ALL the variants of the Irish-class battleship (Gundam Lore)

[@gundamfacts]

//Commentaries and used sources\\ (by Marco and Cod) (Commentaries): - We actually don't exactly know what the underbarrels of the Irish secondary turrets are for, with two contending explanations having being brought out across the years. - The first, brought around 2005 in old (and now defunct) japanese blogs, is the one displayed in the video, with the barrels being interpreted as precisions sensors/antennas, similar to the other two attached on the bridge (which the Areion redesigned and confirmed as antennas), meant to better track mobile suits and support the accuracy of the turret over it. - The other one (pioneered in MAHQ around 2014) instead theorizes that these barrels would actually be small caliber beam guns/ laser cannons, and would be the actual AA defences of the Irish, with the entire subplot about the Irish having poor anti-MS defences being more about these AA weapons providing bad coverage (as they can only turn via the rotation of the whole turret) rather than the Irish lacking any type of defence. This theory is supported by the few seconds of depiction of the Echalote in the Narrative movie (where you can see clearly beam rays being fired from these barrels as well), but can be easily criticized as these beam turrets have never been listed in any of the extensive armament lists (in any kind of source) of neither the Irish, neither the Argama (that shares the same turrets), while also directly conflicting with the Areion's reasons of existence in the first place (Non exhaustive list of used sources): - Comprehensive Gundam Encyclopedia [2007] - Mobile Suit Gundam Mechanics Encyclopedia [1991] - Mobile Suit Gundam - Ship & Aerospace Plane Encyclopedia [2010] - AoZ Traitor to Destiny Visual Book Complete File [2013] - Gundam F90 manga [1990] - Gundam F90FF manga series [2019] - Mobile Suit Gundam: Gihren's Greed: War of Independence [2003] - Ecole du Ciel manga [2001] - Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ Side Story: Mirage of Zeon manga [2007] (for more transparency, i only own the first volume of the series, so I had to follow descriptions from japanese blogs to get the informations of what happened to the Moustache)

[@leoornstein3963]

"Sorry, I can't give you anti-air defenses. Come back when you're a little, mmm, richer." Anaheim Electronics.

[@gundamfacts]

Would normally agree, but Mr Wong interactions in the early episodes of Zeta seem to hint that AE put some lavish budget and effort in the Irish (far less than the Argama but still), notably as a way to see how far they could go in building literal battleships under the Federation's nose.

[@leoornstein3963]

@gundamfacts I need to watch Zeta again man. It's been years since the last time I watched it.

[@thefatking3154]

Mobile suits are cool, but I love to see attention given to the ships!

[@Swindle1984]

As do I. I enjoy collecting the Cosmo Fleet line of ship models from Gundam. In the regular (roughly Matchbox car sized) model series, so far I have: Musai-class Falmel, Musai-class Late Production Type Peer Gynt, Zanzibar, Zanzibar II-class Lilli Marlene, Gwazine, Gwadan, Rewloola (CCA version), Alexandria, Alexandria-class Hario, Dogosse Giar, White Base, Argama, Radish, Birmingham, Salamis, and Papua, and in the 6" size model series I have the Rewloola (Sleeves version with Neo Zeong) and Nahel Argama. I find it fascinating that MS are often obsolete withing just a couple years or even months, yet ships in UC Gundam remain viable for decades.

[@gundamfacts]

UC Ships deserve so much love

[@LrdBxRck]

You are so right! I can understand mobile suits out classing ships in OYW. But it seemed they purposely kept them under power to keep from think of new strategies to deal with them. For instance I like the Sinanju vs the general revel but the Revel should have just deployed shields and countered the paint should have never be scratched.

[@LrdBxRck]

@Swindle1984 ships in Gundam are kept in service because of lazy writing. They never get the upgrades needed to make them viable and are treated as mobile suit dispensers. The fleet comp should have just been the beehive with 2 Columbus class escorts with 4 GP03 mobile armors.

[@KyussTheGreat]

I think it makes it more realistic to keep ships around forever in gundam. That’s what navies try to do in real life so why shouldn’t space navies do the same? Plus the beehive was a Columbus class ship and carriers escorting carriers seems redundant. The salamis class would be good escort options if they had mobile shout hangers, but even so they could still be outfitted for a support role of some sort in the fleet. GPO3 was designed as an area denial weapon, not a fleet escort. And I’m pretty sure it was kinda pricy to produce as well. Why not get 3 or 4 grunts for the price of one GP03? 4 of them for just one carrier ship sounds like over kill anyways.

[@inquisitorgarza312]

Without newer battleships mobile suits will not be able to perform as well as they should, and that means that these ships had to be design to face new challenges that any factions has to face. Though I would say that I always had a very soft spot for warships considering they are always treated as glorified taxis for the mobile suits rather than the vital home base for them to continue to function.

[@gundamfacts]

"Glorified Taxis". That's an incredibly spot on statement for a lot of early UC ships. You get light cruiser getting MS kills all the time in Late UC while the Dogosse Gier kill a single Nemo with its AA defenses on the entirety of Zeta

[@DIEGhostfish]

The Irish is, if anything thr Argama's leaner, meaner brother. More effective catapults and more guns, but the gravity block is limited to medical

[@gundamfacts]

In the Irish class, we all need to float around

[@DIEGhostfish]

I have my issues with Zeta Define's rewrites and redesigns, but showing off the Irish itself was great, and revealing it was Roux's flagship for the Gryps conflict was cool.

[@gundamfacts]

Yeah that was a good addition for sûre

[@ZeroDarkness-]

And Kayra on same team too right?

[@SlimTheydy]

IRELAND MENTIONED WOOOOOOO

[@jayzee9164]

another battleship, another story. do we have a explanation about the pegasus class metioned in opening of Cucuruz Island?

[@gabm2048]

in the origin continuty the Peagsus class was produce in a larger scale than the OG timeline.. the one we see on CI are only unmmaed MP pegasus class.

[@jayzee9164]

@gabm2048 MP means?

[@CheemsofRegret]

​@@jayzee9164Mass Production

[@McLeod917]

​@@jayzee9164mass produced

[@supercell615]

​@@jayzee9164 Mass Production

[@jamesnoble3905]

A fantastic vid. The theories on why no dedicated AA assets was quite enlightening.

[@wyrmshogun5245]

One of my favorite ships

[@memberofthewatchercouncil1738]

YES YES YES YES... I was about to sleep, but screw sleeping I gotta watch this first.

[@gundamfacts]

Time to eat your vegetables (Radishes)

[@Cheese334]

First time I saw the Irish class ship was in DWG 1, when I was still processing what Gundam was, and all its shows in the franchise. And I immediately fell in love with it. Something about the design and look. I quickly likedit much more than the Argama. 😂

[@HamanKarn567]

I always liked the Radish. Captain Henken was also a really cool character.

[@gundamfacts]

Bekkener was a real one for sure

[@spikmaster18]

Nice informative & entertaining video about UC Gundam lstuff. Also as someone from Indonesia you're do good job for the Indo sub, respect for you Gundam Facts ❤

[@gundamfacts]

Had to tweak some things to make it work

[@spikmaster18]

@@gundamfacts So far so good imo, keep up the good work

[@justinbrown9901]

Can you do a video about the uniforms and small arms of Zeon and federation infantry of the one year war?

[@clpfox470]

I think I remember seeing fan concept art of the irish class as a very heavy magellan refit of sorts

[@gundamfacts]

I think I remember that one, it came with a Argama redesigned as well

[@dexexmachinatu4151]

Man, I wish they didn't wait until CCA to mass produce new Motheships after Zeta. The aircraft carrier vibes they have are so good. They should've refit the Salamis-kais with side hangars and flight deck imo.

[@robertdrexel2043]

There are also some fanon redesigns of the Irish Class which does add Anti-Air/Anti-MS Defenses, along with someone modifiying, or hand building, a model of such a design. I had forgotten about the Aerion which does have all of those anti-air defenses on it, which now I am looking at it again also look remarkablely similar to the ones on the Nahel Argama refit, which makes sense as you said it uses prototye, first production type, MP turrets used by the Clop/Calium and the Nahal Argama. I am now wondering if it has some sort of re-entry craft, due to it being not able to enter atmosphere unlike the regular Argama class due you mentioning it sporting an amphibious assault craft. That said! Where actually does the mobile suits on the Irish Class come from the hangar to the catapults. The Aerion looks like it has doors "behind" the catapults, but the canon Irish class has doors along where the track of the catapult ends along either side of the twin catapults.

[@LeoMtz-ni2lb]

Ey I think You gotta do a development history about the Gundam F90, that would be pretty long but an amazing adventure not gonna lie

[@Swindle1984]

It's not pronounced Ee-van-hway, but Eye-van-hoe. Very English, almost certainly a reference to the novel of the same name, and hearing the French pronunciation is a treat. Given how many weird Gundam names we get in English because of the transliteration of Japanese pronunciations of English or German words (Sturm Dias = Schuzrum Dias, Full Vernier = Full Burneren), I can only imagine how wild it gets translated into French. I imagine French localizers are both sticklers for the "official" names of things, and follow the French tendency for fast-flowing, soft consonants rather than harsher, staccato consonants like German or Japanese, resulting in some unique pronunciations. You could do an entire video on Gundam localizations in different languages, in fact, and I would find the whole thing intensely fascinating.

[@NeoXNeo2007]

This was Awesome

[@gundamfacts]

Glad you liked it

[@shinju112]

Why the Irish is actually a peak ship design the video.

[@rolandjaycutter3504]

Now we need a video on the Salamis class and we'll have all the early mainline ships.

[@gundamfacts]

@@rolandjaycutter3504 bro forgot the Argama, Musai, Dolos, Chivay, Alexandria , Pegasus and Papua

[@rolandjaycutter3504]

@@gundamfacts Oh shit, I was thinking another channel and yours were the same. Sorry.

[@jonathana607]

Gundam ships need more love in the form of model kits

[@Satobraze-mw1xv]

A winner in my books due to having Irish as a class name. IRELAND

[@Trip1443]

Honestly, ditching heavy canons and adding more point defense weapons and mobile suit capacity would be a much better use of resources. IRL, carriers made destroyers obsolete instead relying on aircraft to reach out and touch the enemies. Also, ship to ship combat in the show is depicted as being MUCH closer than what it actually be IRL. If you have combat air patrols running 24/7 (as screen defense but also to allow pilots to maintain their flight hours) the idea that ships need big guns to destroy ships would be obsolete. Realistically, most combat would be ship vs mobile suit rather than ship to ship

[@gilbat1]

I know this is a tangent, but I'm really fascinated by the presence of laser weaponry in UC. They appear fairly frequently within the setting, but usually in a secondary or niche role. I can't think of any MS that use a laser as their primary weapon for example, it's always some flavor of beam weapon. The fact they keep showing up means they're clearly useful as a weapons system, but they're also clearly not useful enough to be a mainstay like mega particle or kinetic weapons are. What specifically keeps them from being more common? Is it an issue of power consumption? Are they too heavy? Do they require specialized components that are too maintenance intensive? There's also the related question of why we don't see beam weapons used in the anti-MS role for warships. Beam rifles have pretty consistently proven that they're effective at taking down mobile suits, and supporting rapid/sustained fire shouldn't be an issue if you can hook them up directly to the ship's reactors and power supply. In principle there's no reason a ship designer couldn't develop some sort of AA beam turret by converting say, a pair of Jegan beam rifles (or possibly beam machine guns like those used by the Gelgoog Jaeger or Gear Doga) into a turret mount. Maybe lasers are more effective in the role? But again, if that's the case then why do we see laser weapons so rarely? It leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Again, I realize all of this is kind of off topic, but you did (tangentially) bring up the concept in the course of the video. Edit: Ooh neat, Dreissen is up next.

[@eight-cloudspurple5871]

In UC there is a technology called "semi-transparent coating" can nullify lasers by reflecting the various wavelengths and essentially scatter the energy of the laser. Its the basis for the later anti-beam coating. Although, if such technology does exist, radar would never have played any prominent role even BEFORE minovsky particles is discovered. Radar work by shining radio waves on a target, and the target will reflect the waves back allowing a receiver to "detect" the target presence. A coating that can scatter electromagnetic radiation(such as radiowave, light, laser etc etc) will already make Radar redundant, since the coating would not reflect any radio-wave back to a receiver. So the actual reason is lasers are impossible to dodge since they move at speed of light, the showrunners dont want to include them in meaningful capacity.

[@gilbat1]

@@eight-cloudspurple5871 That makes sense, but at that point we circle back around to "if laser weapons don't fit either the interests of the showrunners or the practical in-universe demands of the setting, then why are they even a thing? Why not just use beam weapons in those roles instead?" Again, you wouldn't think it would be that difficult to develop dual-purpose beam turrets, similar to the heavy AA/light anti-surface guns we see on historical warships. For your point about radar, it could be that the coating is only effective at scattering electromagnetic radiation within a certain range of wavelengths. Maybe it's optimized to reflect in the IR to UV frequencies since those are where lasers operate, and radio waves are large and slow enough that they can pass through without being disrupted? I suspect the true answer to this might be that nobody responsible for making these decisions thought people 40 years later would be examining things at this level, and just went with what sounded cool. Edit: Technically you COULD dodge laser weapons if battles happened over a long enough distance. If engagement ranges were measured in light-seconds for example, the target would have time to see the incoming beam and take evasive action (assuming the ship is maneuverable enough). Though of course whether you could develop sensors and fire control systems able to accurately aim a weapon with a reasonable chance of actually hitting anything at those distances is also a consideration.

[@eight-cloudspurple5871]

@@gilbat1 The coating has to work in a wide spectrum of EM radiation I assume, otherwise the coating would be rather pointless against x-ray laser, microwave laser, or the hypothetical gamma ray laser.

[@gilbat1]

@@eight-cloudspurple5871 That's a fair point, though I guess it's also dependent on what kind of lasers are in use to begin with. If for example x-ray lasers aren't practical as weapons systems within the setting, then there probably wouldn't be much incentive to develop a coating to protect against them. It would make more sense to develop a specialized coating that better protects against the types of lasers actually in use. There's not much point developing a countermeasure to a weapon your enemies aren't using when you could be countering the ones they are.

[@davegravel882]

Hope you do the Nu gundam and it's variants next

[@gundamfacts]

Will have to someday

[@danielchew8739]

I feel that the Irish -Class can be considered a Battlecruiser. Fast, having the firepower of a true Battleship, however lack the protection and durability of the latter.

[@huntermad5668]

Not really, it is just a late war battleship, as fast as a pre war battle cruiser without the lack of armor. It is only outclassed by the mega ship of neo Zeon

[@lucafabbrini6710]

Well we can say that Aereion is an Irish Refit? And the beam turret are needed cause they changed the secondary turrets with newone without the second barrel for AA?

[@MiguelCuevas-m2y]

YES!!

[@TheBigExclusive]

I cannot believe the Irish lacks any anti-air or anti-mobile suit turrets. That's ridiculous.

[@nazotech7590]

What became of the AUEG after the Neo Zeon War?

[@ZeroDarkness-]

Likely absorbed into Karaba or Londo Bell and some probably joining Sleeves

[@MrPatriot112]

Not a bad ship, despite the flaws. And it sucks only one variant existed. As for why they painted the Aerion white instead of of black like it's namesake? ......Titans. Though they could've added a black trim. Overall, good review!

[@grandwall686]

Plss do gundam seed/destiny ships as well,

[@stephenemery8831]

Second like. Second comment.