OYW Ship Hull Designation Explained

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Gelgoog Jager
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OYW Ship Hull Designation Explained

I recently found an interesting site with the explanation for many types of USN ship designations, which actually goes into great detail to explain the many classifications:

http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/index_ships_list.php

This reminded me that many Zeon ships use the same (or at least similar) designations:

BB-38 Gwazine
CC-45 Camel
CC-102 Famel
CCM-80 Zanzibar
CCM-84 Kerguelen
CCM-87 Lili Marleen
CCM-91 Chimaira
CV-65 Dolos
S-203 Graf Zeppelin

Checking the site in question, we can observe that BB stands for Battleship, CC for Battlecruiser, CV for Aircraft Carrier and S for submarine.

In the case of CCM, we can speculate that it refer to a battlecruiser with a secondary role, which by the same site could denote a seoncadry role such as Monitor, Mine warfare or Missile warfare. However, it could also relate to its size, standing either Midget or Medium.

Currently, I'm inclined on the later, specially since a the MSV-R volume on the Gobble depicts a unit with the hull number CCM-54, which presumably belongs to its mothership. Based on the accompanying images, its mothership is most likely a Chivvay class ship. In such case, it's possible CCM could be the designation for non-Musai class battlecruisers.

Now, if we assume that the CCM-80 Zanzibar is both the namesake and first of the class, then perhaps the CCM-1 through CCM-79 hull numbers could have been used by Chivvay class ships. Similarly, we could assume that the BB-1 through BB-37 designations could have belong to the early Chivvay class ships, which were originally designated as battleships and later downgraded to heavy cruisers. Lastly, I'm inclined to think that since Papua class ships are considered were originally missile cruisers, that the CV-1 through CV-64 hull numbers could belong to the Pazock class ships. For what's its worth, IIRC when Kycillia sends reinforcements form Granada to A Baoa Qu, she sends the Dolos along 10 Pazock class ships. I always assumed that in this case she was sending a large number of MS from the Mobile Assault Force to A Baoa Qu, in which case the Pazocks would indeed fulfill the role of MS carriers.

Moving on, the artwork for some others ships also includes hull numbers without a proper designation, such as:

Jicco: 75
Gagaul: 225
Siegfried (Musai FPT): 101
Valkyrie (Musai FPT): 103

In the case of the Gagaul, we could easily assume that it's complete designation could be DD-225. The Jicco is a bit trickier, since there's no direct equivalent in the page I mentioned, but we could assume it would be something such as HB-75 (H standing for assault and B for boat) or MB-75 (M standing for missile). Anyway, I don't see much trouble assuming these two types of 70m class vessels have such large production numbers.

On the other hand, while it's tempting to dump the Siegfried and Valkyrie with the rest of the Musai class ships, I'm not convinced of such being the case, specially if we have to a some that the Falmel is the ship in the middle (102). Depending on the source, the Falmel is sometimes said to have served as Dozle's ship during the early OYW, which would indicate that it was built before the beginning of the OYW. On the other hand, the Musai Final Type is essentially said to be the result of Zeon wanting to match the fleet number of the EFSF, something which wouldn't make much sense until late during the OYW, when the EF finally starts sending to space its rebuilt space fleet.

So what alternatives are there? Well, since the Graf Zeppelin doesn't use a BB or CCM designation, but rather a S (S-203), which would indicate some sort of submarine-like role in space (perhaps as a fast or stealth use MS carrier), perhaps we could assume that the similarly light-armed Musai FPT is given the designation, such as S-101 and S-103.

For what it's worth, there's actually a third Musai FPT seen during 0080, which is briefly shown on a TV news report as being evicted form Side 6, which we could speculate to be the missing S-102 Musai FPT.

Moving on to the EF, we can speculate that SBB-17 Luzal (Magellan) could simply be Space Battleship. Similarly, the SCRT-229 Suruga (refit Salamis) could be a Space Battlecruiser, with the "RT" part simply being Refit Transport. Alternatively, it could have an auxiliary role, which could refer to Rescue, Repair, Radar, etc., and Training, Tug, Tender, etc.

I'll leave the Pegasus class for next time. Meanwhile, anyone knows any other ship hull numbers, specially from post-OYW ships?
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JEFFPIATT
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Re: OYW Ship Hull Designation Explained

Pegasus class
SCV-69 (LMSD-70) Pegasus
SCV-70 (LMSD-71) (MSC-02) White Base
SCV-71 (LMSD-72) White Base Jr.
SCVA-72 (LMSD-73) Thoroughbred
SCV-73 (LMSD-74) Blanc Rival
LMSD-75 (SCVA-73) Troy Horse
LMSD-76 Gray Phantom
SCVA-74 (MSC-06) (LMSD-77) Stallion
MSC-07 (LMSD-78) Albion
the MSC hull prefix was applied post war and retroactivaly applied to even distroyed ships of the class. They also had an LMSD hull code in addition to there SCV codes.
SCVA-76 Nahel Argama
bilbros
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Re: OYW Ship Hull Designation Explained

Just a few more hull numbers from here and there...

CVN-110 Alexandria [Alexandria class; Kazuhisa Kondo's Z Gundam manga]

CVN-77 [unnamed Clop class unit; Revival of Zeon]

CVS-18 Glorious [G class assault landing ship; Revival of Zeon]

CVW-07 Pegasus III [Gundam Sentinel; reported only by some sources, albeit definitely not mentioned either in the original Model Graphix serialization or in teh Gundam Wars III volume]

SBB-09 Jarvis [Magellan class; The Origin I animation]

SBB-21 Somerville [Magellan class; The Origin I animation]

SBB-63 [unnamed Magellan class unit; seen on a screen of Gundam Crisis]

SBB-91 [unnamed Magellan class unit; seen on a screen of Gundam Crisis]

SCC527 [unnamed Salamis class unit; seen on a screen of Gundam Crisis]

SCC591 [unnamed Salamis class unit; seen on a screen of Gundam Crisis]

SCC891 [unnamed Salamis class unit; seen on a screen of Gundam Crisis]

SCRT-177 [unnamed Columbus class unit; seen on a screen of Gundam Crisis]

SCV-102 Nelson [MSV-R]

SS-6011 Lockwood [sumbarine; MSV-R]

SSN-588 Rio Grande [Type VIII submarine (which according to some material would be another designation of the Juneau class); Secret Formula; reported only by some sources]

SSN-735 Dinichthys [Type VIII submarine; MS Generation; reported only by some sources, albeit not mentioned in the manga itself]
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MythSearcher
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Re: OYW Ship Hull Designation Explained

Gelgoog Jager wrote:I recently found an interesting site with the explanation for many types of USN ship designations, which actually goes into great detail to explain the many classifications:

http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/index_ships_list.php

This reminded me that many Zeon ships use the same (or at least similar) designations:

BB-38 Gwazine
CC-45 Camel
CC-102 Famel
CCM-80 Zanzibar
CCM-84 Kerguelen
CCM-87 Lili Marleen
CCM-91 Chimaira
CV-65 Dolos
S-203 Graf Zeppelin

Checking the site in question, we can observe that BB stands for Battleship, CC for Battlecruiser, CV for Aircraft Carrier and S for submarine.
I think CC in this case stands for Cruiser or Command Cruiser(After 1961)
While CCM might be Missile Cruiser(CG in the US navy, oh well, M particles, no longer Guided I guess?) or Mobile Cruiser (Typical translation of Kidou into Mobile)
Fun thing is Musai should be CL (Light Cruiser) and Zanzibar and Chivvay should be CA (Heavy Cruiser)

Gwazine class, all 8 of them are likely BBC in most cases.

The S-203 for Graf Zapplin is likely a group designation instead of ship designation?

Not to mention all of them should have "N" for nuclear. ;9

The Jicco, I'd say its role is more like a TB, the Torpedo Boat. So MB sounds probably right.

And the numbers, I'd suggest the "German Tank Problem".
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Gelgoog Jager
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Re: OYW Ship Hull Designation Explained

By the way, the Papua was originally classified as a Missile Cruiser. However, while I could see CCM being applied in such case, I don't think that the Zanzibar or the Chivvay (assuming CCM-54 is indeed a Chivvay) fit the same designation. On the other hand, while the Chivvay is indeed classified as a Heavy Cruiser, the designation of the Zanzibar is Mobile Cruiser, which do sounds the most likely candidate for CCM.

However, the namesake of the class, the Zanzibar is the CCM-80, which means that there were 79 ships before it with the same classification. As I mentioned, the MSV-R volume about the Gobble seems to hint that the CCM-54 is a Chivvay. However, that would come at odds with the idea about the Chivvay being a slow ship... but is it?

More recent depictions of the Chivvay seem to be based on the MS Igloo version (the version used in Gundam Thunderbolt) and the Chivvay Kai from Zeta Gundam (like the ones from The Origin). The former increases the number of thrusters from 5 to 7 by adding two thrusters, one above and one below the central thruster. In the case of the version from The Origin, the official site labels it as a High-Speed Heavy Cruiser. And of course there's the fact that the Tivvay's (or essentially a Chivvay Final Production type) increased the number of thrusters from the original 5 to 9 in order to emphasize that the ship was faster than the base model.

In other words, today we do have grounds to believe that the Chivvay class could fit the role of Mobile Cruiser, thus making it very likely that the CCM designation, namely from CCM-01 to CCM-79, belonged to Chivvay class cruisers.

Regarding the Gwazine, a few years ago it was basically confirmed that at least 10 Gwazines existed between the animation and the background materials:

http://www.mechatalk.net/viewtopic.php? ... 01#p264144

I'm not sure what do you mean by group designation in this case. I do can say that the 2 Musai FPT ships that tagged along the Graf Zeppelin had the numbers 101 and 103, which would suggest that these are individual ship numbers.

I agree that given the situation, MB sounds right for the Jicco. And just for the record, based on a image form the gihren's Greed videogames, the Jicco would seem to be around the 70m ballpark length-wise.

Thanks for the article you linked, it is quite interesting! I realize that you mean that the Jicco and Gagaul could fall into that very problem, but since it's very unlikely we will ever get definitive production numbers for these ships, if any other info at all, we might as well try to speculate with what we have.

That being said, while 75 is not a surprising number for an assault boat, I guess that 225 do could be a for a 70m class ship. Digging info from he time the MSV-R volume first came out, Deacon translated some info about this ship:

http://www.mechatalk.net/viewtopic.php? ... 60#p345530

From this it sounds that the Gagaul class first existed as a destroyer without MS capacity, which had to be refitted for supporting two MS. Zeon intended to refit 78 ships by the end of U.C. 0078, but only managed to complete 65. At the very least this would confirm the existence of 78 ships, and it also sounds that not all ended up capable of supporting MS.

In other words, perhaps we could assume that 65 or more ships (perhaps closer to a hundred) could have been converted for MS support, assuming Zeon continued converting ships on U.C. 0079. Assuming that 225 or more ships of the class exist, it's quite likely that more than half of them (and potentially more than two thirds) were never converted for supporting MS.

Ultimately, these 70m class ships are the closest equivalent to the EF's Public class and were most likely produced in large numbers in order to shore up the size of the Zeon fleet early on, similarly to how the EF used the Public class to compensate for failing to reach the production goals for the Vinson Plan.
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JEFFPIATT
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Re: OYW Ship Hull Designation Explained

SCV used on the Pegasus Class ships built during 0079 might stand for space cargo Vessel if i remember the first episode of 0079 when char was tailing WB they kept mentioning it was an cargo transport on the Musai my guess being that the Hulls were given misleading hull codes to hide Project V but the Class it self has had many Hull Codes even some being Retroactive to ships lost in combat judging by this list.

Code: Select all

 LMSD-70/MSC-01/SCV-69 Pegasus, LMSD-71/MSC-01/SCV-70 White Base, LMSD-72/SCV-71 White Base II, LMSD-73/SCVA-72 Thoroughbred (refit), LMSD-74/SCV-73 Blanc Rival (refit), LMSD-75/SCVA-73 Troy Horse, LMSD-76/MSC-05 Gray Phantom (refit), LMSD-77/MSC-06 SCVA-74 Stallion, LMSD-78/MSC-07 Albion (refit)
LMSD= Landing MS Destroyer ? it's an very USSR kind of ship type an destroyer with MS Bays like the Soviet era Cr users with landing strips
MSC= MS Carrier
SCVA= Space Cargo Vessel Assault ?
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MythSearcher
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Re: OYW Ship Hull Designation Explained

Gelgoog Jager wrote:By the way, the Papua was originally classified as a Missile Cruiser. However, while I could see CCM being applied in such case, I don't think that the Zanzibar or the Chivvay (assuming CCM-54 is indeed a Chivvay) fit the same designation. On the other hand, while the Chivvay is indeed classified as a Heavy Cruiser, the designation of the Zanzibar is Mobile Cruiser, which do sounds the most likely candidate for CCM.

However, the namesake of the class, the Zanzibar is the CCM-80, which means that there were 79 ships before it with the same classification. As I mentioned, the MSV-R volume about the Gobble seems to hint that the CCM-54 is a Chivvay. However, that would come at odds with the idea about the Chivvay being a slow ship... but is it?

More recent depictions of the Chivvay seem to be based on the MS Igloo version (the version used in Gundam Thunderbolt) and the Chivvay Kai from Zeta Gundam (like the ones from The Origin). The former increases the number of thrusters from 5 to 7 by adding two thrusters, one above and one below the central thruster. In the case of the version from The Origin, the official site labels it as a High-Speed Heavy Cruiser. And of course there's the fact that the Tivvay's (or essentially a Chivvay Final Production type) increased the number of thrusters from the original 5 to 9 in order to emphasize that the ship was faster than the base model.

In other words, today we do have grounds to believe that the Chivvay class could fit the role of Mobile Cruiser, thus making it very likely that the CCM designation, namely from CCM-01 to CCM-79, belonged to Chivvay class cruisers.

Regarding the Gwazine, a few years ago it was basically confirmed that at least 10 Gwazines existed between the animation and the background materials:

http://www.mechatalk.net/viewtopic.php? ... 01#p264144

I'm not sure what do you mean by group designation in this case. I do can say that the 2 Musai FPT ships that tagged along the Graf Zeppelin had the numbers 101 and 103, which would suggest that these are individual ship numbers.

I agree that given the situation, MB sounds right for the Jicco. And just for the record, based on a image form the gihren's Greed videogames, the Jicco would seem to be around the 70m ballpark length-wise.

Thanks for the article you linked, it is quite interesting! I realize that you mean that the Jicco and Gagaul could fall into that very problem, but since it's very unlikely we will ever get definitive production numbers for these ships, if any other info at all, we might as well try to speculate with what we have.

That being said, while 75 is not a surprising number for an assault boat, I guess that 225 do could be a for a 70m class ship. Digging info from he time the MSV-R volume first came out, Deacon translated some info about this ship:

http://www.mechatalk.net/viewtopic.php? ... 60#p345530

From this it sounds that the Gagaul class first existed as a destroyer without MS capacity, which had to be refitted for supporting two MS. Zeon intended to refit 78 ships by the end of U.C. 0078, but only managed to complete 65. At the very least this would confirm the existence of 78 ships, and it also sounds that not all ended up capable of supporting MS.

In other words, perhaps we could assume that 65 or more ships (perhaps closer to a hundred) could have been converted for MS support, assuming Zeon continued converting ships on U.C. 0079. Assuming that 225 or more ships of the class exist, it's quite likely that more than half of them (and potentially more than two thirds) were never converted for supporting MS.

Ultimately, these 70m class ships are the closest equivalent to the EF's Public class and were most likely produced in large numbers in order to shore up the size of the Zeon fleet early on, similarly to how the EF used the Public class to compensate for failing to reach the production goals for the Vinson Plan.
What if the CCM starts from 80 and you do not have previous numbers? That is why I brought up the German Tank Problem.
Another possible situation would be the numbering isn't class based, but a common number. (So you can have BB-1, CC-2, CCM-3, and so on)
Also, there maybe previous class ships using those numbers, but retired from active service and we never see them(makes so much sense given the Chivvay was downgraded from Battleship to Heavy Cruiser signifying the need of more powerful ships) So CCM-1 to 79 may as well be reclassified as CL-1 to 79.

Group designation I mean it is a designation for the group, while each ship in the group have their own designation number as well. So the FPTs are 101 and 103, but the Group has another number S-203 for it.
So it is kinda like 7th Fleet, S-203 Group, ship CC-101. It just happened that we don't see the Tivvay's own number in that angle.
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