The ComStar Fleet

One of the greatest revelations of the Clan Invasion was that not only did ComStar have the ComGuard, an elite army of troops, but it also had a fleet of WarShips the likes of which hadn't been seen for two Succession Wars. By the end of the FedCom Civil War (3067), 34 ships of the fleet are still active. They are (in alphabetical order, with class in parantheses):

Alarcity (Vincent)
Anastasius Focht (Suffren)
Avenging Sword (Aegis)
Blake's Strength (Black Lion)
Blake's Vengenance (Sovetskii Soyuz)
Blake's Vision (Lola III)
Bordeaux (Dante)
Brandenburg Crusader (Essex)
Cleansing Fire (Congress)
Deathblow (Essex)
Defender of Versailles (Essex)
Determination (Vincent)
Divine Wisdom (Lola III)
Dover (Faslane)
Dun Laoghaire (Faslane)
Enlightened Path (Volga)
Fire Fang (Whirlwind)
Fortsmouth (Faslane)
Galamorgan (Faslane)
Hammerstrike (Essex)
Hollings York (Congress)
Holy Martyrdom (Lola III)
Invisible Truth (Cameron)
Manchester (Suffren)
Montpellier (Dante)
Narbonee (Dante)
Plymouth (Faslane)
Ranger (Lola III)
Resilence (Vincent)
Righteous Fury (Aegis)
Roslare (Faslane)
Strength Through Adversity (Lola III)
Swift Justice (Aegis)
Vision of Truth (Potemkin)

Of these, two (Hammerstrike and Blake's Vengenance) were lost at Tukkayid on 30 January 3068 to a Word of Blake attack lead by Deliverance and Blake's Sword ( p87). In March of that year, most of the fleet participated in Case White, the attempt to retake Earth. Although casualty reports vary, we have a pretty clear indication (Dawn of the Jihad, p90, Case White: Alpha, p5) that 20 or 21 ComGuard ships jumped into Terra on 9 March. By all account, none returned. So who do we know went in? We know the following ships were there:

From Dawn of the Jihad, p90:
Divine Wisdom (Lola III)
Holy Martyrdom (Lola III)
Strength Through Adversity (Lola III)
Ranger (Lola III)
Vision of Truth (Potemkin)
Righteous Fury (Aegis)
Swift Justice (Aegis)
Blake's Strength (Black Lion)
Defender of Versailles (Essex)
Deathblow (Essex)

From Dawn of the Jihad, p91:
Blake's Strength (Black Lion)
Vision of Truth (Potemkin)
Avenging Sword (Aegis)
Narbonee (Dante)

From Case White: Alpha, p5:
Avenging Sword (Aegis)
Hollings York (Congress)

From Case White: Breaking of Chemical Bonds and Case White: Stars in the Time of Dreaming:
Vision of Truth (Potemkin)

All told, we can confirm 13 of the 20-21 ships that participated. Striking those 13 from the list, we're left with 19 ships, six of which are Faslane-class Yardships, not combatants. Actually, make that 4 -- we know from Jihad Hotspots 3070 p. 128 that Portsmouth and Roslare were destroyed in December of 3068. So we're down to 17 ships, 7-8 of which were also lost in Case White. Who do we know were not lost?

Invisible Truth arrived to the Case White party late and got away. Bordeaux rescued Primus Mori off of Tukkayid on 1 August 3068. That takes two off our list of potential Case White victims.

Interestingly, three former ComStar ships turn up in 3076: Righteous Fury, Fire Fang, and Hollings York are gunned down at Dyev by a combine Ghost Bear/Snow Raven taskforce while flying Word of Blake colors(Jihad Hotspots 3076, p. 88). We know Hollings York and Righteous Fury were at Case White. Even more remarkable, though, is that Hollings York was reported destroyed by the Word of Blake to their own commanders (Case White: Alpha, p 5), meaning we can't assume even those ships listed as destroyed at Case White might not be resurrected by the Word. The only real exception to this is Vision of Truth, which is indicated to have disintegrated on re-entry to Terra's atmosphere (Case White: Stars in the Time of Dreaming, p17), which would make any attempted salvage rather impractical. Also, if we take a leap with this particular pattern, we can conclude that Fire Fang was also included in the Case White exercise, and was captured by the Word of Blake then.

Speaking of ship formations, let's see what we can gleam from the ComStar organizational structures. We know that ComStar's fleet is broken into five divisions: The First Fleet, The Second Fleet, The First Independent Squadron, and the Second Independent Squadron, and finally two YardShips assigned to the Columbus garrison (Field Manual: ComStar, p. 44.)

• The First Fleet is based at Luyten 68-28, and has 10 WarShips and 2 YardShips. We know that at least 1 surviving ship (Bordeaux) and 5 participating ships (not to mention Invisible Truth) were assigned to this formation. We therefore can't draw any good conclusions as the unit assignment as a whole.
• The Second Fleet is based at Ross 248, and has 9 WarShips and 2 YardShips. We know two of these ships (Ranger and Defender of Versailles) participated in Case White, and we can't rule out any of the other 7.
• The First Independent Squadron has five WarShips, and is based at Tukkayid. Two of these ships were lost during the 31 January 3068 raid, and Righteous Fury and Swift Justice were known to have participated in Case White. Therefore, only Cleansing Fire remains unaccounted for in this Squadron.
• The Second Independent Squadron has only four WarShips. Of these, we know Hollings York, Avenging Sword, and Deathblow were all at Case White. Only Brandenburg Crusader is unaccounted for.
• Finally, the Columbus Garrison is supposed to include two Faslanes, Roslare and Galamorgan. The Columbus Distress Call in JHS3070, though, pretty clearly indicated it was Roslare and Portsmouth that were destroyed there. It is possible that Portsmouth (nominally party of the First Fleet) swapped out for Galamorgan at some point

So what have we learned? We can be fairly certain that Cleansing Fire and Brandenburg Crusader were not detached from their respective squadrons just for Case White, and that they were lost there as well. Along with the assumption that Fire Fang fell into Word of Blake hands at Case White and not in some subsequent exercise, we can now come up with 16 of the 20-21 ships that jumped to Terra on 9 March 3068. Sadly, nothing probable leaps out of the formation numbers -- at least 2 ships of the Second Fleet survived, even if all of the unaccounted for forces came from their command. There are only 2 unaccounted for vessels in the First Fleet, and we already know that at least some of the First Fleet did not participate. We are left with the mystery; we can only give a list of ships, and note that 4 or 5 of these vessels aren't actually in the service of ComStar anymore.

Thus, we know the ComStar fleet inventory is current a subset of these:

ComStar First Fleet
Invisible Truth (Cameron)
Bordeaux (Dante)
Montpellier (Dante)
Anastasius Focht (Suffren)
Alarcity (Vincent)

ComStar Second Fleet
Determination (Vincent)
Resilence (Vincent)
Manchester (Suffren)
Blake's Vision (Lola III)
Enlightened Path (Volga)

YardShips
Dover (Faslane)
Plymouth (Faslane)
Dun Laoghaire (Faslane)
Galamorgan (Faslane)

Look for future posts on the ComStar fleet as more information becomes available.