The Romulans, on the eve of the general war realized that they had several problems.

1) The D4 based Smarba ships were unable to be upgraded further. Their lower powered engines could not maintain squadron speed in tactical environments while arming weapons.

2) The Federation fighter and bomber presence had brought unheard size to drone waves that had proven themselves to be very difficult to deal with.

IN an attempt to deal with both of these problems at least one KD4 was converted to a specialist carrier that traded out all its heavy weapons for a maximum loadout of all superiority fighters (which don't take large amounts of power to arm/ reload). It should be noted that this was a change from the normal Romulan fighter assignment practice.

This ship was destroyed while operating near the Romulan/ Federation/ Tholian border shortly after the Day of the Eagle...

It never had a formal escort assigned though it had been observed operating with several different small escorts.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Saturday, August 28, 2010 - 05:47 pm: Edit

1.) Mixed fighter groups on KRs is a mixed history. The KRV (real), K10V (conjectural), K10S (conjectural), P-V (conjectural), P-VA (conjectural), and KRU (conjectural) had them, but the K7V (conjectural), KDV (conjectural), K10R (conjectural), KWV (conjectural) all had pure superiority squadrons. So there is no particular reason a KD4U design would have to have a pure superiority fighter group, and no particular reason it would have to have a mixed fighter group. Superiority fighters are, however, the best fit for the drone defense mission, and if used on the Gorn or ISC fronts, for the fighter defense mission, i.e., keep the plasma-F armed fighters from getting to attack range.

2.) The reason for building such a ship is another matter. Speed 25 would work well if the ship was supporting SNAs, BHs, and WEs instead of other KRs or hawks. The threat of Federation drones was enough to lead to the "R" refit.

3.) The major problem is that in the period proposed, neither Federation drones nor Gorn fighter strikes are all that much of a problem. At least not enough to justify the ship. You might do better to propose it as a late war desperation conversion, done when actual large scale drone strikes by the Federation were becoming an increasing problem,and when faster Gorn fighters were more of a problem. Perhaps the ship was lost in Operation Remus, or after Operation Remus.

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Saturday, August 28, 2010 - 08:05 pm: Edit

I'd have to agree w/ Mike Grafton about the size of the fighter squadron. A D4 hull can ONLY support 10 fighters (The Klingon LDV).

It keeps 4xDisruptors, so you could move some stuff around to enlarge the fighter bays. So you might be able to squeeze in 14-16 maybe in the aft hull.

So this is going to be a WEAK "Interdiction" Carrier.