Imperial Navy

From Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum
(Redirected from Navis Imperialis)
Jump to: navigation, search
Fleets of the Galaxy : Imperial Navy • Merchant Fleet • Space Marine Fleet • Adeptus Mechanicus Fleet • Chaos Fleet • Eldar Fleet • Dark Eldar Fleet • Ork Fleet • Tyranid Fleet • Necron Fleet • Tau Fleet • Tau Merchant Fleet • Leagues of Votann Fleet

And of all your works, greatest are these vessels, for they carry the blessed into righteous battle

- Imperial Navy litany[20a]


Navis Imperialis
(Imperial Navy)
FleetSymbol.jpg
Imperial Navy symbol
Parent Agency: Imperial Fleet
Headquarters: Naval Headquarters, Terra
Leader: Lord High Admiral of the Imperial Navy
Established: Post-Horus Heresy, M31 (preceded by the Imperialis Armada)

The Imperial Navy, or Navis Imperialis[15] in High Gothic, is one of the armed forces employed by the Imperium. While the Astra Militarum (or Imperial Guard) is responsible for the Imperium's ground forces, the Imperial Navy is responsible for the fleets of warships that soar between the stars and planets in the Imperium as well as engaging threats both inside and outside the Imperium's borders. The Imperial Navy is the military arm of the Imperial Fleet[1] and was, until its separation after the Horus Heresy, a branch of the Imperial Army.

Origins

An Imperial Navy warfleet[21]

During the early Imperium in the Great Crusade-era, the Imperial Navy was originally a subbranch of the Imperial Army known as the Imperialis Armada. During this time, the Imperialis Armada was primarily used for the defence of Imperial space while planetary invasion was left to the fleets of the Legiones Astartes.[19] However, after the devastating Horus Heresy, which saw widespread rebellion from within the Army, Lord Commander of the Imperium Roboute Guilliman felt it prudent to separate the Army and Navy in order to lessen the threat of future insurrections.[17][18]

Organisation

SegGalacticPic.jpg

Fleet Structure

The Imperial Navy is organised into five fleets, each assigned to one of the Segmentae Majoris. Each fleet is named for the Segmentum in which it is based, such as the Battlefleet Solar.

These fleets are then subdivided into smaller fleets patrolling individual sectors and subsectors, and are also generally named after the area they safeguard. For example, Battlefleet Gothic protects the Gothic Sector.

The Imperial Navy's administrative center is the Naval Headquarters on Terra.[9]

Fleet Headquarters

Fleet Personnel

A Navy officer
Main article: Imperial Navy Hierarchy

The Imperial Navy is headed by the Lord High Admiral of the Imperial Navy, who is often one of the High Lords of Terra. He oversees five Segmentum Lord High Admirals.

Below the Lord Admirals are various Sector and Battlefleet commanders, then individual ship Captains and junior officers, and finally a myriad array of Non-Commissioned Officers. The Imperial Navy has a corps of Commissars that oversee the morale and discipline of Naval personnel, known as the Fleet Commissariat.[6]

The Imperial Navy also operates Naval Security Battalions, also known as Naval Armsmen[6]. These consist of units of armed soldiers intended to put down mutinies, board enemy ships, and protect Imperial Navy installations. Typically, Naval Security troopers are equipped with black body armour and shotguns.[4]

Imperial Navy vessels require personnel from other Imperial elements to function. These include Navigators from the Navis Nobilite for navigation[13], Astropaths for interstellar communication[14], and Tech-Priests from the Adeptus Mechanicus for higher maintenance[14]. One of the foremost duties of the Navy is to transport the Imperial Guard to warzones, and as such, every Navy vessel, no matter how small, will sport some means of training deck to accommodate them.[11b]

The lowest level of personnel in the Navy hierarchy are bondsmen, who are little more than slaves. Alongside Servitors, these poor souls, organised into Press Gangs[25] undertake the most thankless and dangerous tasks on a vessel. Bondsmen are acquired by various means, such as rounding up criminals or unsavory elements of Imperial society or simply being born into their status aboard a vessel. Other times, if a ship is low on such menials they may round up the nearest bystanders at random on the nearest world.[25] Bondsmen's duties include cleaning, hauling ammunition into weapons chambers, shoveling fuel, and manual labor. Working long hours and only fed meager rations, Bondsmen are met with brutal discipline should they protest their status.[11a]

Vessels

Main article: Imperial Navy Vessels (List)
Imperial Navy workers load a Torpedo into its firing tube[12]

The Imperial Navy consists of millions of heavily armoured and armed spaceships, both warp-capable and system-bound. While the interstellar vessels are the most famous, the Navy also operates sublight system defence boats, orbital defence stations, star forts and even planetary-based defence lasers and missile silos.[26] The Imperial Navy deploys a vast diversity of vessel types, from one-man attack fighters to kilometers-long Battleships.

Imperial Navy vessels[27]

Construction of Imperial Navy warships is complicated, obscenely expensive, and often takes place over decades or even centuries. The vast majority of construction is done in orbital shipyards by the Adeptus Mechanicus, but the Navy itself sends specialist technicians to oversee certain critical elements. Other such specialist are sent by the Departmento Munitorum and Administratum to give ritual attention to specialized areas. However the Tech-Priests do not take part in the construction of two highly classified of the warship: the Astropathic Choir (which is built by the Adeptus Astra Telepathica) and the chamber for the ship's Navigators (which is built by the Navis Nobilite).[20b] While most new Imperial Navy vessels are constructed in the Navy's own shipyards, a number are build by planetary shipyards of hive, factory or other worlds as part of the tithe.[26]

Another source of new voidships are the forge worlds of the Adeptus Mechanicus. While most of the newly constructed vessels are destined for their own fleet, a number of them are supplied to the Imperial Navy. These Mechanicus-build hulls are marvels of engineering, oftentimes incorporating rare technologies.[26] Though the construction of a single new cruiser may take more than a decade even for a well-supplied shipyard, a forge world can commission multiple new cruisers per years, thanks to economies of scale,[24a] having at any given time a dozen or more hulls in varying stages of construction.[24b]

Sometimes, the Imperial Navy expands its numbers by salvaging old wrecks. This practice uses up less resources than the construction of a new ship, but is considered far more dangerous because these wrecks are often home to predatory aliens. Even less likely is the discovery of a spaceworthy wreck which is part of a Space Hulk. Securing such a hulk is considered worth the risk, even if they are very high. Sometimes, these wrecks are of an older pattern or mark the Imperium no longer has the ability to reproduce or feature archaeotech or other assorted riches.[26]

In the Era Indomitus, the return of Roboute Guilliman has heralded a renaissance in Imperial shipbuilding, forwarded by the multitalented Belisarius Cawl. This has led to new, novel patterns of voidship to be created which are blessed with the finest technologies.[28]

Battleships

Emperor Class Battleship

Battleships are colossal vessels with significant weaponry and shields. They usually serve as the flagship for the Admiral of the Fleet, though this is not always the case. Although very powerful, battleships are slow to manoeuvre and cannot react quickly to enemies that rapidly change course. Imperial battleships can have crews of between 25,000 to 3,000,000 or more depending on sources, including large numbers of Imperial Navy armsmen to defend against enemy boarding assaults. Battleships can be up to 8 kilometres from prow to stern and displace billions of tons. Because they represent such a vast expenditure of resources and require a fairly advanced technical base, these are typically constructed only in the largest shipyards above the major Adeptus Mechanicus Forge Worlds. These vessels are precious assets and are carefully husbanded, usually employed in only larger fleet formations.[2]

There are various classes of Imperial Battleship, but the Emperor and Retribution are by far the most common in the Imperial Navy.

Cruisers

Smaller than Battleships, Cruisers are the ships of the line in Imperial Fleets. There are several different sub-categories of Cruiser.

Grand Cruisers

Vengeance Class Grand Cruiser

Grand Cruisers are significantly smaller than battleships yet distinctly larger than regular cruisers. These vessels are usually very old in design, do not incorporate many features typical in current Imperial Navy vessels, like armoured prow, and are not entirely compatible with current Navy tactical doctrine. Due to this, many are retired from active duty but are still used by reserve fleets. There are also some modernised versions of grand cruisers in service, but since they are much larger and more heavily-armed than their predecessors, they are often classed as battleships. These kinds of vessels are usually purpose-built or modified from battlecruiser hulls and are not commonly encountered in the Imperial Navy.[2]


Battle Cruisers

Armageddon Battle Cruiser

Battlecruisers are based on a hull design that is similar to the regular Cruisers, though Battle Cruisers are generally somewhat larger and more heavily armed, incorporating more advanced power distribution systems capable of supporting battleship-grade weaponry in a cruiser hull.[2]

Cruisers

Dominator Class Cruiser

Cruisers make up the majority of a fleet. Though not as powerful as a Battleship, cruisers are much faster and can still deliver a deadly blow. There are multiple classes of cruisers, most based on the same general hull design but incorporating different combinations of broadside batteries, lance turrets and starfighter hangars. Cruisers can carry a crew complement of 1,000-100,000[3], depending on sources. While cruisers are still particularly complex, it is not uncommon for them to be constructed on smaller Forge Worlds or any Civilised World with a shipyard suitable for constructing vessels of their size.

Light Cruiser

Endeavour Light Cruiser

A subset of the cruiser category are the Light Cruisers. These ships fall in size between cruisers and escorts, mixing the firepower and durability of the former with the speed and manoeuvrability of the latter. Light cruisers are a fairly common ship class, for they are relatively simple to construct for being a capital ship, and they are uniquely suited for reconnaissance patrols and for making a presence where their speed and manoeuvrability are an advantage and where having a larger number of smaller hulls allows the Navy to monitor a wider area of space.[2]

Escorts

Escort Vessels

Escort ships are the smallest type of ship in the Imperial Navy fleets, found in two distinct sub-classes.

The larger of the two are Frigates, better armed and more heavily armoured. Destroyers are generally smaller, but they are by far the fastest and most manoeuvrable interstellar warships employed by the Imperial Navy. They are usually organised in squadrons of 2 to 6 vessels and will always operate as a group. The main task of the escort ships is to serve as a screen for capital ships against enemy torpedoes and attack crafts so that they can get into position more quickly and safely. They are also employed behind the gun line to finish off enemy cruisers that have been damaged so that the larger vessels can concentrate on the most important threats in an enemy formation. Most escort classes specialise in a certain role, such as the Cobra class torpedo boat destroyers or the Firestorm class frigate with its armour-piercing prow-mounted Lance. Escort ships are normally not more than 1.5 kilometres in length, with destroyers generally being only 750 metres to 2 kilometres from prow to stern.[2]

Older and obsolete classes

There are many older classes of Imperial ship that are no longer in production:

  • Ironclad Battleships - also known as Adamanticlads much like their contemporary counterparts, are vast 8-kilometre vessels which lack the void shielding of their counterparts in favour of metres of adamantium plate armour. These ships, built before the advent of void-screen technology, have since been phased out of production, for the main part, to be replaced by more modern designs.[7]
  • Obsolete Classes - There are many classes of vessel which were once utilised by the Imperial Navy. Many of these older vessels are still in service with the Traitor Fleets.

Note on variations in Classes

While naval warships can be defined along a fairly limited number of classes based on weapon configurations approved by the Adeptus Mechanicus, the form these vessels takes varies widely throughout the Imperium. For example, a Lunar class constructed above Cypra Mundi in Segmentum Obscurus may bear little resemblance to a Lunar class constructed above Kar Duniash in Ultima Segmentum and even less so to a Lunar class, constructed among the vast shipyards of Mars. Nonetheless, they will all have roughly the same operating characteristics and weapon configuration, and thus can be easily serviced by any orbital facility throughout Imperial space.[22a]

For example, ships build by Voss all feature so-called Aquila prows upon their fronts, to show devotion to the Imperial creed, something not typical to other STC ship designs. Even existing vessels based on these STC designs, who are only repaired or refitted at the forge world, will be reconfigured to henceforth bear the Aquila prow.[22b]

Furthermore, some ship types build at Voss, like the Endeavour, Endurance and Defiant classes, feature a prominent mid-ship corridor, dividing the forward hull from the rear section, due to the fact that Voss, in difference to the rest of the Mechanicus, lacks knowledge of the science of magnetic containment fields. In case of a magnetic field failure the containment of the vast energies produced by a ship's plasma reactor can not be guaranteed. To prevent such a failure from threatening the main magazine or causing a reactor meltdown, the plasma reactor and engine rooms have to be separated from the rest of the ship by the mid-ship corridor. In case of a containment field failure, the mid-ship corridor will break, physically disconnecting the rear from the rest of the ship.[22a]

Unsurprisingly, the mid-ship corridor is vulnerable to enemy weapons fire, forcing it to be additionally protected by huge, thick plates made from solid adamantine, giving these ships constructed at Voss their distinct appearance. On the other hand, the mid-ship corridor helps against boarding actions, forcing an enemy that has captured one part of the ship to advance through a choke-point to capture the other.[22a]

Attack Craft

An Imperial Navy landng party

Many Imperial vessels carry onboard various smaller craft for both offense and defense.

Aircraft

Main article: Imperial Aircraft
Main article: Aeronautica Imperialis

The branch of the Imperial Navy known as the Aeronautica Imperialis is responsible for the majority of Imperial Aircraft. These aircraft are used both for space-combat and providing air support to Imperial ground forces.

Aquatic Vessels

The Imperial Navy also fields aquatic vessels such as Naval Battleships.[10]

Imperial Navy Equipment

Main article: Imperial Fleet Equipment
Main article: Imperial Navy Weaponry

Notable Members of the Imperial Navy

Images

  • Imperial Navy ships at Port Maw

  • Imperial Navy ships

See also

Sources

Uncited

ServiceImage.jpg

This article purports to rely on sources which are not cited in the body of the text.
For help on citation see the citation guidelines.
You can help Lexicanum by fixing it.


Modern Imperial Organizations
Adeptus Terra Adeptus Administratum (Adeptus Astartes • Departmento Munitorum • Astra Militarum • Ordo Tempestus • Imperial Fleet • Imperial Navy • Merchant Fleet • Praeses Mercatura • Navis Nobilite • Officio Assassinorum • Estate Imperium • Templars Psykologis • Officio Sabatorum • Officio Medicae • Officio Agricultae • Officio Logisticarum • Departmento Exacta • Astra Cartographica • Logis Strategos • Departmento Colonia • Departmento Processium • Departmento of Final Consideration • Departmento Contagio • Departmento Gradio • Questio Logisticus • Rogue Traders • Imperial Commanders) • Adeptus Astra Telepathica (Sisters of Silence • League of Black Ships • Scholastica Psykana) • Adeptus Astronomica • Adeptus Arbites • Adeptus Custodes • Questor Imperialis (House Guard) • Adeptus Fidicius • Synopticon • Officio Communicatus • Officio Propagandum
Adeptus Mechanicus Cult Mechanicus • Collegia Titanica • Legiones Skitarii • Questor Mechanicus (House Guard) • Centurio Ordinatus • Ordo Reductor • Legio Cybernetica • Auxilia Myrmidon • Prefecture Magisterium • Basilikon Astra • Divisio Linguistica • Explorator • Sect Missionarius Mechanicus • Collegiate Extremis • Astynomia • Adnector Concillium • Auxilia Technologica Astartes
Adeptus Ministorum Holy Synod • Adepta Sororitas (Sisters of Battle) • Schola Progenium • Missionarius Galaxia • Creed Temporal • Frateris Militia
Inquisition Ordo Malleus • Ordo Hereticus • Ordo Xenos • Ordos Minoris
Retrieved from "https://lex.124811.xyz/mediawiki/index.php?title=Imperial_Navy&oldid=716327"