Spitting Fish Runs Silent

TME Industries engineers developed the Spitting Fish attack submarine in response to a Security Directorate request for a long-range patrol submersible for defending Tinker World's oceans. As this request occurred in 3058, it landed in the middle of Engineering's love affair of the newly acquired extra-extralight fusion engine and the Bubbleheads, a submarine-specific design team, immediately centered their proposal on it.

Their initial concept of the Spitting Fish was one of a conventional tubular hull with a series of fixed torpedo batteries and a bow gun, quite akin to the conventionally-powered Neptune-class. However, once the Bubbleheads caught wind of primary and secondary turrets they figured that they could make the Spitting Fish into a superior fighter by mounting the primary turret on the ventral surface of the hull--allowing it to fire its torpedo batteries into any arc--and the surface weapons in a forward-facing secondary dorsal turret with a much broader field of fire than the Neptune's bow large laser. The increased mass of the secondary turret and its more complex mechanisms, however, reinforced a tubular submarine's tendency to wallow on the surface, badly interfering with targeting and tracking. The Bubbleheads' solution to this was to  modify the fore and aft portions of the hull into a classic 'boat' shape, exchanging submersible efficiency for surface stability. They considered the facts that the submarine then needed more powerful stabilizing planes to keep it from pitching up while underwater and thus had less plane authority for maneuvers to be more than counterbalanced by the wide coverage of the torpedo arsenal in the ventral turret.

After several computer simulation runs and virtual design iterations, the Bubbleheads settled on a final configuration for their hundred-ton Spitting Fish: a 270-rated extra-extra light fusion engine would propel it at about the same speed as the similarly sized Neptune; increased heat penalties were considered negligible given the superior efficiency of the submerged heat radiators. Its anti-naval arsenal consisted of a twenty-tube long-range microtorpedo launcher and twin six-tube short-range torpedo launchers mounted in a domelike ventral turret; its surface bombardment arsenal consisted of an Ultra-type twenty-class assault autocannon and a twenty-tube medium-range missile launcher in a boxy bow dorsal turret, with the missiles arranged in slightly canted vertical launch tubes on the aft sides of the cannon. Two medium lasers in the bow in mountings similar to classical heavy torpedo tubes offered additional firepower at point-blank ranges while submerged and medium-range support while surfaced. While fourteen tons of standard armor made it only slightly less protected in gross terms than the Neptune, having to spread that armor across a wider surface area with the additional turrets lead to an overall reduction in protection.

With none of the other proposals being nearly as inspired--nor, admittedly, particularly 'cool'--the Security Directorate accepted the Spitting Fish in 3059 and even allowed it to retain its development name rather than a new production name. The limited production of a Spitting Fish-class squadron gave the Security Directorate something to have on hand should Tinker's World be invaded from the sea for whatever reason; realistically, they served to give SecDirec saliors undersea experience and eventually became test and continental shelf exploration platforms. Spitting Fish Article 004 "Gnasher" was temporarily refit to test the applicability of sponson on submersibles; the resulting wake turbulence destabilized the "Gnasher" and led it to lose control and run aground at low speed into a mud bank. After being raised, the sponson were removed and "Gnasher" was returned to its original specifications, albeit with distinctive ovoid panel lines covering where the sponson once were.

Operationally, the Spitting Fish actually made an effective training vessel. Its quarters were small but not as cramped as the Neptune's, as it did not rely on volume-intensive battery banks for underwater operations; while certainly not agile, its stability made it forgiving for new helmsmen to learn on. Management developed an interest in the Spitting Fish but accountants quickly determined that its retail price would be well over a hundred thousand C-Bills; as such, Management requested a 'de-rated' version less dependent on experimental technologies. The Spitting Fish-A borne of this endeavor replaced the powerplant with a more conventional extralight fusion engine, the assault autocannon with a Gauss Rifle, and deleted the medium lasers. Revealed in TME Industries catalogs in 3060, the Spitting Fish-A turned out to be a flexible platform, often exchanging the Gauss Rifle for a Thumper-class light artillery piece (-A1), an Arrow IV-class artillery missile system (-A2), or, later, a rotary five-class medium autocannon with a tremendous amount of ammunition (-A3, dating from about 3065 on). The medium-range missiles were often deleted on the artillery variants in exchange for additional armor (-__A, e.g. -A2A). These variants secured a place for the Spitting Fish as a coastal defense and bombardment submarine, effectively taking the Neptune's role. As the Spitting Fish-A series cost nearly as much as three Neptunes, uptake tended to be limited to well-funded naval forces during the FedCom Civil War.

Later, in the post-Jihad era of around 3093, the Spitting Fish-0 finally entered the market as extra-extralight reactors became a better-understood technology. It also usually followed the variant pattern of the -A series as, outside of coastal marshes and river deltas, the assault autocannon was too short-ranged to be particularly useful.