Irish class battleship

Irish class battleship
Fast Facts
Ship Type	Battleship
Class:	Irish
Launched:	Universal Century 0087?
Class Fate:	Production ended UC 0088
General Characteristics
Displacement:	Unknown
Length:	Unknown
Beam:	Unknown
Draft:	Unknown
Armament:	2-barrel main gun x2, main gun x5
Mobile Suit Complement:	8
Ships of the Line	"Irish, Radish"

The "Irish"-class battleship is a space battleship of the fictional Gundam universe.

The introduction of mobile suits during the One Year War redefined space warfare, and led to a change in the design concepts of space warships, where the ability to deploy mobile suits became a clear tactical advantage. While some of the ship designs still focused on enhanced firepower (such as Earth Federation's "Birmingham"-class battleship), most ships started incorporating mobile suit support. One of the successful design that combined traditional firepower with mobile warfare capacity was the "Irish"-class battleship.

The "Irish" class sports two two-barrel main beam turrets, and five secondary single-barrel beam turrets, giving the ship considerable firepower in ship-to-ship battle. The ship also sports three launch catapults — two on the bow and one in the aft, which gives the "Irish" class a clear relation to the "Argama"-class assault cruisers, which were under construction around the same time as the "Irish" class. The "Irish" class was designed and equipped with twelve rear thruster, giving it a speed advantage against enemy ships, not unlike the real-world American-designed "Iowa" class battleships.

At the outbreak of the Gryps Conflict, the Anti-Earth Union Group realized that it would require more than just the mediocre "Salamis Kai"-class cruisers (which it inherited from the Earth Federation Space Force) to effectively fight against the Titans fleet. The "Irish"-class was developed for that purpose, designed and built by Anaheim Electronics with funding from several private investment groups, making it one of the few non-military developed combat vessels in the Universal Century. At least five battleships were built.

The "Irish" class performed exceptionally well during the Gryps Conflict, and the remaining "Irish"-class vessels were reportedly circulated back into the Earth Federal Space Force at the end of the conflict. The "Irish" class would become a model for future Federation battleship development due to its successes in combining firepower with mobile suit capabilities. However, the loss of "Radish" at the end of the war underscored the vulnerability of large ships to mobile suit assaults.

ee also

*Mobile Suit
*List of Mobile Suits
*Universal Century
*Minovsky Physics
*Henken Bekner -- The (eventual) Captain of the "Radish"

External links

* [http://www.geocities.com/gundam_uc0079/index.html The World-Wide Gundam Informational Network]
* [http://www.geocities.com/gundamships/Mainpage.html Gundam Naval Museum]
* [http://www.mahq.net MAHQ]
* [http://side7.gundam.com/rgz/info/uc_ship2.html Library of Londonion (ship names & fates)]