Fleet count for battle of Solomon and ABQ during the OYW?

[Geoxile]

Anyone have solid numbers? I seem to recall the Federation forces greatly outnumbering the Zeon forces in both battles but I can't find any information on it.

[mcred23]

I don't think there are solid numbers for either battle. As Mark notes here, Solomon seems to be fairly small, with Zeon perhaps having more ships! We don't see all of A Baoa Qu in the animation, and the various print sources inflate the numbers of everything involved compared to what is shown in the animation for both battles (And still often vary widely). However, I think the idea of the Federation outnumbering Zeon greatly is usually applied to the number of ships at A Baoa Qu, where the Federation fleet is thought to be around 75 ships, and Zeon is shown with only around 20.

That is, unless I forgot something that should be obvious (Good chance of that), or Mark has a new theory on all that wacky stuff!

[tHeWasTeDYouTh]

"where the Federation fleet is thought to be around 75 ships, and Zeon is shown with only around 20."

holy crap man so few ships in the final battle

I thought it would be hundred of ships fighting

[Black Knight]

We can count more than twenty ships in one shot pre-battle; the Dolos is of course easy to spot, and there are at least three Gwazines, as well (two circled; other shots of these three: 1; 2,3. Screencaps by Gelgoog Jager). There are at least two Chivvay-class, possibly more, but it's hard to say with all the Gattle grazing in the area. And about sixteen Musai-class, mostly arrayed in pairs.

Not included in that single shot are this fourth Gwazine, clearly nestled against A Baoa Qu itself, the Dorowa, the Gwazine Kycillia brings in the early stages of the battle, or a single Zanzibar class, I think we can safely say that Zeon had more than twenty warships at A Baoa Qu.

Per EB39, with it's ludicrously inflated numbers, Zeon deploys 2 Dolos, 3 Gwazine (which is, for a change, less than in the animation!), a mix of 41 Musai and Chivvay types and 46 Jiccos. And 3600 Rick Doms (this is EB39, after all), with no number of other MS cited.

The Federation, meanwhile, rolls in with 18 Magellan, 98 Salamis, 110 Public boats, 86 Columbus transports, 4800 GMs, and 900 Core Boosters. Balls, like the White Base, Zakus, or Gelgoogs, don't seem to have been important enough to be counted by EB39.

But, we've done this topic many times: here, and here, are two examples.

[toysdream]

Per EB39, with it's ludicrously inflated numbers, Zeon deploys 2 Dolos, 3 Gwazine (which is, for a change, less than in the animation!), a mix of 41 Musai and Chivvay types and 46 Jiccos. And 3600 Rick Doms (this is EB39, after all), with no number of other MS cited.

The Federation, meanwhile, rolls in with 18 Magellan, 98 Salamis, 110 Public boats, 86 Columbus transports, 4800 GMs, and 900 Core Boosters. Balls, like the White Base, Zakus, or Gelgoogs, don't seem to have been important enough to be counted by EB39.

The figures in EB 39 are listed as "3600 Rick Doms, etc" and "4800 GMs, etc". Actually, the chart lists them by their model numbers - "09R type, etc" and "RGM-79 type, etc" - but you get the point. These are supposed to include all the mobile suit types, and they're just listing the most common one as an example.

Incidentally, the accompanying text essay in this book gives an entirely different head count for the Zeon side:

The fighting strength gathered in this airspace included more than four battleships, more than 30 heavy cruisers, and more than 80 light cruisers. This came to almost 70 percent of all Zeon's functional vessels.

Many mobile suits were also gathered here. More than 1,500 MS-06 units. More than 1,200 MS-09R units. And more than 200 units of the new MS-14 type. Including older machines and mass production prototypes, there were almost 3,000 machines.

This is pretty typical for EB 39, which isn't even internally consistent, let alone consistent with any other sources.

-- Mark

[Arbiter GUNDAM]

This is pretty typical for EB 39, which isn't even internally consistent, let alone consistent with any other sources.

-- Mark

Did they just not do the research or did they just make up numbers to sound cool?

[Cardi Doorl]

All statistics and figures in Gundam - all of them - are in the latter category.

[toysdream]

Did they just not do the research or did they just make up numbers to sound cool?

Funny story. According to the Japanese Wikipedia page on this book, author Hiroshi Yamaguchi later confessed that he had to write the whole thing in one week. (The Wikipedia article didn't give a source for this claim, and that part of the article has recently been cut, but you can still find it in the revision history.)

The Wikipedia article also says that the Bandai staff asked Yamaguchi to freely invent stuff, since it wasn't "official setting" material. In this case, I suppose it's everyone else's fault for taking this book too seriously.

-- Mark

[Deacon Blues]

Pardon my ignorance on the matter but do the MS numbers just not match up with the ship count, hence the erroneous/grossly out of proportion claims? I don't really see an issue with 3600 or 4800 of any particular unit when if you look in retrospect at 100,000+ US soldiers being sent overseas to fight... :/

[toysdream]

Pardon my ignorance on the matter but do the MS numbers just not match up with the ship count, hence the erroneous/grossly out of proportion claims? I don't really see an issue with 3600 or 4800 of any particular unit when if you look in retrospect at 100,000+ US soldiers being sent overseas to fight... :/

On the one hand, the figures given in EB 39 (and repeated in later publications) are an order of magnitude higher than the ones given in previous sources like the MSV books. Which is annoying if you're trying to reconcile conflicting info, as fans seem to like to do. Likewise, books like Gundam Officials, which take every scrap of info and throw it all into the same pot, end up seeming horribly confused. (For example, they diligently repeat that the Federation produced a total of 330 GMs and 1,200 Balls, and then go on to say that the Federation deployed four or five thousand mobile suits at Solomon and A Baoa Qu.)

And on the other hand, these figures don't really make sense in the context of the animation. Since you mention ship counts, in the animation we see the Federation deploying GMs only from the belly holds of Magellan and Salamis ships, and in the final episodes we see a few standing on Magellan hulls as well. The notion that the Federation has about 40 mobile suits for every ship, with the extras strapped to the hulls or crammed into hundreds of Columbus transports, doesn't have any support in the animation at all.

And in the animation, the actual mobile suit headcounts are clearly a lot smaller. Putting aside the original size of the Jaburo landing force - EB 39 says fifty-plus mobile suits, but we only see twelve Gaws in the animation - we know that only 28 reached the ground intact, because they say so in the animation dialogue. And this was meant to be a full-scale attack on the Federation headquarters, whose failure crippled Zeon's North American forces!

In the abstract, armies of thousands of mobile suits might seem plausible. But it's a direct contradiction with all the previous sources, and it doesn't seem plausible in the light of the animation itself.

-- Mark

[Gelgoog Jager]

In the abstract, armies of thousands of mobile suits might seem plausible. But it's a direct contradiction with all the previous sources, and it doesn't seem plausible in the light of the animation itself.

-- Mark

But let's not forget about the second episode of MS Igloo: Apocalypse, where the Zeon fleet at A Baoa Qu, and the Federation fleet leaving Solomon, both seem to consist on several hundreds of warships .

Maybe we can consider this a retcon made by Sunrise to match the inflated numbers?

[toysdream]

But let's not forget about the second episode of MS Igloo: Apocalypse, where the Zeon fleet at A Baoa Qu, and the Federation fleet leaving Solomon, both seem to consist on several hundreds of warships .

And then again again, the original TV series told us that the Luzal fleet - one of the three large formations that attacked A Baoa Qu - consisted of about 25 ships. (Aside from the Luzal and White Base, these all seem to be Salamis class, with no extra mobile suits on their hulls.) If the two sides really did have hundreds of warships apiece, that would be pitifully insignificant.

If we're not going to dismiss MS Igloo out of hand, we should probably take the most conservative possible view. But even if we assume that a lot of the background blobs could be assault boats or fighters, instead of cruisers, there are still humongous amounts of Musais on the screen, and it's hard to square this with any other account - including Entertainment Bible 39, which credits the Zeon side with only 41 or 110+ cruisers, depending on which page you happen to be looking at.

-- Mark

[Homeless]

I've always been in favor of dismissing Igloo out of hand, personally.

[Gelgoog Jager]

And then again again, the original TV series told us that the Luzal fleet - one of the three large formations that attacked A Baoa Qu - consisted of about 25 ships. (Aside from the Luzal and White Base, these all seem to be Salamis class, with no extra mobile suits on their hulls.) If the two sides really did have hundreds of warships apiece, that would be pitifully insignificant.

I went and checked again episode 3 of Apocalypse and found something interesting:

Soon after the initial missile attack on the N field, a Zeon soldier says that the enemy is also approaching from the S field, and that it is a large fleet, but he doesn't know how big it is. Afterwards we see a Salamis launching 5 GM Kais from on top of it's deck and right afterwards a larger shot showing about 25 Salamis, with most of them starting to launch their GMs (they all seem to launch 5 GM from on top their decks and 3 more from below of the ship; the official MS Igloo site has a good picture of this 8 MS arrangement on the profile page of the Salamis, along with an unused 3 MS carrying arrangement). Right afterwards we get have another shot showing a total of 39 lights which seem to be these ships seen from the point of view of the asteroid missiles being fired at them. Finally the next shot shows 28 Salamis and a single Magellan right before the asteroids missiles destroy about 7 Salamis.

The fact that there's a single Magellan among so many Salamis made me consider that this could actually be a retconned Luzal fleet (with 39 ships instead of just 25). After all, we also get a look at a retconned Delaz fleet retreating, which seems to have at least 9 regular Musais, 1 Papua, 1 green Chivvay and the Gwaden.

While from the distance 39 ships can be spotted, none of the close shots show all ships, which leaves the possibility that White Base is one of the unseen ships (after all, we don't see any Publics or Zanzibars either, and yet we know that some are around for the battle).

Oddly enough we don't see any Balls among this fleet. Maybe the shot with 25 ships actually meant to indicate that 25 Salamis carried GMs and the remaining ships carried Balls?

Another possibility is that if this fleet is actually smaller than the other two groups, then they were given more MS to make up for the low number of ships.

Still, if each of the 37 Salamis carried 8 units, whether they were GMs or Balls, that would still give us 296 mobile weapons, plus any units carried by the Magellan and White Base would give us a total of just over 300 mobile weapons for an almost 40 ships-large fleet.

[toysdream]

That's definitely the Luzal fleet. I think the highest number of Salamis cruisers I can see in a single shot is 31; the shot of 39 intense lights, clustered into groups of three, could be mobile suits rather than ships. (And even if they're ships, they're not necessarily all capital ships.)

I also note that, judging from the animation, it looks like only half of the Salamis cruisers are actually carrying mobile suits. (The "carrier" versions don't have the top-side gun turret, so they're physically distinguishable.) This means we still have an average of four GMs per ship, just as in the original anime where these were carried internally.

And no, we never see these ships deploying Balls. (Even in the original anime, the only Balls we see being deployed are either sitting on Magellan hulls, or coming out of the shuttle deck in front of a Magellan's bridge.) Perhaps the Balls are being dumped out of offscreen Columbus transports?

In any case, if the Luzal fleet has roughly 30 Salamis cruisers, about half of which are carrying GMs, then that suggests something like 120 mobile suits (plus a mysterious supply of Balls). Seems reasonable to me.

-- Mark

[Iron_spear]

Did the Federation really outnumber Zeon at A Baoa Qu? They seemed to be in really bad shape after the solar ray attack, and EB 1 says that "With the loss of the Revil fleet, their numerical inferiority was unavoidable, and they were barely able to get a small number of mobile suit corps inside the fortress."

Was this idea repeated in any other sources? And which should we believe?

[Nebfer]

We have the EB39 numbers and some suggestions on what the animation show us, but what are some of the other numbers from the other sources? Ive read a number of threads on this and it's been noted that their some other numbers out their.