 3in/50cal in two twin mounts.
4 x quadruple 375mm ASW RLs.
1 x quintuple 21in ASW TT.

These ships served in this configuration for about a decade, from 1954 -- 1956 through 1963 -- 1965, as reliable and able ASW ships; but the needs of ASW were rapidly expanding beyond their capabilities, and their service careers did not demand their replacement yet. So a rehabilitation and upgrade programme was settled upon, and the thirty-six ships were further upgraded, to receive a hangar for two ASW Drones as their DDG cousins had, to receive new lightweight torpedo tubes, and to receive, most importantly, ASROC, which was now available to Kætjhasti and eagerly seized upon as a replacement for their less-than-reliable RATs.

This resulted in the removal of two more turrets and all the 3in/50cal guns, and the final design form for the standard DDs; but the most important component was a provision for air defence. The Kætjhasti had licensed production of Sidewinder, and seized on the missile as a cheap defence for these destroyers--a decision later mirrored by the USN in Sea Chapparal. This mount was placed aft, immediately ahead of the drone hangar, and completed the modifications to the design:



Armament (DD mod two):
2 x 4.1in/65cal in one twin turret.
1 x quad-launcher for AIM-9 SIDEWINDER.
1 x ASROC.
4 x quadruple 375mm ASW RLs.
2 x triple lightweight ASW TT.
2 x ASW drones.

The ships served universally on active duty with these rebuilds until 1975, when the Najrah class had fully displaced the remaining active-duty Aindraastra class ships, and now began to replace the ASW-Salabhat's as well. The very last of the mod-two rebuilds did not however leave active-duty service until 1977. Several were involved in the Timor Crisis with Indonesia in the early 1970s.

It was decided to retain the twelve ships of the class in the best condition as a mobilization reserve; this decision also meant that those twelve ships would, except for UNREP and mine warfare vessels, comprise the whole of the reserve force, which otherwise had entirely been cut by the mid-1970s. They remained the reserve squadron through the 1980s and into the early 1990s when it was decided to eliminate the reserve force; the ships were much to old to be useful by that point, anyway. Six were expended as targets, four scrapped, and one ultimately preserved; the twelfth was subject to some disputes over whether or not she would be preserved and ended up settling into a sandbank at the reserve fleet roadsted at Ti'shan, where she was receiving pulled free as an environmental concern; there are still groups interested in restoring her though her ultimate fate is unknown.

Early in the 1970s, six of the vessels were sold to India; eight were similarly sold to Tanganyika and Ethiopia (four each) as a provision to their militaries (both, at Kætjhasti recommendation, maintain cohesive forces of six frigates; navies under the influence of the Kætjhasti tend to prefer smaller forces of larger ships generally due to the Kaetjhasti dismissal of the capabilities of FACs), three operated and one as a spare parts ship per usual. The other ten vessels were scrapped or sunk as targets in the late 1970s and 1980s.

The final seven unmodified ships of the class were retained into the 1960s due to an ongoing low-grade revolt in the United Nations Mandate of Papua and the Solomons, the old German Papua and Solomons Colony that Kætjhasti has inherited at the end of the Second World War, their 8 x 4.1in guns valued for their ability to get up close to the coast of many small islands and provide rapid and intensive fire support. They were later transferred to the Maritime Gendarmerie to replace the oldest seven of the sixteen Aindraastra class vessels which had been given to the Gendarmeries in the late 1940s, and served in this role for the 1970s, until in the early 1980s the Gendarmerie's collection of old WW2-vintage destroyers being used as cutters were replaced by modern, purpose-designed cutters. In this role, however, the seven Salabhat class ships had been taken in hand on their transfer, their aft guns and superstructure removed to accommodate a full hangar for a single helicopter with aft flight deck, a buoy crane amidships, and B turret removed forward for the provision of navalized Sidewinder (which was ultimately never done due to the cost and training issues) for defence of Gendarmerie ships when patrolling waters disputed with Indonesia. One of these vessels is preserved at the National Gendarmerie Museum in Kænahra.

[Quetzalcoatl]

A fascinating read and slick diagrams. Very nice.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

A fascinating read and slick diagrams. Very nice.

More will, of course, be coming.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Kalitya-class Destroyers.




Dimensions:
Length: 155.3 meters overall
Beam: 15.6 meters.
Draft: 4.7 meters at full load.
Full load displacement: 5,798 tons.
Maximum speed: 35.5kts (as designed, usually 33kts in service).
Armament (as rebuilt) :
1 x Srimarta twin launcher (50 missiles) with two guidance channels.
1 x ASROC 8-cell box launcher with 16 reloads (powered reloading from angled superstructure).
2 x twin 3in/50cal mounts.
2 x twin lightweight TTs.
Armour: Deck: 15mm, Belt: 20mm.
Helicopter capacity: Four lightweight ASW helicopters in hangar, later modified for two heavyweight ASW helicopters of the largest type.

Design history:


The Kalitya-class was based on the hull of 1934 vintage Spähkreuzer design that the Kaetjhasti had developed as a result of the First London Treaty, which created three staggered groups of cruisers in tonnage. The RKN desired to have an extremely fast ship which could both serve as a destroyer leader and bring heavy guns into action. To save money and tonnage, twin 5.9in/45cal turrets removed off ships being modified and uprated to reflect the London treaty with new 6.1in/55cal guns would be used for these smaller vessels. Three such twin turrets were selected as the armament, one forward and two aft; the ship also carried no less than twelve 70cm torpedoes in four triple launchers, two to each side, and six 8.8cm anti-aircraft guns. A total of eight ships were completed to this design before the Kaetjhasti entry to the Second World War in January of 1942, at which point an emergency follow-on order of four ships was directed, and ultimately completed. Plans for further ships based off the hull were cancelled because of the extremely poor anti-aircraft potential.

Following the war, however, new technology was needed in both the fields of anti-submarine warfare and in anti-surface warfare. A class of ships based on the 1934 Spähkreuzer hull (to the point of still having their three stacks) was conceived. Two were ASW optimized, two AAW optimized. These ships were collectively known as the Kalitya-class. All had extensive flag and data-processing capabilities in their large hulls; the armament of the AAW optimized ships was 10 x 4.1in/65cal automatic and 16 x 8.8cm/70cal automatic respectively, experimenting in rapid-fire automatic guns of a heavier calibre or extremely rapid-fire smaller guns with longer barrels; the 8.8cm/70cal was found to have numerous problems and not selected for further development, whereas the 4.1in/65cal became the basis of the 4.1in/70cal automatic which has, in various uprated and redesigned formats, remained the Kaety destroyer gun through the present. The ASW ships had various rocket-propelled and mortar weapons aboard that would ultimately lead the Kaetjhasti to their own equivalent to RAT, later replaced in the late 1950s with cooperation with the USN in ASROC development (during the same agreements which brought about Kaetjhasti purchases of the AIM-9 Sidewinder; 3in/50cal twin mounts had already been acquired during their involvement in the Korean War).

These ships, laid down in 1948, served unmodified through the 1950s, but in the early 1960s their armament was thoroughly obsolescent (and in some experimental cases had always been marginally functional at best) and they were serving mainly as destroyer flotilla flagships in an era when destroyer flotillas were much smaller. They had little remaining purpose in the fleet, but the RKN completely lacked ASW helicopter platforms at the time (and would continue to do so until 1971), instead operating 4 ASW groups off of WW2-vintage CVLs and carrying heavy ASW compliments on their attack carriers--sometimes, too, the helicopter hangars on the command cruisers were utilized for ASW helicopters even though they had been intended to provide command mobility, greatly irritating the Admirals at sea. The situation with ASW assets grew desperate enough, as a consequence, that the Navy ultimately resorted to building or modifying all UNREP assets to operate ASW helicopters so they could defend themselves against submarine attack.

The drones fitted to the rebuilt Salabhat-class ships and the Kamunashjhad-class CBGs, similar to the American DASH, though paired in groups, with one carrying sonobuoys and the other, torpedoes, were seen as insufficient by themselves for the ASW role, and there were only 50 ships carrying them, additionally. To address the lack of ASW helicopters, it was therefore proposed in 1962 to modify the four ships of the Kalitya-class to similar standards as the Savurnapura-class DDGs, built on the same hull in the mid-1950s, except with the entire aft armament removed in favour of a large hangar and flight deck capable of operating four of the light ASW helicopters then in use at the time. The plan was duly approved, and over the next three and a half years the four ships were modified and extensively rebuilt into DDHs. They mimicked the forward half armament of the Savurnapura-class, with the only guns consisting of two American twin 3in/50cal mounts.

The ships served in this form for the next 20 years, ultimately seeing their four light ASW helicopters replaced with two of the heaviest type, as the centrepieces of ASW hunting groups, until the commissioning of the CSGNs in the mid through late-80's, with their capacity for four heavy ASW helicopters, combined with their age and the ineffectiveness of their old Srimarta SAM armament, which had been phased out of the fleet on every other ship except for the Kalitya-class (and so for which spare parts were becoming difficult to obtain), resulted in their decommissioning at the same time as the minimally-upgraded Trivandhai-class CLGs. They received no major upgrades after their mid-60's rebuilds, and only one of the ships is preserved as a museum in Ritangiri on the southeast Zealandia coast, probably selected as a home for the ship because the Chancellor at the time (Damini Keroljis) was from that city.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Savurnapura-class Guided Missile Destroyers.




Dimensions:
Length: 155.3 meters overall
Beam: 15.6 meters.
Draft: 4.65 meters at full load.
Full load displacement: 5,645 tons.
Maximum speed: 35kts (regularly maintained 34kts in service).
Armament (as designed) :
2 x Srimarta twin launchers (50 missiles), one fore, one aft, with four guidance channels in total.
4 x quadruple 375mm bofors ASW RLs.
1 x twin 4.1in/65cal turret (automatic loading).
4 x twin 3in/50cal mounts.
2 x twin lightweight TTs.
2 x single, fixed-aft 70cm super-heavy ASW torpedo tubes.
Armament (from 1964-65 until rebuild) :
2 x Srimarta twin launchers (50 missiles), one fore, one aft, with four guidance channels in total.
2 x quadruple 375mm bofors ASW RLs.
1 x 8-cell ASROC box launcher right forward with 16 reloads in quick-loading angled superstructure aft of the launcher, replacing the two forwardmost 375mm's.
1 x twin 4.1in/65cal turret (automatic loading).
4 x twin 3in/50cal mounts.
2 x twin lightweight TTs.
2 x single, fixed-aft 70cm super-heavy ASW torpedo tubes.
Armour: Deck: 15mm, Belt: 20mm.
Helicopter capacity: None.

Design history:


The Savurnapura-class ships were essentially Kalitya-class--which was based on the hull of 1934 vintage Spähkreuzer design as noted in that article--except built from the start to handle guided missiles. The additional radars that were dictated by this role quickly came to fill up the largest forward mast the design could handle, so the Savurnapura-class was designed from the start with the central of her three funnels converted into a MACK to handle an additional radar and some aerials and other electronics equipment. This freed the aft arrangement for the fire control for the aft-mounted turret and two guidance directors, though one was low and rather poorly placed as initially designed. The missile launchers were of the newest Type-20, with modified and improved loading mechanisms replacing the early Type-10s (as the Kaetjhasti designated them) for the Srimarta missile fitted to the Samadare-class and as secondary batteries on the Kamunashjhad-class CBGs, and coincidentally increasing the magazine space by two missiles.

The ships were loved from the start; they were incredibly fast, brilliantly powerful, and with their long, lean hulls, absolutely built for racing. By the usual cramped Kaetjhasti standards the ships were considered quite luxurious, especially since the reduced number of gun turrets meant that manning requirements began to drop noticeably, especially in the lack of extensive anti-aircraft armament. As built, the armament of 4 x quadruple 375mm RLs forward was considered excellent and hard-hitting in the ASW role after the numerous failures of native designed experimental systems as too heavy or cumbersome, and the ships were not primarily designed for ASW anyway. The Srimarta missile proved to be as essentially just as effective, though with a fractionally (by about 500 meters) longer ranger than the comparable early mark Tartar that it beat into service, and became the workhouse missile of the Kaety anti-air capability, which was taken extremely seriously in the period with a rather desperate effort to get as many missile launchers as possible into the carrier screens.

By the late 1960s it was very common for two of these ships to form half a substantial part of the missile screen of the big Kaetjhasti carrier groups, usually operating with two missile cruisers and a Samadare-class DDG, or a missile cruiser and a Jhamra-class DLG, those ships providing the long-range (and potentially nuclear tipped) Kulkarna element to the carrier group defensive screen The Savurnapura-class however had the main role for close-in defence with the ability to engage on the broadside with four channels and four launching rails, and considerably upgraded models of the Srimarta missile offered some serious AAW capability. Such carrier groups usually also had three ASW destroyers for an 8-strong escort force.

The ships continued serving reliably through the early 1970s, but by this point their Srimarta launchers were aging considerably in terms of capabilities. A proposal was made to refit the ships with new, single-arm launchers for the new Samandha missile, which were intended to hold the same number of missiles as the Srimarta launcher, Samandha itself being in largely the same airframe as the Srimarta but with a new motor and considerable electronics upgrades. Also, the new Nakama SSM offered them considerable anti-ship capability. The ships ultimately were not heavily updated and rebuilt like the later Jhamra-class was, but the launchers were added and the minimal necessary improvements in the electronics were provided for their operation:




Armament (1977) :

2 x single-arm Samandha launchers (50 rounds each) with 4 guidance channels.
2 x quadruple Nakama SSM box launchers.
1 x 8-cell ASROC box launcher forward with 16 reloads in quick-reloading angled superstructure just aft the launcher.
1 x 4.1in/65cal twin automatic-loading gun aft (now fitted with GUNDAR to allow elimination of the director).
2 x twin ASW TTs.
2 x Multiple Subsurface Rocket Launchers (MSRL), experimental anti-torpedo weapon.

The rebuild did not prove perfect. The forward Samandha launcher, for instance, irritatingly obscured the forward bridge to some extent and caused some problems with blast due to its very high placement. The issue with the masking of the lower aft guidance channel was at least satisfactorily solved, with the gun's use primarily secondary regardless, and GUNDAR proving sufficient for those tasks. The MSRL ultimately proved a prototype for the subsequent TUW-119 anti-torpedo system which was duly retrofitted in 1980, providing an active anti-torpedo defence in conjunction with the very powerful and modern sonars that had been fitted to the ships.

They still, however, lacked the ability to safely handle helicopters, and this hampered them in underway replenishment operations. The beautiful steam plants of the ships tended to prove a bit more troublesome after they were twenty years old, regardless, and though the ships served on through the Deralis administration, one of the key features of her military modernization commenced to support the United States in the Pacific against the Soviets was to ultimately replace the Savurnapura-class with modern and immensely powerful nuclear-propelled follow-ups to the Lahnajha-class Nuclear Strike Cruisers that were fitted with phased array radar and VLS. Originally twelve such DDGNs were to be procured, but the end of the Cold War cut the number to ten. Nonetheless, the Savurnapura-class was rapidly removed from service in the late 80's and early 90's.

The ships' operational lives did not end, however. Of the twelve, three were sold operational to Ethiopia and another three to Tanganyika, each country also receiving a fourth as a parts hulk as part of the deal. Of the remaining four vessels, one was expended as a target for the fleet and one was converted into the seagoing Warrant and Petty Officers School Ship; a third was converted into a stationary Maintenance and Damage Control School Ship; and the fourth was retained as a parts hulk. These vessels continue in these roles to the present, the Kaetjhasti noteworthy for still retaining a fairly large seagoing training force of older vessels, and Imperial Ethiopia continues to maintain a fairly strong navy at Assab as a threat to the Eritrean coast should further violence with Eritrea resume; the ILAF in Tanganyika remains committed to a six-major-combatant force, and both nations will presumably be looking for replacements to the now elderly and somewhat decrepit DDGs in coming years, but for the moment they soldier on.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I'm a bit curious about the biology, if you'd care to digress from your ships. By the year 2000, I'm assuming this bacteria has been identified and studdied fully. Has anyone attempted to remove it from Kaejhitsi (can't spell it) society? Is it possible at this point? Have their been any outbreaks of parthenogenesis elsewhere in the world after the West contacted them?

[Wyrm]

Smallpox?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I'm a bit curious about the biology, if you'd care to digress from your ships. By the year 2000, I'm assuming this bacteria has been identified and studdied fully. Has anyone attempted to remove it from Kaejhitsi (can't spell it) society? Is it possible at this point? Have their been any outbreaks of parthenogenesis elsewhere in the world after the West contacted them?

Kaetjhasti.

It's easily removed by sulfa drugs or by doxycycline treatment. The problem is that if you remove it, they're incurably sterile. M. wolbachia modifies their reproductive organs in the same way it does all other species; they can't reproduce without it, and they can only reproduce parthenogenically.

The bacteria doesn't live in males for very long. It tends to cause sterility when it infects males, but does not permanently colonize their reproductive organs and is ultimately killed. That means the usual result of pre-modern contact was some sterile sailors and no epidemic. In the modern era, effective quarantines and the general disinterest of Kaetjhasti in exposing themselves to western society (except for the upper classes who would demand social restraint anyway) prevented any serious outbreaks.

[RRoan]

From a purely artistic standpoint they're pretty good (though I'm not a huge fan of the use of shipbucket parts). Also, I'd recommend you save the pictures as .png files instead of .gif files, since saving things as .gif in Paint can cause image corruption as bad as (and sometimes worse than) .jpg, which makes editing them later extremely hard and time-consuming.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

From a purely artistic standpoint they're pretty good (though I'm not a huge fan of the use of shipbucket parts). Also, I'd recommend you save the pictures as .png files instead of .gif files, since saving things as .gif in Paint can cause image corruption as bad as (and sometimes worse than) .jpg, which makes editing them later extremely hard and time-consuming.

Well, they were intended primarily as illustration for design schema rather than as artistic works; they are straightforward line drawings, in short, though slightly more sophisticated than placing circles instead of radars as is often done in the real ones. I have a more traditional styled line-drawing for the CBG I should probably place here.

[Slacker]

A map of the region would make the whole thing tremendously easier to visualize, Marina. I know geography pretty well and I'm still getting a bit befuddled.

[Steve]

I think this will work for you, Slack, it's a bit big to direct-link to.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Jhamra-class Missile Destroyer Leaders




Dimensions:
Length: 168.6 meters overall
Beam: 17.5 meters.
Draft: 8 meters at full load.
Full load displacement: 8,835 tons.
Maximum speed: 34kts.
Armament (as designed) :
1 x Kulkarna twin launcher (54 missiles) aft with two guidance channels.
1 x Srimarta twin launcher (50 missiles) forward with two guidance channels.
1 x twin 4.1in/65cal turret (automatic loading) forward.
1 x 8-cell ASROC box launcher amidships without reloads.
2 x twin lightweight TTs.
Armour: Splinter coverage only, though with a focus on protecting the wave-guides.
Helicopter capacity: None.

Design history:


The Jhamra-class were the first ships completely designed from start to finish as missile destroyers in the Kaetjhasti navy. As originally conceived of, the RKN had wanted two Kulkarna platforms for each carrier--and the number of carriers at the fleet, with the introduction of the two 85,000 ton Te'ke'ora-class conventional supercarriers--would be stabilizing at 6. That made the goal of 12 Kulkarna ships achievable, though only with some sacrifices; for example, the Kamunashjhad class had AAW capability compared to the USN's Albany-class, but leaving them tied to the carrier groups limited their employment as independent cruisers, which they were fully capable of, though the expectation that any landing would need air support from the carriers made their 6 x 11.1in/50cal guns a useful investment to retain. The six single-ended Trivandhai-class CLGs filled out the ranks of the Kulkarna ships.

At the same time the British Royal Navy--which remained in the period of the early 1960s the main expected opponent for the RKN--had completed two huge 18,500 ton cruisers armed with Sea Slug and converted the four Tiger-class cruisers with 3-D radars and Sea Slug as well--was in the process of building ten new County-class large destroyers also armed with the missile (due to very slow building conditions the last would not be completed until 1970, however).

The Kaeties, who always had problems with intelligence gathering in the outside world, also assumed that Sea Cat was a rather more effective missile than what it really was, and imagined the Royal Navy would soon have sixteen very effective ships armed with long range missiles and short range missiles. The Kaetjhasti fleet of the early 1960s was rapidly completing the Savurnapura-class and would therefore have no less than 32 missile-armed ships in service, second only to the United States and twice as many as the Royal Navy; but only 8 of these would be, as it currently stood, armed with the long-range Kulkarna, which was already undergoing substantial improvement which would hopefully make it genuinely effective (the performance specifications for Sea Slug were considerably inflated by military intelligence in Kaetjhasti, possibly for political reasons). With conflict over West Australia Colony and over Kaetjhasti's involvement in the Non-Aligned Movement, especially the recent takeover of Tanganyika from the British supported transitional government to the Kaetjhasti-supported Iron Legion of Askari Fighters (ILAF) which had been formed by veterans of Lettow-Vorbeck's East Africa Korps and the Provisional Government of a Free Tanganyika that had persisted in the period of 1919 -- 1923, the Kaetjhasti military structure assumed that a conventional conflict with Britain over the post-colonial world remained more likely than confrontation with the Soviets.

In this atmosphere it was decided to handle the main Soviet threat with the modification of the four Kalitya-class DLs into DDHs to deal with ASW (which notably ended up armed with Srimarta themselves); and to handle the main British threat (their carriers, always considered more threatening by Kaetjhast in this period than they really were, since only five operational carriers--HMS Eagle, Ark Royal, Hermes, Victorious and Vanguard remained, with the other three in ASW/command roles) with the construction of an additional four Kulkarna-armed ships. These were, however, to simply be destroyers like the County-class, rather than additional missile cruisers which the government, with the construction of the Te'ke'ora-class, could not possibly afford. The support Kaetjhasti showed for Indonesia in the Konfrontasi (Konfrontasti in Kaetjhasti) heightened the urgency of the ships.

The design that took form, however, though it still followed Spahkreuzer design standards, tended to be a very large cruiser in conception; the armour was reduced to splinter armour (though the Savurnapura class had not had much more), but completely redesigned, in particular so that protection for the wave-guides was obtained in all respects and the above-deck missile spaces had some protection. The sheer size required by the Kulkarna magazine nonetheless pushed the ship into the tonnage level suitable for a light cruiser, which the RKN perhaps should have been more aware of, as it was presently at the same time converting four war-built light cruisers into single-ended Kulkarna ships for the Indian Navy at-cost as part of the government's efforts to improve ties with its fellow Hindu state in the NAM. Per usual, to keep the size of the ship under control, no provision was made for helicopter operations, with the AAW/ASW distinction still remaining fairly strict in this period; by 1970 it would have begun to break down, culminating in the first helicopter hangar equipped AAW destroyers of the Lanakh class in the mid-1970s.

This at least allowed a design in which, for ASW, an ASROC launcher (though without reloads) and ASW torpedo tubes could be fitted; anti surface warfare would be taken care of by command-guidance of Kulkarna missiles into the enemy ships, and through the twin 4.1in gun also available in anti-aircraft role (though functionally irrelevant) and shore bombardment. The Kulkarna missiles would be supported by a close-range engagement capacity with Srimarta; in the end the best configuration was to place both the Srimarta launcher and the gun forward, the ASROC and torpedoes amidships, and Kulkarna aft. This design was in some respects prototypical. The hull was designed more for seakeeping than the Savurnapura-class had been, but enough power was provided that with the new gas turbines at full power she could still reach 34kts. And indeed the gas turbines were the most impressive part; these ships were, concurrent with the Te'ke'ora-class, the first ships not built with all-steam propulsion in the RKN, instead both classes employed COSAG.

Four ships of the class were finally ordered to fill out the desired Kulkarna requirements for the fleet and bring the numbers of missile armed escorts up to 36 (discounting the DDHs and CACs). The programme is sometimes cited as one of the reasons for the construction of the four subsequent follow-ons to the Long Beach-class CGN in the USN, and the authorization of the two further proposed Albany conversions, but there is more evidence that the USN achieved those orders based on Kaetjhasti force projections long before the Jhamra-class appeared. In service the vessels usually operated as squadron flagships after they commissioned in 1967 - 1968.

They operated in their designed configuration for only a short time, however. The aft deck was later modified for helicopters to land on, and then the original weapons suite only lasted for 12 years. Starting in 1979, the hulls, still in excellent condition, were subject to a substantial reconstruction:




Armament (1986) :
(as shown.)

1 x single-arm Samandha launcher (50 rounds)
1 x twin-arm Samandha/Samandha-ER/ASROC launcher (64 rounds).
-- two directors associated with each launcher.
2 x quadruple Nakama SSM box launchers right aft.
1 x 8-cell ASROC box launcher amidships.
1 x 4.1in/65cal twin automatic-loading gun aft (now fitted with GUNDAR to allow elimination of the director).
2 x twin ASW TTs.
2 x TUW-119 anti-torpedo rocket launchers.
2 x 20mm Phalanx.

With the lessons learned from the less extensive rebuilds of the Savurnapura-class, and the much more extensive rebuilds of the Kamunashjhad-class, the reconstruction of the Jhamra-class proved fairly easy for a chance. The helicopter flight deck had refueling and rearming capability added though the ships still necessarily lacked a hangar; the forward Srimarta launcher was replaced with a single-arm Samandha launcher for medium range Samandha; the Kulkarna structure, including guidance radars, was more or less ripped out entirely and replaced by a smaller built up superstructure for two of the much smaller Samandha guidance channels. Nakama box launchers were mounted right aft with the reposition of the flight deck somewhat forward (though this tended to make aviation operations somewhat awkward), and a provision was ultimately made for CIWS, with the remotely operated TUW-119 launchers mounted on the sides below the forward Samandha launcher.

The ships in this configuration, combined with a complete replacement of the radars and other electronics, proved very powerful and comparable to any of the USN's NTU ships. They served throughout the Deralis years in the height of the twilight decade of the Cold War, later being fitted with Phalanx, and then carried on into the Navy of the 1990s despite the SCP budget cuts which reduced the fleet to 28 destroyers. By 1999, however, the SCP government decided on further cuts, and as part of a way to increase sales of the Sachsen-type frigates jointly being pursued with Germany, struck a deal whereby the Jhamra-class ships would be leased (for a ceremonial 1 Rupiyah) to Brazil, and serve until replaced by four Sachsen-type large air defense frigates that the Brazilians then committed to purchase, two built in Germany and two in Kaetjhasti, at the end of their respective production runs. Therefore, the German-built Sachsens for the Brazilian Navy--which are based on the CODAG variant built for the RKN, with a raised bow for improved seakeeping and a 4.1in gun (and are thus capable of 31kts)--will be laid down in 2009 and replace the older two Jhamra-class ships on completion; the younger two will be replaced by Sachsen class frigates built in Kaetjhasti yards several years later. On the end of their service in the Brazilian Navy the ships will be returned to Kaetjhasti where the new NUP government has already announced at least one will be placed on donation hold.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Lanakh-class Guided Missile Destroyers.




Dimensions:
Length: 170 meters.
Beam: 17.5 meters.
Draft: 8.1 meters at full load.
Full load displacement: 9,150 tons.
Maximum speed: 33kts with COSAG.
Armament as built:
1 x twin 4.1in/70cal gun forward.
2 x twin-arm Samandha II SAM launchers, up to 64 missiles per launcher, fires Samandha/Samandha ER/ASROC.
2 x quadruple Nakama SSM launchers.
2 x twin ASW torp tubes (one to each beam ahead of the helicopter hangar).
-- Designed for TUW-119, but not yet available, so it was not initially fitted.
Armament, present:
1 x twin 4.1in/70cal gun forward.
2 x twin-arm Samandha II SAM launchers, up to 64 missiles per launcher, fires Samandha/Samandha ER/ASROC (three illuminators).
2 x quadruple Nakama SSM launchers.
2 x twin ASW torp tubes (one to each beam ahead of the helicopter hangar).
2 x 30mm Goalkeeper CIWS.
1 x Sea RAM launcher aft.
4 x TUW-119 anti-torpedo rocket launchers.
2 x single 30mm guns (anti-small boat, one to each beam forward, manually trained and fired).
Helicopter: One light ASW helicopter only.


The Lanakh-class grew out of the need to replace the aging Samadare-class DDGs, which had by the time the class was planned, been in service for 12 years on hulls which had been decked over in the yards for a decade before work began to complete them as missile destroyers. Though the hulls could certainly stand more service (and some did in foreign navies), the missile systems were grossly out of date and upgrades would be very uneconomic.

The proposal, then, was a completely new ship class, built around the upcoming Samandha missile. Slowly the ship that took form crept upwards in size; numerous configurations were considered, with the primary problem being the demand by the Navy for a good ASW capability in what was otherwise to be an AAW warship. Like the Najrah-class frigates built in the same time frame, the ship was to be COSAG and carry a single light ASW helicopter. The requirement for a hangar and flight deck, however, used up substantial room on the ship, and with the anti-air warfare component demanding a double-ended missile ship, space quickly vanished as the designs gained clarity. It was soon apparently that only a single gun mount could be fitted, and that needed be aft the forward launcher for weight considerations, limiting its firing arc even though it was of the new and extremely rapid-firing 70cals model.

Even then, the ship reached 9,150 tons--300 greater than the preceding Jhamra-class, to accommodate the desired two twin-rail launchers (necessary for both AAW and the firing of ASROC weapons in the ASW role) with the helicopter. Anti-surface missiles in the form of Nakama box launchers were accommodated amidships, with torpedoes mounted alongside the hangar. For the first time, too, plans were made to mount a new form of ASW rocket launcher, intended for intercepting incoming torpedoes, on the ship, though it was not yet available. Electronics growth ate away at the capability of the ship to serve as a flagship, and so it was genuinely merely a destroyer, even though it was larger than the Destroyer Leaders that had preceded it. The main regret was that the lack of space topside with the tremendous growth in electronics space requirements that forced only three illuminators, though the tracking nature of the Samandha missile and dual-tasking of the launchers with ASROC made this less of an issue than it initially seemed (and that the Reichstagasti complained about in the budget for such enormous vessels).

Completing in the mid through late 70's, the vessels were seen as pressing the capability limits for their tonnage from the very start, though they were capable; a knot slower than the Jhamra-class but just as capable of keeping up with the carriers in a sea state, and generally comfortable boats. They were upgraded with Goalkeeper in the 1980s and later single 30mm light cannon were added for use against small boats. The electronics were upgraded in the late 80's to allow for improved threat handling, similar to the American NTU for the Kidd-class (to which the Lanakh type is usually compared), and the most recent upgrade has been the addition of a Sea RAM launcher atop the hangar. The ships have, however, in the numerous upgrades over their history gained substantial amounts of topweight and have no existing margins for further growth.

As a related development, however, an improved-Lanakh class was proposed even as construction on the first twelve ships was proceeding. These vessels were to be 2 meters longer and a half-meter greater in beam, with tonnage increased by 325 tons, the extra space being used for a full-sized hangar for two heavy ASW helicopters. These ships were initially not funded, but the RKN succeeded in gaining additional funding from the new Deralis Administration in the late 1970s to build two ships to modified versions of this design as testbeds; one would be built with COGAG instead of COSAG, and be the first all-gas turbine propulsion ship in the RKN (Flight II-Najrah class ships were built CODAG instead of COSAG). The second would be a nuclear surface ship, the first in the RKN, built as part of a demand by the prior coalition government established during the times of economic hardship in the Arab Oil Crisis that the Navy investigate ways of eliminating its dependence on foreign sources of fuel.

As the designs were developed, one of the advantages of nuclear propulsion was clear; the reduction in topweight allowed the mounting of a fourth illuminator, and even (ultimately) two twin 30mm cannon very high up with good, clear arcs of fire. Though the COGAG propulsion on the Varunastra was considered acceptable, the success of the Divyastras made the Deralis government, already committed to the expansion of nuclear power, to decide that all future surface combatants displacing more than 9,000 tons would be nuclear powered, as well as any future full-deck carriers; only amphibious assault ships and aviation cruisers were to be exempted.

Divyastras-class DDGN (mod-Lanakh, nuclear)



Dimensions:
Length: 172 meters.
Beam: 18 meters.
Draft: 8.2 meters at full load.
Full load displacement: 9,475 tons.
Maximum speed: 33kts with Nuclear power.
Armament as built:
1 x twin 4.1in/70cal gun forward.
2 x twin-arm Samandha II SAM launchers, up to 64 missiles per launcher, fires Samandha/Samandha ER/ASROC (four guidance channels)
2 x quadruple Nakama SSM launchers.
2 x twin ASW torp tubes (one to each beam ahead of the helicopter hangar).
3 x TUW-119 anti-torpedo rocket launchers.
Added in later refits:
3 x Goalkeeper (1 replaced by RAM in 2000)
2 x 30mm twin cannon.
Helicopter capacity: 2 heavy ASW helicopters.

Varunastra-class DDG (mod-Lanakh, COGAG)



Dimensions:
Length: 172 meters.
Beam: 18 meters.
Draft: 8.2 meters at full load.
Full load displacement: 9,475 tons.
Maximum speed: 34kts with COGAG.
Armament as built:
1 x twin 4.1in/70cal gun forward.
2 x twin-arm Samandha II SAM launchers, up to 64 missiles per launcher, fires Samandha/Samandha ER/ASROC (three guidance channels)
2 x quadruple Nakama SSM launchers.
2 x twin ASW torp tubes (one to each beam ahead of the helicopter hangar).
3 x TUW-119 anti-torpedo rocket launchers.
Added in later refits:
3 x Goalkeeper (1 replaced by RAM in 2000)
2 x 30mm twin cannon.
Helicopter capacity: 2 heavy ASW helicopters.


Due to the weights on the Varunastra-class, it was required that her 30mm twins be mounted in an unusual position right aft, though their fire arcs have proved acceptable; she, like the earlier ships of the class, retains only three illuminators, unlike the nuclear-powered Divyastras. Note that unlike the regular Lanakh-class ships, only three TUW-119s are fitted, but that the RAM launcher aft is a full-sized model, replacing a third Goalkeeper, rather than Sea RAM.

[Big Orange]

My brain shuts down with the indepth but very dry information about the warships, but I like the warship profiles and enjoyed reading through the essay about KÆTJHASTI society: the general tone is delightfully imperial and ignorant, with the clangingly outdated racial theories and the constant denigration of the downtrodden Aboriginal population (I wonder if a civil rights movement bit KÆTJHASTI's ruling elite on the ass).

[The Duchess of Zeon]

My brain shuts down with the indepth but very dry information about the warships, but I like the warship profiles and enjoyed reading through the essay about KÆTJHASTI society: the general tone is delightfully imperial and ignorant, with the clangingly outdated racial theories and the constant denigration of the downtrodden Aboriginal population (I wonder if a civil rights movement bit KÆTJHASTI's ruling elite on the ass).

That article was not of course written by Kaetjhasti, but by the British. In 1911. Or so I tried to imitate, anyhow. The general complexities of Kaetjhasti racial politics is one of the things that the high-brow version of the AIM chat often talks about, for hours on end.

I posted it to at least provide SOME backstory for people, the EB1911 articles also feature in a story I'm coauthoring with Eris called Where There Ain't No Ten Commandments. The first section is up, the second section is slowly being written--it's slightly on the backburner for us at the moment and we'll start posting more updates in December or so.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

My brain shuts down with the indepth but very dry information about the warships, but I like the warship profiles and enjoyed reading through the essay about KÆTJHASTI society: the general tone is delightfully imperial and ignorant, with the clangingly outdated racial theories and the constant denigration of the downtrodden Aboriginal population (I wonder if a civil rights movement bit KÆTJHASTI's ruling elite on the ass).

Oh, the best part, this is the flag they settled on in the 1820s: Possibly not safe for some Europeans.

Left-handed Hindu-type crimson swastika on light blue canton with white body and yellow/dark blue/dark green bands on the end of the flag (added in the 1880s after it was complained by some that the flag looked rather like a flag of surrender or could be easily mistake for one in its current form, the yellow band intended to represent Sahul, the dark blue band, the middle seas, the dark green, Zealandia).

In their defence, they adopted it 100 years before the Nazis were a gleam in someone's eye as a minor crank party, and they got rather attached to it, fighting through four major wars under that banner before the world was aware of the Holocaust, so they of course certainly utterly refused to change it.

[Big Orange]

That article was not of course written by Kaetjhasti, but by the British. In 1911. Or so I tried to imitate, anyhow.

That explains the extreme dickishness of the hypothetical article writer and I guessed as much.

I get the impression the Aborigines (and the other technologically primitive natives) are faring somewhat better in this fictional timeline under the Kaetjhasti Empire than they did under the British Empire, with them being relatively less lackadaisically mistreated and being more assimilated (initially as basic labourers in the Outback's industrial/agricultural projects).

Their flag does not bother me, since it is the cuddly, orange, level and counterclockwise Hindu swastika and not the scary, black, tilted and clockwise Nazi swastika.

[Voyager989]

I see I was eventually supposed to post here, much to my chagrin. Might as well!

East Amazonia/California does have a very different fleet and origin, as Duchess said. Also much less developed (as I in no way conceptualize as fast as she). One major difference was a much warmer relationship with the UK which has only faded in the last decade or so. The origin of the name, which Duchess is responsible for, is:

Sabed que a la diestra mano de las Indias existe una isla llamada California muy cerca de un costado del Paraíso Terrenal; y estaba poblada por mujeres negras, sin que existiera allí un hombre, pues vivían a la manera de las amazonas. Eran de bellos y robustos cuerpos, fogoso valor y gran fuerza. Su isla era la más fuerte de todo el mundo, con sus escarpados farallones y sus pétreas costas. Sus armas eran todas de oro y del mismo metal eran los arneses de las bestias salvajes que ellas acostumbraban domar para montarlas, porque en toda la isla no había otro metal que el oro.

Know that on the right hand from the Indies exists an island called California very close to a side of the Earthly Paradise; and it was populated by black women, without any man existing there, because they lived in the way of the Amazons. They had beautiful and robust bodies, and were brave and very strong. Their island was the strongest of the World, with its cliffs and rocky shores. Their weapons were golden and so were the harnesses of the wild beasts that they were accustomed to domesticate and ride, because there was no other metal in the island than gold.

–Las Sergas de Esplandián, (novela de caballería)

Anyhow, the art!



HIMS Princess Kayia
Dimensions:
Length: 127 meters.
Beam: 13.5 meters.
Draft: 5.5 meters
Maximum speed: 28kts with steam
Armament as shown, circa 1969:
2 x twin 120mm/50 Model 1950.
2 x quad Sea Cat SAM Launchers
1 x single Ikara ASW Launcher
2 x triple Limbo ASW mortar
2 x triple ASW torp tubes
2 x twin 25mm/75 (Manually aimed and fired, AA and anti-boat)
Helicopter: 3 x DASH drones

The Princess Kaiya's were conceived in the need to replace the rapidly aging fleet of WWII era escorts in the Californian Navy, and, in the long tradition of Californian architects of basing ships off their British counterparts, found the basic Type 12 design to their liking. Much as the Leander class was produced for the RN and others, so were the Kayia's for the Californians, though to a larger and more robust design for use as a general purpose escort with an ASW focus, rather than the single-purpose design of the Leander. In the end, thirty six were built between 1960 and 1973, due to wrangling over a possible successor design and ongoing governmental fights over the direction of military spending, with all ships creaking along into the 1990's with little modernization work, giving them a reputation as "toothless terrors" amongst First World navies.

[Voyager989]

HIMS Duchess Cardinia
Length: 153 meters.
Beam: 17 meters.
Draft: 6.15 meters
Maximum speed: 28+kts on CODAG
Armament as shown, circa 1999:
1 x single 120mm/50
1 x Phalanx CIWS
32 x VLS cells for Sea Wolf SAM
16 x VLS cells for VL-ASROC/Tomahawk
2 x quad Harpoon SSM canisters
2 x twin 12.75" ASW torpedo tubes
2 x twin 25mm/75 (AA and anti-boat)
Helicopter: 2 x Chinook ASW, 2 x 2 x QH-50G drones

The long-awaited replacements for the Princess Kayia class, the Duchess Cardinia's suffered through a development hell, with numerous false starts from the mid 1970's onwards coming repeatedly to naught, till, in desperation, the Naval General Staff proposed a cooperative development with the Canadian Patrol Frigate project. Surprisingly, the government of the time smiled in the endeavour and provided the necessary funding. The supposed cost savings vanished quickly, with only the hull and general arrangement remaining recognizable after modification of the design to Californian requirements was completed. Still, the Navy finally received a destroyer which could stand against her opposite escort numbers and not feel ashamed at the result. Twenty ships were built between 1987 and 2002, with the final four being canceled due to the ongoing disastrous saga of the fleet carrier replacement programme.

[JointStrikeFighter]

Chinook ASW?:) Good lord what motivated that:D

[Sea Skimmer]

The ASW Chinook is a real concept, and was one of two competitors for the ASW aircraft for CVA-01. The other option was an upgraded Sea King. No decision was ever reached on that topic, because the ship itself was canceled in 1966. Some flight tests took place though, at least for evaluation, so this was not purely a paper concept.

Basically the advantages stem from the rotor configuration. Tandem rotor choppers are more stable then choppers with a single main rotor and tail rotor, this would allow for operations in significantly worse weather, particularly when using dipping sonar or taking off or landing. Since all engine power goes into making lift such choppers are also somewhat faster, and have longer range or greater payloads.

The main downside of tandem rotor is reduced rates of turn, not very relevant to ASW, and the shear size of the aircraft which could not be reduced by a folding tail. This is why once the ASW Chinook idea died the first time it didn’t come back, because people had already built swarms of escorts which could not land such a large chopper. It would be undesirable to field a chopper that could only land on a carrier and not the escorts as well. Back in 1966 chopper pads were still a new thing on escorts, most were old and had one, so it would have been easy to specify all future pads have the required size.

Interestingly the modern Type 45 destroyer was designed to be able to land Chinooks, though I don’t think it can hanger them. This is mainly to support special forces though. Merlin has the large chopper ASW topic well covered.

The USN solution meanwhile was to simply keep using fixed wing ASW planes until recently. I suspect we’ll see a carrier launched ASW UCAV in the near future as a replacement. The RN had wanted to phase out the medium chopper-plane mix out on CVA-01 in favor of operating only one big chopper type for all ASW duties.