The Imperial Navy - Warhammer 40,000 Tribute

A tribute to the Imperial Navy and Battlefleet Gothic by GUNFLASH22. During the Great Crusade, both the Imperial Guard and Navy were originally a single organisation; the Imperial Army. Normally each Imperial Cruiser would have a single Guard Regiment assigned to it. Commanding Officers held command over both their regiment and the warship assigned to them, making a single warship tactically flexible and minimizing the losses in the event of the loss of a spaceship in the Warp. During the Horus Heresy, however, it appeared that some regiments used the power at their disposal in order to forge empires for themselves in the fire of anarchy. This led to the eventual split between Guard and Navy, as Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the Ultramarines Legion, wrote the Codex Astartes which ordered that spaceships will no longer be commanded by officers of the former Imperial Army (now Imperial Guard). The Imperium is divided into five "Segmenta;" Solar, Obscurus, Pacificus, Tempestus and Ultima. Every ship of the Imperial Navy is assigned to one of these Segmenta, and falls under the command of the respective Lord High Admiral. In turn, each Segmentum is divided into "sectors", regions of space that are generally cube-shaped and contain 8 million cubic light years of space. These sectors contain multiple sub-sectors, collections of star systems no more than twenty light years in radius. The ships of each Segmentum are divided amongst the sectors. These Battlefleets are assigned the task of safeguarding the sector they are assigned to, each Battlefleet is generally named after the sector it is assigned to (Battlefleet Gothic is located in the Gothic sector, Battlefleet Cadia is located in the Cadian sector, etc). Each Battlefleet is assigned a number of cruisers and battleships, usually between fifty and seventy-five vessels. The Battlefleets are also assigned multiple squadrons of escort starships, and is also in command of a large number of transports, messenger craft, orbital defences, space platforms and system patrol vessels. The ships of a Battlefleet must constantly patrol their sector and fulfil a variety of roles; protect merchant shipping from pirates, transport Imperial Guard regiments to warzones, escort Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator fleets and provide orbital support for invading or defending armies. Because of the vast space that requires policing, the Battlefleet is normally split into detachments consisting of one or two cruisers, accompanied by a squadron of escorts. If a particular situation is more than a detachment can handle, additional detachments are called in to reinforce. On occasion, a Battlefleet can be formed to operate in a smaller area. Battlefleet Armageddon is assigned solely to the Armageddon sub-sector, and, prior to the Third War for Armageddon, was made up of four battleships, twenty-seven cruisers and thirty six squadrons of escorts. Battlefleet Solar is assigned specifically to the Solar System, and is primarily charged with defending the two holy worlds of Terra and Mars. ----- Credits: Images: - Games Workshop - Deviant Art authors Music: - Unstopable by E.S Posthmus - Redrum3 by Imediate Music - RavenShieldTheme by BillBrown ----- If there is anyone out there from Games Workshop GW Leicester then feel free to join our society/club (The Dark Millennium) that we have recently set up. There is a link to it on my homepage so just click my username and have a look. Thanks!