The newest battleship entering service with the Bretonian Armed Forces is HMS Royal Oak. The Oak is a very unique ship indeed, it was being created using the crippled hulls of the Kusari Battleships that the Bretonian Armed Forces has destroyed during the war. These hulls are gutted of all equipment until all that is left is the outer shell and armour plating. The shells are then placed in a rough order of where they should fit; this is where it gets interesting. Using the salvaged innards of crippled Dunkirks, these pieces are then filled with equipment, decks, crew quarters and other essential equipment to create a mighty beast indeed.
[color=#FFCC33]This may be the newest ship, but it is certainly not the newest idea. The whole concept began at the start of the Bretonian - Kusari war, the original idea was to capture a Kusari Battleship, fill it up with all the latest Bretonian equipment and weapons. this idea was abandoned by most of the Admiralty Board but not all. A young Captain by the name of Bentley S. Ashers hung onto the idea like it was a newborn child. Of course he told no one about his newly founded ideas of a well enhanced battleship, they would think him obsessed with an idea that would never get approved. As he continued thinking, Ashers realised that obtaining a whole Kusari Battleship was an absolute failure of an idea, as those things were defended almost as well as the Bretonian Crown Jewels. Probably cost around the same as well. There was no way that the Imperial Kusari Navy would allow the Bretonian Armed Forces to sail away with one of their most prized ships.
After several more months of thinking, Ashers enlisted the help of Markus Lindström, a top Bretonian Scientist who knew ships like the back of his own hand. Together, the pair worked out what components they would need from the hull of a Kusari Battleship. Complete sections of the hull super-structure as well as massive slabs of armour plating would need to be cut from these giant hulks floating in the Tau systems. The propulsion created from a Kusari Battleship reactor core was nothing compared to the might of a Bretonian one, and as Bretonian Cores are much smaller, they would be able to fit two of them in the same place as one Kusari Core. These two cores would be unmodified, simply running in parallel to each other powering separate systems. The theoretical output generated would be sufficient to provide faster propulsion and manoeuvring, bringing the hybrid battleship close to the performance of a Dunkirk, despite its huge bulk. With its ample power supply, the vessel would need a weapons system to match. Fortunately the Bretonian Armed Forces were researching advancements in battleship weaponry around this time.
At this stage in the war, both Kusari and Bretonia were taking massive losses, including battleships. If it were possible to salvage these massive hulls and reconstruct them to Bretonian standards then this project would be able to get up and running again. This time though, it was more than just an idea.
A proposal was put into the Admiralty Board to secure funds to mount salvage operations. It took months to secure the funds but finally the Project was underway. Salvaging crippled warships from under the enemies' nose was a difficult job, even more so in the middle of a war zone. With the help of the 9th Fleet running distractions on the opposite side of Leeds, Ashers and Lindström secured their very first part that would make up the 'HMS Royal Oak'.
The part in question was the nose section, a very sensitive area that usually houses the scanners and electronic countermeasures, but sadly they were gone. The innards of the nose section were wrecked, probably caused by a direct hit to the forward magazine which is usually situated just behind the sensitive equipment and along a weak point in the hull. If this was not to happen again they needed to think of an idea to cover the weak point, a join in the ships armour plating.
Lindström was the one who came up with the idea of covering the weak points along the seams with a newly developed Bretonian Reactive Armour. Doing this would completely solve the issues of forced labour. The main benefit with this new armour over the Kusari standard was the fact that it could absorb energy from impacts and disperse it harmlessly throughout the ship as tiny vibrations that would hardly be felt by anyone. The reason why this is not the standard for Bretonian Battleship armour is for one very large flaw in the design - it needs a great surface area and mass to disperse the huge amounts of energy from an incoming cannon barrage. The Bretonian Battleship is too small for Reactive Armour to be used, as test subjects of the armour showed that eventually it would twist the super-structure of the battleship. In a vast vessel such as the Kusari Battleship, this was not a problem with a size and mass almost three times that of a Dunkirk.
Now Commodore, Ashers used his new rank to persuade his superiors to commence a full blown search of wrecked hulls across the front. He was supplied with a map of all Bretonian Capital Ship victories throughout Tau 31, Leeds and Edinburgh. With his new found information, he set out gathering a group of volunteers to act as a salvage crew. It was made up mostly of his old friends and comrades, which proved his greatest resource as most others that did not know how determined he was, would simply think he was mad trying to attempt such an operation right below Kusari's nose.
A year later, they had the pieces of hull they needed. The main section, aft and nose had all been recovered and taken to Southampton for reconstruction; this was the easy part compared to collecting them. The work was scheduled to take 18 months to complete, but there was a problem: Bretonia simply lacked the resources to repair such a massive ship. So the call went out to Bowex to source the needed parts, and they accepted such a challenge. A few days had passed since Bowex had begun their part of this project when the first transports loaded with raw materials started arriving. The next parts to arrive were spare hull panels in the massive 'Heavy Tankers'.
With Stage 3 in progress, Ashers and the recovery crew stepped into action once again, this time hunting out Bretonian Battleship remains. The first wreck they would visit would be the HMS Regina, the last resting place of Fleet Admiral Percey Nelles, a man Ashers looked up to and respected. When the crew arrived at the wreck, they saw the wreath remembering Nelles, floating around what was once the bridge of the magnificent ship. Leaving their emotions behind them, the salvage crew went into action. They were searching for two things and two things only: the ships bell, and it's crest. These are the two most honoured items on the ships, a tradition thought to be from the Sol Sector. The ship's crest was easy to find, as it was secured to the outside of the armour, just above the bridge. The bell however, was a different story. It took them two full days of searching but eventually they had found it, drifting from the main portion of the wreck to a small cluster of debris 2k away.
With those acquired, the crew returned to Southampton to see how progress was getting on, seeing that it had only been three days since they had left, a mighty change had taken place on the hull components. They had all been cleaned out, stripped back to the bare metal, and gleamed in the New London Sun's beams. It was so picture perfect that one could almost forget that it was being built into a machine of death and destruction. It was a wonderful sight, but not as wonderful as seeing Lindström receiving the first parts of the electronic equipment to go into storage until the time was right to install them. The two cores which would be installed had already arrived and were waiting for the correct mountings to be fitted before they could be put in. Once they were in however, the decks could then be moulded around them and the ship would start to look more like a warship than a wreck.
Eight months later and Ashers was on the hunt for the final piece of the jigsaw, something which would tie the ship together, not structurally, but sentimentally. He was looking for the Bretonian Flag that is imprinted into every new battleship's armour. A further six months of scouring every wreck he could find and he finally found an intact one, it was perfect. You may ask why he did not order for a new one to be cast, but Ashers would have just replied that making a new one does not honour the fallen.
By now the Royal Oak had really taken shape: the cores were in, decks were complete, every piece of large equipment that had to be put in whilst the ship was open, was installed. The next stage was to seal the large panels together, and once that had been completed, the armourers would move in and install the reactive armour that Ashers had been looking forward to. Sealing the vessel only took three weeks with robots working day and night to get it done. Sometime during this process, Ashers received some news that he had not been expecting at all.
It was a normal Wednesday afternoon as Ashers stepped out of his shuttle and into Whitehall on New London, and what greeted him was not to be expected. It was most of the Armed Forces' top commanders gathered in one corner studying something that was obscured from his line of sight.As he stepped in closer and saluted, he saw they were studying reports... Reports of a new contender. A new House. The House of Gallia. Ashers was taken a back; All this time they had heard nothing and now a new House turns up practically next door. He was shocked. What he heard next shocked him even more, as he learned that they were on the warpath, with probably the most technological equipment anybody had seen. Ashers, now white in the face, turned to the Fleet Admiral, and said four words, 'We have to finish.' With that, Ashers rushed out to his shuttle which had been waiting for him and flew as fast as its little engines could carry it back to Southampton and Lindström.
When he reached the shipyard, Lindström was waiting for him on the platform. He had already been informed of the new threat that had emerged and had run some diagnostics to see whether or not the Royal Oak could be finished sooner than expected. Its official launch would have to wait if it was needed on the front lines. Formalities and tradition were not as important as defending the Kingdom of Bretonia. Luckily Lindström had found several ways to make the build quicker. He had also drawn in several more robots for welding the armour into place; this meant that it would be several months ahead of schedule by the time it was completed. Estimated completion time was a little over two months. Ashers was over the moon. His dream had become not only a reality, but more than he ever expected.
With the new help, the armour was finished in a little over a month. The Bretonian Flag imprint stood as proud as it could be on such a marvel of engineering. The outside may be complete, but Ashers knew that he had not finished yet. All attention was now given to the inside of the ship, getting crew quarters installed, consoles, wiring, plumbing, everything that made this ship self-sufficient had to go in. This was going to take people working on two shifts: one in the day time and one in the night but it would barely get done in time. Lindström had an engineering team testing the cores as the rest of the workers completed their tasks. It was coming together now; they all knew they had nearly done it. Taken wrecks of Kusari Battleships and turned them into a marvel of Bretonian Engineering, but after all, they are the best at what they do. They're Bretonian.
Two days and seven hours after Lindström had expected, the Royal Oak was now a fully functioning battleship, apart from one key feature: it was weaponless. But for this, the ship had to be towed to Salisbury as Southampton focused on ship building, not mounting weapons. The move to Salisbury took half a day as it's engines were still being tested. When it arrived, it was moored to Winchester Station for the final process of it's build. The finest Bretonian weapons which could be found were placed upon the Oak, and proudly they gleamed in the sun. She was now one of the many hopes that Bretonia had to beat this new found enemy. She was the Royal Oak.
Bravery is being the only one who knows you're afraid. - David Hackworth (1930 - 2005)
![[Image: royaloak.png]](http://img542.imageshack.us/img542/9043/royaloak.png)