HOME | DD

Description

NOTE - I'm not doing the mecha of the Gundam multiverse; just the spacecraft. This is Mandel's Fighting Starships after all, not Mandel's Fighting Mecha. I'll let someone else take on that particular topic. (REM)

--------------------

XPS port by Metalscourge18XD of the GMOD version by Blaze, who by his own account ripped and ported them himself from various Gundam franchise video games. Magellan originally created by Kunio Okawara for the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime TV series and subsequently reused (sometimes in modified form) for later installments in the long-running Gundam anime franchise. Preview picture posed in XNALara XPS. You can get the XPS version from Metalscourge18XD's dA page at the link below:

Before we begin, let's hear the original Gundam theme, courtesy of YouTube!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GplTzl…

Magellan was the first "new technology" space battleship class fielded by the Earth Federation following the Minovsky physics revolution, and not long before the One Year War with the Principality of Zeon. It was the bigger brother of Salamis and class ship Magellan entered service later in the same year as Salamis. Magellan was the most powerful class of spacegoing capital ships in the Earth Federation's space fleet at the time, although events early in the One Year War (most notably the Battle of Luon) coupled with the introduction of mobile suit technology by Zeon and disasterous losses in combat because of that rendered it obsolete overnight. After that most surviving stock Magellans were relegated to combat fire support, surface and space bombardment, and other lower-tier support and auxiliary roles. Those that survived the war would continue to soldier on in these roles, as well as performing standard patrol duties in order to free better Earth Federation starships for other missions, until they were eventually retired due to age and wear from use.

It should also be noted that Magellan was old enough to have been initially deployed with old-fashioned projectile weapons as its armament, just as was Salamis and other older Earth Federation classes. The entire class began undergoing refits with mega particle cannons and other such beam weaponry as soon as those technologies were developed. This weapons refitting process had not yet quite been completed when the One Year War broke out, with unrefitted examples still in service hastily pulled for refitting and those undergoing refits having them completed and returned to service as soon as possible. Successive variants and spin-offs were armed with beam weaponry while building and thus had no need for this technology to be backfitted as did the original Magellan.

Magellan proved successful enough, despite its known flaws, that it would serve as the starting point or design basis for several subsequent Earth Federation capital starship classes, which eventually culminated in the even more massive and far more capable Ra Cailum class (see separate entry). There were also at least three major variations on Magellan during its service lifetime. Magellan Kai was a wartime refit variant that attempted to address its worst deficiencies, although it still couldn't support Federation RG-type mobile suit operations. Birmingham was its immediate "all big gun" successor, with all of Magellan Kai's improvements and more incorporated into an enlarged and somewhat redesigned hull, even though it was still incapable of supporting mobile suit operations save in a very limited way. It was the darling of the old "all big gun" school advocates in the Earth Federation admiralty, and got used a lot as an Earth Federation fleet flagship both during and after the war because of this. Trafalgar was the most radical revision of all and was actually based on a Magellan add-on concept developed before the One Year War. It more or less nested a Magellan or Magellan Kai inside a specially built and even larger dual open-ended hangar bay frame capable of operating up to twelve (12) fully loaded standard assault craft, and which was later refitted during the war (out of need) to also support mobile suit combat operations. I will be talking more about Birmingham and Trafalgar later in their own separate entires.

Magellan is canon in almost all threads of the Gundam multiverse, given that it was created for the original Gundam TV series. Some Magellan variants may be specific to selected Gundam multiverse threads (Trafalgar in particular); please check the data on the particular media in question where said variant is used.

ASIDE 1 - The later use of Magellan as a bombardment ship echoes the way everyone who had them on both sides used some of their older battleships during World War II. Specific examples include the old Standards of the Americans and the two pre-dreadnought linenschiff of the Germans, but there are others.

ASIDE 2 - I'm using the romanizations of the various Gundam names and terms that were common during the initial batch of video releases here in the States prior to the turn of the millennium, as that is how I was introduced to Gundam at the time. I promise to delete any Comments and possibly use my banhammer on anyone who insists on making an ass of themselves about my spellings. Clear?

Description

NOTE - I'm not doing the mecha of the Gundam multiverse; just the spacecraft. This is Mandel's Fighting Starships after all, not Mandel's Fighting Mecha. I'll let someone else take on that particular topic. (REM)

--------------------

XPS port by Metalscourge18XD of the GMOD version by Blaze, who by his own account ripped and ported them himself from various Gundam franchise video games. Magellan originally created by Kunio Okawara for the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime TV series and subsequently reused (sometimes in modified form) for later installments in the long-running Gundam anime franchise. Preview picture posed in XNALara XPS. You can get the XPS version from Metalscourge18XD's dA page at the link below:

Before we begin, let's hear the original Gundam theme, courtesy of YouTube!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GplTzl…

Magellan was the first "new technology" space battleship class fielded by the Earth Federation following the Minovsky physics revolution, and not long before the One Year War with the Principality of Zeon. It was the bigger brother of Salamis and class ship Magellan entered service later in the same year as Salamis. Magellan was the most powerful class of spacegoing capital ships in the Earth Federation's space fleet at the time, although events early in the One Year War (most notably the Battle of Luon) coupled with the introduction of mobile suit technology by Zeon and disasterous losses in combat because of that rendered it obsolete overnight. After that most surviving stock Magellans were relegated to combat fire support, surface and space bombardment, and other lower-tier support and auxiliary roles. Those that survived the war would continue to soldier on in these roles, as well as performing standard patrol duties in order to free better Earth Federation starships for other missions, until they were eventually retired due to age and wear from use.

It should also be noted that Magellan was old enough to have been initially deployed with old-fashioned projectile weapons as its armament, just as was Salamis and other older Earth Federation classes. The entire class began undergoing refits with mega particle cannons and other such beam weaponry as soon as those technologies were developed. This weapons refitting process had not yet quite been completed when the One Year War broke out, with unrefitted examples still in service hastily pulled for refitting and those undergoing refits having them completed and returned to service as soon as possible. Successive variants and spin-offs were armed with beam weaponry while building and thus had no need for this technology to be backfitted as did the original Magellan.

Magellan proved successful enough, despite its known flaws, that it would serve as the starting point or design basis for several subsequent Earth Federation capital starship classes, which eventually culminated in the even more massive and far more capable Ra Cailum class (see separate entry). There were also at least three major variations on Magellan during its service lifetime. Magellan Kai was a wartime refit variant that attempted to address its worst deficiencies, although it still couldn't support Federation RG-type mobile suit operations. Birmingham was its immediate "all big gun" successor, with all of Magellan Kai's improvements and more incorporated into an enlarged and somewhat redesigned hull, even though it was still incapable of supporting mobile suit operations save in a very limited way. It was the darling of the old "all big gun" school advocates in the Earth Federation admiralty, and got used a lot as an Earth Federation fleet flagship both during and after the war because of this. Trafalgar was the most radical revision of all and was actually based on a Magellan add-on concept developed before the One Year War. It more or less nested a Magellan or Magellan Kai inside a specially built and even larger dual open-ended hangar bay frame capable of operating up to twelve (12) fully loaded standard assault craft, and which was later refitted during the war (out of need) to also support mobile suit combat operations. I will be talking more about Birmingham and Trafalgar later in their own separate entires.

Magellan is canon in almost all threads of the Gundam multiverse, given that it was created for the original Gundam TV series. Some Magellan variants may be specific to selected Gundam multiverse threads (Trafalgar in particular); please check the data on the particular media in question where said variant is used.

ASIDE 1 - The later use of Magellan as a bombardment ship echoes the way everyone who had them on both sides used some of their older battleships during World War II. Specific examples include the old Standards of the Americans and the two pre-dreadnought linenschiff of the Germans, but there are others.

ASIDE 2 - I'm using the romanizations of the various Gundam names and terms that were common during the initial batch of video releases here in the States prior to the turn of the millennium, as that is how I was introduced to Gundam at the time. I promise to delete any Comments and possibly use my banhammer on anyone who insists on making an ass of themselves about my spellings. Clear?