My Shipyard

- Cisne Branco Class Aircraft Carrier -

# Ship Version

After the failure of the project Teiuc II of aircraft carriers, developed by the Aztec province, some officers of the Latin Empire Navy started to rethink their approach with aircraft carriers and reached the conclusion that their investment would be much better if focused on their heavy-punching and resilient battleships rather than on the still-emerging aircraft carriers. Those who opposed this were quite confident that the carriers would take over the battleships eventually, but being the minority, they were outvoted and further existing projects for aircraft carriers were canceled for the time being. That proved a costly mistake for the Latin Empire, as a few years later the carriers around the globe started to show off their battle capabilities in small wars like the ones waged by the Sun Empire and Rome Empire. Not wanting to stay behind, the Latin Empire created a monthly funding project that should go equally to each province and should be used especially for aircraft carriers development, but in a devious scheme, the Brasa province managed to redirect this money mostly to themselves, allowing them to much quickly develop an aircraft carrier class, the Cisne Branco, with a single warship built, of the same name as the class. After this scheme was discovered, the aircraft carrier was escorted to the Plata province and there it should wait until a decision was taken about the actions of the Brasa province, possibly resulting in either a fine for all the redirected money or the giveaway of the carrier to another province. After the Latin Empire Civil War ended, in which Cisne Branco was released temporarily to fight for Plata and Brasa's cause, and motivated by the destruction such a war brought, the emperors of the Latin Empire provinces finally made a decision about the carrier: Brasa could keep the aircraft carrier, but would have to pay a fine for all the redirected money.

In armaments, Cisne Branco had two twin mounts of 15.2 cm guns, four twin mounts of 13 cm dual-purpose guns, eight triple mounts of 27 mm AA guns, and 14 single mounts of 7.7 mm AA guns. The guns were rather weak to properly defend the aircraft carrier: not only they were a little outdated, but were also better for aiming and fighting vessels rather than aircraft, rendering the carrier exposed to any aerial threat that enemies could send. In other words, Cisne Branco needed to be either escorted, preferentially, by AA specialized warships or always be under the CAP of its own fighters, but it had a limited airwing aboard, caused by poor planning and lack of experience that Brasa had with aircraft carriers. In total, it could carry up to 60 aircraft, usually divided equally between torpedo bombers, dive bombers, and fighters, far worse when compared to the Yama, Stars, and Ariana classes of aircraft carriers which all had 100 or more aircraft. The hugest disappointment was, however, when Cisne Branco was compared to Princess, a converted class of aircraft carriers that still had a better aircraft capacity of 72 planes. The only good thing about the carrier was the armor and the speed. The former proved to be quite tough to penetrate, especially in the essential areas such as the hangar, the engine room, and the magazine. The latter, meanwhile, had enough strength to speed up the warship to 33.4 knots at best.

After thoughtful consideration, during the Civil War of the Latin Empire, Brasa's officers agreed to retrofit the carrier with a single focus on mind: expanding the aircraft capabilities. For reaching such a purpose, the Brasa province developed new cruisers and destroyers that would work as the carrier's escort, while the carrier itself would lose a good part of its armament. The remaining weaponry aboard were two twin mounts of 13 cm dual-purpose guns, one twin mount of 15.5 cm guns, four triple mounts of 27 mm AA guns, and only four single mounts of 7.7 mm AA guns. The armor was also greatly reduced, making the warship quite fragile, but still able to hold off against destroyer-caliber shells at the very least, but vulnerable areas were the ones that suffered the most. Luckily, the engine room was also reduced in size, as the engines were replaced by worse but smaller and harder-to-hit ones that could speed up the carrier to 29.7 knots only. The results were quite clear, the aircraft capacity was increased to 96, usually being 32 fighters, 32 dive bombers, and 32 torpedo bombers.