V1.00Spitfire  wŮ ~F~FDqC8BDM3231483030 6N9138128n.a.0uP1c,y= 4Magna FirestarGImperator Dragon's Fire9Magna Starglow4Magna FirestarGImperator Dragon's Fire9Magna Starglow4Magna FirestarGImperator Dragon's Fire9Magna Starglow  Q\Officers (14 minimum)3p@=xPy6Crew (0 minimum)p@=x\Gunners (19 minimum)1st Class Passengersp2nd Class PassengersPSteerage PassengersPMarines2pg5'Marine Battle Armor Troopers/Elementals@BvHGrav Deck #1 - 150m DiaP t; Grav Deck #2 - 80m Diad@BvHGrav Deck #3 - 100m Diaʚ; TEnergy Storage Batteriesp Life Boatsp Escape Pods  Lot Spare Parts (1.00%)  Magnetic clamping systeml The Spitfire was designed for the BlackHearts, to be an assault dropship, targetting WarShips. The dropship that the BlackHearts wanted had to be extremely tough, heavily gunned and fast. One of the concepts that was used in the planning, was to allow the Spitfire to ride in large craft bays, to conceal them from view and sensors, allowing tactical surprise. Large craft bays had gone out of style, but at Merlin's Workshop, it was being used on WarShips camouflaged as Jumpships, and on a few prototype WarShip upgrades. Spitfires were set up to carry 50 Nighthawk XXII space battlearmored marines. With a 50 ton magnetic clamp system, and it's speed, it could deliver it's marines to the hull of a WarShip with ease, allowing the marines to take the WarShip. The Spitfire was heavily armored to be able to withstand fire from WarShips and was heavily gunned to allow it to make holes in the hulls of WarShips to allow it's marines entry away from airlock choke points. Too allow it to operate away from high tech resources, it used regular armor, though a 112 and 1/2 tons of it. The reasoning behind this, was that the part of the ship to be most in need of repair and replacement was the exterior armor. The crew size was increased to allow them to maintain the ship independantly. This had a side benefit of allowing the ship to still be fully combat capable even with a large number of combat casualties.  All the Spitfires were involved in the assault by Amaris troops on Merlin's Workshop camouflaged space station and on the surface base on Lothario. Since the Amaris troops had a good idea on what they faced, they came in strength. The Jitterbug launched it's two Spitfires against a Moonsoon-class ship, while it went after the other WarShips at another pirate point. The Moonsoon, not liking the facts that nukes were being used against them, decided to leave, after launching a full spread of it's own nukes and some biological weapons against the ground base. The Spitfires did exactly as planned, taking fire, but surviving to clamp onto the Moonsoon just before it jumped. The 100 battlearmored Blackhearts took the ship, but in the fight, the jumpdrive had been damaged, and they had jumped into deep space, the rendez-vous point for the Amaris forces. The Blackhearts killed all of the Amaris troops, then commited suicide, as no rescue was possible. The Spitfires at Merlin's Workshop went out with skeleton crews, even the 4 incompleted ones. They faced off against 8 Pintos, 2 Kimagures, an Avatar and all their dropships. With them was a modified Dart-class light cruiser, the Rim Runner, and the station. At the end of the fight, the Kimagures and the Amaris dropships were totally destroyed and the other WarShips were non-operational, on balistic courses. 4 Spitfires survived with heavy damage, including one of the incomplete ones, and the Rim Runner was a barely controlled air bleeding wreck. A late arriving Pinto (jumped to the wrong pirate point, then micro-jumped in system to the station) got off a "Golden BB". It breached the main doors of the station, when everyone was in the main repair bay, trying to rescue as many of the crew of the Rim Runner as possible. The resulting explosive decompression killed eveyone on board, and sent the stations well away from it's original orbit. That Pinto was destroyed by the Jitterbug shortly after that. The crew of the Jitterbug died within days of the attack, of a biological weapon used by the Amaris troops on Lothatrio. The history and design of the Spitfire was lost for centuries, until a small mercenary unit, the Lothian Ice Hawks, found Merlin's Workshop and the Jitterbug.  The 2 prototypes were assigned to an upgraded Nightwind-class ship, the Jitterbug. The other ships of the class were still at Merlin's Workshop at the time of the coup. 4 were completed, awaiting crews, and the next 4 were partially completed.9Blackhearts is the name of the SLDF special forces units.Merlin's WorkshopLotharioLockheedDurallex HeavyLockheed/CBM Comset 100Lockheed/CBM TarSet 55Lockheed FairFax (Unknown)[ none ]