Eglen's Reach

Mansgra Island

Eglen's Reach is an experimental vessel of the Imperial Eglonian Navy.

After their disastrous Attack run on Mansgra Island. The navy sought an answer, first they fought to counter the Democratic Republic of Duscurybanr by also designing Battlecruisers. But later analyses of the attack run showed that the main reason Duscurybanr had the overhand was because of their air support. So some bright soul at the navy had the idea of bringing the air support with them to sea.

Four of the five planned Hero-class battlecruisers would still be built, but the fifth would be something different entirely.

Changes from the Hero-class

Internally, the ships are almost identical, besides the missing infrastructure to support the main guns. But that space was quickly taken up by the requirement to re-trunk the boiler funnels and the oil storage tanks for the fuel of the Ondonats.

All main gun turrets were removed. The deckhouse with navigation station is moved forward with a cruiser sized turret in front of it for self defence. The secondary guns would remain the same. Later this would proven a bad choice, on the whole Hero class. As the designers had defaulted to casemated secondary guns, and those cannot elevate high enough to defend against air attacks. On Eglen's Reach, they'd never change. But on the Hero-class battlecruisers they are later removed and air defence gunnery is installed on the topdecks.

The four funnels are moved as far forward as possible. But still remain in the centre line. They are raised a bit to create extra draft to compensate for the complicated trunking.

The main deck is made flush, and a hangar is built to store and maintain the Odonats, the hanger runs the full length from deck house to stern and covers the full width. On top of the hanger a flight deck is made. Midships split by the funnels. But covering the full beam towards the stern. The Odonats can be brought up from the hanger by two steam powered lifts one on each side of the funnels. The aft mast is completely removed from the ship.

Practise

Practically the ships proved to be very coal hungry, to get them up to the desired speed. What the Imperial Eglonian Navy at the point of building didn't know was that the Duscurybanr used steam turbines in their ship and not triple expansion engines. They would not know for many years, as the Eglonion didn't think it was necessary to spy on their neighbours as they believed to be technologically superior.

To compensate this slightly, Eglen's Reach removed all armour plating of the hull to lighten the ship. When the tactical use of the aircraft carrier changed.

Landing and taking off from the deck of the ship turned out to require quite some practice for the pilots of the Odonats. Even though the craft could take off and land vertically. The moving deck gave them quite a challenge in the beginning. After many experiments it was found that speed was actually an advantage when landing. But then in such a way that the wind passed diagonally over the deck. So that the heat from the funnels was blown away and the air would be less turbulent above the deck.

Also many iteration of deck painting and lighting was tried out to aid the aircraft in landing.

The ship most of the time only used it's full speed potential to get away from an enemy engagement. Normally it sailed with the battleships, that were slower, to give air support. But when there was an engagement Eglen's Reach would pull back to a safe place. With some Corvettes to protect her.

Future

The Admirals are currently debating and planning a new purposely built ship to carry Odonats with the battle fleets.