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Is there any examples of Wet Navy combat in 40k? What fo Imperium water craft look like? What about Xenos Water Craft?

There was a Guard novel that had small boats in it (think PT boats in Vietnam), and I think there was a carrier as well. I'll have a look at my bookshelf and see if I can find it.

Orks made submarines to invde Helsreach hive (I think it was) on Armageddon.

One of the Cain books has a world with quite a bit of water where boats are used. No mention of a wet military navy as such, but descriptions of civilian craft and a particularly large dredger are included.

One would imagine that local militia/PDF's would have water borne military craft. If only for things like smuggling prevention and such (kind of like the modern US coast guard). Probably mostly smaller craft, nothing like a WWI Dreadnought - but the Imperium is large enough that there's space for such a thing to exist. On a planet that's mostly small islands, it would be expedient to have a wet Navy of some kind to patrol.

 Kcalehc wrote:
One would imagine that local militia/PDF's would have water borne military craft. If only for things like smuggling prevention and such (kind of like the modern US coast guard). Probably mostly smaller craft, nothing like a WWI Dreadnought - but the Imperium is large enough that there's space for such a thing to exist. On a planet that's mostly small islands, it would be expedient to have a wet Navy of some kind to patrol.

Ok so Orks build ships too as mentioned above. Yknow what would be a really cool setting? A mostly water planet filled with Numerous islands and its a cilvized planet at a roughly ww1 or ww2 tech level and some of the islands are inhabited by Orks that are the remnants of a long defeated Waaghh from centurys ago. And the Orks are also at a ww2 level and so you have a never ending war between the PDF and the Orks with like Battleships and ww2 Fighter plans. Like an Ork Battleship just sounds fething awesome. I might try and write a fic for this idea.

beast_gts wrote:
There was a Guard novel that had small boats in it (think PT boats in Vietnam), and I think there was a carrier as well. I'll have a look at my bookshelf and see if I can find it.

Flesh and Iron, by Henry Zou (Bastion Wars series).

Gaunt’s Ghosts do a Normandy style beach landing in one of the earlier novels IIRC

The second War Of the Beast novel has a wet navy response to an ork invasion, good fun - well, as a reader..

phillv85 wrote:
Gaunt’s Ghosts do a Normandy style beach landing in one of the earlier novels IIRC

They do, but its an airborne drop onto a beach.

chimera0205 wrote:

 Kcalehc wrote:
One would imagine that local militia/PDF's would have water borne military craft. If only for things like smuggling prevention and such (kind of like the modern US coast guard). Probably mostly smaller craft, nothing like a WWI Dreadnought - but the Imperium is large enough that there's space for such a thing to exist. On a planet that's mostly small islands, it would be expedient to have a wet Navy of some kind to patrol.

Ok so Orks build ships too as mentioned above. Yknow what would be a really cool setting? A mostly water planet filled with Numerous islands and its a cilvized planet at a roughly ww1 or ww2 tech level and some of the islands are inhabited by Orks that are the remnants of a long defeated Waaghh from centurys ago. And the Orks are also at a ww2 level and so you have a never ending war between the PDF and the Orks with like Battleships and ww2 Fighter plans. Like an Ork Battleship just sounds fething awesome. I might try and write a fic for this idea.

Well, BFG is basically what youre looking for :p
Though in-universe there is little reason to have large sea navies unless we are talking about a waterworld like you are. I believe Earth today would be considered an ocean/water world too.

123ply wrote:

chimera0205 wrote:

 Kcalehc wrote:
One would imagine that local militia/PDF's would have water borne military craft. If only for things like smuggling prevention and such (kind of like the modern US coast guard). Probably mostly smaller craft, nothing like a WWI Dreadnought - but the Imperium is large enough that there's space for such a thing to exist. On a planet that's mostly small islands, it would be expedient to have a wet Navy of some kind to patrol.

Ok so Orks build ships too as mentioned above. Yknow what would be a really cool setting? A mostly water planet filled with Numerous islands and its a cilvized planet at a roughly ww1 or ww2 tech level and some of the islands are inhabited by Orks that are the remnants of a long defeated Waaghh from centurys ago. And the Orks are also at a ww2 level and so you have a never ending war between the PDF and the Orks with like Battleships and ww2 Fighter plans. Like an Ork Battleship just sounds fething awesome. I might try and write a fic for this idea.

Well, BFG is basically what youre looking for :p
Though in-universe there is little reason to have large sea navies unless we are talking about a waterworld like you are. I believe Earth today would be considered an ocean/water world too.

he's talking wet navy. sea ships not starships

40k being what it is, a galaxy spanning sandbox, there's no reasons you couldn't imagine it existing. But not as an Imperium wide military branch.

That said I agree it could be very fun to see a few naval based scenarios in 40K, though as of now you can essentially house made them to play it out in a way or another with friends.

In the novella Death Knell, the Ultramarines and Guard infiltrate a Chaos-held island using a form of submarine.

If I remember correctly there was a line of comics about an Ork airwing and their (mis)adventures. One of which involved a raid on a rival Ork battleship. So if Orks build navies, why not others too.

The limiting factor is probably "Where do you put the boats on the space ship, and how do you get it onto the water?"

I mean, it's like all of the stuff about Eldar dinosaur riders or some of the original knight stuff (or, for that matter, titans). It's really easy to imagine the people living on a planet having their own navy. But if someone comes in from space to attack, they already need to have ways to fly down and fly back up.

I could see the Imperium having amphibious variants of the Chimera or Rhino. Otherwise... I mean, if you invade and take over a planet you're going to spend your time doing things like building sand castles and messing around. If you were on a world with an ocean, it might make sense to build a navy in some circumstances. But those would all have to be situations where you wouldn't just use your flying transports.

But I could see the Eldar and Dark Eldar being all "Oh, yeah, all of those flying vehicles we have? All of those vehicles also float. Didn't the authors tell you?"

The chimera is amphibious, apparently.
But yeah, you're in a narrow window of need between "Just build a bridge" and "relocate via air or space" - indigenous forces (pdf) having carriers and battleships, sure, and an imperial campaign dragging on for years might build them on a specific world.

It'd be unusual to ship them through space and you probably wouldn't have them 'on the shelf' though.

I believe ork subs even had an apocalypse datasheet...

https://1d4chan.org/images/5/5f/Ork_Submersible_Datasheet.png

And, the Orks, built them on site.

Maybe thats the solution. Airdrop a factory.

Not really. As most worlds are unified under the imperium, threats generally come from space, and worlds that are mainly water tend to raise armies of fliers. See the novel double eagle for an example. And from a practical real life point of view, trying to incorporate naval warfare in the 40k universe would be difficult. The fantasy setting would be much easier to pull this off in.

Deff Squadron featured an attack on a battleship (called the Bizmork, if I remember correctly). very cool art.

I would say that spaceships should make functional sea ships, and it would be less fuel-cosuming (and load) to float your fleet on the ocean of a planet than hover around everywhere - especially if you were on diplomatic or inquisitorial business. A starship hovering over to a city of natives/questionably imperial imperials would probably knock it flat from the pressure wave of their engines.

I'm not sure you'd want the sensitive components of a plasma core or whatever your propulsion system is, sat in salt water. Plus most space ships in the, 40k universe are assembled and commissioned in orbit on special construction stations.

 Kcalehc wrote:
One would imagine that local militia/PDF's would have water borne military craft. If only for things like smuggling prevention and such (kind of like the modern US coast guard). Probably mostly smaller craft, nothing like a WWI Dreadnought - but the Imperium is large enough that there's space for such a thing to exist. On a planet that's mostly small islands, it would be expedient to have a wet Navy of some kind to patrol.

This times a hundred. Most surface navies in the Imperium are likely to be part of the PDFs , and such forces are likely to be of the "brown water" variety.


And I agree that there is room for such in the setting.

 some bloke wrote:
Deff Squadron featured an attack on a battleship (called the Bizmork, if I remember correctly). very cool art.

I would say that spaceships should make functional sea ships, and it would be less fuel-cosuming (and load) to float your fleet on the ocean of a planet than hover around everywhere - especially if you were on diplomatic or inquisitorial business. A starship hovering over to a city of natives/questionably imperial imperials would probably knock it flat from the pressure wave of their engines.

No, none of the stuff depicted for the Imperial side of Battle Fleet Gothic is the sort of thing that’s going to do well entering atmosphere, landing in water, and then trying to leave atmosphere. That’s why Space Marines have landing craft and drop pods.

I’ll admit that I don’t know what sort of landing craft GW, Black Library or Forge World have hand waved for getting super heavies or titans up and down. It’s possible those might be able to double as boats.