Space Attack Carrier Gaw

[MythSearcher]

https://twitter.com/1970Chione/status/1 ... 65027?s=20
From an old magazine with very dubious claims that the Gaw is a space attack carrier.
With an overall length of 147.7m, and speed of Mach 7.4(no idea why you get a speed in space, but if in atmosphere, that speed is just superbly ridiculous)
The Dopps can also obviously operate in space, with a much slower Mach 2.9 speed.(Why would they be of any help if the Gaw can go at Mach 7.4...)

The Space Cruiser Musai is claimed to be a commander ship of the legion, and the specs are slightly different from the current 250m, at only 197m long. Still had a speed spec tagged with it, Mac 7.14.

Honourable mention of the Patrol vehicle Luggun, no spec is given, label says "Radar".

The background looks suspiciously like Mars, this must be a parallel world where Zeon somehow successfully forced the EFSF to fight all the way to Mars and converted the Gaw into space operational.

Considering the Gaw was using Fusion jets, converting them into Fusion rockets is likely possible but a lot of internal space would also have to be changed into propellant tanks, so the capacity of 8 Dopps and 4 Zakus sounds a little too much.

[Dark Duel]

I don't recall offhand ever seeing a Gau used in space - off the top of my head, the only appearances of the Gaw that I can recall always had it appearing on Earth.
And even on Earth, a top speed of Mach 7.4 is indeed completely ridiculous.

[bilbros]

As far as I can tell, the Gaw (and Dopp as well) is used in space only on the original Tomino novels, which actually are completely settled in space and in any case should be considered as "alternate realities" compared to the anime.

[Seto Kaiba]

https://twitter.com/1970Chione/status/1 ... 65027?s=20
From an old magazine with very dubious claims that the Gaw is a space attack carrier.
With an overall length of 147.7m, and speed of Mach 7.4(no idea why you get a speed in space, but if in atmosphere, that speed is just superbly ridiculous)
The Dopps can also obviously operate in space, with a much slower Mach 2.9 speed.(Why would they be of any help if the Gaw can go at Mach 7.4...)

The Space Cruiser Musai is claimed to be a commander ship of the legion, and the specs are slightly different from the current 250m, at only 197m long. Still had a speed spec tagged with it, Mac 7.14.

... wrote a long, detailed response analyzing how the lore for the Gaw and Dopp has changed over the years to try to establish when it was published. Then I noticed that there was a clearly legible artist signature and date on this art, which the publisher of the article unhelpfully put text directly over.

The artist's name was familiar, and the date explained pretty much everything.

Down in the bottom left, literally underneath the paragraph about the Dopp, you can see the signature Aibo Tanaka 79.3. The name matches the printed artist credit in the bottom right.

The art in this article was drawn in March 1979... before the start of Mobile Suit Gundam's broadcast run on 7 April 1979. This is almost certainly promotional material that came out concurrently with the first few episodes of the TV series, meaning the artist was probably drawing solely from animation model reference with minimal actual knowledge of the story and setting. An incredibly early version of the lore and an artist who was probably flying blind about the story when drawing the art, hence the Dopp and Gaw being spacecraft and the inexplicable choice of Mars(?) as a backdrop instead of the moon.

It's Early Installment Weirdness in promotional art!

[MythSearcher]

... wrote a long, detailed response analyzing how the lore for the Gaw and Dopp has changed over the years to try to establish when it was published. Then I noticed that there was a clearly legible artist signature and date on this art, which the publisher of the article unhelpfully put text directly over.

The artist's name was familiar, and the date explained pretty much everything.

Down in the bottom left, literally underneath the paragraph about the Dopp, you can see the signature Aibo Tanaka 79.3. The name matches the printed artist credit in the bottom right.

The art in this article was drawn in March 1979... before the start of Mobile Suit Gundam's broadcast run on 7 April 1979. This is almost certainly promotional material that came out concurrently with the first few episodes of the TV series, meaning the artist was probably drawing solely from animation model reference with minimal actual knowledge of the story and setting. An incredibly early version of the lore and an artist who was probably flying blind about the story when drawing the art, hence the Dopp and Gaw being spacecraft and the inexplicable choice of Mars(?) as a backdrop instead of the moon.

It's Early Installment Weirdness in promotional art!

Yes, the artist is famous for drawing this kind of art in children magazines.
I just find it fun to share.

I recall there's a manga with a similar plot where Amuro had a very aggressive and almost punk like attitude where the Zeon launches the amphibious MS in space as well. In the early years, anything can happen, who cares about rationalisation.

[Mafty]

Is it ever stated where the Gau is manufactured? Zeon came from space; and the earth based mecha could be carried down on the ships, but what about the earthbound aircraft? Are they manufactured on earth after Zeon starts capturing factories? Or are they built in space and sent through the atmosphere?

[Seto Kaiba]

Is it ever stated where the Gau is manufactured? Zeon came from space; and the earth based mecha could be carried down on the ships, but what about the earthbound aircraft? Are they manufactured on earth after Zeon starts capturing factories? Or are they built in space and sent through the atmosphere?

Not that I can find... they frequently mention that all of Zeon's questionable aircraft designs were designed back on Side 3 and that all design and testing was done virtually because they have nowhere to actually test an aircraft. It's mentioned in writeups of the Dopp that prototyping of the Dopp was done on Earth (and went very poorly). It does seem likely that they were mass produced locally on Earth.

[MythSearcher]

Is it ever stated where the Gau is manufactured? Zeon came from space; and the earth based mecha could be carried down on the ships, but what about the earthbound aircraft? Are they manufactured on earth after Zeon starts capturing factories? Or are they built in space and sent through the atmosphere?

Without checking any sources, yet. But I do believe they do not have a craft that can safely drop a Gaw from space, and if they do, I am pretty sure we already have lots of entry of it everywhere. Landing something that big is going to also be very big, or at least we will have some type of "modified Gaw for reentry", which we never see.
I might be wrong though, the Zanzibar class is bigger than the Gaw and still have reentry capabilities, so the Gaw may also have it if Zeon really didn't care about efficiency. Too bad I wasn't quite interested in the Gaw and don't recall reading that entry in Gundam Officials(which likely will be one of the only two sources we have with a fairly long bit of writing about the Gaw, the other is the "File" series[Fact file and Perfect file].)