Miklos Horthy-class heavy nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser:
With the increase in the importance of carrier-centric forces in Reichspakt and Danubian Federal Naval doctrine, there was also an increase in the need for large combatants with global range to escort them on their long-range power-projection missions. The result offered to the Danubian Navy was the penultimate carrier escort: a 25,000 ton nuclear-powered heavy guided missile cruiser, as it was referred to officially (more commonly known as a battlecruiser unofficially.) Though the fleet’s nuclear carrier program encountered numerous delays, the escort side of things proceeded rather smoothly, with both ships laid down at the STT yard in Trieste in 1977, launching in 1980 and commissioning in 1984. The lead ship of the class was named for Admiral Miklos Horthy, who led the Austro-Hungarian (later Danubian) fleet to victory in the Great War and served as president of the Federation from 1936-40 and again from 1941-45. The second ship, meanwhile, was named for former Austro-Hungarian Grand Admiral Anton Haus. As completed, they were the largest and heaviest surface combatants in the world aside from the American Socialist States’ Iowa-class battleships, which were still afloat, albeit markedly inferior in range, firepower, and versatility. Particulars were as follows:
Displacement: 24,650 tons nominal, 28,400 tons full load.
LOA: 225 meters (738 feet)
Beam: 27 meters (88 feet, 7 inches)
Draught: 9.5 meters (31 feet)
Armament: 12 x SSaW-240 SSM's, 24 x SFaR-300 long-range SAM's, 40 x MFaR-200 medium-range SAM's, 2 x 2 LFaR-200 short-range SAM's (20 missiles each), 1 x 8 UAW-72M ASROC system, 2 x 3 332mm ASW torpedo tubes, 2 x 1 127/54 Otobreda Compact, 6 x 2 20mm 71M CIWS, 4 x 1 12.7mm machine-guns
Aviation facilities as designed: Short-term accomodation for 2 ASW helicopters
Machinery: 2-shaft CONAS: Two GD-UG2 nuclear reactors with two GD-70R steam turbines, 140,000 shp
Design speed: 32 knots
Range: Unlimited
Crew: 695
The entire program was achieved through domestic production and design with exception of the aft guns, which were of Italian design, and the WM combined missile/gun guidance system, which was of German manufacture. The reactors and associated equipment were produced by the Alternative Propulsion Division of Ganz-Danubius in Budapest, while the missiles were manufactured by the Federal Institute for Aeronautical Defense. CIWS systems and other small guns were produced by FEG in Csepel, and electrical equipment by Manfred-Weiss. Both ships were provided with a helicopter landing pad astern to accommodate 1-2 ASW helicopters, as well as gear to secure them in rough weather, but lacked hangar and refueling facilities for long-term helicopter operations. The main armament was centered around a main battery of twelve SSaW-240 (Schwere Schiffsabwehr Waffe) nuclear-capable land-attack/anti-ship supersonic missiles carried in vertical launch cells forward the superstructure. Just astern of them was another 64-cell vertical launch system, the result of a cooperative development initiative between the German Empire, the Italian Empire, and the Danubian Federation, housing the long and medium-range SAMs, while amidships a pair of twin-arm retractable launchers firing LFaR-200 missiles provided point-defense against incoming missiles and aircraft.Further CIWS armament consisted of six 71M radar-directed systems armed with a pair of 20mm 66M cannons each capable of firing 2000 rounds per minute. ASW armament, added largely as an afterthought when it was realized the ships would be incredibly vulnerable to submarine threats, consisted of a bow-mounted 72M anti-submarine rocket system capable of firing nuclear-capable anti-submarine munitions, as well as a pair of triple 332mm torpedo tubes housed in openings in the hull which could fire wire-guided anti-submarine torpedoes. Astern, a pair of superfiring 127mm Otobreda guns manufactured under license by Skoda provided dual-purpose gun and land-attack capabilities with both anti-air and guided, long-range land-attack munitions, capable of a rate of fire of 45 rounds per minute. Finally, armament was completed by a quartet of 12.7mm machine gun positions in the superstructure for defense against asymmetric threats. Air/surface search, 3D array, and TACAN system were all of local manufacture, as was the visual gun fire-control system and main missile directors. Upon commissioning, Miklos Horthy joined a joint Italian-French squadron in the Mediterranean and Black Sea providing anti-piracy and patrol duties off the coast of the war torn Levant and Sinai, being attacked once by Egyptian air force aircraft during clashes with the neighboring Ottoman Empire (she strayed too close to Egyptian territorial waters), she engaged and shot down a pair of Egyptian F-86 Sabers with her medium and short-range SAM systems before retreating. None of her crew were killed. She later shadowed the ex-American carrier Progress, now Vikramaditya in the Indian Socialist Republic’s Navy, while on patrol in the Indian Ocean. During the 1991 Reichspakt intervention in the Persian Revolution, where Indian and American-backed socialist revolutionaries tried to overthrow the Shah, she supported a large amphibious operation to secure major ports along the Persian Gulf Coast, cooperating with her Reichspakt allies, Entente forces, and non-aligned but anti-socialist Ottoman Imperial troops. She provided fire support during landings to secure the port of Bandar Abbas, utilizing her 127mm guns in anger for the first time. Later, she fired her SSaW-240 missiles in the land-attack role against the capital, Tehran, in order to strike key targets believed to be under the control of the temporary socialist administration. At the end of the operation in late 1992, a group of lost-cause socialist suicide bombers piloting a stolen Persian Imperial Navy torpedo boat loaded with explosives attempted to ram her, but were engaged with heavy machine-gun and CIWS fire which shredded the craft before she could do any damage. Since the fall of the American Socialist States in 1995, she has visited the reformed United States three times. She currently serves as flagship of the 2nd Surface Ship Division based in Zadar (Split), and has received extensive modernization (this version will be uploaded later), with plans to keep her in service for another 20 years. Conversion to an aircraft carrier has been proposed but repeatedly denied.
Her sister ship, Anton Haus, was immediately placed on foreign station upon commissioning. Based in Cuba, a Reichspakt member state continually surrounded by hostile socialist forces, she served as a powerful reminder to the Americans and their Mexican allies not to act aggressively towards the heavily fortified island nation. In the event of an attack, she was to escort the German carrier Graf Zeppelin and her strike group, launching her missile at rival American carrier groups, which would theoretically be too fast to be intercepted by hostile SAMs, and decimating the American naval presence in the Caribbean. Thankfully this war never came, but she did support pro-Entente forces fighting in Venezuela in 1988 against an invasion by the American-backed socialist government in Colombia, coming under attack from Colombian aircraft twice, which killed three of her sailors. Her short-range SAM systems claimed four Colombian fighter-bombers in just a few hours before she retreated to international waters. By 1993 she had been retired back to the Adriatic for refitting, and was laid up in drydock for the duration of the Reichspakt intervention in Persia. She re-entered service in 1997, having received updated electronics, missiles, and fire control equipment. As the need for a ship of her type slowly decreases, there is talk of converting her into a helicopter carrier for defensive ASW operations, but it seems the Danubian fleet quite enjoys it’s status as having the largest and heaviest conventional surface combatants in the world, as there are no plans on retiring them. Both are scheduled for a refit later this year, however, and it is planned to retain them in service until 2035.