The Excalibur, a direct hit

[C57D]

I am working on a TOS setting for a STTRPG roleplaying game campaign, and wanting to use an upgraded version of the Excalibur as the heroes ship.
I am assuming that following the Ultimate Computer it was given a skeleton crew then flown back to a nearby shipyard and converted into the first "Phase 2" type Connie.
I am inspired in part, by lack of systems damage in the UC dialogue, and so assume that the ship wasn't substanially materially damaged, but the crew mostly (if not all) lost. This suggests to me that the damage may have been to life support systems solely so killing the crew without massive physical damage? And the remastered visuals seem to show the hits on Excalibur to be saucer near the Impulse engines, and generally on the secondary hull - both places where life support could be.
Also seems to tie in with the Phase 2 saucer being almost unaltered (except the bridge module) while the secondary hull and warp engines being very new.
Love to hear if anyone agrees/disagrees with my assumptions - I always like to keep things right!!

 

[BillJ]

Disagree.

Even with a hit to life support, the crew should’ve been able to survive awhile. Especially with space suits and oxygen masks.

She had to have massive internal damage to kill the majority of the crew. Just go with Excalibur II/A.

 

[Noname Given]

Disagree.

Even with a hit to life support, the crew should’ve been able to survive awhile. Especially with space suits and oxygen masks.

She had to have massive internal damage to kill the majority of the crew. Just go with Excalibur II/A.

Or you can say the ship hull was towed back to a Federation Starbase and refit/repaired. Remember Star trek doesn't believe in ghosts or the supernatural (if something appears that way, it's due to some scientific effect or principle we don't yet understand); so there would be no fear by the replacement crew of it being a 'haunted' ship.

 

[Shawnster]

This is similar to the premise of the Starship Exeter fanfilm series. http://www.starshipexeter.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Exeter In this series the Exeter, from TOS Omega Glory was recovered by Starfleet, decontaminated, and given a new captain and crew.

I do like your idea about the Excalibur receiving the Phase II upgrades. If they are going to recover and reuse the Excalibur, she definitely would need extensive repairs.

 

[BillJ]

Or you can say the ship hull was towed back to a Federation Starbase and refit/repaired. Remember Star trek doesn't believe in ghosts or the supernatural (if something appears that way, it's due to some scientific effect or principle we don't yet understand); so there would be no fear by the replacement crew of it being a 'haunted' ship.

I guess it would come down to the nature of the damage. Some sort of radiation burst from the impulse engines that cooked everyone on the ship, then it might be doable to bring it back to active service at some point. If there is major structural damage from the attack, it would be likely easier to scrap it.

 

[Timo]

Radiation would be the consistent Trek way to do it - call it Delta or whatever for added effect.

But the one surefire trick would be if M-5 hit the inertia dampers and the rest of the hit shook the ship to starboard at a zillion gee. It's quite the miracle that ship crews don't perish that way more often. And probably goes hand in hand with how artificial gravity basically never fails, be it from hull-ripping hits, total power failures or eight hundred thousand years of tumbling adrift.

Could a starship be salvaged if it lost 100% crew to inertia damping failure? Might be too hard on the bulkheads, too. But there could be a Goldilocks zone there.

This doesn't match the TOS dialogue too well, though. The M-5 attack doesn't immediately kill all the Excalibur crew: Wesley reports only the top brass dead, in a fashion making it clear that there are survivors. No further hits then take place - but moments later, Kirk bets his life on everybody aboard the Excalibur indeed being stone dead, so that M-5 can be driven to suicide from guilt when it scans the wreck.

What kind of damage could Kirk witness, and recognize for slowly but inevitably lethal, when not in command of any scanners? He probably can't even tell which spots his starship really hit on the target vessel. But it might be that he can tell a hit on an unshielded ship from a hit on a shielded one, and knows that the former sort kills everybody from "phaser radiation" in minutes. Even if in certain other fights it does not.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Maurice]

The post-hit Excalibur was represented by footage of the wrecked Constellation, which suggests rather catastrophic damage.

 

[Timo]

...Which is sorta the worst of both worlds here, because that damage didn't kill Decker and didn't really contribute to the deaths of his crew, while it would make for a poor starting point for the restoration desired in the fanfic.

The damage in the remastered version is different, involving no bent pylons or big holes in the hull. Better for the fanfic, no better in explaining why everybody died, and somewhat underwhelming overall. Why did the remakers steer away from gory when they could have splattered with abandon?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[C57D]

Thanks to all for your informative posts.
Yes I am definitely wanting to include a bit of a "cursed death ship" vibe to the setting. Especially if the saucer has been able to be mostly reused, and so the new crew are literally living, working and sleeping where hundreds recently died. Not to mention the ship's reputation within Starfleet!
As regards ship damage I am working from the remastered depiction, which, as far as I can see is just one phaser hit near the saucer engineering/impulse engines and a short burst on the secondary hull. This suits my supposition (and the Phase 2 design) that, other than the new bridge module/turbolift module the saucer is able to be reused. While the secondary hull is totally new.
I just need to decide precisely what agency killed all the crew with so little (remastered depiction only) material ship damage?

 

[Henoch]

I think the M/AM reactor was "breached" which resulted in extreme internal damage plus an intense radiation burst. Both internal events killed everyone. I would put the radiation burst on line with a neutron bomb; enough to kill humans instantly or within moments. We know that damaged starships in TOS do emit radiation when damaged as seen in The Day of the Dove with the Klingon D-7 needed to be destroyed due to its radiation hazard.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Real world, after the 1967 fire aboard the USS Forrestal (CV-59), there were literally crewmen melted into parts of the ship.

They sealed those areas off and continued to use her another 26 years.

Starfleet can deny "haunting" all it wants, but there's sure to be individuals who would rather not serve on a ship where the entire crew got fried no matter how much you clean it.

 

[BillJ]

Thanks to all for your informative posts.
Yes I am definitely wanting to include a bit of a "cursed death ship" vibe to the setting. Especially if the saucer has been able to be mostly reused, and so the new crew are literally living, working and sleeping where hundreds recently died. Not to mention the ship's reputation within Starfleet!
As regards ship damage I am working from the remastered depiction, which, as far as I can see is just one phaser hit near the saucer engineering/impulse engines and a short burst on the secondary hull. This suits my supposition (and the Phase 2 design) that, other than the new bridge module/turbolift module the saucer is able to be reused. While the secondary hull is totally new.
I just need to decide precisely what agency killed all the crew with so little (remastered depiction only) material ship damage?

Radiation or fire. But a fire may also damage the frame of the ship. Which might not be apparent until they got her into a dock and started taking stock.

 

[J.T.B.]

Real world, after the 1967 fire aboard the USS Forrestal (CV-59), there were literally crewmen melted into parts of the ship.

They sealed those areas off and continued to use her another 26 years.

I'd like to see a reputable citation on that. If any of the ship's structure got hot enough to melt, its integrity would be compromised and it would have been replaced.

 

[BillJ]

I'd like to see a reputable citation on that. If any of the ship's structure got hot enough to melt, its integrity would be compromised and it would have been replaced.

https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/disasters-and-phenomena/forrestal-fire.html

On 29 July 1967, USS Forrestal (CVA/CV-59) suffered a catastrophic fire during flight operations while on Yankee Station off the coast of Vietnam. Wracked by eight high-order explosions of thin-shelled Korean War–vintage bombs and a number of smaller weapons explosions, the world’s first supercarrier was mere minutes away from the bottom of the Gulf of Tonkin. In its wake, the fire claimed 134 Sailors and Airmen, and seriously injured or burned another 161. Of those who died, 50 died where they slept. Many more were wounded but did not report their injuries because of the severity of those of their shipmates.

Forrestal was the first Atlantic Fleet carrier on Yankee Station, and she had been there only five days. As the ship prepared for its second strike of the day, at 1050, everything changed. The Navy in its definitive report on the event—Manual of the Judge Advocate General Basic Final Investigative Report Concerning the Fire on Board the USS FORRESTAL (CVA-59)—concluded that a stray electrical signal ignited the motor of a Zuni rocket carried by an F-4B Phantom II on the starboard quarter and shot across the deck, striking the external fuel tank of a fully armed A-4E Skyhawk on the port. At least one of the Skyhawk’s M-65 1,000-lb. bombs fell to the deck, cracked open, and was burning with a white-hot ferocity.

The carrier’s fire crew responded immediately. Fifty-four seconds after the initiation of the fire, Chief Gerald W. Farrier, head of the firefighting team, attacked the cracked and furiously burning bomb with a hand-held extinguisher. Twenty seconds later the hose crew arrived and fought the periphery of the fire. At slightly more than 90 seconds into the fire, the bomb exploded. Nine seconds later a second 1,000-pounder exploded with even more ferocity, hurling debris nearly 1,000 feet away at the bow.

The explosions of the large, old weapons blew holes in the armored flight deck above spaces primarily set aside for crew berthing. Flaming and unburned fuel, water, and foam cascaded down into the compartments. Battling the fires below deck was more difficult than that topside with the confined spaces, little light, thick black smoke, and toxic fumes. Although the fire on the flight deck was controlled within an hour, fires below deck raged until 0400 the next morning.

Twenty-one aircraft were destroyed and another 40 damaged of the 73 on board at the start of the fire.

Although the investigation report cited errors of safety checks on the Zuni rocket, it concluded that no one on board was directly responsible for the fire and subsequent explosions, and recommended that no disciplinary or administrative action be taken against any persons attached to the ship or its air wing.

Forrestal received emergency repairs over eight days at Subic Bay, The Philippines, before sailing for complete repair at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia. She went on to serve until 11 September 1993 when she was decommissioned after 21 deployments. She never made another Vietnam cruise.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I'd like to see a reputable citation on that. If any of the ship's structure got hot enough to melt, its integrity would be compromised and it would have been replaced.

I heard that part decades ago, so it could have been over-exaggerated. I wanna say the idea was, that if remains were in those areas, they couldn't be recovered, so were left alone.

The fire was started by a rocket striking a fuel tank of an A4, the fuel fire then went into the lower decks. We know from the WTC fires that jet fuel can melt steel.

Thanks @BillJ So many stories, I was having a hard time finding the right one.

 

[BillJ]

Thanks @BillJ So many stories, I was having a hard time finding the right one.

Regardless of the story, I've always heard the Forrestal was a pretty bad incident causing massive damage to the ship. She had to spend eight days in port in order to be sea-worthy enough to make it home for full repairs.

 

[J.T.B.]

I heard that part decades ago, so it could have been over-exaggerated. I wanna say the idea was, that if remains were in those areas, they couldn't be recovered, so were left alone.

The fire was started by a rocket striking a fuel tank of an A4, the fuel fire then went into the lower decks. We know from the WTC fires that jet fuel can melt steel.

No question. But when steel gets that hot its temper changes and it is no longer reliable to structural specs. According to Fire, Fire on the Flight Deck Aft by Kenneth Killmeyer , a basically minute by minute account of the fire and the events before and after, some 200 compartments were replaced along with 175 feet of flight deck. I don't recall reading anything in it about crewmembers "entombed" in any way.

 

[C57D]

I think the M/AM reactor was "breached" which resulted in extreme internal damage plus an intense radiation burst. Both internal events killed everyone. I would put the radiation burst on line with a neutron bomb; enough to kill humans instantly or within moments. We know that damaged starships in TOS do emit radiation when damaged as seen in The Day of the Dove with the Klingon D-7 needed to be destroyed due to its radiation hazard.

I like it! Some sort of fast acting, always fatal radiation burst from the MAM or Impulse Engines (saucer seemed to take a hit about there) would seem to be a good culprit for swiftly killing all the crew without much material damage.
I think that I will have the Player Characters initially unware as to which ship they are reporting to, just that it is modified as a testbed for some new technology.
Maybe thats why the Excalibur's NCC is undecided between 1664 or 1705? It was actually changed to try to bury the past disaster.
I would also wonder if some systems were a little put out by the radiation burst? And so they rarely manifest little niggles, which leads to talk of gremlins (or the spirits of the dead crew?)

 

[PCz911]

Real world, after the 1967 fire aboard the USS Forrestal (CV-59), there were literally crewmen melted into parts of the ship.

They sealed those areas off and continued to use her another 26 years.

Starfleet can deny "haunting" all it wants, but there's sure to be individuals who would rather not serve on a ship where the entire crew got fried no matter how much you clean it.

Wow. Mind blown.
I was going to ask about some of the ships In pearl harbor. Weren’t they raised and refitted?
But this is more astounding

 

[Henoch]

I was going to ask about some of the ships In pearl harbor. Weren’t they raised and refitted?

Not all. Arizona, Utah (now a training vessel), and Oklahoma were declared lost after the bombing. West Virginia, Nevada and California were re-floated and repaired to continue to serve in WWII. Tennessee and Maryland were only damaged and quickly repaired. Pennsylvania was in dry dock and only slightly damaged.