One big, happy fleet [FJ]

[Wingsley]

Something about Franz Joseph's 1975 Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual book has puzzled me for a long time.

We naturally assume that the Federation Starfleet is a dedicated, professional organization with a clear set of objectives to serve the Federation's member-worlds through exploration, science, and providing materiel support, technical support and transportation as needed. Kind of like a cross between a navy, a railroad, a post office/pony express, and Jaques Cousteau all rolled into one. Their fleet would be logically organized to that end.

But one thing I noticed about the FJ starship lists puzzles me: FJ listed five different kinds of Class I starships: transport/tugs, destroyers, scouts, heavy cruisers, and dreadnoughts. Of course, we can all look at the movies and see that the "canon" analogues to what were presented (in a vaguely conceptual sense, if not by name) are very different than the ships imagined in the Tech Manual. While the Reliant and her derivatives were never given an on-screen class name in the TMP-era movies, she does seem to be a "heavy" version of what the Saladin and/or Hermes were meant to be. The Grissom seems to serve on the "lighter" end of that niche.

Regardless of this (fandom, of course, has retconned numerous explanations and many other ship classes), that's not what I want to focus on in this thread.

Isolating FJ's Tech Manual, has anyone else ever found it odd that the "heavy cruiser" class has over 140 ships listed (roughly from NCC-1700 through 1841, plus others out of sequence), while there are only about 56 destroyers and only 40 scouts. There are about 140 transport/tugs listed, but this has me scratching my head.

Forget the dreadnoughts for the moment. There are only about 21 of them so they are obviously not a "mainstream" ship. Whether you look at it from a naval perspective or other perspective (like NASA or the Air Force), the heavy cruiser is the elite, the biggest and best-outiftted class of vessel in mass production. But what about the destroyers/scouts? Why so few of them?

In an Air Force, wouldn't you expect to see more training planes and fighter-jets than B-52's? And wouldn't you expect there to be comparatively fewer large B-52's and Stealth bombers than anything else?

It is logical that a large number of warptugs would be employed by Starfleet. The Federation obviously needs a large number of Class I starships to carry freight and personnel between member-worlds, starbases and non-aligned worlds.

But shouldn't there be 140 destroyer/scouts and only a few dozen cruisers at best? Shouldn't the support and lesser ships of the line outnumber the big cruisers? Isn't that the way the pyramid works? Shouldn't the bulk of the fleet be comprised of lesser ships, and the biggest ships be a relatively small percentage?

In "Tomorrow Is Yesterday", Kirk bragged to USAF Capt. Christopher of the Enterprise "there are only twelve like it in the fleet". There are several logical interpretations of this brag, one of them being that there are only 13 Class I starships in service from the United Earth Space Probe Agency at that time (Kirk mentioned that during the same turbolift ride), or there are only 13 original Constitution-class starships built (presumably Decker's Constellation, with minor visual differences, could be a refit from a previous class and therefore not part of Kirk's club), or maybe 13 Connies launched by Earth. While I'm not specifically endorsing any of that in this thread, I wonder if maybe FJ deviated a little from the intent of TOS, by making the Connies so common and other ship classes comparatively smaller. Wasn't the Enterprise, and weren't her sisterships shown in the show, supposed to be "elite" ships, so comparatively rare and powerful that we saw some of them commanded by commodores?

Presumably there would be fewer cruisers than scouts, just as there would be fewer dreadnoughts than cruisers, right?

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Well, if you consider the FJ Destroyers as actual fighting ships, and running concurrently with the notion that the Starfleet isn't a purely military organization, maybe that's all they needed at the time. A "Destroyer" is generally used to describe a fighting ship of the line in today's navies, while other ship types have other functional differences (carrying aircraft, anti-sub warfare, etc.).

If Starfleet is mostly peaceful, and if its "cruisers" are the visible symbol of that philosophy, you'd rather have more cruisers galumping around the galaxy than destroyers, keeping the latter around for when you DO need to blow stuff up. Similarly, scouts would not be as numerous as the cruisers because they are not meant to support Starfleet's primary missions as well as the Enterprise and her brethren. And of course you'd have a bunch of spiffy tugs to keep the whole thing running.

Fandom was relatively in its infancy at the time, so forty years of hindsight can't have applied. FJ simply wanted other ships, figured that Starfleet would build 'em out of common components, and swapped 'em around until he found some cool shapes. I like to think that he considered "Class I Starships" as Starfleet's first real attempt at designing a bunch of starships to fulfill different mission requirements while minimizing construction and development costs. FJ wasn't thinking much about it, but it therefore leaves room for whatever starships came before or after to have radically different-looking nacelles and saucers.

Mark

 

[Santaman]

In the age of sail it wasn't uncommon that warships also were used to haul cargo, like Spain's silver fleets, if Star Trek follows this concept it might be indeed that most cruisers also have cargo hauling missions now and then.

Another explanation, at least for the lack of transports, would be that it was mostly done by non starfleet organisations.

 

[Wingsley]

Let's assume, momentarily for sake of argument, that instead of 140 cruisers, 56 destroyers and 40 scouts FJ had published an arrangement like this: 160 scout/surveyor ships, 40 destroyers, and 40 cruisers. Given what we saw in TOS (from both a military-might standpoint as well as a "frontier" standpoint and a logistical/organizational standpoint) wouldn't this seem to better fit the TOS philosophy? (Actually, the "twelve like it in the fleet" brag, combined with the Enterprise-all-alone feel of "Balance of Terror", makes me think more like 200/20/20 or even 220/15/15.)

I know this is all Monday-morning quarterbacking and FJ did a great job conjuring up a comprehensive vision of the technical aspects of the TOS Universe at a time before anyone else thought of doing it, but I looked over the Black Book today and thought maybe in one respect he drew a little more from his own imagination than from TOS itself. I thought in would be interesting to question and/or retcon that a bit.

 

[Wingsley]

In the age of sail it wasn't uncommon that warships also were used to haul cargo, like Spain's silver fleets, if Star Trek follows this concept it might be indeed that most cruisers also have cargo hauling missions now and then.

Perhaps that would fit a contingency like "Journey to Babel", in which the Enterprise accomodated at least 114 passengers under apparently overcrowded conditions? (Don't look now, but that episode seems to imply that a Connie can house 430 + 114 = at least 544!!! "A Taste of Armageddon" could very loosely back that up.)

Another explanation, at least for the lack of transports, would be that it was mostly done by non starfleet organisations.

You mean the S.S. Deirdre, or maybe the Woden?

 

[Albertese]

The number of heavy cruisers in the TM actually isn't a canon violation, though it would seem to be at first glance.

You'll notice that the ships are grouped according to their appropriation dates. The first group (Stardate 0965) has fourteen ships, four of which are listed as "lost in the line of duty." Those are the Constellation, Farragut, Intrepid, and Valiant.

Kirk gives his brag about the "twelve like her in the fleet" on or about stardate 3113.2. The Valiant and the Farragut are described as having been lost before the beginning of the series. (Evidently FJ supposed the ships as mentioned in "A Taste of Armageddon" and "Obsession" were also Constitution-class ships.)

The Intrepid was lost during the events of "The Immunity Syndrome" on stardate 4307.1. "The Doomsday Machine" doesn't give a stardate, but we can assume, as it's in the second season it happens after "Tomorrow is Yesterday."

So, 14-2 (with the other two yet to be lost) =12 including the Enterprise herself.

The next batch of CA's according to the TM are on stardate 3220, which is also after TiY. These are of the Bonhomme Richard sub-class. And probably take long enough to build that most of them weren't flying yet by the end of the series.

Interestingly, if you look at the dates of the other ships, when first appropriated, the CAs were outnumbered by each other class.

Why the stardate 5930 appropriation for the Achernar sub-class is such an enormous purchase is a mystery to me, except that perhaps the other classes were also due for a proportionally large order that hadn't been made yet by the date of the rest of the TM, approximately stardate 7306. O,r perhaps the versatility of the CA type ship was thought to be more justified that the more specialized hulls....? I suppose there are lots of possible explanations.

--Alex

 

[Wingsley]

^ Interesting analysis. Of the "original" 14 Connies built in the first batch, approximately 28% were lost.

There's an interesting tie-in with "Court Martial" to consider, cross-polinating from this recent Trek Tech thread. And here is a link to a related Memory Alpha article by Greg Jein about "The Case of Jonathan Doe Starship" dating back to the 1970's. In Jein's article, he matches up NCC registries with starships names and class numbers ("Mk IX" and so on) from Commodore Stone's wall chart in "Court Martial". Jein's findings require a leap of faith ( a bit of pretzel logic there) but they do open up some interesting possibilities when contrasted with very different ship lists in FJ's book.

In the Jein article, the starship class numbers are interpreted very differently than in FJ's list. There, "Mk IX", the nomenclature associated with the Constitution-class heavy cruisers, is referred to as "Mk. IX deep space cruiser". (NOTE: in Jein's findings, "Mk X" is also labeled "deep space cruiser"; the Mk X is a dreadnought according to FJ. Jein's listing for "Mk. VIII" is an "interstellar cruiser", while FJ used this nomenclature for the Saladin-class destroyers. On Jein's compiled list, Intrepid and Constellation were listed as "Mk. VII instellar cruiser", a designation reserved in FJ's book for the Hermes-class scout vessel. And finally, FJ's Mk. VI Ptolemy-class warptug is referred to in Jein's listing of NCC-1371 Republic as a "Mk. VI space cruiser".

I bring all of these outside references into this thread to point out that maybe not all of the ships listed on Commodore Stone's wall chart were Connies. Instead, they may have been from other starship classes. (I'm not citing Jein's findings in detail; just conceptually pointing out what could be going on; after all, it seems unlikely that all these cruisers were on holdover at the same port on the same day...)

If we assume that Constitution, Enterprise, and their heavy-cruiser sisterships were "deep space cruisers", and that other ship classes were not dedicated "deep space" vessels, and that "deep space" vessels are notorious for high mortality rates, it might make sense for the Federation to build an unusually large number of ships for "deep space" missions, hence, large numbers of Connies relative to other ship classes.

I have my doubts about this logic, though. When I hear the term "scout" applied to a starship, I think of one of two things: either a tiny, limited-duration ship like Cyrano Jones' ship or a Klingon Bird of Prey, or a think of a larger deep space vessel to augment the Connie in an exploratory fleet. So the Hermes-type ships would have to suffer a similar mortality rate and require commensurate mass production of ships to keep up. That would suggest (to me, anyway) a mix of 158 scouts, 100 heavy cruisers, and 20 destroyers. (Simply shift FJ's ship names for the Tikopai, Siva, and Cochise subclasses over to Mk. VII scouts.) That way, if at least 70 Connies and 114 Hermes survive, there still must be a viable fleet to explore deep space.

 

[throwback]

The Oberth-class starship was an example of a Scout Class starship. (ST III)

I think that there may be a Class II Heavy Cruiser, a Class III Heavy Cruiser, and so on. I think it would be the same for the other types of ships. If this is not the case, then why have a Class I this, or a Class ! that? What would be the difference between a Class I Heavy Cruiser and a Class II Heavy Cruiser?

 

[Albertese]

^^^
In the FJ mode of thought, the Class I starship series was all built of the familiar Enterprise cut-n-paste components. In theory, all the saucers were more or less alike and which other parts were attached to it in what arrangement is what made it what it was. This is why the saucer is called the "primary hull". This is also part of the logic in the FJ stuff to have the engineering section in the primary hull near the impulse deck. Also bear in mind that in the 70's it was assumed that the nacelles were self contained power generators in addition to the main propulsion. So all the elaborate "warp core" equipment seen in later shows was not at all required (or even conceived of) in 1975.

So the starship is the saucer; if it has a secondary dedicated engineering and hanger deck hull with the nacelles attached to that, it's a long range cruiser. If it has the nacelles attached directly to the primary starship hull and the neck attaches to a tow pad, it's a tug. If it only has one nacelle attached to the neck and that's it, then, depending on it's armaments, it's either a scout or a destroyer.

Now, this line of thinking doesn't make sense to me, but I'm pretty sure that's what FJ had in mind back in the day. To me, the internal arrangement of the saucer would have to be quite a bit different from class to class in order for it to make sense for their missions.

--Alex

 

[Santaman]

In the age of sail it wasn't uncommon that warships also were used to haul cargo, like Spain's silver fleets, if Star Trek follows this concept it might be indeed that most cruisers also have cargo hauling missions now and then.

Perhaps that would fit a contingency like "Journey to Babel", in which the Enterprise accomodated at least 114 passengers under apparently overcrowded conditions? (Don't look now, but that episode seems to imply that a Connie can house 430 + 114 = at least 544!!! "A Taste of Armageddon" could very loosely back that up.)

Another explanation, at least for the lack of transports, would be that it was mostly done by non starfleet organisations.

You mean the S.S. Deirdre, or maybe the Woden?

I think those were indeed non starfleet.

I'm not entirely sure how Starfleet is running its cargo department, on one hand there are loads of non fleet ships around on the other hand they've shown the Sydney class which is a large transport and I haven't seen one in civillian hands yet.

 

[Forbin]

"12 like her in the fleet" means 12 total, including the E. If he'd said "12 others like her..." then that would have meant 13.

 

[E-DUB]

I've always thought that the "twelve in the fleet" reference meant "Earth's fleet", under UESPA. Later the Enterprise was placed under UFP auspices, much as a military unit today might be placed under United Nations command. Just a theory, give it as much or as little credence as you'd like.

 

[Wingsley]

"12 like her in the fleet" means 12 total, including the E. If he'd said "12 others like her..." then that would have meant 13.

Yes, but wouldn't this mean that there were either (a: 12 Class I starships in the entire Federation, or, more likely, (b: only 12 Constitution-class heavy cruisers in the TOS-era Federation, period? How would that square with FJ's Technical Manual, or would it flatly contradict FJ's ship lists?

 

[Wingsley]

I'm not entirely sure how Starfleet is running its cargo department, on one hand there are loads of non fleet ships around on the other hand they've shown the Sydney class which is a large transport and I haven't seen one in civillian hands yet.

This is just my reading of what FJ envisioned in the Tech Manual, of course, but I think he largely ignored the Deidre/Woden issue focusing mainly on Starfleet's Class I starships-of-the-line. We can assume/retcon that there are other Federation vessels in operation, such as the U.S.S. Carolina ("Friday's Child"), but these would not be the larger Class I ships. We can also assume that numerous other non-Starfleet ships are also in operation, but they would not be covered in this Tech Manual.

Within the purview of the Tech Manual (Class I ships only), it seems to me that FJ wanted to create a warptug to haul containers like the starliner Astral Queen ("Conscience of the King"), so he created the Ptolemy. In the FJ Universe, Ptolemy is probably one of a group of frieghter/tugs, with ships like the Woden, Huron, Deirdre and so on also pitching in for both Starfleet official traffic and civilian traffic as well. But Ptolemy is probably unique in that she is both a manned warptug and an armed and armored one capable of Warp 6 to 8. (Sulu said Dierdre was only capable of Warp 2, but she would be a civilian ship.)

So FJ's focus would be broadly military, or at least Starfleet-centric. Keep in mind that the Tech Manual was obviously derived from Khan's accessing of "your technical manuals" on the library computer in "Space Seed". (Where else would FJ get the idea?)

 

[SchwEnt]

^^^ I tend to think TOS Enterprise was the Star Fleet equivalent of a 1960s USN aircraft carrier or battleship. By that I mean the largest and most important capital ship in the fleet.

The 1960s USN didn't have 150 battleships in service or dozens and dozens of carriers. Similarly Star Fleet had "twelve like her" in the fleet, just about the same number of carriers as the USN. Just a rough idea for the audience to understand that the importance of a carrier to the Navy was approximate to that of a starship to Star Fleet.

I think that's all Kirk's line was supposed to be about.
Later analysis about "Starship Class" and "Constitution Class" and Class I starships versus Class III and Mk IXs were beyond the intent of the line.

 

[Albertese]

...

Yes, but wouldn't this mean that there were either (a: 12 Class I starships in the entire Federation, or, more likely, (b: only 12 Constitution-class heavy cruisers in the TOS-era Federation, period? How would that square with FJ's Technical Manual, or would it flatly contradict FJ's ship lists?

The answer is very clearly b: only 12 Constitution-class heavy cruisers in the TOS-era Federation, period. The dates given in the TM agree completely with the dates given on the show and subsequent orders of more cruisers post-dated Kirk's "only twelve" line. (See my post #6 in this very thread for a more in depth explanation.)

There is no conflict whatsoever with the FJ lists. Post-1975 developments of both fan and canon stuff may freely contradict FJ. But as far as the Heavy Cruiser name list goes, there is no conflict between what FJ wrote down and what was aired between 1966 and 1970, in color, on your NBC affiliate.

Being more of the TNG kid generation myself, I, too, was perfectly willing to throw out the FJTM as the erroneous material and rely on the Okuda/Jien stuff more heavily. But as I grew older, in my 20's, I gradually became way more of a TOS fan, and now I see TOS/TAS/FJTM/SFB to be one universe and TNG+ to be a different, slightly similar universe. A lot of it can tie together, but not all of it has to. When considered against the context of it's own times, the FJTM is a remarkable piece or art, research and design that really holds it's own pretty well and stacks nicely against the actual show. Even if he made some design concessions to make some of the sets work better in his imagination than how they were actually build in the sound stage.

--Alex

 

[TIN_MAN]

^^

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I think FJ got the name of the Defiant wrong; FJ's MK-IXA NCC-1717 is named Defiance. (It's also way out of alphabetical order, at the end, suggesting it was a late addition, perhaps almost overlooked.)

ETA: That is to say, I think he misspelled the Defiant from "The Tholian Web" as the Defiance.

 

[blssdwlf]

Another way to look at FJ's fleet composition could be to compare it to the British navy circa 1806. ~11% were Ship-of-the-line, ~10% comprised of schooners and gunboats and the bulk were frigates. If we think of the Dreadnaught = Ship-of-the-line (good for only combat), Cruisers = Frigates (all-around powerful, good range) and Destroyers / Scouts = short-range defensive/combat ships then the composition is very similar...

 

[Birdog]

Another way to look at FJ's fleet composition could be to compare it to the British navy circa 1806. ~11% were Ship-of-the-line, ~10% comprised of schooners and gunboats and the bulk were frigates. If we think of the Dreadnaught = Ship-of-the-line (good for only combat), Cruisers = Frigates (all-around powerful, good range) and Destroyers / Scouts = short-range defensive/combat ships then the composition is very similar...

Considering that during that period a cruiser was merely a detached frigate sent on a cruise, it makes perfect sense.