Wolf 359 Casualties

[Six of Twelve]

What do you think the percentages are for Federation personnel at Wolf 359 for assimilation, KIA, and survivors?

Voyager mentions two people assimilated there, Riley in Unity, and one of the women in Unimatrix 0.

I would say that the majority were killed, as the Borg were in a hurry and didn't want to take the time required to assimilate that many people. I think they grabbed as many as they could for assimilation before moving on. The smallest percentage were those who survived, like Sisko and Jake.

 

[Solariabsg25]

We know that Starfleet had gathered 40 starships, and from dialogue it appears that a few Klingon vessels may have also got there in time. It's also stated on-screen that 39 starships were lost in the battle.

In the Voyager episode Unity it is established that some crewmembers from the Roosevelt were assimilated. Given what we saw of Borg methods in First Contact, it's possible that Borg boarding-parties may have attempted to assimilate starships, with any ship successfully assimilated being dispatched back to the Delta Quadrant while the cube continued it's advance on Earth.

Given the sequence in DS9's Emissary, and the fact that defeating Starfleet appeared to be a primary goal rather than assimilation, the likelihood is that they attempted to take over only a few ships, maybe as few as a half-dozen. Assuming an average crew of about 500 per ship, then maybe 50% being killed either by being damaged by the cube or during fighting on the ships, then there would be a probable maximum of about 1,500 assimilated crew.

All the other ships would have been destroyed, but we can only speculate about how many casualties would have been suffered. The Melbourne's saucer-section was cleaved in half, and in all likelihood due to decompression and structural failure, everyone actually in the saucer were killed. The warp core didn't go up, so assuming this was able to be either shut down or ejected, most if not all, personnel in the secondary hull may have got to shuttles and/or lifepods. Wrecks of other vessels the Enterprise discovered when she arrived would seem to indicate few, if any, survivors.

Being generous then, I think we could assume an average of 10% survivors from each ship destroyed. That would place actual dead at Wolf 359 at about the 13,000 mark, with about 1,500 survivors, plus about 3,000 MIA i.e. on assimilated ships.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I'm more interested in the ship that survived Wolf 359.

We know that 40 ships were sent, and 39 were destroyed. So logically, one must have survived. (The Enterprise doesn't count, since it wasn't at the battle.)

So it begs the question, what was it like on that ship? Which one was it? How did its crew feel, being the lone ship to survive the battle where all those others were destroyed?

 

[Solariabsg25]

It's been speculated that the Wolf 359 survivor is the Endeavour based on Janeway reading the Captain's Log of her captain in Scorpion where he discussed the Borg encounter. Of course there's nothing to say that this wasn't a separate encounter post-Best of Both Worlds.

 

[Paradise City]

Survivors seem very thin on the ground when the Enterprise eventually arrives first on the scene. They don't seem to detect or pick up any survivors. Presumably the radiation or whatever obscures their presence. The escape pods may also want to hide lest they get picked off and picked up by the borg.

 

[Solariabsg25]

Survivors seem very thin on the ground when the Enterprise eventually arrives first on the scene. They don't seem to detect or pick up any survivors. Presumably the radiation or whatever obscures their presence. The escape pods may also want to hide lest they get picked off and picked up by the borg.

Indeed The Federation exists in a galaxy where not everyone may believe in the niceties of allowing survivors, so they may be designed to hide from general scans, plus of course it may have been a running battle over a far larger area of space than we saw in the brief sequences on-screen. The Enterprise may have suspected there were survivors in the area but couldn't spend the time doing a proper search..

 

[Tracy Trek]

In the Voyager episode where Seven was experiencing multiple personalities of other individuals. Wasn't one of those personalities of a Starfleet officer assimilated at the battle of Wolf 359? A human woman.

 

[Tosk]

Given the sequence in DS9's Emissary, and the fact that defeating Starfleet appeared to be a primary goal rather than assimilation, the likelihood is that they attempted to take over only a few ships

I agree. Based on a very small sampling, we see the Borg both destroying (the gut-punch they deliver to the Melbourne) and presumed assimilation (holding the Saratoga in a tractor beam for several minutes).

 

[The Wormhole]

It's been speculated that the Wolf 359 survivor is the Endeavour based on Janeway reading the Captain's Log of her captain in Scorpion where he discussed the Borg encounter. Of course there's nothing to say that this wasn't a separate encounter post-Best of Both Worlds.

IIRC, most tie-in material doe stick with it being the Endeavor that survived Wolf 359.

 

[USS Triumphant]

That one ship. Totally unharmed, not even a scratch. Except a psychological one: a message from Locutus that said "You will be spared to bear witness to the futility of resistance." Desperately trying to save the other ships, rescue escape pods, etc - but getting pulled around out of their route by the Borg at every other turn.

Not canon, obviously. Just something kind of awful I was just thinking.

 

[Ithekro]

Survivors seem very thin on the ground when the Enterprise eventually arrives first on the scene. They don't seem to detect or pick up any survivors. Presumably the radiation or whatever obscures their presence. The escape pods may also want to hide lest they get picked off and picked up by the borg.

Enterprise did arrive several hours if not half a day after the battle ended. She was still repairing damage to the ship when the battle started if I recall. Sso there would be time for any surviving starships to pick up survivors and head away from the cube and Earth. There could have been more than one ship to survive since Hansen say he had gathered 40 ship and that was just the start. straggles and Klingon ships could have arrived in the hours before the Borg arrived at Wolf 359.

 

[JesterFace]

Perhaps that one ship out of the 40 that were sent into battle was not destroyed because the entire crew was assimilated and the ship was just left by the Borg floating empty in space.

I wonder, before the battle, Admiral Hanson told that Klingons were sending ships to fight the Borg and Federation was trying to reach the Romulans for help. Did the Romulans ever respond or help? If they didn't, that would be a stupid move, if the Borg had assimilated Earth, Romulus would be a target sooner or later.

 

[Ithekro]

The first indication of the Borg in Federation space was the end of the first season with the scooping up of colonies along the Neutral Zone...both sides of it. The Borg already know of the Romulans.

 

[Timo]

Regarding numbers, 40 is both a suggestively round number and a low-end estimate ("That's just for starters", as Ithekro pointed out) on what Admiral Hansen expects to use. The actual number of ships present is quite unknown to us, and may vary from, say, 36 (Hansen "actually meant" this with his rounded forty) to, say, 98 (Hansen's second helping arrived in time, and so did his third).

OTOH, numbers aside, there exists no evidence of any ship actually surviving the fight. No character ever confesses to having been aboard a surviving ship, or refers to a surviving ship. In contrast, there are characters referring to Borg encounters explicitly other than Wolf 359, so no random statement on the subject of fighting and surviving the Borg suffices as evidence of surviving Wolf 359 specifically. And no ship evidenced, no matter how indirectly, as being in action after Wolf 359 would have been confirmed as having been present at Wolf 359.

Gertting back to numbers, 11,000 people "lost" (dead/assimilated/still missing after all those years) would mean about 275-300 per ship in the low-end estimate of ship numbers. Is that a reasonable average for the scenario where extremely few people survive? It's sufficiently low with regards to things like giant-ships-present that we can argue Sisko wasn't a rare survivor but a common one - but also sufficiently high with regards to arguments like most-ships-had-left-their-civilians-behind that we can say only the single lifepod carrying Sisko was ever recovered, and only because Sisko had divine protection.

A distinction between assimilated and dead is easy to make but the numbers difficult to establish. Even on a ship shot to hell, we actually saw relatively few corpses, and as far as we could tell, no ship totally disappeared in a fireball. At least not before the Borg had her wriggling in a tractor beam for several minutes, allowing for assimilation - and indeed suggesting that such a thing was going on (else why use the tractor and spend the time?).

A distinction between assimilated/dead and MIA is less relevant: you can only go "missing" in space for about a minute before you move from one category to another!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ithekro]

Since Sisko's escape pod was not found by USS Enterprise, someone had to have picked them up. Enterprise caught up to the Borg cube shortly after crossing the wreckage of the battle, following a trail left by the damaged cube. It seems to have limped off to repair itself, allowing Riker to capture Locutus.

So there is a window of opportunity, not only for the Borg to assimilate and send back captives/the queen (if needed), but also for surviving starships to pickup survivors and warp away to say Alpha Centauri for medical treatments and the like, knowing heading in the direction of the Cube or Earth was a bad idea.

One can assume some Klingon ships arrived due to the Borg having assimilated Klingons in the Delta Quadrant. Though this could have happened at any time, the one known instance were the Klingons might engage the Borg is Wolf 359.

 

[Timo]

Since Sisko's escape pod was not found by USS Enterprise, someone had to have picked them up.

The other option quoted above, of the lifepods lying low and utilizing their sensor-thwarting survival systems out of fear of the still factually lingering Borg, is also available.

Enterprise caught up to the Borg cube shortly after crossing the wreckage of the battle, following a trail left by the damaged cube. It seems to have limped off to repair itself, allowing Riker to capture Locutus.

Or at least it was caught moving at a slow speed, yet without obvious damage remaining. Alternately we might speculate that the Cube remained behind to supervise the assimilation of many of the wrecks into Borg ships that would then set course for new destinations, among them those parts of Delta where the Voyager heroes later encountered Wolf 359 survivors.

So there is a window of opportunity, not only for the Borg to assimilate and send back captives/the queen (if needed), but also for surviving starships to pickup survivors and warp away to say Alpha Centauri for medical treatments and the like, knowing heading in the direction of the Cube or Earth was a bad idea.

Would that be a bad idea? No harm appeared to come to the E-D from unassumingly approaching the battle site, or even the Cube itself. Even after opening a channel to Locutus, Riker could have turned tail and fled, having at least collected a bit more intel for Starfleet to use. Wouldn't a "surviving starship" have her crew strangled for cowardice if they ever tried to approach another Federation asset again?

One can assume some Klingon ships arrived due to the Borg having assimilated Klingons in the Delta Quadrant. Though this could have happened at any time, the one known instance were the Klingons might engage the Borg is Wolf 359.

The thing is, there are many "unknown instances" about the Borg - them "advancing" as per Picard's ST:FC rant, them assimilating somebody from aboard the Excalibur, them fighting Amasov of the Endeavor, and supposedly many others we simply haven't heard of.

If assimilation indeed "improves the quality of life" for the victims, and gives them extra health points and years of life, Klingons might have been assimilated in the 22nd or 19th century already. Heck, the Klingon they "met" in "Infinite Regress" wasn't even actually met physically, just metaphysically... A ghost from the distant past, possibly.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[sbk1234]

I'm more interested in the ship that survived Wolf 359.

We know that 40 ships were sent, and 39 were destroyed. So logically, one must have survived. (The Enterprise doesn't count, since it wasn't at the battle.)

So it begs the question, what was it like on that ship? Which one was it? How did its crew feel, being the lone ship to survive the battle where all those others were destroyed?

If there are any authors reading this, how about writing this up? Great idea.

That one ship. Totally unharmed, not even a scratch. Except a psychological one: a message from Locutus that said "You will be spared to bear witness to the futility of resistance." Desperately trying to save the other ships, rescue escape pods, etc - but getting pulled around out of their route by the Borg at every other turn.

Not canon, obviously. Just something kind of awful I was just thinking.

another great idea.

 

[MAGolding]

We know that Starfleet had gathered 40 starships, and from dialogue it appears that a few Klingon vessels may have also got there in time. It's also stated on-screen that 39 starships were lost in the battle.

In the Voyager episode Unity it is established that some crewmembers from the Roosevelt were assimilated. Given what we saw of Borg methods in First Contact, it's possible that Borg boarding-parties may have attempted to assimilate starships, with any ship successfully assimilated being dispatched back to the Delta Quadrant while the cube continued it's advance on Earth.

Given the sequence in DS9's Emissary, and the fact that defeating Starfleet appeared to be a primary goal rather than assimilation, the likelihood is that they attempted to take over only a few ships, maybe as few as a half-dozen. Assuming an average crew of about 500 per ship, then maybe 50% being killed either by being damaged by the cube or during fighting on the ships, then there would be a probable maximum of about 1,500 assimilated crew.

All the other ships would have been destroyed, but we can only speculate about how many casualties would have been suffered. The Melbourne's saucer-section was cleaved in half, and in all likelihood due to decompression and structural failure, everyone actually in the saucer were killed. The warp core didn't go up, so assuming this was able to be either shut down or ejected, most if not all, personnel in the secondary hull may have got to shuttles and/or lifepods. Wrecks of other vessels the Enterprise discovered when she arrived would seem to indicate few, if any, survivors.

Being generous then, I think we could assume an average of 10% survivors from each ship destroyed. That would place actual dead at Wolf 359 at about the 13,000 mark, with about 1,500 survivors, plus about 3,000 MIA i.e. on assimilated ships.

Here is a quote from "The Drumhead":

SATIE: Tell me, Captain, have you completely recovered from your experience with the Borg?
PICARD: Yes, I have completely recovered.
SATIE: It must have been awful for you, actually becoming one of them, being forced to use your vast knowledge of Starfleet operations to aid the Borg. Just how many of our ships were lost? Thirty nine? And a loss of life, I believe, measured at nearly eleven thousand. One wonders how you can sleep at night, having caused so much destruction. I question your actions, Captain. I question your choices. I question your loyalty.

So possibly 2,000 more crew members than you calculated were assimilated and/or escaped and/or were not present due to be being left off on planets and starbases because they were not needed for combat.

 

[Idran]

If there are any authors reading this, how about writing this up? Great idea.

Trek tie-in authors can't use unsolicited story ideas because of legal concerns, unfortunately. In fact, they have to actually avoid using any story ideas they get unsolicited.

 

[Farscape One]

There's also that Klingon ship Voyager encountered in "PROPHECY". It was in the Delta Quadrant for decades, and who knows how many Klingons may have been stranded on a planet or another ship in that time. The Borg could have assimilated them.

 

[Paradise City]

The surviving ship could be quite badly damaged. But was salvagable and maybe even returned to service. Much like the Enterprise B in Yesterday's Enterprise.