Class:
Daedalus
Classification:
Explorer (Obsolete)
Service:
2150-2196
Number
Active: 0
Layout
Length:
121m
Beam:
48m
Height:
40m
Decks:10
Mass:
30,000 Metric Tons
Compliment:
230
Tactical:
4
Heavy Laser Cannons
2
Missle Launchers
Defense:
Standard
Deflector Shield System
The
Human / Romulan war was Humanities first interstellar conflict after
more than forty years of total peace. Thus, while the Romulans began
the war with a well tested fleet of purpose designed combat vessels,
the Humans where trying to hold them back with converted merchant
vessels augmented by the occasional ship bought from an alien
government. From the first day of the war it was obvious that a new
class of warships was needed, ships that where larger, faster and
more powerful than any which had preceded them. Work began at a
feverish pace early in 2156, and by mid 2158 the first of the new
Daedalus class was launched.
The
designers where urged to be daring, and they certainly took this
advice to heart. Instead of the integrated hull form which most
previous ships had possessed, the Daedalus class was the first
design which featured a multi-hulled configuration. The engineering
section was a cylinder six decks tall which housed the ships heavy
engineering equipment - the warp core, structural integrity and
inertial damper field generator systems, shield generators, hangar
bays, impulse drive, etc. This hull was connected by a two deck neck
to a spherical primary hull which housed the ships main weapons,
control areas and provision for the crew. The Daedalus class was
intended to remain in space for up to a full year with minimum
outside support, far longer than any pervious design. The
accommodation standards where thus much improved compared to the
ships which began the Romulan war; the senior officers had
individual rooms, while all enlisted personnel had barracks style
accommodations. Considering that contemporary vessels slept
everybody below the rank of Lieutenant Commander in hammocks hung
wherever there was room, the Daedalus represented a quantum leap in
luxury.
Primarily
a combat vessel, the class was fitted with four laser cannon of the
heaviest type in service and a magazine of twenty four fusion
missiles. Combined with her high speed and enhanced shield capacity,
the Daedalus was considered equal to any four Romulan warships. In
service they proved exemplary, rapidly acquiring a fearsome
reputation on the front lines. By 2159 the rapidly growing Daedalus
fleet had turned the tide in the war, and by the end of that year
they where routinely striking deep into Romulan home territory. The
Romulans, faced with a war now fought almost wholly on their own
territory, sued for peace in 2160.
When
the United Federation of Planets was formed in 2161, the
constitution called on members to supply the newly formed Starfleet
with ships until purpose-built vessels could be constructed. The
pacifist Vulcan's where reluctant to devote resources to what they
considered a military force, but the Humans had no such qualms; of
the fleet of seventy Daedalus class vessels in service in 2161, they
turned over no less than sixty of these to Starfleet. With Starfleet
assigned a major scientific and exploratory role in addition to its
secondary military mission, this bold move bought the Humans a huge
stake in the future of the Federation. Virtually every exploratory
mission, every first contact, every new scientific discovery made in
the first eighty years of the UFP was made by Daedalus class
starships under Human command and carrying wholly Human crews.
Several Daedalus class ships where lost during their exploratory
missions for Starfleet. The USS Essex (NCC-173), under the command
of Captain Bryce Shumar and first officer Steven Mullen, was lost to
an electromagnetic storm while investigating a class M moon orbiting
Mab-Bu VI. The USS Archon was lost when its crew was absorbed by the
entity known as Landru on the planet Beta III in the system C-111.
The
Daedalus class USS Horizon visited Sigma Iotia II in 2167, resulting
in massive cultural contamination of that planet. The huge number of
such first contacts, together with the planting of colonies and
exploratory work, resulted in a heavy pro Human bias in the evolving
structure of the Federation itself, and most especially within
Starfleet. This bias endures even to the present day.
The
first of the Daedalus class vessels reached the end of its hull life
in 2188. Initially it was planned to conduct a major overhaul on the
hulls of the ships to extend their lives a further twenty years, but
with a lessening in tensions during this period it was decided that
Starfleet needed fewer heavily armed ships in service. The number of
Daedalus class ships was allowed to gradually fall as ships reached
the end of their hull life and retired. Initially it was planned to
retire the crusier-type altogether in favour of large numbers of
smaller, more manoeuvrable vessels. But in the end it was decided to
put most of the Daedalus fleet into mothballs against possible
future need. The last one hundred ships where placed in storage in
2196.
As
the Daedalus ships fell behind the state of the art and became
gradually less useful even as a reserve force, Starfleet began to
find other uses for them. One was retained for the Fleet Museum,
where it remains to this day. Some thought was given to refitting
the remaining ships and using them as cargo carriers, but this plan
was abandoned. Another plan to sell the Daedalus fleet to alien
governments was also abandoned when the Prime Directive was
established in 2225. Thirty of the ships where used in live fire
exercises - one achieving a degree of fame as the first vessel
destroyed by a phaser bank during the development of that weapon in
the 2250's. The remaining ships where scrapped between 2250 and
2260. Today the only Daedalus class vessel in existence is the
single example still in the fleet museum.
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