USS Britania
CV NCC-2301
with
Stalker Gunboat
Squadron

Before--and during--my days at the Academy, I use to play FASA's Star Trek Role Playing Game, and its related Starship Combat Simulator board game. The joy here was that the two games meshed together, so that given a group of players, you could literally role-play using the board game as the backdrop.

The board game's combat system was basically a variation on Wooden Ships and Iron Men, a game about naval warfare in the age of wooden-hulled ships and black-powder cannon. Overall FASA's game was good--easy to pick up and play, and well supported by a ship design system--combine that with its incredibly detailed lead miniatures (when painted up properly) and you truly felt like you were part of the Star Trek universe.
 

Being a first-year engineering student (and a Trekkie [you did not read that here]), I decided (as all gamers do) to redesign one of my favorite ships from the game--the Chandley class frigate--to be something a little more interesting, namely the Star Fleet equivalent of an aircraft carrier. That other board game had them, but FASA wasn't interested in the idea--at first--this was at a time before the great war in Deep Space Nine, where such things as fighters were finally introduced.
 

[LEFT]  A composite of the three "D sized" velum drawings of the Churchill, made during my mechanical drafting class. It has been said "that form follows function", so Churchill was designed from the inside out, using my Stalker class gunboats as the ship's strike craft. Happily, the Academy was hip-deep with military personnel, namely Nick Nickolas, who was an aircraft handler aboard the USS Ranger (CV-61). So for the price of a cup of coffee, we sat in the cafeteria and he explained to me the facts of life on the flight deck.

The ship's overall design was based on FASA's Chandley class frigate, combined with the artistic style of David A. Kimble's illustrations from the Star Trek: The Motion Picture blueprint set; such as the beautiful clamshell doors over the hanger bay.

[MIDDLE/RIGHT] Here we have two views of the miniature USS Britania; I built a polystyrene hanger, and mounted it to a Chandley lead miniature. As you can see, the hanger piece is the only real change, so for production purposes, all that was needed to produce Churchill miniatures was an extra piece added to an existing prepackaged Chandley kit.
 

[RIGHT] A labeled diagram of the Stalker  Gunboat, made during my CADD class. The Stalker was inspired by the external Photon torpedo bay of the starship USS Reliant. I added a shuttlecraft for a cockpit (so that it could separate and fly away on its own), and the usually bits to make it a Federation-style starship (an impulse engine and warp drive nacelles). On the top, port and starboard of the cockpit, are two small Phaser ball turrets; while top/aft you can see the exhaust ports for the twin Photon torpedo launchers. [MIDDLE] A scaled up plastic miniature of the Stalker. [RIGHT] a scaled Stalker before the USS Britania.
 

Even with the acceptance of the Churchill class cruiser (later updated to that of a heavy cruiser), the Stalker gunboats [LEFT], and its cousin the Corsair [RIGHT], were both out in the cold. FASA was planning to use Scorpio class corvettes as the strike craft.

The all-gun (Phaser) Corsair came into existence to help protect the Stalker from enemy gunboats; with its massive impulse engine, it was fast and powerful (as gunboats went).

Epilogue: I finally met with Forest Brown--the man in charge of the Combat Simulator Game, and producer of the game's lead miniatures--at a gaming convention in Trenton NJ. He liked my work and was planning to use it in the next update of the game. It was also at this time that I was invited to help game test the new Star Trek Ship Construction Manual  (it had a Chandley in spacedock on the cover). Unfortunately, less than a year later, FASA lost the rights to Star Trek; so both the RPG and board game were no more. Alas, the Federation starship USS Churchill, never saw the light of day; that is until now.