Source for Enterprise's designation as 'Heavy Cruiser'

[WAMTNG]

Enjoyed this side exchange about fighter craft...

It's always seemed to me that Star Trek operates under the premise the bigger the reactor, the more power for movement, shields and weapons. Fightercraft are therefore slower and weaker than capital ships, so there's little use for them.

This is the key conceptual point in my view. In a world without shields, or with imperfect shields, fighters make sense in space combat, because a hull breach can cause explosive decompression even on a larger vessel. But as soon as starship combat is a question of power output (directed energy weapons versus shields), the combat goes straight to the capital ships.

Yes, and... I find it interesting that Star Trek did not take that direction while pretty much every other space-based franchise did.

I might have an answer for this, as I'll discuss in just a moment.

It wasn't really a thing, though, until the early '70s with the Yamato shows AFAIK.

Right, I think the two of you have converged on the key issue here. In the 1960s, fighter combat was too expensive to do with TV special effects. Capital ships required fewer models and less intricate model choreography. But then, of course, Star Wars raised the bar in 1977... and then sci-fi shows were keen to play along. So you get your Battlestar Galactica's (1978) and Buck Rogers (1979), which shoot the footage with fighters in the pilot and then reuse the stock footage ad nauseum. Of course, TNG could have gone down this line too... but why would it, when it already had a format that worked well for it...?

Thanks for the interesting discussion folks! Enjoy your weekends.

 

[drt]

Didn't someone post a picture on here showing a plaque near the turbolift or somewhere near there saying the Enterprise was Starship class? And I thought Nimoy was asked once if he'd seen it or am I getting this mixed up with something else? or just imagining it? LOL

Yes, that's correct, the dedication plaque by the turbo lift does say "STARSHIP CLASS".

The dialog in "Bread and Circuses" supports the idea Starships™ were something special.

THE STARSHIPS ARE THE HEAVY CRUISERS, THE ONES WHICH CAN BEST DEFEND THEMSELVES AS THEY PROBE FARTHER AND FARTHER OUT, OPENING NEW AREAS . . . AND THEN THE OTHERS FOLLOW.

Thinking more about this quote from The Making of Star Trek, the way it reads could also be interpreted as "Starships are the equivalent of modern naval heavy cruisers" as in a "fast, reasonably well armed, longer range ship", not necessarily "Enterprise is a heavy cruiser", which is how FJ seems to have read it.

 

[Dukhat]

It's always been interesting to me that despite the clear shift in real-world naval tactics to carrier-based operations by 1966, there's no sign of fighters anywhere in Star Trek. Star Wars of course has fighters, some ship-based. The Orville has ship-based fighter craft. But even the modern iterations of the Trek franchise really don't, and the original certainly doesn't.

DS9 showed Federation fighters.

 

[F. King Daniel]

So did Discovery season 2.

Hey where did those hundreds of fighters the emerged from the Enterprise go? Probably could have helped out during Strange New Worlds

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Thinking more about this quote from The Making of Star Trek, the way it reads could also be interpreted as "Starships are the equivalent of modern naval heavy cruisers" as in a "fast, reasonably well armed, longer range ship", not necessarily "Enterprise is a heavy cruiser", which is how FJ seems to have read it.

I agree. It seems to be saying the former, not the latter.

 

[PCz911]

Here ya go:

https://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tsfshd/tsfshd0184.jpg

Notice that it’s the TOS Constitution class, not the refit. This diagram came directly from the FJ Tech Manual, and to my knowledge is the first instance in canon to use the ‘heavy cruiser’ moniker. In the same film, one of the Klingons refers to the Enterprise as a ‘Federation battle cruiser.’

so, I know it’s not “fair” to use screen images from the movies to justify tos…. But this , in my personal “head canon” , enshrines franz Joseph and his tech manual as “canon”. The tech manual was so important (to me) in that era of ‘no new trek’ … (an era that few remember but that I do). I spent countless hours reading the tech manual. Therefore, a heavy cruiser? You betcha.

and … no fighters ? Of course not. As Someone said previously, this is Horatio hornblower …it’s the age of sail. There weren’t any blokes in row boats moving around at high speed. This is the wooden ships and iron men era. Big wind driven man o wars …. Extrapolated to space (and the limitations of sfx)

now, get off my lawn…. ;-)

 

[MAGolding]

It's always been interesting to me that despite the clear shift in real-world naval tactics to carrier-based operations by 1966, there's no sign of fighters anywhere in Star Trek. Star Wars of course has fighters, some ship-based. The Orville has ship-based fighter craft. But even the modern iterations of the Trek franchise really don't, and the original certainly doesn't.

Maybe you shoud ask yourelf the differences between airplanes and sea ships on Earth, and then ask if such differences would apply in outer space, or whether space fighters would have any tactical uses.

The oceans of Earth are a thin film of water forming a two diemsional layer on top of a three dimensional globe of rock. The three types of manned vessels used in navel warfare on Earth are submarines, surface ships, and airplanes.

Submarines travel on the surface of the water or below it to a depth no more than a few tens, hundreds, or thousands of meters, depending on how deep they can safely dive.

Surface ships travel on the surface, with parts of their hulls submerged in dense water, which has a lot of drag to slow them down, and the other parts of their hulls in the atmosphere which is much thinnner and has much less resistance to movement..

Airplanes travel in the atmopshere, which is much thinner than water and offers much less resistance to movement.

So how does outer space resemble the situation on Earth?

 

[PCz911]

Maybe you shoud ask yourelf the differences between airplanes and sea ships on Earth, and then ask if such differences would apply in outer space, or whether space fighters would have any tactical uses.

The oceans of Earth are a thin film of water forming a two diemsional layer on top of a three dimensional globe of rock. The three types of manned vessels used in navel warfare on Earth are submarines, surface ships, and airplanes.

Submarines travel on the surface of the water or below it to a depth no more than a few tens, hundreds, or thousands of meters, depending on how deep they can safely dive.

Surface ships travel on the surface, with parts of their hulls submerged in dense water, which has a lot of drag to slow them down, and the other parts of their hulls in the atmosphere which is much thinnner and has much less resistance to movement..

Airplanes travel in the atmopshere, which is much thinner than water and offers much less resistance to movement.

So how does outer space resemble the situation on Earth?

Good point

 

[publiusr]

You don't often see the nautical term used any more

Large cruisers were a step up from heavy cruisers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska-class_cruiser#.22Large_cruisers.22_or_.22battlecruisers.22
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_cruiser

The last was the Newport News...sigh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Newport_News_(CA-148)

 

[Noname Given]

The Enterprise type ships in TOS were consistently referred to as Starship by the characters; and in dialogue in TOS S2 Bread And Circuses, a Starship was considered a very special type of Federation space vessel.

 

[drt]

You don't often see the nautical term used any more

Large cruisers were a step up from heavy cruisers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska-class_cruiser#.22Large_cruisers.22_or_.22battlecruisers.22
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_cruiser

The last was the Newport News...sigh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Newport_News_(CA-148)

Yeah, cruisers as a whole have disappeared from most navies, over the next decade or so the USN is replacing their last few with larger destroyers (which probably would have been called “cruisers” in years past).

 

[Metryq]

I assume the introduction of the "fighter" (which term I don't like) idea was rooted in exposure to WW2 films and imagery over the preceding decades and a desire to transpose the excitement and energy of those visuals into a SF setting.

This is a perennial debate on other sci-fi forums. I agree with JTB's take on the World War II influence. I find a lot of "World War II thinking" in older sci-fi in terms of technology and tactics, even when pushed into the future. And I've read somewhere that modern "fighters" really can't dogfight a la WWII without slowing down. What they do at high speeds is an entirely different kind of warfare, e.g. "fighters" are delivery platforms for long-range smart weapons, etc.

I can see Heinlein's point in Starship Troopers where the "MI" are point commandos—"We make war as personal as a punch in the nose. We can be selective, applying precisely the required amount of pressure at the specified point at a designated time."

But if one does not need anything left over for diplomacy or resources, interstellar warfare might be in a class where one-man fighters are completely irrelevant—say the star system destroying weapons described in Murray Leinster's The Wailing Asteroid, or the space-time destroying Disruptor in Edmond Hamilton's The Star Kings.

I imagine many here are already familiar with the Project Rho site.

 

[publiusr]

Starcrash got the name Zarth Arn from Star Kings no doubt,

 

[J.T.B.]

Thinking more about this quote from The Making of Star Trek, the way it reads could also be interpreted as "Starships are the equivalent of modern naval heavy cruisers" as in a "fast, reasonably well armed, longer range ship", not necessarily "Enterprise is a heavy cruiser", which is how FJ seems to have read it.

That would be my guess, too, even though the diagrams which obviously inspired him use "space cruiser." What's kind of interesting to me is that he didn't follow up on the implication that if there's a "heavy cruiser" there's probably a "light cruiser." Personally, I head-canon the Reliant type to be the light cruiser.

Yeah, cruisers as a whole have disappeared from most navies, over the next decade or so the USN is replacing their last few with larger destroyers (which probably would have been called “cruisers” in years past).

The last real USN cruiser, from a design standpoint, was the nuclear-powered Long Beach, built in the late 1950s. By then it was becoming clear that destroyers, having grown both in size and capability, were able to take on more roles but were also more economical. The large destroyer leaders, soon to be called frigates, inherited the title "cruiser" in the mid '70s, but they are clearly part of a destroyer lineage.

This is a perennial debate on other sci-fi forums. I agree with JTB's take on the World War II influence. I find a lot of "World War II thinking" in older sci-fi in terms of technology and tactics, even when pushed into the future. And I've read somewhere that modern "fighters" really can't dogfight a la WWII without slowing down. What they do at high speeds is an entirely different kind of warfare, e.g. "fighters" are delivery platforms for long-range smart weapons, etc.

Another thing that's interesting to me is the lack of ship-killer weapons in Star Wars. It seems like the only thing the small craft can do against a capital ship is swarm them in great numbers. There doesn't seem to be much chance of a single X- or Y-wing putting a star destroyer out of action.

There was a time, before WW1, when destroyers (usually commanded by no more than a lieutenant) had the swaggering, dashing young officers of the fleet, with their ultimate daring mission being to dart into the enemy's gun range to deliver a swift torpedo attack on the battle line. This was overshadowed later, though, by the air and submarine services. But again, the destroyers could employ a ship-killing weapon. It wasn't until aircraft could carry very heavy torpedoes or withstand the stresses of dive-bombing that they themselves were an actual threat to a capital ship.

 

[Dukhat]

That would be my guess, too, even though the diagrams which obviously inspired him use "space cruiser." What's kind of interesting to me is that he didn't follow up on the implication that if there's a "heavy cruiser" there's probably a "light cruiser." Personally, I head-canon the Reliant type to be the light cruiser.

Very early TNG used naval designations, but that didn’t last past the first season:

USS Drake - light cruiser
USS Tripoli - cruiser
USS Horatio - heavy cruiser
USS Renegade - frigate
USS Thomas Paine - frigate

 

[drt]

That would be my guess, too, even though the diagrams which obviously inspired him use "space cruiser." What's kind of interesting to me is that he didn't follow up on the implication that if there's a "heavy cruiser" there's probably a "light cruiser." Personally, I head-canon the Reliant type to be the light cruiser.

Considering FJ's destroyer/scout design similarity, I always found if interesting he didn't do a dorsal-less variation of the tug as a light cruiser, which is essentially what we got with Reliant (as you mentioned).

 

[J.T.B.]

Very early TNG used naval designations, but that didn’t last past the first season:

USS Drake - light cruiser
USS Tripoli - cruiser
USS Horatio - heavy cruiser
USS Renegade - frigate
USS Thomas Paine - frigate

All season one, that's interesting. Has a "destroyer" ever been mentioned?

 

[Christopher]

This is the key conceptual point in my view. In a world without shields, or with imperfect shields, fighters make sense in space combat, because a hull breach can cause explosive decompression even on a larger vessel. But as soon as starship combat is a question of power output (directed energy weapons versus shields), the combat goes straight to the capital ships.

Fighters in space don't make any real sense at all, as the superb Atomic Rocket site explained:

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/fighter.php

In short, there's nothing a fighter can do that can't be done better by a computerized drone, which doesn't have to waste mass on carrying a pilot and their life support system and controls. Also, the only real reason for fighters on Earth is to extend a ship's combat range beyond the horizon, and there are no horizons in space except the event kind, which you wouldn't come back from.

I mean, even today, drones are taking over a lot of the stuff that used to be done by fighter planes. It stands to reason that in the future, there'd be even less reason to risk sentient lives in fighter craft.


As for the risk of explosive decompression, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda developed a very plausible space combat system with no magic energy shields, and the way their ships minimized the risk was by concentrating the crew in a few places and decompressing the rest of the ship ahead of time, so any projectile that penetrated the ship would most likely pass through vacuum and thus not transmit destructive shock or thermal effects through the atmosphere to the rest of the ship. (It also employed drone fighters that were extensions of the ship's AI, although they could optionally be piloted. But combat relied primarily on missiles and relativistic kinetic projectiles, IIRC.)

Thinking more about this quote from The Making of Star Trek, the way it reads could also be interpreted as "Starships are the equivalent of modern naval heavy cruisers" as in a "fast, reasonably well armed, longer range ship", not necessarily "Enterprise is a heavy cruiser", which is how FJ seems to have read it.

Interesting. I think you may be right. GR might've been making an analogy similar to how TMoST described Kirk's first command as a destroyer-equivalent vessel, but not one actually called a destroyer.

 

[Metryq]

There doesn't seem to be much chance of a single X- or Y-wing putting a star destroyer out of action.

Well, there was that A-wing in Return of the Jedi that crashed into the bridge of the Super StarDestroyer, which then went nose-first into Death Star, Take 2. More "World War II thinking." C'mon, even the Federation Constitution class have a second bridge, and the Yamato has three.

In the live-action Space Battleship Yamato (2010) it was suggested that the one-man fighters swarmed the capitol ships to map targets for the big guns. Like ground forces "painting" a target with lasers. Still, one wonders why Gamilas did not have (or use, if they did have) Wave Motion Gun technology. They obviously knew enough about Wave Motion to track the Yamato when they used it. However, the nature of the enemy was changed subtly between anime and live action such that Gamilas did not want to blow away all the humans, until they got too close. (Gamilas was not after Earth.)

 

[Metryq]

In short, there's nothing a fighter can do that can't be done better by a computerized drone, which doesn't have to waste mass on carrying a pilot and their life support system and controls.

(Forgive a follow-up reply to another post while I was writing the above.)

A writer might invent any number of reasons to side-step the issues you raised above. In Colin Kapp's short story "Gottlos" we are given the point-of-view of a "drone pilot" very similar to those used today. Fiendish is a warmec, a super-tank driven by a remote operator using full VR. But as Fiendish draws closer to the bunker that is his target, his resolution and speed are compromised by the inevitable radio jamming. And that's when he meets Gottlos, a rival tank not bothered by the radio noise because the operator's brain is buried deep inside the tank. Gottlos doesn't drive the tank, he is the tank.

Then there's the short story "Without A Thought," the first story in the Berserker anthology by Fred Saberhagen. The berserker has a beam that can scramble the thoughts of both man and his computers. But one clever pilot figures a way to bluff the berserker into thinking its mind ray is not working, and thus hold off the fight until reinforcements arrive. So, a scenario where AI replaces a live pilot may have its drawbacks. The novel This Island Earth by Raymond F. Jones also posits a situation where computer driven war is a losing proposition.