Browncoat Navy

POSTED BY: Talvin
UPDATED: Friday, April 16, 2004 23:29
VIEWED: 7513
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TALVIN

Thursday, April 15, 2004 2:13 AM

The Browncoats that we see and hear about are pretty much all groundpounders. We have yet to hear about a single (Space) Naval Battle during the Unification War. Of course, those of our heroes that served were in the MudSlogging Infantry, and so that is where we focus. Still, it's hard to believe that the entire war was fought on the ground.

A couple theories:

1) Joss just hadn't gotten that far yet. (See a hypothetical dialogue at the end of this post.)

2) Naval action between capital ships just really wasn't part of the war! A pretty good case can be made that this was the first ever Interstellar War (and only one so far), so alot of stuff had to be made up along the way. Ground and Air Combat tech would have been in goodly supply from Earth-that-Was, but such "navy" ships as existed were primarily Cutters and Corvettes for anti-piracy, anti-smuggling, etc. Colony Transports could be turned into Troop Transports very quickly, but Ships of the Line are another matter entirely. The Alliance Cruiser could well have come along at the end of the war, or even after. What we see of the "Cruiser" indicates that it is more of a mobile base than anything else; there to support ground troops, carry a wing of fighters, etc. It does NOT come across as a ship that thinks it will ever run into a hostile in its own class.

While I like theory 1, I tend to lean toward 2 based on available evidence. It also fits with the Civil War inspiration: a few exciting tussles at sea, but mostly "brown-water" navy and lots of ground fighting. The Navy was there to blockade.

But consider:

Mal: "Will you look at that!"
Wash: "What is it?"
Book: "Toward the end of the Unification War, the Demeter Orbital Yards built the first and only Battleship in the Independent Navy: the 'Lotus'. A week after she was launched, Demeter was overrun by the Alliance. Her class was designed to give pause to the new Alliance Cruisers. After mauling the IAV Cortes in deep space, she headed for St. Albans, but never arrived. Her fate is one of the great mysteries of the war."
Zoe: "And we found her."
Jayne: "Great! Where can we sell it?"

"I give up. I admit it. I'm a Browncoat."

JASONZZZ

Thursday, April 15, 2004 2:50 AM

So, if you drive a ship in space, would you still be a squid?

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GUNRUNNER

Thursday, April 15, 2004 2:57 AM

Well a few things I’ve seen hint to some space combat. In ‘The Message’ Zoe asks “Our we hit!?!” when the Alliance gunship fires at it. It seems to me that she had experienced a near hit in a spacecraft before but was not a expert in space combat. In Trash Yo-Saf-Bridge says that the war buddy bond is hard to brake. Well Monty don’t seem to be the infantrymen type. Could he have been in the Browncoat Navy? Maybe a pilot of a troop ship or landing craft and that’s how he and Mal met, it would also explain why he captain’s a cargo ship (maybe its his old ship?)

I think that if the Independence had any naval forces they were small Blockade Runners and Commerce Raiders like the German’s utilized in WWII. They may also have had some proper military ships but they would be insignificant compared to what the Alliance could muster with all their resources and money.

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BROWNCOAT1

Thursday, April 15, 2004 4:01 PM

Unfortunately there is no real way of saying unless the BDM brings it up.

I find it hard to believe that the Independents didn't have some sort of navy. They moved ground troops (Mal, Zoe, and others) from one world to another to fight. They had air support (skiffs) according to the episode "Serenity". That to me says they had ships of some sort. Now whether they were capital ships is yet to be seen.

It would seem to me that some Alliance cruisers or ships were bound to have sided w/ the Independents or were captured by crews. That or large ships were converted for the purposes the Browncoats needed them for.

"May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."

EMBASSY

Thursday, April 15, 2004 9:54 PM

I always intepreted "Angels" as Close Air Support from the Browncoat Air Force, which may have performed other missions like troop transport, long range strike, offensive counter-air and other things. Maybe all the time I spent in the Air Force has biased me.

GUNRUNNER

Thursday, April 15, 2004 10:19 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Embassy:
I always intepreted "Angels" as Close Air Support from the Browncoat Air Force...

Well that doesn’t mean the "Angels" weren’t space capable fighters. Take the Womack’s gunship for example it was capable of combat in both space and in atmo. I assume by the time Firefly takes place a small craft can have both space engines and atmo engines without any serous loss of space.

The term "Angels" reminds me of a comment in Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising where a Soviet commander mentions that his troops have started calling the NATO A-10s (A deadly Close Air Support jet for the non military literate) 'Crosses of Death' or something similar. Both names have a kind of religious feel to them.

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MILESLONG

Thursday, April 15, 2004 10:31 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Talvin:

2) Naval action between capital ships just really wasn't part of the war! A pretty good case can be made that this was the first ever Interstellar War (and only one so far), so alot of stuff had to be made up along the way. Ground and Air Combat tech would have been in goodly supply from Earth-that-Was, but such "navy" ships as existed were primarily Cutters and Corvettes for anti-piracy, anti-smuggling, etc. Colony Transports could be turned into Troop Transports very quickly, but Ships of the Line are another matter entirely. The Alliance Cruiser could well have come along at the end of the war, or even after. What we see of the "Cruiser" indicates that it is more of a mobile base than anything else; there to support ground troops, carry a wing of fighters, etc. It does NOT come across as a ship that thinks it will ever run into a hostile in its own class.

I would think that option 2 is the most likely. But if the Civil War inspiration holds true, then remember that there was signifigant Naval action. The Union managed a blockade that streched all along the southern states in the Atlantic. That is no small feat. The thing that makes it so forgetable is that the South never had a fleet to challange it with, nor any highly skilled Captains (with the level of competence of a Lee or Jackson). So the South lacking a Naval Hero and a Fleet for him to command, never caused a noteworthy sea battle.

That said there were blockade runners and such. But they wern't very successful. Heck they lost the South's diplomat to the Union Navy and the Union only released him to prevent Britan from siding with the South.

In the Role Playing Game that a friend of mine is running we have about 3/4 assumed that this is the way it went for the Indpendents. Not the captured diplomat, but the very limited space navy.

Miles Long
or Jeff

TALVIN

Thursday, April 15, 2004 11:35 PM

Oh, I am not saying they had *no* fleet, or that the naval aspects were insignificant. Just that, yes, like in the American Civil War, it was rather lopsided. Hera and Serenity Valley had some pretty large troop numbers, at least according to the deleted scene, and I don't think they walked or took little ships like the Firefly class. The Med Ships seen in another deleted scene are no small potatoes themselves, and I am sure there were some big transport vessels running around.

Blockades in space are a little more problematic than the one in the Civil War. They may have *attempted* blockade, but I think the blockade runners were probably a bit more successful in this 'Verse. Too much area to interdict! This fits in well with my interpretation of the role of the Alliance Cruisers: mobile bases for the faster ships and logistics and C3I for the ground elements.

To risk borrowing from another 'Verse, probably a bit prone to Trench Run Disease without its fighter escort, though. If the Browncoats won any battles in space, that's probably how they did it.

[Edited to remove a thought I started, forgot to finish, and now have forgotten entirely.]

GUNRUNNER

Friday, April 16, 2004 1:47 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Talvin:
Hera and Serenity Valley had some pretty large troop numbers, at least according to the deleted scene, and I don't think they walked or took little ships like the Firefly class.

I think they may have used lots of smaller transports and a few larger transports as bases since the Alliance probably have lots of patrol ships and smaller warships (Frigates and Corvettes for example) that could easily hunt down a large lumbering troop ships.

What I think what they did for planetary assault was have a few big converted cargo ships or colony ships acting a mobile bases much like the modern day Tarawa LHAs and Wasp LHDs these ships would load the troops rollers, hover tanks, IFVs on to the smaller transports that would make land fall on the planet. Much like the landings at Normandy or Iwo Jima, once the assault forces from the smaller ships had made a (Hopefully) covert landing and had secured ground the big ships would land and set up the heavy fortifications and drop off the big armor, like the browncoats equivalent of the M1A1.

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DAVEY

Friday, April 16, 2004 12:32 PM

Im thinking that any capital ships in the war would be like the big american carriers of today,too expensive and fragile to put in harms way directly. After all there are no star trek type defensive shields,AFAIK, so one good hit with a nuke and most any ship would be toast.i would imagine that it would be easier to cobble together some kind of makeshift carriers from existing designs than produce a true ship of the line.

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