And now, I present the most celebrated, yet also the most hard-luck ship class to date.
While the Connecticut and Louisiana are still serving in the active fleet, all other ships of this class have been
destroyed in action.
While the preceding ships were sunk in battle, the USS New Hampshire was torpedoed and sunk by a British submarine off the US East Coast, immediately after finishing her re-deployment.
- Historical Description:
- The Connecticut class of pre-dreadnought battleships were the penultimate class of the type built for the United States Navy. The class comprised six ships: Connecticut, Louisiana, Vermont, Kansas, Minnesota, and New Hampshire, which were built between 1903 and 1908. The ships were armed with a mixed offensive battery of 12-inch (300 mm), 8-inch (200 mm), and 7-inch (180 mm) guns. This arrangement was rendered obsolete by the advent of all-big-gun battleships like the British HMS Dreadnought, which was completed before most of the Connecticuts entered service.
The
Connecticut Class battleships came into being during my campaign in 1902, with one being laid down then, another in 1903, and three being laid down during the war with France in 1904.
Upon being completed, as the newest and most powerful ships in my Navy, they were assigned to the US East Coast, and as a result, they saw no action against either France, or Japan.
What they did do, was free up other ships to go fight.
They would serve as the forefront of the Navy until the
Mississippi Class battleships came into being in 1915. By any metric, serving as the tip of the spear for a full decade in game is an impressive feat for a single class of ship.
Through their presence alone, they helped to keep tensions in check, and helped keep war aspirations low among the weaker nations.
This gave me a quiet period in game to allow for the development of new technology, and to fill out the ranks of the Navy with more cruisers and destroyers.
However, it wasn't all champagne and caviar for these ships.
After being replaced on front-line duty by newer ships, they were relegated to the Caribbean, and West Coast fleets. They did their duty quietly, until the war with Great Britain.
The first major British attack came in the Caribbean, as a costal raid off the Florida panhandle.
Now, with hindsight, I probably should have denied the battle, taken the small hit to Victory Points, and gone about my day.
However, my blood was up, and given the fact these ships had never fired a shot in anger, I was curious to see how they would fare.
My curiosity would lead to the deaths of many brave sailors, as despite the fact the overall tonnage may have been equal, the British fleet was composed of much newer ships.
In an interesting parallel to history, other nations had already been building dreadnaughts for some time before I was able to get around to doing so.
My dreadnaught building program really only kicked off as the war was starting, and all my ships on strength were functionally obsolete.
My scouting force, consisting of a
Tennessee Class armored cruiser, and my main battle group of three
Connecticut Class battleships initially made contact with an enemy group containing two battlecruisers of some 20,000 tons each.
Thinking this was the entirety of the enemy force, I aggressively closed with, and engaged the enemy. While the enemy ships were heavier, my ships had far greater mid-range firepower, and if you actually counted up the number of weapons available, I had more big guns among my several battleships, than the enemy had on their two dreadnaught-style battlecruisers.
The battle swirled around the coast of the panhandle, and eventually the numbers advantage on my side began to win out.
One of the enemy battlecruisers was on fire, and the other had taken two torpedo hits, and could no longer run away. It looked like victory was imminent.
Then, the enemy main fleet arrived.Led by the 40,000 ton dreadnaught
Inflexible, the British quickly smashed my scouting force which had been conducting a reconnaissance in the direction of a contact marker, then poured on their 26 knot top speed toward the rest of my fleet.
It was every ship for itself.
Run.
Fight.
Die.
Over the course of the next three hours, the British fleet methodically hunted down and destroyed my fleet. Only a few destroyers made it back to port.
The
Vermont,
Kansas, and
Minnesota, along with the armored cruisers
Montana and
South Dakota were destroyed outright.
This was the most lopsided defeat in my entire campaign. The British won a decisive victory, and I lost two Prestige points.
However, the battle was not entirely one-sided. Both of the two British battlecruisers we had engaged first, succumbed to their wounds, costing the enemy two ships far superior to my own.
This would eventually prevent the British from being able to blockade the East Coast, and despite the fact my fleet has done little more than sit in port, we have managed to secure British possessions in the Caribbean, the American East Coast, and the American West Coast. All this came about because we removed two critical ships from the enemy line of battle, and lowered their relative tonnage compared to my own.
Now you might be wondering, what happened to the
New Hampshire?
Well, when the war with Japan concluded in 1906, the
New Hampshire had been laid down six months prior.
With the naval budget reduced after the war, I had to make cutbacks to my building program. I decided that expanding my fleet of armored cruisers and destroyers was more important than building a new battleship, so her construction was held off. She would sit, half built, in the construction yards, for the next
SEVEN years.
She was eventually completed in 1913, and was sent to the Southeast Asia squadron. When the war with Britain broke out, and the disaster in the Gulf Coast happened, she was immediately recalled to the US East Coast to help prevent a blockade. With an escort of two destroyers, she sailed halfway around the world, only to be torpedoed and sunk by a British submarine immediately after arriving on station.
This particularly rankled me, because I am from New Hampshire, and I always looked upon this ship as "My Ship".
Needless to say, I finally resolved to smash the British into splinters, even if it will take fifty years. No more long chances, no more risky battles, I would use the power of attrition, several excellent raiding ships (some previously mentioned) and a rather expansive fleet of submarines to fight the war by methodical attrition. I would only commit my fleet to battle if forced to do so, or if I had some kind of an advantage.
So far, we've been at war for 10 months, I've closed the gap in Victory Points to less than a thousand, and we've seized three British territories, while losing none of our own.
The
Connecticut Class, despite coming to such a bad end, still holds the honor of teaching me valuable lessons in how to fight an enemy much stronger than myself.
For that alone, they deserve recognition.
(Thanks for reading. I'll be back some other time with more stuff. Don't worry, my ship pictures will get a bit better as I eventually learned how to use the thing.)