In a surprising turn of events, I actually upload something.  I was scrolling through my uploads a few days ago and realized that the last airship I built, the Hydra-class Battle Cruiser (I'm downgrading it to a destroyer following recent developments in both my airship concepts and building skills.) was uploaded in August of 2014.  Everything following has been either space or oceangoing ships.   This seemed a little odd, given my username is "AirshipsEverywhere."  It's like someone who only uploads airships saying he's a castle builder.  As a result, I took a break from the exosphere and threw together this fun little atmo job.  Technically a semirigid airship, since it lacks the structural ring girders of a rigid (zeppelin) even though it uses gas cells instead of just filling up the hull (DON'T CALL IT A BLIMP THAT'S A NONRIGID THERE'S A DIFFERENCE!) , the Hunter goes back to the classic roots of fictional steampunk warships; a contemporary (for the time) ocean vessel strapped in one way or another to a gas bag or zeppelin hull.  Sorry if the lore part of the description gets a little full of names,  I've been in a Skylord lore developing mood lately, so expect a full history blog for the UTS soon, as well as maybe a few creations from the other nations that share a continent with this enthusiastic world power.  Anyhoo, time for specs!

Specs:
Class: Hunter
Type: Destroyer Escort
First Flown: 2/10/1932 
Length: 83m 
Width: 21m 
Height: 37m 
Armament: 

• 4 Mk3 57mm cannons 
  
• 3 Mk42 Mod 3 Aerial Torpedoes 
  
• 1 20mm Bofors Anti-Aircraft Gun
  
• 2 Browning M2HB Machine Guns
  
• 2 AirArms Mk6 Close In Defense Systems (2 20mm Bofors Guns Per Turret)
  

Top Speed: 260 mph 
Powerplant: 3 Coal Boilers (For shipboard power)
Thrust: 4 Diesel Piston Engines Connected to Variable-Pitch Propellers
Lift: Multiple Electrium Gas Cells 
Displacement: 800  tons 
Commissioned Ships (As there are/were 250 in service I will only list the first eleven, which were the initial evaluation batch): 

• Skyship Hunter (SDDE-101) 
  
• Skyship Portshall (SDDE-102) 
  
• Skyship Overdale (SDDE-103) 
  
• Skyship Oakhurst (SDDE-104) 
  
• Skyship Southbrook (SDDE-105) 
  
• Skyship Hindmarsh (SDDE-106) 
  
• Skyship Foxmoor (SDDE-107) 
  
• Skyship Hazelhurst (SDDE-108) 
  
• Skyship Melcree (SDDE-109) 
  
• Skyship Oxham (SDDE-110)
  
• Skyhip Ashfield (SDDE-111) 
  

Crew: 50 (45 enlisted, 5 officers) 
Operating Ceiling: 35,000 feet 
Cost: $45 million Skylord Dollars 
Auxiliary Craft: None  


The Skylord Air Navy, the size of a normal oceangoing force, saw limited action internationally, due in part to isolationist Skylord feelings and also out of fear that airship technology would redefine human development.  While an Air Navy squadron annihilated a German zeppelin fleet on its way to bomb London once in World War One in one of the most comically one-sided engagements in world history (the official German story was that its machine gun-armed ships were lost in a storm instead of to 14-inch naval cannons.), the sheer success of that effort actually led Skylord leaders to back off their contributions.  Aside from this, the UTS was engaged in enough conflicts on its own continent that major contributions to international wars were impractical.  From the massive yet somewhat primitive fleet of Al'Thyr that threatened Skylord air superiority to hit-and-run attacks by Iyectan warships, the Air Navy had its hands full with dealing with nations that also exploited the ultra-light stable substance electrium, found solely on the continent of Minecraftia.  The Hunter class of destroyer escorts replaced the previous Vespin-class ships as a slightly larger, faster, and more heavily armed craft for convoy escort, scouting, and hit-and-run attacks.  Lightly armored, the Hunter relies on its small profile and aerial torpedoes, a sort of TOW missile designed to pierce airship hulls and then detonate inside them.  While electrium is not as explosive as hydrogen, the large holes the missiles create allow enough oxygen in prior to detonation for an explosion capable of tearing apart most ships from the inside.  This development came too late for World War I, but just in time for renewed hostilities with Al'Thyr, whose mineships were wreaking havoc on the old, slow, and naval-focused Vespins.  The Hunter, to the contrary, was modified to fit the threats, with heavier weapons to deal with large ships and lighter machine guns to engage mineships.  Included in the innovations of the ship was the AirArms Mk6 Close-In Weapons System, an initially visually guided remote control turret with two 20mm Bofors guns.  By the early 1940s they would be integrated with radar to form essentially an early Phalanx, albeit with a much slower engagement time and rate of fire.  The Hunter, while slightly larger than the ship it replaced, was still not a spacious vessel, and so they were not as glamorous a posting as a battleship or carrier.  While officers received cramped quarters, enlisted crewmen had no quarters of their own and thus pitched their racks wherever they could find room.  The crews of these larger ships, however, would grow to love their little companions, who would sweep for mineships that could be deadly to larger ships of the line, provide scouting and gunnery information to the fire control directors on the big boys, and keep enemy vessels busy engaging a zerg rush of escorts as the battleships and cruisers sighted in their guns.

The first notable incident that proved the success of the Hunter would come soon after hostilities with Al'Thyr blossomed into war in October of 1932.  A squadron of Skylord battleships was patrolling the border of Al'Thyr when they came under attack by almost one hundred mineships.  In earlier times, these lightly-armored mineships, armed with a single cannon and explosives, could cause serious damage to even a battleship, puncturing gas cells and ballast tanks, destroying smaller weapons emplacements, and taking out command and control systems like radar and gunnery directors.  Smaller ships had even worse luck, as the cannon was capable of sinking most Skylord light vessels,  Fortunately for this squadron, it was protected by the Skyships Hunter, Foxmoor, and Ashfield, still part of the initial evaluation order and on exercise with the battleships.  The escort screen stumbled across several mineships before the attack, and immediately engaged, alerting the battleships.  In a fierce confrontation, the mineships were forced to retreat after losing nearly three quarters of their number, many to the escorts.  Skylord losses were relatively light, with the Foxmoor requiring drydock time for repairs and the battleship Indomitable taking heavy damage from several suicide mineships.  Deeply impressed, the Air Navy immediately ordered more, forming a fleet numbering 250 destroyer escorts that quickly swept the skies of Al'Thyrian mineships and forced them to fight the UTS warship to warship, something the Skylords excelled at.  Several examples were requested by the neighboring Kingdom of Corace, and the New Lunar Republic received fifty vessels for their own fleet, done up in black and navy blue fabric as the Incubus-class corvette.  While impressive, the ship is not perfect.  Lightly armored and more suited for broadsides, the ship is poorly covered in the bow, with only two 57mm cannons capable of shooting anything coming from the front.  The limited interior space means they have very short ranges compared to the well-supplied larger combatants, and the only weapon they have capable of destroying larger ships runs out after three shots.  Fortunately, a combination of strategy, capabilities, and combined arms has rendered most of these issues mere annoyances instead of ship-killing flaws.

The age of the lighter-than-air Skylord warship officially came to a close in mid-2004, two months after the Skyship Indomitable (SCB-97) was launched.  While the Hunter was phased out of service in 1953 for a jet-powered missile-armed successor, several remained in the reserve fleets well into the late 20th Century.  The last Hunter-class was retired from reserve service on February 16th, 2007 and joined the ranks of museum ships docked with Skybase 1, including several other Hunters.  Four, including the former Foxmoor and Southbrook, have been fully restored in private ownership and serve as personal airships.  The plucky little vessel had a distinguished career as a background ship, never reaching the awe-inspiring fame of the great battleships, heavy cruisers, and carriers nor the distinguished honor of the bravest destroyers, but they were still indispensable to the Skylord Air Navy.  They are succeeded in spirit by the heavier-than-air Vulture-class guided missile frigates currently serving in the Air Navy's modern mechanized fleet.