28 Monte Cassino Nightmare: USS District of Columbia

The USS District of Columbia was a fine US Naval Battleship, designed in secret with prototype technology back in Nineteen-Thirty-Six and was completed in early Nineteen-Thirty-Nine. She was eight-hundred and sixty inches in length, the longest warship in US history. She had prototype naval guns, the largest the world had seen, they were ultra-light in weight due to the material composite used in the construction, they were classified as twenty-inch guns. Officially designated as The Mark I Ultra-Light Heavies, the USS District of Columbia is the only ship of her class with two such guns. The ammunition was a prototype shell that used a stabilizing fin, allowing for longer flight times and a more accurate trajectory path. It was almost a modern day tank shell if the tank shells used in modern day weighed twenty-seven hundred pounds and were thirty inches in length. The shells were massive and also built with the ultra-lightweight composite materials that made up the room at the medical facility where Thomas is at. The explosives used in the shell were a prototype mixture that was classified, officially labeled Composite Three, or C-Three for short. It was made to explode on contact with any surface, very useful for naval warfare, as a near miss on the water would still result in a huge explosion.

The USS District of Columbia also had brand new engines that were less based on crude oil and more based on a nuclear hydrogen mix as directed byanother Kincade prototype technology, it ensures that the engines were more powerful and enabled more juice for the ship, but the cost was quite high as the shakedown sequence was longer and it took a full twenty minutes to start up, deadly for any ship that suffers a power failure. There were many redundancies and safeties built in to ensure a power failure to the engine doesn't occur, but nothing is one hundred percent. If any of the specially trained engine crew dies, that would also be bad, they didn't have any in reserve, the technology wasn't as understood, so they didn't have a class they could sit people through.

The USS District of Columbia also had something other naval ships during it's time did not have, firing control solutions. Thanks to Alan Tucker and a few other eggheads, they were able to install a prototype computer system into the naval ship. With a crudely done, but sophisticated AI prototype, it was capable of calculating the correct trajectory and firing arc for any fire solution the Captain of the ship may desire to enter. One could say it is the epitome of naval warships in the Second World War era, it's only vulnerability still remained it's top deck, they still opted for the wood look on top. Nice to look at, but it doesn't offer much in terms of defense, which is why she had a compliment of Anti-Aircraft batteries installed along the aft and starboard sides of the ship, they still had to be crewed by the seaman, but thanks to advances in wheel bearings and other small hardware pieces, they turned faster and more smoothly, allowing for a greater access to shooting down aircraft. Due to the value of the warship, AA Batteries were to be crewed at all times in rotating shifts, each gun required a crew of three. The AA batteries were a mix of American-made Flakk shells based on the German design and twenty-millimeter regular guns. The Flakk was an interesting concept developed by two unknown designers in the navy over a drunken game of cards. It used a proximity-based warhead instead of the standard timer, so if a plane neared it, theoretically it would explode, severely damaging the plane.

Going back to her armaments, besides the two MARK Is and the AA Batteries, the ship also had four smaller naval guns at five inches. They were the standard thirty-eight caliber and could be repurposed for anti-aircraft, but they hid one more secret. They were slaved to the firing control computer and did not require a human crew like the twenty-inch pounders. That was their greatest secret, as long as the firing axis and the coordinates were input, the computer would do the rest. It was heavily classified and no one under the rank of Rear-Admiral knew about it, with the exception of the Captain of the ship of course.

Currently, the ship was just off the coast on standby, orders from allied command were to await firing coordinates, red smoke designated the approximate location. Its crew were at general quarters, they weren't under attack yet, but that could change any moment. At that point, all hands to battle stations would be called and the entire ship would be a flurry of activity. As it was right now, the entire ship was on standby, only the bridge and gun crews were at battle stations, the ship was tense, just ready to unleash hell and misery on their targets. The Captain himself was an impatient man, he hated sitting around, which fit the nature of his ship that was armed to the teeth. Just as he could wait no more, the call finally came in.