SSV Winston Churchill
From FABT
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Length: |
1578m |
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Width: |
750m |
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Height/depth: |
873m |
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Max acceleration: |
20 kilometers per second |
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Engine unit(s): |
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Shielding: |
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Hull: |
1200cm of Titanium-A3 Ablative Heavy Armor |
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Armament: |
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Crew: |
24,324 |
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Skeleton crew: |
700 |
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Commissioned: |
13 March 2176 CE |
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Decommissioned: |
6 October 2231 CE |
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Role(s): |
Carry and deploy fighters, bombers and interceptors/fire support |
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Commander(s): |
Captain Curtis Zimmerman (2176 CE - 2196 CE) |
SSV Winston Churchill CDS-11 (Carry and Deploy/Super-11) was a Charles de Gaulle-class supercarrier in the Alliance Navy. The eleventh ship of her class to be built, the Winston Churchill was assigned to the Sixth Fleet under Admiral Osamu Nakamura not long after it was commissioned in early 2176 CE. The Winston Churchill was the eleventh of the initial sixteen Charles de Gaulle-class ships that were ordered and built for the Alliance Navy, being commissioned, completing its shakedown run and assigned to the Sixth Fleet all within the same year as the outbreak of the Skyllian Blitz in late December. The Winston Churchill would be present with its sister ship, William Wallace, at the Battle of the Dhelile System, where its presence alongside those of the two supercarriers of the Second Fleet would prove instrumental in the Alliance's victory in the battle, once again cementing the effectiveness of carriers in naval space combat as they easily overcame the batarian fleet guarding the sector, forcing them into retreat before they could be overwhelmed. Following the Blitz, the Winston Churchill would periodically perform patrol sweeps through the abandoned Uifa'ar Nebula, ensuring the batarians did not attempt to reestablish a foothold in the sector. The Churchill saw no action during the Eden Prime War, and continued performing sweeps throughout Uifa'ar for the next decade. On May 2184 CE, a fire broke out in the engineering compartment, leading to the shutdown of most of the ship's engines and leaving it adrift, while the fire continued to spread: worst still, the ship was stuck deep in the Uifa'ar Nebula, where it was being tailed by a batarian counter-intelligence task force, with the captain concerned they may attempt to take advantage of the situation and destroy the vessel. The batarians instead offered assistance to the stricken Alliance vessel, having detected the issue occurring within the carrier: the captain declined, knowing the batarians would use the opportunity to extract intelligence about the carrier to find weaknesses. The batarian task force kept its distance, monitoring the supercarrier as the situation developed. The fire spread to four more decks before it was finally contained, but the fire had severely damaged much of the engineering deck, disabling six of the ship's fourteen colossal engines. The Churchill sent out a distress call, and once the batarians realized more Alliance ships would soon to be in the area, they withdrew. Eight Sixth fleet cruisers would appear an hour later and tow the colossal ship to Terra Nova, where repairs could be done. An investigation into the incident found no evidence of foul play, but allayed fears that the ship had a design flaw: an accident had led a contamination of the fragile mix of fuels needed to power the vessel, leading to a small ignition in one of the ship's port injector tanks, causing the fire. Despite, the incident was used for propaganda on Khar'Shan, with the Office of Propaganda claiming their task force had been ambushed by the supercarrier and that their "brave men and women had fought off the ship, sending it fleeing from the system." To counter this, the Churchill was redeployed to the sector, resuming its patrols only a month later.
The Winston Churchill and its escorts were recalled to Terra Nova with the rest of the Sixth Fleet on 2 June 2186 CE in the opening stages of the Reaper invasion, where it was hoped it would check a potential attack on the planet. Once the fleet received word from Admiral Hackett across emergency channels about the disastrous defeats at Arcturus and Luna, and that Earth had fallen, Osamu Nakamura was ordered to immediately commence evacuations of Terra Nova, as it was likely the Reapers would hit it next. The Winston Churchill and its sister ship were the key to this evacuation effort, as the gargantuan warship had room for thousands of passengers: to speed up the evacuation, gunships and bombers were stripped of their armaments and used in addition to the shuttles, which greatly sped up the evacuation, and the number of evacuees. Despite this, the Sixth Fleet was only able to evacuate 400,000 of a 4.15 million population by the time a small Reaper force finally arrived in the system three days later on the 5 June. Nakamura was warned against directly engaging the Reaper forces, with lessons learnt of the futility of a defensive posture against such a foe learnt all too well at Arcturus and Luna. As such, the Churchill was ordered not to participate in the Battle of Terra Nova, and instead briefly continued evacuations until the Reapers reached the planet, at which time it finally disengaged and left the system. The Winston Churchill arrived at the Citadel a day later, dropping off the human refugees it had saved and then being redeployed to assist with Operation Hornet's Nest two weeks later where, during a sub-operation, it would return to Terra Nova to evacuate more civilians while a larger contingent of the Sixth Fleet deployed marine forces to destroy a Reaper conversion camp, distracting them: the operation was a failure, but allowed the Churchill to extract 7,000 more civilians before it had to retreat. The Churchill would take part in Operation Defiant, and would be present at the final battle over Earth, where the ship suffered significant damage, but managed to survive. It was repaired shortly after and took part in the Border War, now as a Coalition vessel, and again during the Post-Apocalyptic War. The Winston Churchill would continue to serve until 2231 CE, when it was finally retired, along with the rest of the Charles de Gaulle-line.
The ship was named after Winston Churchill, the famous 20th century wartime prime minister of the UK who led Great Britain through the majority of the Second World War.