How big are the aircraft carriers in Girls und Panzer?
Type that into Google and I bet that search results providing a numerical, quantitative value will probably be very difficult to come by, at least until this post is indexed. This post aims to not only rectify that, but also a rather misleading Google Search result as a consequence of my captioning one of my images funny. I’ve noticed that one of the images I’ve posted here were unintentionally indexed to Google Images, meaning that if one were to do a search for the UNSC Infinity and its size, they would likely come across an image depicting the Ooarai school vessels from Girls und Panzer. That is to say, searching for something would turn out meaningless, unrelated results; of course, this is unsportsmanlike of me to do so.
- Figure I: Size comparison between the Ooarai school ship, the UNSC Infinity and other well-known vessels. Because I’m awesome, I was able to reverse engineer some images to form this comparison. The Ooarai vessel is actually one of the smaller vessels in the series. The figure of 7.6 kilometres will be used for subsequent calculations, which are only an estimate.
With this in mind, I have come across discussions concerning the size of the vessels in the anime, which are sufficiently large as to carry small towns on their surface. Thus, the UNSC Infinity from Halo 4 will be used as a yardstick of sorts to carry out the comparison. As a bit of background reading, the INF-101 UNSC Infinity was commissioned into the UNSC Navy following the end of the Human-Covenant war in 2553, Infinity represents the pinnacle of Human technology, incorporating recovered technology from both the Covenant and Forerunners, boasting advanced defensive and slipstream technologies. Infinity is approximately 5.6 kilometres (3.5 miles) from bow to stern, making it the largest known UNSC vessel to date. Said to possess Forerunner technology, Infinity features substantially improved shielding and slipstream technology relative to its predecessors.
- This image comparing the UNSC Infinity to the Forward Unto Dawn can be expanded for more detail. Aside from their armour complement, the ships in Girls und Panzer are largely undefended and do not appear to have airfields. Moreover, they do not appear to have heavy armour plating. In comparison, the Infinity is heavily armed as a warship; aside from four CR-08 Series-8 Mass Accelerator Cannons, a substantial missile network consisting of 1100 missile pods is present to enable ship-to-ship combat, anti-air defense and orbital support for ground forces. Close-in defense against enemy missiles, fighters, and boarding craft is provided by the ship’s M965 Fortress point defense system, which consists of a network of 830 70mm automatic cannons. It also had a number of Mark 2488 Magnetic Accelerator Cannon’s on the top of the ship. Finally, Infinity’s most powerful weapons appear to be two bow-mounted energy weapons that are powerful enough to penetrate Forerunner armour.
- While the Infinity was originally built to combat the Covenant in the event that Earth had fallen, the end of the Human-Covenant War meant that this function would no longer be necessary. Thus, the vessel would be re-purposed as an expeditionary and exploratory ship, as well as being the location of a SPARTAN-IV training site. Infinity is assigned the task of locating Forerunner installations and establish nearby bases to oversee their decommissioning at the beginning of the events in Halo 4.
By comparison, information regarding the school ships in Girls und Panzer was released prior to the start of the season. The original documentation gives us the precise dimensions of the Ooarai carrier. The scan finds that the carrier is 7.6 km in length, with a beam of 1.1 km, and a maximum height of 900 metres. Citations are always more reliable than estimation. One fan guessed that the Ooarai carrier was 600 m long; rather than engage in a long discussion, it’s rather more efficient to simply produce some documentation. This already blows the UNSC Infinity out of the water in size, but you have to remember that the Infinity has…you guessed it, Forerunner technology and two of the most powerful bow-mounted guns seen on any human vessel.
- From left to right, we have the St. Gloriana vessel and the Ooarai vessel. Its beam appears to be 1.8 times greater than the Oorai vessel’s beam, which would give it a beam of 1980 metres, if we suppose that the length-to-beam ratio of 6.91 holds for them, the entire ship would have a length of 13680 metres.
- The Pravda vessel is depicted to the right here and from the image, probably has a beam of 2.22 times the width of the Ooarai vessel. This would give the Pravda ship a beam of 2220 metres, so assuming that the ratio of 6.9 still holds, the vessel would be roughly 15338 metres long, rivalling the Super Star Destroyer in length.
Thus, given that the Ooarai vessel is 7.6 km long, I conclude that the St. Gloriana vessel is 13.7 km long, and the Pravda vessel is 15.3 km in length. It is important to note that these estimations are purely based on the assumption that the aircraft carriers follow very specific standards, so there is a possibility that the actual dimensions may vary by up to 10 percent. The UNSC Infinity was stated to have a length of 5.6 km, making it smaller than the all of these vessels. There are considerable structural challenges when constructing any vessel of this scale: humanity required the use of Forerunner technology to make the Infinity possible, and it stands to reason that ocean-borne vessels larger than the Infinity would be even more challenging. However, given that both Halo 4 and Girls und Panzer are fictional, a rational viewer is willing to suspend their disbelief and enjoy the series for what they are. While Halo 4, being a science-fiction game, does do a more thorough job of accounting for the construction of its mega-vessels compared Girls und Panzer, this does not affect the anime in any way and ends up making the ships’ sizes more of a fun point to consider. At the very least, this post should compensate viewers for being misdirected to an anime blog when they were in fact looking for UNSC Infinity related materials.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. So thorough and analysed. Similar to an XKCD blog article or a Mythbusters crackdown.
I’m glad you’ve enjoyed it. Sometimes, it’s fun to look at science fiction and discuss whether things are feasible or not :)
Wow, briliant , looks like the St.gloriana,s carrier is based on the ark royal, Saunders is missing, based on Nimitz carrier? might be bigger than St,Gloriana,s and Pravda carriers?
I think all of the carriers are based on the World War II-era design. The Saunders carrier would most likely be inspired by the Yorktown, Essex or the Midway-class carriers, all of which share similar characteristics. A Nimitz class carrier of that size would be truly massive and might not be sea-worthy even if it could be built and maintained.
yeap Saunder’s Ship is similar to Nimitz Class.
https://infinitemirai.wordpress.com/2013/03/24/school-ship-war/
Good observation! That does break tradition with the WWII-era designs, though: the USS Nimitz was the first of the Nimitz class and was commissioned May 1975.
The Pravda vessel looks like an Admiral Kuznetsov class Russian Aircraft carrier due to the ski jump and the (massive) heli pads
it pretty similar to Kiev class Aircraft Carrier.
A few thing to consider Regarding the Infinity construction using Forerunner technology:
1- Infinity is a space traveling ship, and so it needs different standards for it’s construction, even when compared to a 7km Aircraft Carrier.
2- Most of the Ships in Halo are smaller than infinity because, at the time they were built (Not that the Human Covenant war wasn’t a really long one) they met the necesities of the UNSC because at the time they were just fighting insugents and as such these vessels where just what the UNSC needed, because it wasn’t an all out war against a different faction with the same industrial capabilities.
3- UNSC infinity almost left the UNSC bankrupt and was built as a last resort. Maybe the high builg cost might have come because of all the reverse engineering that must have been done to all the forerunner technology used, and not because of the size.
4- I’m not sure how big the Super MAC or cairo station is, but if you take into consideration the Space Stations, then one could truly have a better look at the capabilities of the UNSC at building.
I believe the people from GuP just make their aircraft carriers of “Unobtanium” (AKA, plot materials) and just carry on :P
Fair enough, although for purposes of discussion, I believe that my comparisons makes things sufficiently interesting.
The MAC Stations aren’t that big: at around 1.336 km in height, they’re large enough to dock Stalwart-class light frigates, but that’s about it.
The carriers in GuP are clearly examples of the Bigger on the Inside trope. Look at those 20 foot containers on the dock for scale. The carriers are seen in aerial views that include Oarai more than once. The deck height is shown as the same as Oarai Tower, which is 60m high. Oarai Tower close-ups appear in GuP, and it’s no bigger than in real life.
A city block on the carrier deck is about one container length by two container lengths, or about 7 m x 14m. The deck just isn’t to scale. There’s no escaping that. A 7km carrier would dwarf the whole town of Oarai.
I’ve taken a close look, and the claim that the Zuikaku has a deck height of 60 metres is soundly false, as per the source materials (which give an actual height of 690 metres). Inspection of the Zuikaku finds that from the camera’s perspective, the Ooarai Tower appears closer in height to the deck, where in actuality, it is not. Similarly, there is a possibility that the containers and cranes might not be of the same dimensions as conventional cargo containers. Thus, I call to mind the idea that the scale representations are probably inconsistent, rather than fitting in with your aforementioned trope (which is not present at TvT at the time of writing).
With that said, this is an anime, so I’m willing to let the details slide. Lastly, 20 feet would be 6.096 metres, rather than 7 metres ;)
no body cares about your little unpopular anime ship! please do not compare something awesome with some otaku trash ps super star destroyer 8miles! covenant super carrier 27kilometers!
Your comment has been rescued from the spam queue: I’m not sure why Akismet would flag a perfectly valid (if somewhat disagreeable) comment.