Gunstar Enceladus (D26)

The Enceladus is an Erinyes Class Gunstar. A heavy battlecruiser design, the Enceladus was placed into service approximately 20 years before the Fall of the Twelve Colonies.

As a battlecruiser, the Enceladus does not have an embarked Viper complement. Her modest hangar typically only carries an operational complement of 10 Raptors and 2 Mk II Shuttles, though under emergency conditions she can accomodate twice that number for a short period. Although lacking the force projection offered by an air group, Enceladus was nevertheless built strong, with a heavier armor layout than normally found on even the larger Battlestars of the fleet, she is able to absorb an incredible amount of punishment.

With a gun-heavy design, the Enceladus was employed as a heavy escort for Battlestar Groups. Packing an impressive arsenal of 32 Dual-Barrel Heavy Kinetic Energy Batteries onto her 1150.91 meter long hull, the Enceladus was more than capable of engaging enemy capital ships one-on-one on near equal terms. In additional, the ship employs an equally impressive secondary Anti-Aerospace Battery in the form of 250 dual-barrel close-in anti-aerospace craft batteries. For additional hitting power, Enceladus was also equipped with a total of 64 silos for Predator anti-ship/orbital strike conventional missiles and 756 launch boxes for the ship-mounted variant of the Javelin AMRAAM. Rounding out her arsenal was a modest load of 6 variable-yield tactical nuclear warheads in silos mounted along the dorsal section. This withering firepower was directed by a dedicated phased-array DRADIS system capable of tracking and locking on to hundreds of targets simultaneously.

Fall of the Twelve Colonies

At the time of the Fall, the Enceladus was under the command of Colonel Thadius Runel. For the last several months prior to the Cylon attack, Enceladus had been attached as lead escort for Battlestar Group 75 (BSG 75) under Commander William Adama. When Galactica recieved her final orders at Rhapsody Station to proceed back inside the Colonial Defense Perimeter and return to Caprica for her decommissioning, Enceladus and two accompanying destroyers, Adroa and Ikenga, were detached as Gunstar Group 73 in order to complete the last couple legs of the patrol.

But instead of completing the patrol as planned, Enceladus soon recieved orders to proceed out to Armistice Station along the Colonial-Cylon border in order to ascertain why the Colonial Representative was overdue. The first inkling the crew of Enceladus had that a shooting war had begun was when their group was ambushed by a loitering Basestar upon arrival at Armistice Station. Before anyone aboard knew what was happening, the Cylons delivered a punnishing first strike against the battlecruiser with a tactical nuclear warhead. Although heavily damaged by the strike, the Enceladus crew nevertheless recovered and executed a bold counter-attack. Although the Cylon virus was able to disable the accompanying Adroa and Ikenga, Enceladus computer network was down for repairs, allowing the vessel to continue to operate normally as the bow of the stout vessel turned to engage. Although the Cylons initially had the upper hand due to the element of surprise, the Enceladus rallied and using a mixture of cannon fire and missile strikes successfully fought off the accosting Cylon forces.