When we question the Oberth class ships presence we should remember that in the real world battle groups also consist of lightly armed and unarmored support vessels, armed civilian ships, military aircraft that dont necessarily partake in the shooting. The fleet was also assembled on short notice, and when the ship in question isnt the star of the show we should assume that they travel at canonically appropriate speeds. Meaning that even between earth and Wolf359 many ships would require days of travel time to get there or leave. Meaning that little Oberth may just have been there at the wrong time and lacked the ability to flee, and so cjose to throw their bit of firepower in with the rest of the fleet. Or provide support while failing to avoid actual combat.
A science vessel supporting a battlegroup makes a lot of sense, especially against such an unknown enemy. They could have been providing a real-time analysis of the enemy as it was being engaged and/or attempting to identify and paint target points for the fleet?
@@Azraiel213 I'd like to think that the Oberth class (Bonestell) survived. It orbited the battle while scanning the Borg vessel during the engagement. Thanks to the plethora of data it obtained, Star Fleet was able to develop the technology that went into the Sovereign, Akira, Steamrunner, and Defiant classes, which defeated the Borg on their next incursion into Federation territory.
@@leestewart72 it was seen through a window in Emissary as taking a rather nasty blow to the saucer, so I rather doubt it survived. I tend to favor USS Ahwahnee as the ship that survived.
To say nothing of the fact that any survivors left behind as the last ships of the task force were either destroyed or fled would have been picked up and assimilated by the 'Borg.
In the immediate aftermath of such a battle, the hard radiation and the Federation and Borg debris might have masked scattered lifesigns. Specialized rescue and salvage ships arriving soon afterward might have had better luck. Maybe by then some survivors were able to jerry-rig distress beacons.
your analysis makes me wonder if there were two phases of the battle, an initial phase that we see in TNG when the battlegroup first engages the Borg Cube, and then a later phase that took place as the Borg Cube punched through the battlegroup and the Starfleet ships regrouped to try to slow the Borg Cube down. The ships of the initial phase, which tried to make a stand, would've been utterly obliterated and rendered lifeless in a static location (which is what the Enterprise flies through), while the ships of the latter phase were moving more dynamically in an attempt to outflank, catch up to the Cube, slow it down, etc. Once those ships were disabled and/or destroyed, the wreckage and survivors would've been left drifting off in all sorts of random directions with whatever inertia had been left to them when the Cube knocked them out. it could also be that the escape pods intentionally moved outside of the battle area to avoid all of that wreckage
Yeah i would think that standard tactics for fleet formations would include dropping your shuttles prior to engagement with your utility shuttles can do things like tow damaged ships or rescue survivors. This just makes sense to me to do this especially if your expecting to take severe losses.
Yes i believe that admiral Hansen called to regroup and that at that point the battle moved a bit around in the system i'm assuming. I would think the Borg being undamaged would have simply not allowed them to effectively gather themselves though.
USS Dunkerque-NCC-44532-Cheyenne, USS Thy'lek Shran-NCC-62151-Centaur, USS Ahwahnee-NCC-71620-Cheyenne, USS Anderson-NCC-12248-Springfield, USS Bastion-NCC-2527-Constellation, USS Bellerophon-NCC-62048-Nebula, USS Bonestell-NCC-31600-Oberth, USS Buran-NCC-57580-Challanger, USS Chekov-NCC-57302-Springfield, USS Columbia-NCC-71102-Galaxy, USS Constance-NCC-10367-Constellation, USS Endeavour-NCC-71805-Nebula, USS Endurance-NCC-5365-Ambassador, USS Firebrand-NCC-68723-Freedom, USS Gage-NCC-11672-Apollo, USS Galatea-NCC-2692-Constellation, USS Garratt-NCC-12256-Georgiou, USS Hoagland-NCC-31800-Miranda, USS Hood-NCC-42296-Excelsior, USS Konom-NCC-32285-New Orleans, USS Kyushu-NCC-65491-New Orleans, USS Liberator-NCC-67016-Centaur, USS Melbourne-NCC-63043-Excelsior, USS Melbourne-NCC-68256-Nebula, USS Mjolnir-NCC-3117-Miranda, USS Potemkin-NCC-18253-Excelsior, USS Princeton-NCC-59804-Niagara, USS Reliant-NCC-1864-Miranda, USS Republic-NCC-1371-Constitution II, USS Righteous-NCC-42451-Excelsior, USS Roosevelt-NCC-2573-Excelsior, USS Saratoga-NCC-31911-Miranda, USS Sonak-NCC-29873-Miranda, USS T'Shen Kovil-NCC-68208-ShiKahr, USS Tolstoy-NCC-62095-Rigel, USS Victory-NCC-9754-Constellation, USS Yamaguchi-NCC-26510-Ambassador, USS Yorktown-NCC-61137-Zodiac
JTVFX has done several instances on the subject of BoBW Part 1 & 2 (and I think that is where the idea of the battle being conducted in two phases originates).
HANSON, to Enterprise: "Your engagements have given us valuable time. We've mobilised a fleet of forty starships at Wolf three five nine, and that's just for starters. The Klingons are sending warships. Hell, we've even thought about opening communications with the Romulans." This line actually implies there could very well of been more than forty vessels by the time they engaged the Borg, leading to the possibility of more surviving vessels. It is likely, if there were such vessels, that the Borg would not of wasted time chasing them down, but instead continued it's course to Earth.
The Klingons didnt arrive in time. I wish they had just for the visuals but aside from that line from Hanson nothing was ever shown or said on screen about it again
@@birdmonster4586 Honestly i cant think of a ship that needed to be more updated then the largest and most functional to a hostile target threatening Earth.
@@shaundis2117 in Voyager's episode Unity, some brief flashback scenes of birds of prey being destroyed were incorporated, suggesting that at least some did arrive in time, towards the end of the battle. Additionally, this may be where the assimilated Klingons from the episode UnimaterixZero: Part II came from.
@@RoseBunneh Or it is possible that the Borg switched their attentions from the Federation to the Klingons during the intervening years between Wolf and the Sector 001 battle.
Star Trek: Borg also adds the Excelsior class USS Rightous, which may or may not be canon. Also, regarding survivors: Considering how many large starships were present, it could be that the 11,000 dead were the total casulties and that the lifepods launched full of survivors like Sisko were not among the count. For one, the ship that survived may have picked up the lifepods after the Borg went on their way, or perhaps the Enterprise was so late that the lifepods were already out of sensor range- Given that they completely missed all of it despite urgently catching up i'd find that believable.
In the case of the Rightous it was recorded as lost as it appeared to be destroyed. It wasn't until much later that that was revealed as a fabrication by Q to preserve the timeline.
Another possibility is the Enterprise was only doing a cursory scan - there were dozens of destroyed/crippled ships, massive amounts of weapons fire, detonations, subspace catastrophies from destroyed warp cores, etc. Any thorough sensor sweep could have taken hours - hours they didn't have. They could have had dififculty getting thorough sensor readings so upon an initial scan kept on going. escape pods might have gone away from the battle at maximum speed and turned off transponders to minimize the chances of being picked up by the Borg, so cursory scans could have missed them and they could have only been located days later. Also depending if one accepts it as canon or not, the 'Borg' adventure game from the 90's shows one ship being sent to the future by Q that was a retroactive survivor and would have been missing in action (due to the time travel bit). However, this requires treating live action games as canon materials, which has never been stated firmly either way. But it was done by production crews who worked on the series, used sets from them, and had a lot of the same actors and creators.
it is a little handwavy. the enterprise sensors can find bacteria and small bits of specific metal from orbit but can't see survivors(many of them actively trying to signal for help in lifepods designed to be easily found)? even if they had transponder and beacons off they don't have romulan cloaks and seeing enterpise or the borg leave would turn them back on. most likely a small retcon or one ship grabbing survivors like ben sisko and hightailing out.
For the 'No Survivors' question I had a thought; the Klingons. The Admiral said that 'The Klingons are sending warships' when talking to Riker and knowing the Klingons they'd burn their engines out at high warp to fight the Borg shoulder to shoulder with their former enemies and now allies! But since they were too far away maybe they arrived too late to engage in the battle but arrived in time to rescue the survivors and lifeboats. I can see the Klingons respecting the survivors greatly seeing the destruction of the scene, like how the Enterprise C defended the Klingon outpost and died doing so seeing 39 destroyed Federation ships must be a massive show of 'These people can and WILL fight to the bitter end!'
A two part battle does make sense. The Federation is losing, Hansen tries to break off and regroup, the Borg decide to ignore a badly damaged but still functioning ship and chase down the retreating group, wiping them out in the process. Then the Borg decide to continue on the earth rather than backtrack. The damaged ship manages to get underway, collect survivors, and limp out of the area maintaining radio silence so as to not remind the Borg they are still alive. By the time the Enterprise shows up the area is in the depicted state.
You seem to think the two battles are writing retcons instead of in universe explanations. Hansen was attempting to regroup the fleet when communication was cut off with the Enterprise-D. Clearly no one survived the initial encounter which is the location the Enterprise warped to. Sisko was at the later fall back point also near or in the Wolf system, yet outside detectable life form sensor range. Remember also that heavy subspace interference was reported, potentially reducing sensor performance.
Thank you for this line: "Clearly no one survived the initial encounter which is the location the Enterprise warped to." Cleary he did not consider that both battles depicted in "BOBW II" and "Emissary" were possiblly separate engagements by Starfleet as an attempt to stop the Borg Cube from entering the Terran System (going to Earth). This also has implications that indeed the USS Endeavour was the potential 40th starship to survive the first assault by Starfleet. It could have been seriously damaged and out of sensor range by the time the Enterprise-D passed through the Wolf 359 Wreckage , as Admiral Hanson's starship was not also seen: Commander Shelby did not call out its name as she listed known ships that passed within the view of the Enterprise. I generally like this man's videos but his assertions and conclusions here were somewhat lack luster at best and need more pursuit and polish. I always assumed that the 40 starships that Hanson was able to muster were vessels in and around the Terran system perhaps at Stardock and/or the Utopia Planitia Shipyards at Mars that were deployed to defend Earth. This might also explain why those vessels had so little crew aboard because they were either under repair, upgrades or being decommissioned when the Borg Invasion occured, thus "skeleton crews" were issued to command and operate them. Converesly, the USS Saratoga could have been a ship that arrived some time later and engaged the Borg between the Terran System and the Wolf 359 System. Another line of dialogue that could be used to support these suppositions is spoken by Commander Shelby just before her departure during the conclusion of BOBW II. She mentions that with her help "the Fleet will be up and operational in less than a year". Surely, she is not referring to the entire star fleet that Starfleet is comprised of--because is has to have more than 40 starships in use--but is the "Home Fleet" assigned to either defend Earth itself or all of Sector 001. Those 39 ships (plus potentially more) that were lost to the Borg Cube would be replaced by existing vessels or newly commissioned ones in that time frame.
@@Aqweiusthere where 2 battles. The first line of defence was destroyed while the second line pulled back I think this was siskco battle where he and others survived. I do also believe it was 16,000kia not 11
@@Aqweius Very logical! As the Borg Cube did sport lots of damage. not enough to really hamper it's operation. But suggestive of more than a single, major engagement. The Borg didn't stop due to the need to NOT allow Star Fleet more time. It is suggestive they were aware the Cube was in damage - IF - a starship rammed it at warp speed. In fact, the sheer scale of the destruction to the Klingon vessel suggests that might have been their final attempt. And with enough warp able vessels incoming, the Cube was at risk.
It is quite possible that, rather than running, the surviving ship was assigned the specific duty of picking up survivors once the cube (and possibly the remains of the fleet in pursuit) warped out of the area. In WWII submarines were often stationed near battle areas, not to participate in the fight, but to pick up downed aviators. So this ship may have been on station far away from the battle, came in after the cube left, and picked up survivors. This would account for why "only" 11,000 people died when that would mean many of the ships would have tiny crews. It would also explain why there were no life signs when the Enterprise arrived as that ship may have been there and gone already. And it might even explain it being a Nebula class, as only a large ship would be able to hold so many survivors. Hansen was pretty realistic about their chances and probably foresaw the need for a large rescue ship, even if it meant taking that firepower out of the battle.
Some have speculated that the Cube assimilated a bunch of the crews then sent a Sphere back with them so they were able to be there for the Voyager episode later on, as otherwise everyone assimilated would have died when the cube exploded.
And, alpha quadrant species drones are encountered by Voyager in the Delta quadrant... unless they use the whole 'you think in such 3 dimensional terms' argument... which is how the Queen survives to show up in First Contact.
If you are at all interested, I wrote ‘We have engaged the Borg: The oral history of the battle of Wolf 359’ which the STO battle is based upon and the question of what ship survived is a pivotal plot point in the book, we also try and square a number of inconsistencies from both BOBW and Emissary, you can read it for free online, just search for the Wolf 359 Project. Would love to have a chat about it and dive in more to the details if you like
To me it would make perfect sense that when it came to large fleet battles Starfleet would have one or two ships standing by in reserve for "Clean up duty". Their job would be to pick up life boats, in the unfortunate event of a starship being destroyed. This would also answer the question of, "Why was an Oberth class ship there?". The Oberth and the mystery ship, were busy recovering life boats, the Oberth either got over zealous or sadly caught in the crossfire. The mystery ship, being that it was not engaged with the Borg, was ignored and continued its mission to recover life boats, thus the reason why there was no life boats around for the Enterprise to recover when she arrived hours later.
Ooooh. Used the conning tower from a typhoon class submarine kit? OK, brace, because this may sting... the thingies used to represent the defensive pods whatsits * that the Borg Cube swats out of existence were made, in part, from the hulls of typhoon kits, so, one might speculate they had a few conning towers lying around,... One of the things that has almost always amused me a tad, when we started getting large scale battles in Trek, is that, in theory, each of those ships is packed with techy geniuses, so, a Federation fleet in attack mode ought to be kalaidoscopic, really, every ship with more than one zany scheme to technobabble the enemy to death, every ship's super smart person trying time dilation or hyper warp induction scoops, each vaunted engineer coagulating the photonic whoopsitrons. Time travelling entities, duplicate vessels from alternate worlds. They win the day thanks to reverse engineering, but, surely, each of those ships was working on some kind of plan, right? Yet we never see anyone trying anything flash except for our heroes (which of course is the point don' get me wrong) The only time iirc we get any kind of hint that other ships are just as inventive and awesome is the chap explaining his engineer is rigging a solar sail in St4. It always seems to boil down to, each captain saying... "OK, people, we're going to try attack plan A. Fly towards the enemy, fire the phasers, then fly away again." "Couldn't we try something else?" "Such as?" "Well, what about those poly-phasic neutron boom whatsists that Marki LaWhizz built last week? Couldn't we beam them onto the Borg cube?" "We'd never get through the shields." "Well, sure, except, we could use the defibulation warp field mode we came up with on Dabnifelchpond 3 to read their shield frequency and..." "You're relieved!" * Mars perimeter defence pods
An existentially threatened Federation has no need for edgy Section 31 evil schemes. They’d unleash away teams of MACO’s boosted by Scalosian water making them effectively comic book superspeedsters wiping out entire ship crews or space stations or cities if need be. They’d respond to fleets by warping in a heavily armored Galaxy class fitted with a Mannheim Temporal device locking that fleet into place in a temporal loop for eternity. Key systems would be wiped out by red matter, genesis device, or similar scale weapon. And yeah that’s ignoring artificially enhanced evolution to become god beings (ala Organians and the like) or simply getting unstable psychics by smashing people into the galactic barrier, or time travel duplicates, etc. Trek that had coherent scientific follow-up would have the space hippies overwhelm those noble warrior races or sneaky manipulators by sheer accident with the 13th galaxy devastating lab experiment they conducted.
6:43 Probably the same thing the Oberths at the Battle of Sector 001 were doing… The Bonstell may have been the transport mentioned in VOY “Infinite Regress” and it got roped into the battle. There was also a Type-7 shuttle model used in the BOBW debris scene but barely visible. It was labelled as belonging to the USS Liberator NCC-67016, so I think it’s safe to assume that ship was there and was lost too.
I assumed that maybe Sisko's escape pod had a warp engine like most shuttlecraft do. Though it's not on-screen, the model department did build a wrecked warp-capable shuttle from the USS Liberator for the battle scene. And it wasn't just the secondary hull of a Constitution-class refit in the wreckage, you see the saucer-section too that seemed to have been blown clean off. The Enterprise may have had time to pick up some survivors after they rescued Picard- their kidnapping of Locutus seemed like it was right next to where the Battle of Wolf 359 was and after the rescue they were 15 minutes behind the Borg when they entered Earth's solar system. We know even with manual docking it would only take like 2 minutes for the secondary and primary hulls to reconnect and the Enterprise to give chase and at less than 8 light years that's not enough distance for the cube's speed advantage at warp to matter, so maybe the Enterprise spent like 10 minutes collecting escape pods. It seems like the cube was jamming sensors in the area- even though the hulking thing was right there next to the battle site sitting still, the Enterprise had to follow "eddy currents" to find it, which implies their sensors were unable to detect it, so that jamming may have prevented them from finding escape pods too. Maybe the Borg were sitting still when the Enterprise followed the eddy currents to them because they were licking their wounds and had a jamming field to keep anyone from attacking while they did that. The Borg were never that hard to detect otherwise. Also I can't remember if it was in a canon source or not but Hanson had his ships attacking in waves as opposed to all swarming at once like in First Contact. That was how it was depicted in Star Trek: Borg (where the Saratoga was in the first wave, which seems consistent with Locutus broadcasting the warning right before they open fire) and other places, so when Hanson gave the retreat order one ship in the last wave could have grabbed some escape pods and fled. And technically speaking that means there were two or more battles of Wolf 359.
Sisko could have been picked up by the Surviving ship potentially too. If it was one of those long and odd looking Discovery Style Medical vessels there would be plenty of space.
It’s also worth mentioning that there were likely more crew than 11,000 total on the ships since Shaw made it out on an escape pod and survived to get to ST: Picard, as well as the survivors we see from DS9. It’s a reasonable assumption to guess that at least some other people from the other ships survived as well, although probably not many… One explanation for the reason the Enterprise didn’t detect any survivors is perhaps because the battle moved throughout its course, or maybe the escape pods were already taken away by the time they got there. This could have even been done by a non-Starfleet ship.
It is also more logical because it was a space battle; starfleet commanders asked all non-starship operations / essential crew to remain n others to disembark (temporary) . . . Hence less casaulties There may exceptions . . . But Sisko wife died at wolf 359 who knows
Quite a few points that can be raised here. First with the crew count - we see in DS9 that when Starfleet has advanced warning, they offload non-combat-essential personnel before sailing into harms way. Its reasonable to assume that the fleet gathered did exactly this; ergo allowing for larger ships to be at the battle. Second - When the Ent-D shows up, its not made clear how much time has passed between the end of battle and the big D showing up - ergo, the 'lone survivor' was the one on rescue duty. This neatly ties up the TNG and DS9 episodes; bringing them back to just one battle; where as the survivors made themselves scarce as to not attract further unwanted attention and 'cleared datum' - submariner term for GTFO. Third, there was another starship that survived the battle - USS Righteous, Excelsior class, was, courtesy of Q, 'snapped' out of the battle just before destruction and thrust forward in time. I would argue that Star Trek: Borg is 100% canon, as it does a vastly better job respecting the established canon without crapping all over it as, well, anything post VOY does.
Why can't the surviving vessel be the one that saved Sisko? They could have seen the way the battle was going, grabbed as many escape pods and shuttles as they could, and gtfo.
I'm pretty sure they only used shuttles to escape as too many of the Saratogas crew was killed by the initial strike to the saucer, and rescue wouldn't have been needed as shuttles are equipped with warp capabilities
Probably my favourite piece of Star Trek meta-media is the Star Trek Borg CD Rom Game and Audiobook. This posits that the Excelsior class USS Righteous, NCC 42451 was 'struck by an unknown Borg weapons discharge and vapourised' ... but was instead timejumped from 2367 to 2377 by Q. As an aside, in ST Borg the list of lost ships is given (audibly incompletely) "Tolstoy, Kyushu, Saratoga, Melbourne..."
I prefer the short done here on youtube by JTVFX. First wave went in, failed with the remaining forces retreating and regrouped, but not far away. The regrouped forces may have gone to the other side of the star, the Borg followed and beat them to a fine paste. The Enterprise would have gone into the first skirmish, the last know location of Hanson's flagship (in this one being an unfinished galaxy called Auriga) that the Enterprise had soul contact with. The ships: The two Melbournes are explained with one (Excelsior) being recently decommissioned and the other (New Nebula) about to be commissioned. The rest being in range or fit to fly. Considering that this just 8 light years away from Earth with its vast docks and shipyards, that ain't a lot. The full list of ships: Melbourne, Melbourne (decom), Auriga, Liberator, Pulsar, Torrens, Trent, Leonov, Saratoga, Firebrand, Agincourt, Monarch, Kadosca, Roma, Champlin, Yorktown, Columbia, Roosevelt, Kyushu, Gage, Tolstoy, Chekov, Rutherford, Constance, Princeton, Ahwahnee, Hoagland, Buran, Bellerophon, Yamaguchi, Star League, Montoro, Paris, Demeter, Righteous, Endeavour, Pisces, Taurus, Bonestell and Tyrargo. 40 ships.
Those are great shorts and supremely well done but even the creator said he took alot of liberties and added his own take on the events. Awesome work but its not a "true " telling of events.
I don't really think, there was a Galaxy there. From storytelling perspective, if it were there, why not show it, to show the crew (and the audience), that they will likely fail, as their sistership had failed too?
@@looseycanonBecause back then they were still using models not CGI ships and they couldn't afford to destroy the model of the Enterprise they had. But considering they showed a Galaxy class battle bridge, there had to be at least 1.
One thing you didn't consider in the Crew numbers was the idea that some although not all ships had been able to evacuate families and non essential crew before the battle obviously this could only happen on the ships that got to the rendevous point first.
I think the battle occurred in waves. Sisko was in the first wave judging by the appearance of Locutus on the viewscreen and the lack of damaged ships already there. Only a handful of ships were seen, indicating the rest of the fleet was held back. Sisko then ejects in an escape pod, and off screen it likely heads to an escape pod rally point to be picked up by non-combat ships. 40 starships are mentioned, but that doesn't mean there weren't additional support ships which wouldn't qualify as starships. Also, it could also be that another late arrival starship came before the Enterprise, and beamed up all the survivors from the escape pods. It was a call for all available ships, so they would have been arriving at different times. It could be a 41st starship who arrived just at the end of the battle, and didn't engage knowing it was lost, only to pick up survivors after the Borg moved on. The Borg would have been unlikely to engage a starship which didn't approach them, due to wanting to continue their mission to Earth.
But the Ahwahnee didnt return from the battle: it was rescued AFTER the battle, which means ANOTHER ship is the one who managed to survive, and must the one who saved both Sisko and (maybe) Shaw. The Enterprise arrived after the ship left with the surivvors and the Borg assimilated the rest
I'd argue they aren't the same ship but sisters that started construction at nearly the same time. The 1st Ahwahnee was a higher registry number and launched 1st as the other was stuck in drydock been worked on. After she was lost with all hands her sister was renamed in her honor. Starfleet has a history of renaming ships to honor lost vessels so this would make sense, its likely there are new/renamed versions of the entire fleet.
@@cKerensky normally for a completely new rebuild with the same registery number that would be the case, but there are examples of it not been when a ship was renamed & had a different registery number (even if that was subsequently changed). The Definat for example, there are 3 ships to bear the name, NCC-1764 (lost to mirror universe), NX-74205 (lost to the breen) and NCC-75633 (renamed from USS Sao Paulo and had registery changed to NX-74205, later retired and preserved). They never applied a letter suffix to any of them, thus It's possible they did the same here, the writers have always been a bit lax with the rules in regards to lettering. Worth noting however this could also be partially because of the NX registery code rather than the usual NCC but that's pushing it too.
TBOBW turns Wolf 359 into a Noodle Incident. No rendition of it could ever match what we imagine the battle was like. I remember seeing that episode first air, and even as a child it was a shock. You expect Enterprise to arrive and save the day, only to find she is too late.
@@artbrann Just like when we walk it is not we that are moving but making the earth rotate under us, the shot of them Noping away was actually the cube going away and the Cerritos staying still.
Perhabs the surviving ship tried to rescue all scape pods that she can, but eventually have to flee, leaving behind a lot of pods with people. So, when the Enterprise D arrived at the scene, the few that survived already gone in the surviving ship, and the rest... assimilated by the Borg, so the Enterprise didn't found survivors, as we saw.
🖖😎👍Very cool and very greatly nicely wonderfully well done and very well informatively explained and executed in every detail way shape and format provided on Who or if any Starship's actually Survived the Battle of Wolf 359, A job very nicely fabulously well done indeed Sir!👌.
Could the USS Righteous an Excelsior Class that was shown in the Star Trek Borg game be the one that got away? Q took the ship away from the battle in an instant, there's even a YT channel called JTVFX wich shows the Battle of Wolf 359 and also depicts what ships took part in the battle including Hanson's ship which was a Galaxy class in saucer separation mode
i was going to point out that this was a massive battle and the ships may have been operating with minimal crews, but i also remember that starfleet was too overconfident and more than likely didn't evacuate non-essential personnel and crew families.
We for sure they didn’t evacuate anyone as Jennifer and Jake Sisko were still aboard the Saratoga, as well as the blonde woman Ben speaks to in the corridor and others seen in the escape pod. I don’t put that down to overconfidence though, but more to a lack of time to do anything but get ships in position.
Yeah there were talks with the Klingons and Romulans to add more ships, the 2 Melbournes could be due to an older, decommissioned namesake brought out of mothballs and the presence of a Connie and Oberth support Hanson brought everything he could to Wolf 359. Still think some ships dropped off nonessentials when they could but clearly not the Saratoga which as an older ship might have had to rush just to make it
They weren't. One, the fleet had been called on a very short notice and two, if they were, Jennifer Sisko would have survived the battle, as she and her son Jake would have been left at some starbase, just like the Odyssey had been evacuated of non essential personnel before venturing into the Gamma quadrant.
@looseycanon Miranda class is old, may not have been fast enough to make a dropoff detour and reach the fight in time. Faster ships, or those closer to safeharbor either at their starting point or along their course may have been able to do so.
@@DIEGhostfish They could have always done a ship-to-ship transfer of non essential personnel and left civilians on something very weak, but therefore expendable to take civilians to a starbase, say that Oberth that took part in the battle. The fact, they didn't do it, would suggest the haste. After all, you could argue the same for a newer ship, that responded from greater distance. The fact, that they didn't would sugggest this had been called very hastly.
Crucially, we do not know that even one ship survived the battle of Wolf 359. It is entirely possible that there were zero surviving ships or even multiple. Any surviving vessels likely recovered lifeboats and fled before Enterprise's arrival. In TNG: The Best of Both Worlds Part 2, Hanson says that he has "mobilised a fleet of forty starships at Wolf three five nine, and that's just for starters. The Klingons are sending warships. Hell, we've even thought about opening communications with the Romulans." Before the battle, he is evidently optimistic that more ships will be able to arrive in the short time available. We do not know that 40 represents the final size of the battlegroup, or even that 40 is the exact number of ships at the time of Hanson's report. As he evidently did not think the number fixed, he may have been rounding any number between 35 and 45 to 40, for convenience.
There were no life signs at Wolf359 because everyone either got away in shuttles or they were assimilated. I can't remember which episode, but an aquaintance of 7 of 9s was a survivor from the Melbourne who was captured and assimilated. Id be willing to bet the borg snatched up life pods and boarded any derelict ships that still had pockets of atmosphere and took them all. There's a video out from JTVX that covers this... Pretty chillingly.
That also implies the borg fully assimilated atleast one ship, likely the most powerful Federation ship present (best tech) and sent it back to the Delta quadrant with potentially a few thousand drones aboard.
@@cgi2002 potentially, but we know crew from the Melbourne were assimilated, which makes sense as only the primary hull was obliterated. However, Melbourne was mentioned specifically by Shelby in the graveyard. So, if a ship was assimilated, it wasn't her.
I think the surviving ship was in fact the Endeavor. I could see it being incapacitated by Birg weapons fire but not destroyed. Seeing so many other ships being wpied out with his own not being able to intervene would certai ly give Capt Amasov reason to see the Birg as evil. The crew not being fired at would have the breathing room needed to get systems at least partially functioning. Once the cube left, they would have gathered up all the survivors from lifeboats as well as the ones on the wrecked ships and moved off, perhaps limping away at warp 2. Thus when the Enterprise arrived, there wouldn't be any survi ord present to be picked up.
2:25 While Wolf 359 occurred before the first appearance of the Akira-class, we should not assume that the class is yet to have been invented. The design of the ship is not long and sleek like the later Intrepid and Sovereign classes, but wide and rounded like the earlier Galaxy and New Orleans classes. Consider also the registry of the U.S.S. Thunderchild from from VIII: First Contact, is NCC-63549. While we do not know that there is any definitive relationship between timing and registry, this lower than typical registry acts as weak evidence that the Akira-class might even precede the Galaxy-class.
The Akira-class is often presented in supplementary material as being, like the other new classes seen in First Contact and like the Defiant-class, designed in response to the battle of Wolf 359. I believe it also informed the out-of-universe design of the new classes; they were designed to be more militarised, as well as to provide new twists on the typical two hulls and nacelles design so that they stood out from the new Enterprise. They were also given greeblies and hull detail (like escape pod hatches) that were meant to be somewhere in between the Galaxy- and Sovereign-classes. That being said, supplementary and behind-the-scenes information isn't canon, so it is possible for something else to come along and say that the Akira was developed earlier.
@@andymac4883 I did not mention the lifeboat hatch details because those can be refitted more easily than the basic shape of the ship can be redesigned, and the saucer proportions are more indicative of an earlier ship.
That seems pretty obvious, since a significant amount of time passed between Hansen's communication and the Enterprise's arrival. Yet this TH-camr seems to act like it's physically impossible for another ship to show up before the Enterprise and rescue the survivors. I don't know why.
E-D got there about 12 hours after the battle, and she was in bad shape. I prefer the explanation in We Have Engaged the Borg (The Wolf 359 Project) - the work that STO used for their version of the battle - that E-D's sensors were barely working, and there was a lot of distortion that kept her from seeing the survivors. Riker was also more focused on stopping the cube from betting to Earth than on looking for any survivors when the first pass at sensor sweeps said there were none. It was a basic triage situation.
It might be worth noting that Memory Beta directly pulls its list from Star Trek Online, which itself pulls its list from We Have Engaged The Borg, a fanfiction. That fanfic has its own list which, strangely, includes a Parliament Class (first seen 2380).
With the Ahwahnee, its possible that the Borg attack ruptured key systems and flooded the ship with radiation. We know from "Redemption", that the Sutherland's weapons systems flooded at least two decks with radiation. The Ahwahnee is a lot smaller with fewer decks - a radiation burst would take out a larger percentage of the ship. The ship would be salvageable after radiation clean-up, but the crew would be dead very quickly if the radiation burst was high enough. With the crew dead, it would be adrift and no longer seen as a threat - further attacks would be unnecessary to the Borg. As a result it survived relatively intact.
Or it could have destroyed its life support systems. Once it stopped being a threat the borg would have moved on to other targets regardless of the type of damage caused
I think that's from Star Trek Online. As much as I like Star Trek Online, they shouldn't have retroactively altered the list. Lots of research out there they could have worked from to build a more accurate roster. They even included an Akira-class, which most people attribute to being designed after Wolf 359. But Star Trek online has limited resources and needed to fill out the fleet with more variety. The Parliment-class was an existing asset and was shoe-horned in.
@@ealan3694 Better yet, why a Parliament class ship named after a person, rather than, I dunno, a city in a country that had a Parliament in their government? A lot of the "First Contact" ships could not have been designed post-Wolf 359, unless we declare that registries are not chronologically assigned in consecutive order. Steamrunner, Saber, Akira, Norway... all have registries that predate the Galaxy class. So their development had to have started prior to that. Norway and Akira are the "newest", while Steamrunner is the "oldest". It's entirely possible that they were basically in development hell, and most or all of the classes went through extensive redesigns to some extent post-Wolf 359 and before they actually entered production. An Akira prototype being present is actually theoretically possible, if we accept registries being chronologically assigned in consecutive order. Personally, I see the Akira development starting as a result of the ongoing border war with the Cardassians, but the prototype(s) had issues that kept the class out of production until redesigned into an anti-Borg torpedo boat after Wolf 359. That sort of history could allow for a prototype to be involved in the battle.
Visually, other than the nacelles, the Parliament and California classes are closer to the Galaxy styling than the post-Galaxy styling of the Sovereign and Nova classes. STO's version of the battle is based on the work "We have engaged the Borg: The Oral History of the Battle of Wolf 359" which is a really good fanwork that covers a lot of the gaps.
@@nekophht You're making an assumption that registries are chronological. There are too many inconsistencies to state that they are chronological and we do not know how they are assigned. While there is a "rough" chronology to them, I do not believe they are chronological, and plenty have been attributed to being arbitrarily assigned or the registries are just assigned at random. The production staff played pretty fast and loose with them. Just look at the USS Yeager, our 1st ever Saber-class starship that we got to see. It's registry is NCC-61947, the First Contact film staff acknowledged, the registry was assigned 6-1947 to coincide with the year Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, 1947. The ships in question have the most recent prime starfleet design elements that directly contradict an earlier design era. From RCS thruster style, hull markings, the triangular escape pods, ect that tie them to the post Galaxy-class designs. Additionally, the the proposed specs in the resources I have seen state they are equipped with Type-10 phasers with a maximum warp of Warp 9.4 to 9.7, confirming they are later designs. Pre-galaxy designs generally did not have max warp speeds in that range, particularly lighter non-explorer type ships, and at the time, the only warp engines that were achieving that range of warp, were the Braums engines, identifiable by the Galaxy-class style warp nacelles. Remeber, the Galaxy-class and Nebula were ground breaking in the Warp Engine category, with the Galaxy being the later and faster of the two. Additionally, 20 years ago, magazines, games and interviews pretty much confirmed the implication that they were always intended as a Post Wolf-359, Anti-Borg fleet, and it should be noted that these classes came to dominate Starfleet in the 2370s. Why would a 20-ish year old design surplant newer designs, which we know were in the works? As for the registries, the only thing that I could see explaining the descrepencies with the registries, is that the various shipyards in the Federation are assigned 'Blocks' of Registry numbers. For example, say the Antares Shipyards was assigned a blanket contract for registries 62000-65000 and assigns them out as ships are either 'laid down'/construction starts or comissioned. And these contracts are for 'hulls' not specific classes, as specific class orders will change due to the needs of Starfleet in a given year. And these registries could be held in reserve for years, possibly even decades as the shipyard fills orders over time. We know specific shipyards are dedicated to constructing specific ship classes, and such a system would explain the registry 'clustering' for a given class. Particulary for the 'mass produced' classes, like the Akira. This also allows for more 'custom' ship orders to be being inserted, blocks of registries being centrally held by Starfleet and assigned for 'special' orders like "Galaxy"-classes, and as the Federation grows and expands, newer and larger shipyards come online, being assigned larger and larger blocks lending it some "rough" chronology, which then becomes blurred over time. And it also explains why the earliest registries are 'more' chronological due to there being smaller shipyards and smaller ship orders in the earlier years of Starfleet. And in the same train of thought, we have no idea if contracts were placed for earlier class starships, that may have been cancelled, for instance, in the wake of Wolf 359 where the early to mid-century designs were found woefully lacking and Starfleet subsequently began a crash course in developing new combat oriented designs. Does the shipyward wash it's hands of the registries? Or does it just roll them over to the next ship orders? I think the registry blocks in question are hold-overs from years past, or previous shipyard orders that were redirected to newer construction and designs.
It was stated many places, including Voyager, that USS Endeavour NCC-71805 was the sole 'survivor' of the 359 massacre. Its captain, Amasov, stated that the Borg were as close to 'pure evil' as anything or anyone he'd ever encountered. Yes, some of the 359 ships were later recovered and salvaged; these include the Ahwahnee and Yamaguchi. But they were essentially dead hulks. Endeavour got away, with most of her crew alive... though the ship herself got stomped badly.
I think his point is if Sisko (and others) got away, but when the Enterprise arrived they reported "no life signs" someone had to pick them up in the meantime. This implies atleast one ship survived, picked up the survivors, and took off before Enterprise arrived.
@@navyreviewer or alternatively that escape pods have limited warp capabilities (which would make sense, an escape pod that can't safely reach a habitable world in a short time is mostly useless).
@@navyreviewer honestly they didn't need to, atleast thats my theory along with this: The Borg often allow people to escape, it spreads fear and gives people a level of knowledge of the borgs capabilities thus letting the survivors adapt new technology to resist the borg, new technology they inevitably assimilate. The borgs entire strategic approach is based around having people resist and improve their tech, its only once a race/group exhausts their ability to adapt that thet assimilate them en mass. Resistance is not only not futile, its the goal all along. If the Borg wanted to assimilate everyone, they'd just do it, 1 large unending unstoppable wave of drones, rather than having 99% of the collective stood around on planets doing nothing. Why repeatedly send 1 single cube to attack the federation every few years when they could send 10000, and have them arrive directly at Earth rather than flying, slowly, through every defensive line the federation can muster.
My head cannon for all the inconsistency the battle was that it wasn't all the ships engaging the cube at the same time. But rather in groups, and over the course of the of the cubes path to earth. As for the odd casualty numbers not matching the number of and stated types of ships is that many of the ships were not entirely destroyed, but mostly disabled, and that the Borg simply left many survivors with the intent to assimilate them later, the primary task being earth. So MOST of ships crews survived in escape pods, or in the wreckage. This requires us to hand wave away "No life signs and power signatures" this cannot be easily reconciled and at some point we have to merge the versions to create the best of all worlds with the LEAST retcon possible. So i find your idea of the casualty numbers makes more sense and better avoids retcons so it's now my new head canon for that contradiction. As far as Sisko i imagine his escape pod left the area during the battle while the Borg were distracted. While most everyone else was NOT so lucky.
2:30 Actually there is an explanation for this ship. The Akira-Class was designed for the Cardassian border Wars, but by the War’s end in 2363? Only two ships of the class were completed. The USS Akira and USS Kaneda. A third ship, the USS Tetsuo, remained incomplete and was disassembled in dock. The Akira-Class program was indefinitely shelved but the Two prototypes it produced would go on to see service, when Wolf 359 happened? Akira was in dock under retrofit, so Kaneda was called to action, Kaneda lasted far longer than most its contemporaries, proved the Akira’s viability aswell as Starfleet’s need for Tactical capable vessels and the Class Project was ordered resumed with the Class going into full production by 2369. It also states the USS Hood also participated in the battle, and had only sustained damage and itself was the survivor, 4:03 Hason’s flagship was the USS Columbia NCC-71102, a newly completed Galaxy-Class running on a skeleton crew, obviously it was Destroyed. 5:43 Rigel is a star, also immediately after that scene the Wrecked Constitution-II we see was one of many cadet training vessels bearing the name “TS Republic”, it was temporarily reactivated as “USS Republic” under emergency orders to prepare for Wolf 359. 7:14 explanation for that aswell: The USS Melborne was an Excelsior-Class, however the Nebula-Class was the PCU Melborne NCC-78256, she was incomplete and supposed to be still under construction but had to be rushed to readiness to meet the borg at 359 under emergency orders. 9:00 its not confirmed if Amisov was at Wolf 359 or not, it’s just as likely that he and the Endeavor could’ve been part of the search and rescue teams sent following the battle. 12:45 the area was highly irradiated, which we’ve seen in trek before does tend to scramble ship sensors. Hence why the Enterprise probably didn’t detect them as they couldn’t scan thoroughly enough to see them if they were hiding amongst the corpses of their starships. Also in STO Canon The USS Hood rescued as many as she could, while the rest hid in the hangar bays of the USS Endurance NCC-5265-A, an already destroyed Nerendra-Class starship (although I would like to mention that STO’s W359 thing is based off the fan-made Wolf 359 project, so two different sources the ship exist with two very different descriptions of that ship, originally it’s supposed to be the Original Essex-Class USS Endurance NCC-5265 but due to STO not having the Essex-Class model for a few different reasons? The Nerendra-Class was chosen instead.) 13:21 in STO? The Ahwahnee did survive and was salvageable, but her crew were killed when attempting to Abandon ship by a radiation leak, following her role in TNG: “Redemption Pt. II”? Starfleet decided to Decommission her and place her at the Wolf 359 Memorial along with her fallen fleetmates. In essence, given we know very little? I think it's in our best interest to turn to recent beta canon for answers, which would indeed implicate the Sole survivor as the Excelsior-Class U.S.S. Hood NCC-42296, although she had survived? She was heavily damaged and couldn't do much in terms of search & rescue in her state. so she would do as much as she could before withdrawing to friendly territory and then being dry-docked for repairs while Starfleet sends a formal search and rescue party lead by Captain Amasov of the U.S.S. Endeavor.
I saw an excellent video of a recreation of the Battle of Wolf 359 - the creator and channel slip my mind unfortunately. The video shows 2 phases of the battle with Hansen's flagship being a Galaxy class. It also explains that there were two Melbournes, the Nebula Melbourne was a newly commissioned ship, rushed into service, and it was this Melbourne that was offered to Riker. But the second Melbourne was the recently decommissioned Excelsior class that was rushed back into service for the fleet.
The Excelsior class ship from the video game “Star Trek: Borg” was blinked by Q out of the fight, eight years into the future. While most video games aren’t canon, Qi’s line in Voyager, “If it weren’t for me, you would have all been assimilated by the Borg” seemed like a reference to a successful play-through of that game. (The game ends with the crew detecting another Borg attack on Earth. While it doesn’t line up exactly, I still head-canon that to mean the events at the start of Star Trek: First Contact.) Someone created a really good depiction of the Battle of Wolf 359, depicting it happening in two waves, solving the survivor vs no survivor. Admiral Hanson’s cut signal was between the two waves, where they attempted a retreat and regroup. Also, the Melbourne ship class discrepancy was handled by having both a decommissioned Melbourne thrown back into service because they could, and they needed everything that moved and had any firepower; and a newly commissioned Melbourne.
where was Gondor when the battle of Wolf 359 happened? No really, I LURVE the videos from Travel by Night. Knowing and acknwoledging it is fiction, still trying to make sense of it.
The escape pods might have been masking their life signs until they were sure the Borg were gone to avoid capture, and if a ship suffers complete power failure including life-support, that would kill the crew but leave the ship salvageable.
13:00 mark, random thought, due to the difference in time with warp travel, perhaps the nebula class had already completed picking up what few survivors were there and had left the region before the enterprise was on site? even if its mere minutes they missed them, it would be a star fleet warp signature in contact with starfleet command and no need to put time in questioning the path of any allied ships? not saying im right, just had a question cause of how much time is necessary for the enterprise to reach wolf 359 from the neutral zone. the borg hit hard and fast, the battle was over and the enterprise was hours away. the nebula class being more medical/science related while still helpful in battle as a support and tactical disruption vessel, it may have hung back from the physical fight and survived the borg when the fall back order was given. having been alone at the rendezvous, they may have rushed back and done what they could after the borg had moved on? again, just questions i have. im not saying i have any evidence or backing to this theory.
9:21 Captain Amasov's account is not "second-hand". Captain Janeway contextualises Amasov's quote by saying that "I've been looking through the personal log entries of all the Starfleet Captains who encountered the Borg. I've gone over every engagement, from the moment Q flung the Enterprise into the path of that first Cube to the massacre at Wolf 359. Every battle, every skirmish. anything that might give me an insight into the mind of the Collective." However, this correction still does not prove that the U.S.S. Endeavour was present at Wolf 359, or even Amasov. Amasov may have been aboard another vessel when he encountered the Borg, and that was not necessarily at Wolf 359. In TNG: Descent Part 1, Admiral Nechayev claims that the Borg have "killed tens of thousands of innocent people". The Battle of Wolf 359 only accounts for 11,000, not exactly "tens of thousands". New Providence colony on Jouret IV is only another 900, and Nechayev's use of the word "innocent" suggests that she may not be referring to Starfleet casualties, but civilians. In either case, it seems that there are more Borg encounters that we are not told about, perhaps confined to RNZ-bordering colonies as @WeTravelbyNight suggests at 9:49.
It was probably an observer, supply ship, communications relay and/or medical frigate. Probably kept on the periphery to record and analyse what worked against the borg and looking for weaknesses to exploit and when the escape pods were ejected it was tasked as the ship to retreat to. At some point, it must have wandered too close and became a casualty. I like to think it sacrificed itself trying to shield escape pods (possibly Sisko's) getting clear of the cube's path.
@@Stormonu True. Maybe they tried to science the Borg to death using the "power of math" by channeling STEM students through the main deflector that the dedicated science ship doesn't have for some reason. How does the Oberth work anyway? Whatever, at least it can make a safe water landing :P
I assume that’s where the survivors and lone ship went. Borg were heading to Earth. Once there was no threat, they’d leave at warp 9+. So a ship picking up survivors and wisely heading in the opposite direction would have survived. Though I reckon what actually happened is a final reserve wave went in when everything went bad to cover the retreat of escape pods and what lightly armored support ships were there buying time for their escape with their lives. No matter how bad things get Starfleet doesn’t leave people behind and would have developed a scheme even in the midst of disaster.
To be honest, may speak to the absolute desperation of the battlegroup that the Oberth was there. Literally throwing everything they had available at the Borg Cube. Or it might have been there as a rescue ship - being so underpowered Locutus would not have seen it as a priority target. So it may have lasted to pick up whatever survivors it could and hightail it out of there. As someone else has pointed out, the sheer scale of the battle, wreckage and residual radiation may have made accurate scans impossible. You also have to remember that anyone in lifepods or escape shuttles may have deliberately masked subspace fields and lifesigns until they were clear of the area. To avoid assimilation. Regardless, given that the Enterprise-D was the only ship apparently capable of pursuit at that time, it would have been Riker's duty to ignore any survivors. Short of maybe a near-warp transport. There may have been thousands of survivors of Wolf-359. But there were billions on Earth. And if Earth fell, the rest of the Federation would swiftly follow.
My son's and I are playing a Star Trek Adventures scenario where we show up in our Andorian class ship named the Republic. We are too slow to have made it to the battle because it was over way faster than Hanson predicted. We engage some assimilated escape pods and a shuttle. We pick up Lt. Junil Rue along with all of the other shuttles and escape pods. In our next episode we will be helping a disabled Endeavor get underway and as we are too slow to catch up to the Borg and the Endeavor to damaged we will take the survivors to the nearest space dock.
The absence of escape pods by the time the Enterprise arrived could be explained if there was a settlement in the system that survivors from the battle could have fled to in escape pods and shuttles that lacked warp drive. The Borg wanted to attack Earth specificaly so could have ignored a colony that could not threaten their ship, just as they wil ignore intruders aboard their vessels until they pose a danger.
1. The reason why it was such a small fleet assembled is because of the suddenness of the attack and the high speed the borg can move at, we've all known that for a while, it was basically what Starfleet could drag together upon a single point in very short notice, none of the other powers were present, not even the Vulcans, which shows how sudden an event it was. 2. Ergo it also stands to reason families / civilians either would not have been present on the ships they selected, OR would have been offloaded before going up against the borg, meaning ships like a Nebula or galaxy class would be down to just a few hundred crew a piece "on average" across the battlegroup that contained many a small ship of barely a hundred crew in the mix which lends to the desperation of the situation.
Excellent video. Like in First Contact, I always figured that the battle spread over several million or even billon miles, so when enterprise arrived it was onky a small portion of the initial engagement. Also they never really establish the length of time from Hanson's transmission, so it could have been many hours. Its very possibke that the surviving vessel was heavily damaged and unable to give pursuit, so it retreived what survivors it could then fled to the closest star base. A subordinate commander might not know Enterprise was enroute. I think Oberth class were there for three reasons: desperation, small science vessels might not be seen as much of a threat to the borg and could be used to evacuate casualties, hench the one destroyed close to the Saratoga.
My thinking has more or less always been (at least since DS9) that one ship got away with the survivors of the battle before the Enterprise got there. Maybe it left the battle and came back. Maybe it was disabled during the battle, or even before the battle, but was able to be repaired enough to rescue survivors and leave. Maybe it was a ship whose role was from the beginning to rescue survivors during the battle and retreated when all was clearly lost. If it was a Nebula class there'd be room for all the survivors. It could even be that one of the last ships (maybe even two) sacrificed itself to give the surviving ship the opportunity to beam survivors aboard and get away. It would explain why one ship wasn't destroyed, how there were survivors, why there were no life signs when the Enterprise arrived, and why the death toll was so "low".
There's reasons SAR teams are specialized, even when you don't have a bunch of Starfleet people probably still trying really hard to, say, hide from Borg. :)
Yeah. We all know that corner of the Borg cube was “pulled”. And traces of radionucleotides were found in the area where the cube was destroyed. When it blew, the video shows it went section by section; like there were charges set off at different times in a controlled demolition. Totally a false flag. The Federation created a fake Borg cube, and sent in thousands of Starfleet personnel to die to force the Federation onto a war footing. Just like Operation Northwoods; the reason Kennedy was taken out. 😂
There is *another* possibility, and that is that *the escape-pods* were *warp-capable,* at least over a limited distance; necessary, when removing yourself from the vicinity of Matter-AntiMatter explosions, gravity wells etc - the one The Sisko and Jake get put into is certainly very roomy and is definitely shown to require a pilot, AND a co-pilot, prior to launch. In TOS-era it was assumed that no shuttlecraft were warp-capable, and in TNG a clear distinction was made between standard shuttlecraft and a warp-capable Runabout; but then the Defiant has warp-capable shuttlepods, which were tiny, and all of Voyager’s shuttles were warp-capable; in the post-Discovery era, ALL shuttlecraft are assumed to be warp-capable, ALL the time, so from that perspective, the notion that the Saratoga *wouldn’t* be carrying lifeboats *capable* of removing survivors from the zone of combat is frankly *ludicrous.* Especially when you consider that this is in an era when the underlying operational doctrine is that family members and civilians WOULD be being taken into battle along with the officers of the fleet, should conflict occur; there HAS to have been a provision made for that contingency - that’s the whole rationale for the Enterprise-D high-warp saucer separation in Encounter at Farpoint, *and* the one in The Arsenal of Freedom.
The Endeavor/Amasov scenario doesn't include that he could have survived but the ship didn't, or was promoted after the fact(there were a whole lot of new slots for command ranks) and the Oberth actually makes more sense when you realize Starfleet had apparently been using Oberth's as test ships(see the S7 ep The Pegasus, sure that was after The Best of Both Worlds but... so was DS9's slight tweak to the battle), of not always legal experiments that would mean they might have a prototype weapon and/or ridiculously overpowered (for the size) sensors and communications arrays(to potentially get past any jamming), we had already seen the various Federation and Romulan bases just disappeared, many without a signal, were they all overwhelmed in seconds or were they jammed
Hm. Consitution class,,,,names like Hood, Intrepid, constallation, enterprise, i forget the one with all Vulcans. I expected those names. Surprised. Well done video!
I personally like the way that JTVFX did the Melbourne situation, with the Melbourne (Nebula) being the Melbourne-A, and the original excelsior Melbourne was at the A’s commissioning ceremony about to be retired.
It is known that Star Fleet Escape pods have some navigational ability, an ability to reach local star systems and land on planets. It is likely that any Escape Pods not assimilated by the Borg cube, would have by time the Enterprise arrived, moved out of the area to the nearest survivable planet biome, and thus weren't in the Enterprises sensor range and it is unlikely the tactical section would be focusing the longer range, less sensitive sensors to looking for anything other than the Borg Cube and so these Escape Pods could have avoided detection. It is possible this 40th Starship, picked up whatever pod survivors it could, as it fled the battle. Theres no indication that this 40th ship was intact when it left the area. The captain could have seen the devastation, and upon taking a severe hit, chose to play dead and hope for the best. As the Cube was on a direct course for Earth it is likely, it arrogantly ignored the wreckage and continued with its original mission, to assimilate Earth and upon it leaving the area, this 40th Starship, resumed operations, picked up what survivors it could find, and got the hell outta there and then when the Enterprise arrives, its sensors detected nothing left worth salvaging or anyone to be rescued, assuming everyone had either been killed or assimilated before itself continued with its original mission, to intercept and eliminate the Cube before it could assimilate Earth.
I guess I'll be that guy and note that if I had assembled a fleet of 39 ships and was telling someone about it I might well describe it as a fleet of 40
i always took it that there were two melbournes. the excelsior being decommissioned while the new nebula (the one riker was offered command of) was being built. when the cube was headed to earth, both ships were rushed into action.
There have also been several US navy ships named “Kitty Hawk,” most notably a nuclear aircraft carrier that was still in service when TBOBW first aired
Well one thing of specific Merit that you mentioned I mean there was only one battle with the Borg strategic engagement wolf 359 of which Cisco was there as was Picard Commander Sisko during the pilot for DS9 mentioned to Picard when they first met that they met battle at Wolf 359 LOL. That right there in the narrative would imply the battle with the borg that the Saratoga was destroyed and was the same engagement that the 40 star ships led by Admiral Hansen conducted with the borg is it possible there were other engagements with a smaller or lesser group of Starships absolutely the borg Cube did fight some interceptors when entering the Terran solar system. But it's never explicitly stated in dialogue, but the one thing that we can confirm is the destruction of the Saratoga was indeed at the Battle of Wolf 359. Cisco's dialogue indicates that with absolute clarity. Also, as far as the Endeavor goes as being the sole survivor, it's never been definitively confirmed, but I do believe the story writers for Scorpion wrote that with the intention of that being the definitive explanation I don't believe there was any editorials when the Enterprise at the battle site of wolf 359 the survivors that were there had already departed and weren't in the vicinity as the Enterprise arrived I mean they did make the addendum of Cisco's inclusion in the episode Emissary but it doesn't conflict with the earlier canonical source that there were no survivors when the Enterprise D arrives on scene However it was never definitively elaborated on when Janeway and Chipotle were conversing about what to do with the emerging threat of the Borg in the series with the ending of the franchise in 2005 whatever the original case may be the Endeavor is thought to have been the surviving vessel but I've never come across anything that ever definitively stated that it was from specifically the producers in the show and however I think it's absolutely plausible some of the ships from Wolf 359 were salvageable just like the defiant after the battle of sector 001 she was adrift but salvageable the same case could be made for any of the Hulks left over from the battle
I assume the _Endeavor_ picked up Sisko and Shaw and the rest, then withdrew before the _Enterprise_ arrived. The wreck of the _Ahwanee_ was salvaged and rebuilt. That’s not surviving the battle.
Shelby does say at the end "we'll have the fleet back up in a year". That kind of requires some salvage and repair, I think. A harder question about Wolf 359 though is how some people supposedly assimilated there re-appear in the Delta Quadrant during Voyager. WTF?
On the casualty numbers per ship btw, one might expect some escapes/missing in action.revised statistics later. (Also one might posit that Endeavor got all the survivors they could and got out of Dodge. And maybe everyone else that survived was... still hiding from the Borg by being clever Starfleet people? And, really, there's a pretty tall but intact warp core floating around in one of your clips, which implies someone ejected it from a substantial ship and it didn't explode. Figure Endeavor took heavy damage *getting* the survivors and whatever stunt they pulled to get away involved yeeting a warp core from something? Gone by the time Enterprise catches up, still hiding from Borg?
As for the "Mysterious Excelsior Class" that brings Hanson to the Enterprise, as the idea was that Riker could accept promotion, which was to the Captaincy of the Melbourne, that likely that ship was the Excelsior in question.
Amasov was quoted as the CO, so it would relate to an incident that his ship was involved in, while under his command. He might have been at Wolf 359 and escaped in a lifeboat, his ship might have encountered the aftermath of Borg attacks (such as the colonies that were destroyed near the neutral zone) it could be that his crew had a skirmish with the Borg (Something along the lines of the encounter in “I, Borg”) A big ship might stand a chance against a small cube, but if something like an Oberth or Miranda saw a main cube turn up, all that captain could do would be hide in the star’s corona and watch in horror.
There are several references in other series that included active participation of other ships in the battle.There are 2 episodes in Voyager that had Star Fleet personnel that had participated in the battle and had been assimilated. Seven of nine had even assimilated a parent of someone who was caught up in the battle. According to that episode, there were even civilian ships that had been assimilated. There have also been several references of entire ships and crews being assimilated and returned to the Delta Quadrant. As for the surviving ship, it more than likely was overloaded with survivors from the destroyed ships and if they hadn’t left, they ALL would have been either dead or assimilated. Being overloaded with wounded, they would have to be taken to the nearest medical facility (other than Earth),as soon as possible‼️
Maybe there where actually two battles, the main frontal engagement and then a fighting retreat where the borg didn't deem it necessary to change course to chase after the ship that got away. This would help with the narrative side of their being survivors / no survivors and the graveyard the Enterprise encounters at the coordinates of the frontal assault. The Enterprise would not be aware of the other ships that got gunned down retreating elsewhere.
An episode set on the survivor ship once it's been salvaged and given a new crew would be interesting. The crew are despondent, troubled, and nobody is sure why. One even sees dead crew members, but these are diagnosed as just stress hallucinations. The audience are never told if anything is fundamentally wrong or if it is just a ship-wide morale problem, and we are left to draw our own conclusions.
It would make sense for the escape pods and any shuttlecraft that evacuated the damaged ships to attempt to move to safety, any crew on board the escape pods or shuttles taking steps to hide themselves or hard radiation masking the life signs. There have been at least a couple of former drones claiming to have been assimilated at wolf 359, willing to admit there are a couple of ways that can happen, but there is no evidence to suggest a second Borg vessel cleaning up after the battle. Curious to know if other than the Star Trek Borg game, whether there are any secondary sources for what happened to the USS Righteous? That is to say after it arrived 10 years after the battle
There was about 6 after the wolf 359 battle that enterprise finally showed up at the wolf 359 semystem. By then maybe starfleet had time to pick up all survibing live p enterprise d was in a rush to save picard earth and all the alpha quadrant
Given the amount of time beween the battle and the Enterprise arriving (potentially hours) I think it's fairly safe to assume escape pods and shuttles were well clear of the battle area and the scans were of the local area and not the entire system. I would also make a comparrison to real world mayday situations where vessels of all types will assist if able to do so, perhaps a few civillian transports/freighters picked up survivors from the escape pods.
It took several hours (at least 2, more likely 3) to repair Enterprise after they fired that deflector dish beam at the borg cube and the cube was faster than Enterprise, so there are easily 4 hours of time between the battle and the arrival of Enterprise during which the reinforcements, that were supposedly on the way, could have arrived, picked up escape pods and survivors and transported them to the nearest star base. But this makes me wonder where those reinforcements went afterwards, because none of them seem to be anywhere near Earth when the cube gets there.
I think we have to acknowledge the insane bravery of the ships who, having seen over half their fleet annihilated for no gain, chose to hold the line instead of running for their lives.
it's Funny you asked about Amasov action as in jtvfx Wolf 359 animation, One Hanson ship was destroyed. Amasov ordered what was left to withdraw but as shown in the upcoming part 2, he is also leading the second attack.
Several posters have suggested that another ship may have rescued survivors before the Enterprise arrived. Perhaps that was the surviving ship itself. Perhaps something like this happened: Already having taken some damage, the surviving ship receives Admiral Hanson's order to fall back and regroup. Knowing they won't last if they don't run immediately, they warp out in the nick of time. Seeing no active opposition, the Borg cube moves on towards Earth. The surviving ship detects this and returns to the battle site long enough to collect survivors from escape pods. Already damaged, they then beat a hasty retreat towards the nearest Starbase with adequate repair/medical facilities. By the time Enterprise arrives, they are long gone. Enterprise is unaware of this as the surviving ship is either unable to communicate or chooses/is ordered not to so as to avoid drawing Borg attention.
There were two Melbourne's. The Nebula-Class Melbourne was new, having just been launched, and the Excelsior-class Melbourne, which had been decommissioned but pressed back into service for Wolf 359. Watch JTVFX's Wolf 359 series, and you will see the fleet ships named, plus there are two battles shown...the main one, and a smaller second one where the Klingons arrived. The Endeavour was the sole surviving Starfleet ship, but was heavily damaged.
I'd not consider a wrecked ship with a dead crew to have survived the battle, even if the drifting hulk was salvaged later for rebuilding for the same reason that the Essex was lost prior to the events of The Omega Glory, but presumably would have been towed back by the Enterprise for cleansing and recrewing afterward. I'd lean more toward the Oberth surviving. It was probably acting as a comms and sensor support vessel on the periphery of the combat zone, which would grant it a good chance to escape and also provide Sisko and co a good heap of data for their project, alongside recovered black boxes from the wrecks and possibly survivor collection given the class' considerable cargo space. Also if it wasn't engaging the Borg directly, it'd be more likely to be simply ignored as irrelevant to their mission, since the cube didn't need to employ subtle tactics of knocking out support ships to overpower the battle group.
It is also possible that the Life pods, had limited warp drive I have seen some designs where they had a limited warp burst capability intended to point them in the direction of a star base or habitable planet. I think (I don't remember perfectly) the Connie Refit's escape pods had a brief warp 4 burst. They eject, get away from the disaster, and then do a 30 second warp jump away from the danger zone. The Escape pods on the fridge of sensor range, and kept at low power to hide from the borg rendered them non detectible by Enterprise. I know for a fact that if I escaped (barely) from a such a disaster, I would wait a couple hours before broadcasting my location. In regards to the ship that got away, It could have been one of the last ships to engage the Borg, they did fight but realizing that they had lost like 80%+ of their battle group, and with no discernible damage to the Borg vessel. Knowing it would most likely cost me my command, I most likely would order a withdrawal from combat, and on the way transport escape pods to my ship to the best of my ability. The Borg would most likely realize "Ship withdrawal, Ignore, attacking vessels have priority." So yes, there were 'No survivors' in the aftermath, as the escape pods had either been picked up, or were hiding and with sensors off (including passive sensors) Enterprise would not have detected them. And as for no power signatures, i think that meant no standard power levels on the ships. there was clearly power just nothing stable.
When we question the Oberth class ships presence we should remember that in the real world battle groups also consist of lightly armed and unarmored support vessels, armed civilian ships, military aircraft that dont necessarily partake in the shooting.
The fleet was also assembled on short notice, and when the ship in question isnt the star of the show we should assume that they travel at canonically appropriate speeds. Meaning that even between earth and Wolf359 many ships would require days of travel time to get there or leave. Meaning that little Oberth may just have been there at the wrong time and lacked the ability to flee, and so cjose to throw their bit of firepower in with the rest of the fleet. Or provide support while failing to avoid actual combat.
A science vessel supporting a battlegroup makes a lot of sense, especially against such an unknown enemy. They could have been providing a real-time analysis of the enemy as it was being engaged and/or attempting to identify and paint target points for the fleet?
@@Azraiel213
I'd like to think that the Oberth class (Bonestell) survived. It orbited the battle while scanning the Borg vessel during the engagement. Thanks to the plethora of data it obtained, Star Fleet was able to develop the technology that went into the Sovereign, Akira, Steamrunner, and Defiant classes, which defeated the Borg on their next incursion into Federation territory.
@@leestewart72 it was seen through a window in Emissary as taking a rather nasty blow to the saucer, so I rather doubt it survived. I tend to favor USS Ahwahnee as the ship that survived.
The Oberth class proabbly got the urgent rally call and with its limited armarments they are still starfleet and decided to pitch in
There is also an Oberth visible in the Battle of Sector 001, as seen in ST:FC.
My OCD deeply admires your attention to minute detail about a fictional event. Mad respect.
"Fictional" ???
@@TroyUlysses LT Steve Levy revealed too everyone that the Battle of Wolf 359 was an inside job.
@@TroyUlysses
I think he means the fictional reenactment of real historical event.
Perhaps by the time the Enterprise arrived, another ship had picked up the survivors. The Enterprise would therefore detect no one to rescue.
To say nothing of the fact that any survivors left behind as the last ships of the task force were either destroyed or fled would have been picked up and assimilated by the 'Borg.
In the immediate aftermath of such a battle, the hard radiation and the Federation and Borg debris might have masked scattered lifesigns. Specialized rescue and salvage ships arriving soon afterward might have had better luck. Maybe by then some survivors were able to jerry-rig distress beacons.
That's what I was thinking, along with bcostin's suggestion of radiation and debris interfering with the sensors, as both could be true.
Also any escape pods would not be still in the the battle area by the Time enterprise turned up.
Its implied in episodes of voyager that any survivors were assimilated. Those not located in escape pods as B.S. escaped on one
your analysis makes me wonder if there were two phases of the battle, an initial phase that we see in TNG when the battlegroup first engages the Borg Cube, and then a later phase that took place as the Borg Cube punched through the battlegroup and the Starfleet ships regrouped to try to slow the Borg Cube down.
The ships of the initial phase, which tried to make a stand, would've been utterly obliterated and rendered lifeless in a static location (which is what the Enterprise flies through), while the ships of the latter phase were moving more dynamically in an attempt to outflank, catch up to the Cube, slow it down, etc. Once those ships were disabled and/or destroyed, the wreckage and survivors would've been left drifting off in all sorts of random directions with whatever inertia had been left to them when the Cube knocked them out.
it could also be that the escape pods intentionally moved outside of the battle area to avoid all of that wreckage
Yeah i would think that standard tactics for fleet formations would include dropping your shuttles prior to engagement with your utility shuttles can do things like tow damaged ships or rescue survivors. This just makes sense to me to do this especially if your expecting to take severe losses.
Yes i believe that admiral Hansen called to regroup and that at that point the battle moved a bit around in the system i'm assuming. I would think the Borg being undamaged would have simply not allowed them to effectively gather themselves though.
@@kadmii you are a Vulcan
USS Dunkerque-NCC-44532-Cheyenne, USS Thy'lek Shran-NCC-62151-Centaur, USS Ahwahnee-NCC-71620-Cheyenne, USS Anderson-NCC-12248-Springfield, USS Bastion-NCC-2527-Constellation, USS Bellerophon-NCC-62048-Nebula, USS Bonestell-NCC-31600-Oberth, USS Buran-NCC-57580-Challanger, USS Chekov-NCC-57302-Springfield, USS Columbia-NCC-71102-Galaxy, USS Constance-NCC-10367-Constellation, USS Endeavour-NCC-71805-Nebula, USS Endurance-NCC-5365-Ambassador, USS Firebrand-NCC-68723-Freedom, USS Gage-NCC-11672-Apollo, USS Galatea-NCC-2692-Constellation, USS Garratt-NCC-12256-Georgiou, USS Hoagland-NCC-31800-Miranda, USS Hood-NCC-42296-Excelsior, USS Konom-NCC-32285-New Orleans, USS Kyushu-NCC-65491-New Orleans, USS Liberator-NCC-67016-Centaur, USS Melbourne-NCC-63043-Excelsior, USS Melbourne-NCC-68256-Nebula, USS Mjolnir-NCC-3117-Miranda, USS Potemkin-NCC-18253-Excelsior, USS Princeton-NCC-59804-Niagara, USS Reliant-NCC-1864-Miranda, USS Republic-NCC-1371-Constitution II, USS Righteous-NCC-42451-Excelsior, USS Roosevelt-NCC-2573-Excelsior, USS Saratoga-NCC-31911-Miranda, USS Sonak-NCC-29873-Miranda, USS T'Shen Kovil-NCC-68208-ShiKahr, USS Tolstoy-NCC-62095-Rigel, USS Victory-NCC-9754-Constellation, USS Yamaguchi-NCC-26510-Ambassador, USS Yorktown-NCC-61137-Zodiac
JTVFX has done several instances on the subject of BoBW Part 1 & 2 (and I think that is where the idea of the battle being conducted in two phases originates).
HANSON, to Enterprise: "Your engagements have given us valuable time. We've mobilised a fleet of forty starships at Wolf three five nine, and that's just for starters. The Klingons are sending warships. Hell, we've even thought about opening communications with the Romulans."
This line actually implies there could very well of been more than forty vessels by the time they engaged the Borg, leading to the possibility of more surviving vessels. It is likely, if there were such vessels, that the Borg would not of wasted time chasing them down, but instead continued it's course to Earth.
The Klingons didnt arrive in time. I wish they had just for the visuals but aside from that line from Hanson nothing was ever shown or said on screen about it again
@@shaundis2117 Some visual evidence indicate they did not arrive in time, but it isn't conclusive. But that does not prove that in the
@@birdmonster4586 Honestly i cant think of a ship that needed to be more updated then the largest and most functional to a hostile target threatening Earth.
@@shaundis2117 in Voyager's episode Unity, some brief flashback scenes of birds of prey being destroyed were incorporated, suggesting that at least some did arrive in time, towards the end of the battle. Additionally, this may be where the assimilated Klingons from the episode UnimaterixZero: Part II came from.
@@RoseBunneh Or it is possible that the Borg switched their attentions from the Federation to the Klingons during the intervening years between Wolf and the Sector 001 battle.
It was dumb luck that the USS Endeavor survived the battle of Wolf 359.
Some say it's Hood, considering it appears later on in LDS.
What is LDS?
@@shadowki497Star Trek lower decks
@@shadowki497 lower decks.
@@shadowki497 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Star Trek: Borg also adds the Excelsior class USS Rightous, which may or may not be canon.
Also, regarding survivors: Considering how many large starships were present, it could be that the 11,000 dead were the total casulties and that the lifepods launched full of survivors like Sisko were not among the count. For one, the ship that survived may have picked up the lifepods after the Borg went on their way, or perhaps the Enterprise was so late that the lifepods were already out of sensor range- Given that they completely missed all of it despite urgently catching up i'd find that believable.
In the case of the Rightous it was recorded as lost as it appeared to be destroyed. It wasn't until much later that that was revealed as a fabrication by Q to preserve the timeline.
Another possibility is the Enterprise was only doing a cursory scan - there were dozens of destroyed/crippled ships, massive amounts of weapons fire, detonations, subspace catastrophies from destroyed warp cores, etc. Any thorough sensor sweep could have taken hours - hours they didn't have. They could have had dififculty getting thorough sensor readings so upon an initial scan kept on going. escape pods might have gone away from the battle at maximum speed and turned off transponders to minimize the chances of being picked up by the Borg, so cursory scans could have missed them and they could have only been located days later.
Also depending if one accepts it as canon or not, the 'Borg' adventure game from the 90's shows one ship being sent to the future by Q that was a retroactive survivor and would have been missing in action (due to the time travel bit). However, this requires treating live action games as canon materials, which has never been stated firmly either way. But it was done by production crews who worked on the series, used sets from them, and had a lot of the same actors and creators.
Star Trek Klingon tied in with Star Trek VI.
Yeah, so not sure if live action video games are considered canon or not. As far as I'm aware it's never been specified either way.
it is a little handwavy. the enterprise sensors can find bacteria and small bits of specific metal from orbit but can't see survivors(many of them actively trying to signal for help in lifepods designed to be easily found)? even if they had transponder and beacons off they don't have romulan cloaks and seeing enterpise or the borg leave would turn them back on. most likely a small retcon or one ship grabbing survivors like ben sisko and hightailing out.
For the 'No Survivors' question I had a thought; the Klingons. The Admiral said that 'The Klingons are sending warships' when talking to Riker and knowing the Klingons they'd burn their engines out at high warp to fight the Borg shoulder to shoulder with their former enemies and now allies! But since they were too far away maybe they arrived too late to engage in the battle but arrived in time to rescue the survivors and lifeboats. I can see the Klingons respecting the survivors greatly seeing the destruction of the scene, like how the Enterprise C defended the Klingon outpost and died doing so seeing 39 destroyed Federation ships must be a massive show of 'These people can and WILL fight to the bitter end!'
A two part battle does make sense. The Federation is losing, Hansen tries to break off and regroup, the Borg decide to ignore a badly damaged but still functioning ship and chase down the retreating group, wiping them out in the process. Then the Borg decide to continue on the earth rather than backtrack.
The damaged ship manages to get underway, collect survivors, and limp out of the area maintaining radio silence so as to not remind the Borg they are still alive. By the time the Enterprise shows up the area is in the depicted state.
You seem to think the two battles are writing retcons instead of in universe explanations. Hansen was attempting to regroup the fleet when communication was cut off with the Enterprise-D. Clearly no one survived the initial encounter which is the location the Enterprise warped to. Sisko was at the later fall back point also near or in the Wolf system, yet outside detectable life form sensor range. Remember also that heavy subspace interference was reported, potentially reducing sensor performance.
Thank you for this line: "Clearly no one survived the initial encounter which is the location the Enterprise warped to." Cleary he did not consider that both battles depicted in "BOBW II" and "Emissary" were possiblly separate engagements by Starfleet as an attempt to stop the Borg Cube from entering the Terran System (going to Earth).
This also has implications that indeed the USS Endeavour was the potential 40th starship to survive the first assault by Starfleet. It could have been seriously damaged and out of sensor range by the time the Enterprise-D passed through the Wolf 359 Wreckage , as Admiral Hanson's starship was not also seen: Commander Shelby did not call out its name as she listed known ships that passed within the view of the Enterprise.
I generally like this man's videos but his assertions and conclusions here were somewhat lack luster at best and need more pursuit and polish.
I always assumed that the 40 starships that Hanson was able to muster were vessels in and around the Terran system perhaps at Stardock and/or the Utopia Planitia Shipyards at Mars that were deployed to defend Earth. This might also explain why those vessels had so little crew aboard because they were either under repair, upgrades or being decommissioned when the Borg Invasion occured, thus "skeleton crews" were issued to command and operate them. Converesly, the USS Saratoga could have been a ship that arrived some time later and engaged the Borg between the Terran System and the Wolf 359 System.
Another line of dialogue that could be used to support these suppositions is spoken by Commander Shelby just before her departure during the conclusion of BOBW II. She mentions that with her help "the Fleet will be up and operational in less than a year". Surely, she is not referring to the entire star fleet that Starfleet is comprised of--because is has to have more than 40 starships in use--but is the "Home Fleet" assigned to either defend Earth itself or all of Sector 001. Those 39 ships (plus potentially more) that were lost to the Borg Cube would be replaced by existing vessels or newly commissioned ones in that time frame.
@@Aqweiusthere where 2 battles. The first line of defence was destroyed while the second line pulled back I think this was siskco battle where he and others survived. I do also believe it was 16,000kia not 11
@@Aqweius Very logical! As the Borg Cube did sport lots of damage. not enough to really hamper it's operation. But suggestive of more than a single, major engagement. The Borg didn't stop due to the need to NOT allow Star Fleet more time. It is suggestive they were aware the Cube was in damage - IF - a starship rammed it at warp speed. In fact, the sheer scale of the destruction to the Klingon vessel suggests that might have been their final attempt. And with enough warp able vessels incoming, the Cube was at risk.
It is quite possible that, rather than running, the surviving ship was assigned the specific duty of picking up survivors once the cube (and possibly the remains of the fleet in pursuit) warped out of the area. In WWII submarines were often stationed near battle areas, not to participate in the fight, but to pick up downed aviators. So this ship may have been on station far away from the battle, came in after the cube left, and picked up survivors. This would account for why "only" 11,000 people died when that would mean many of the ships would have tiny crews. It would also explain why there were no life signs when the Enterprise arrived as that ship may have been there and gone already. And it might even explain it being a Nebula class, as only a large ship would be able to hold so many survivors. Hansen was pretty realistic about their chances and probably foresaw the need for a large rescue ship, even if it meant taking that firepower out of the battle.
Some have speculated that the Cube assimilated a bunch of the crews then sent a Sphere back with them so they were able to be there for the Voyager episode later on, as otherwise everyone assimilated would have died when the cube exploded.
That makes sense that a sphere would left with assimilated crew.
And, alpha quadrant species drones are encountered by Voyager in the Delta quadrant... unless they use the whole 'you think in such 3 dimensional terms' argument... which is how the Queen survives to show up in First Contact.
If you are at all interested, I wrote ‘We have engaged the Borg: The oral history of the battle of Wolf 359’ which the STO battle is based upon and the question of what ship survived is a pivotal plot point in the book, we also try and square a number of inconsistencies from both BOBW and Emissary, you can read it for free online, just search for the Wolf 359 Project. Would love to have a chat about it and dive in more to the details if you like
Automatic like for the Red Dwarf reference!!!❤
Yep
Ah, the beauty of a Cheyenne class; it never gets old.
Thank you for taking my mind off of this cruel world
To me it would make perfect sense that when it came to large fleet battles Starfleet would have one or two ships standing by in reserve for "Clean up duty". Their job would be to pick up life boats, in the unfortunate event of a starship being destroyed. This would also answer the question of, "Why was an Oberth class ship there?". The Oberth and the mystery ship, were busy recovering life boats, the Oberth either got over zealous or sadly caught in the crossfire. The mystery ship, being that it was not engaged with the Borg, was ignored and continued its mission to recover life boats, thus the reason why there was no life boats around for the Enterprise to recover when she arrived hours later.
Ooooh. Used the conning tower from a typhoon class submarine kit?
OK, brace, because this may sting... the thingies used to represent the defensive pods whatsits * that the Borg Cube swats out of existence were made, in part, from the hulls of typhoon kits, so, one might speculate they had a few conning towers lying around,...
One of the things that has almost always amused me a tad, when we started getting large scale battles in Trek, is that, in theory, each of those ships is packed with techy geniuses, so, a Federation fleet in attack mode ought to be kalaidoscopic, really, every ship with more than one zany scheme to technobabble the enemy to death, every ship's super smart person trying time dilation or hyper warp induction scoops, each vaunted engineer coagulating the photonic whoopsitrons. Time travelling entities, duplicate vessels from alternate worlds. They win the day thanks to reverse engineering, but, surely, each of those ships was working on some kind of plan, right? Yet we never see anyone trying anything flash except for our heroes (which of course is the point don' get me wrong) The only time iirc we get any kind of hint that other ships are just as inventive and awesome is the chap explaining his engineer is rigging a solar sail in St4.
It always seems to boil down to, each captain saying...
"OK, people, we're going to try attack plan A. Fly towards the enemy, fire the phasers, then fly away again."
"Couldn't we try something else?"
"Such as?"
"Well, what about those poly-phasic neutron boom whatsists that Marki LaWhizz built last week? Couldn't we beam them onto the Borg cube?"
"We'd never get through the shields."
"Well, sure, except, we could use the defibulation warp field mode we came up with on Dabnifelchpond 3 to read their shield frequency and..."
"You're relieved!"
* Mars perimeter defence pods
An existentially threatened Federation has no need for edgy Section 31 evil schemes. They’d unleash away teams of MACO’s boosted by Scalosian water making them effectively comic book superspeedsters wiping out entire ship crews or space stations or cities if need be. They’d respond to fleets by warping in a heavily armored Galaxy class fitted with a Mannheim Temporal device locking that fleet into place in a temporal loop for eternity. Key systems would be wiped out by red matter, genesis device, or similar scale weapon. And yeah that’s ignoring artificially enhanced evolution to become god beings (ala Organians and the like) or simply getting unstable psychics by smashing people into the galactic barrier, or time travel duplicates, etc. Trek that had coherent scientific follow-up would have the space hippies overwhelm those noble warrior races or sneaky manipulators by sheer accident with the 13th galaxy devastating lab experiment they conducted.
6:43 Probably the same thing the Oberths at the Battle of Sector 001 were doing… The Bonstell may have been the transport mentioned in VOY “Infinite Regress” and it got roped into the battle.
There was also a Type-7 shuttle model used in the BOBW debris scene but barely visible. It was labelled as belonging to the USS Liberator NCC-67016, so I think it’s safe to assume that ship was there and was lost too.
I've seen material that lists the Liberator as Hansens Galaxy command ship
This is high quality stuff. Thanks for your love of TNG!
I assumed that maybe Sisko's escape pod had a warp engine like most shuttlecraft do. Though it's not on-screen, the model department did build a wrecked warp-capable shuttle from the USS Liberator for the battle scene. And it wasn't just the secondary hull of a Constitution-class refit in the wreckage, you see the saucer-section too that seemed to have been blown clean off.
The Enterprise may have had time to pick up some survivors after they rescued Picard- their kidnapping of Locutus seemed like it was right next to where the Battle of Wolf 359 was and after the rescue they were 15 minutes behind the Borg when they entered Earth's solar system. We know even with manual docking it would only take like 2 minutes for the secondary and primary hulls to reconnect and the Enterprise to give chase and at less than 8 light years that's not enough distance for the cube's speed advantage at warp to matter, so maybe the Enterprise spent like 10 minutes collecting escape pods. It seems like the cube was jamming sensors in the area- even though the hulking thing was right there next to the battle site sitting still, the Enterprise had to follow "eddy currents" to find it, which implies their sensors were unable to detect it, so that jamming may have prevented them from finding escape pods too. Maybe the Borg were sitting still when the Enterprise followed the eddy currents to them because they were licking their wounds and had a jamming field to keep anyone from attacking while they did that. The Borg were never that hard to detect otherwise.
Also I can't remember if it was in a canon source or not but Hanson had his ships attacking in waves as opposed to all swarming at once like in First Contact. That was how it was depicted in Star Trek: Borg (where the Saratoga was in the first wave, which seems consistent with Locutus broadcasting the warning right before they open fire) and other places, so when Hanson gave the retreat order one ship in the last wave could have grabbed some escape pods and fled. And technically speaking that means there were two or more battles of Wolf 359.
Sisko could have been picked up by the Surviving ship potentially too.
If it was one of those long and odd looking Discovery Style Medical vessels there would be plenty of space.
I really appreciate your videos because you put so much care into the aesthetic quality of the audio and visuals.
5:21 all this talk of submarines and you missed the even cooler things the nacelles of the Cheyenne class were made from...
Highlighters😊
I've never liked in profile images of the Cheyenne but, in all the angles seen here, I'm now a fan, highlighters notwithstanding.
@@originaluddite I thought the same. I think I'm becoming a fan too.
I've still got one of those highlighters! I'll probably never throw it away because of the TNG connection.
It’s also worth mentioning that there were likely more crew than 11,000 total on the ships since Shaw made it out on an escape pod and survived to get to ST: Picard, as well as the survivors we see from DS9.
It’s a reasonable assumption to guess that at least some other people from the other ships survived as well, although probably not many… One explanation for the reason the Enterprise didn’t detect any survivors is perhaps because the battle moved throughout its course, or maybe the escape pods were already taken away by the time they got there. This could have even been done by a non-Starfleet ship.
It is also more logical because it was a space battle; starfleet commanders asked all non-starship operations / essential crew to remain n others to disembark (temporary) . . . Hence less casaulties
There may exceptions . . .
But Sisko wife died at wolf 359 who knows
Quite a few points that can be raised here. First with the crew count - we see in DS9 that when Starfleet has advanced warning, they offload non-combat-essential personnel before sailing into harms way. Its reasonable to assume that the fleet gathered did exactly this; ergo allowing for larger ships to be at the battle. Second - When the Ent-D shows up, its not made clear how much time has passed between the end of battle and the big D showing up - ergo, the 'lone survivor' was the one on rescue duty. This neatly ties up the TNG and DS9 episodes; bringing them back to just one battle; where as the survivors made themselves scarce as to not attract further unwanted attention and 'cleared datum' - submariner term for GTFO. Third, there was another starship that survived the battle - USS Righteous, Excelsior class, was, courtesy of Q, 'snapped' out of the battle just before destruction and thrust forward in time. I would argue that Star Trek: Borg is 100% canon, as it does a vastly better job respecting the established canon without crapping all over it as, well, anything post VOY does.
Love your Galaxy class models. Also, very thorough explanation. Thank you!
Why can't the surviving vessel be the one that saved Sisko?
They could have seen the way the battle was going, grabbed as many escape pods and shuttles as they could, and gtfo.
I'm pretty sure they only used shuttles to escape as too many of the Saratogas crew was killed by the initial strike to the saucer, and rescue wouldn't have been needed as shuttles are equipped with warp capabilities
@@Undathesea it was not a shuttle.
@@matthewbarabas3052 it was, if you rewatch the episode
Probably my favourite piece of Star Trek meta-media is the Star Trek Borg CD Rom Game and Audiobook. This posits that the Excelsior class USS Righteous, NCC 42451 was 'struck by an unknown Borg weapons discharge and vapourised' ... but was instead timejumped from 2367 to 2377 by Q. As an aside, in ST Borg the list of lost ships is given (audibly incompletely) "Tolstoy, Kyushu, Saratoga, Melbourne..."
I was going to bring this up as well. You beat me to it!
Thanks Q! He does funny stuff sometimes.
Vaporized*
I prefer the short done here on youtube by JTVFX. First wave went in, failed with the remaining forces retreating and regrouped, but not far away. The regrouped forces may have gone to the other side of the star, the Borg followed and beat them to a fine paste. The Enterprise would have gone into the first skirmish, the last know location of Hanson's flagship (in this one being an unfinished galaxy called Auriga) that the Enterprise had soul contact with.
The ships: The two Melbournes are explained with one (Excelsior) being recently decommissioned and the other (New Nebula) about to be commissioned. The rest being in range or fit to fly. Considering that this just 8 light years away from Earth with its vast docks and shipyards, that ain't a lot.
The full list of ships: Melbourne, Melbourne (decom), Auriga, Liberator, Pulsar, Torrens, Trent, Leonov, Saratoga, Firebrand, Agincourt, Monarch, Kadosca, Roma, Champlin, Yorktown, Columbia, Roosevelt, Kyushu, Gage, Tolstoy, Chekov, Rutherford, Constance, Princeton, Ahwahnee, Hoagland, Buran, Bellerophon, Yamaguchi, Star League, Montoro, Paris, Demeter, Righteous, Endeavour, Pisces, Taurus, Bonestell and Tyrargo. 40 ships.
Those are great shorts and supremely well done but even the creator said he took alot of liberties and added his own take on the events. Awesome work but its not a "true " telling of events.
@@shaundis2117 Isn't taking liberties just another word for making guesses to fill in blanks? Its a bit of star trek fun, to quote another youtuber.
I see you to are a man of culture.
I don't really think, there was a Galaxy there. From storytelling perspective, if it were there, why not show it, to show the crew (and the audience), that they will likely fail, as their sistership had failed too?
@@looseycanonBecause back then they were still using models not CGI ships and they couldn't afford to destroy the model of the Enterprise they had. But considering they showed a Galaxy class battle bridge, there had to be at least 1.
One thing you didn't consider in the Crew numbers was the idea that some although not all ships had been able to evacuate families and non essential crew before the battle obviously this could only happen on the ships that got to the rendevous point first.
Yeah, other ships or ships coming from less havited areas of the quadrant likely had no time to do so (as we saw fro The Emissary)
I think the battle occurred in waves. Sisko was in the first wave judging by the appearance of Locutus on the viewscreen and the lack of damaged ships already there. Only a handful of ships were seen, indicating the rest of the fleet was held back.
Sisko then ejects in an escape pod, and off screen it likely heads to an escape pod rally point to be picked up by non-combat ships. 40 starships are mentioned, but that doesn't mean there weren't additional support ships which wouldn't qualify as starships.
Also, it could also be that another late arrival starship came before the Enterprise, and beamed up all the survivors from the escape pods. It was a call for all available ships, so they would have been arriving at different times. It could be a 41st starship who arrived just at the end of the battle, and didn't engage knowing it was lost, only to pick up survivors after the Borg moved on. The Borg would have been unlikely to engage a starship which didn't approach them, due to wanting to continue their mission to Earth.
But the Ahwahnee didnt return from the battle: it was rescued AFTER the battle, which means ANOTHER ship is the one who managed to survive, and must the one who saved both Sisko and (maybe) Shaw. The Enterprise arrived after the ship left with the surivvors and the Borg assimilated the rest
I'd argue they aren't the same ship but sisters that started construction at nearly the same time. The 1st Ahwahnee was a higher registry number and launched 1st as the other was stuck in drydock been worked on. After she was lost with all hands her sister was renamed in her honor. Starfleet has a history of renaming ships to honor lost vessels so this would make sense, its likely there are new/renamed versions of the entire fleet.
@@cgi2002 Bit of an older reply, but I'd expect it to have had a legacy applied to it, Ahwahnee-A
@@cKerensky normally for a completely new rebuild with the same registery number that would be the case, but there are examples of it not been when a ship was renamed & had a different registery number (even if that was subsequently changed). The Definat for example, there are 3 ships to bear the name, NCC-1764 (lost to mirror universe), NX-74205 (lost to the breen) and NCC-75633 (renamed from USS Sao Paulo and had registery changed to NX-74205, later retired and preserved). They never applied a letter suffix to any of them, thus It's possible they did the same here, the writers have always been a bit lax with the rules in regards to lettering. Worth noting however this could also be partially because of the NX registery code rather than the usual NCC but that's pushing it too.
TBOBW turns Wolf 359 into a Noodle Incident. No rendition of it could ever match what we imagine the battle was like. I remember seeing that episode first air, and even as a child it was a shock. You expect Enterprise to arrive and save the day, only to find she is too late.
We all know it was a California class that "NOPE'd" away.
nah, the cube looked at the California and went "F that, it's a downgrade"
@@artbrann Just like when we walk it is not we that are moving but making the earth rotate under us, the shot of them Noping away was actually the cube going away and the Cerritos staying still.
New ships are often named for ships lost in action. There were Essex class versions of the Lexington, Yorktown, Hornet, and Wasp.
Perhabs the surviving ship tried to rescue all scape pods that she can, but eventually have to flee, leaving behind a lot of pods with people. So, when the Enterprise D arrived at the scene, the few that survived already gone in the surviving ship, and the rest... assimilated by the Borg, so the Enterprise didn't found survivors, as we saw.
🖖😎👍Very cool and very greatly nicely wonderfully well done and very well informatively explained and executed in every detail way shape and format provided on Who or if any Starship's actually Survived the Battle of Wolf 359, A job very nicely fabulously well done indeed Sir!👌.
Could the USS Righteous an Excelsior Class that was shown in the Star Trek Borg game be the one that got away? Q took the ship away from the battle in an instant, there's even a YT channel called JTVFX wich shows the Battle of Wolf 359 and also depicts what ships took part in the battle including Hanson's ship which was a Galaxy class in saucer separation mode
i was going to point out that this was a massive battle and the ships may have been operating with minimal crews, but i also remember that starfleet was too overconfident and more than likely didn't evacuate non-essential personnel and crew families.
We for sure they didn’t evacuate anyone as Jennifer and Jake Sisko were still aboard the Saratoga, as well as the blonde woman Ben speaks to in the corridor and others seen in the escape pod. I don’t put that down to overconfidence though, but more to a lack of time to do anything but get ships in position.
Yeah there were talks with the Klingons and Romulans to add more ships, the 2 Melbournes could be due to an older, decommissioned namesake brought out of mothballs and the presence of a Connie and Oberth support Hanson brought everything he could to Wolf 359. Still think some ships dropped off nonessentials when they could but clearly not the Saratoga which as an older ship might have had to rush just to make it
They weren't. One, the fleet had been called on a very short notice and two, if they were, Jennifer Sisko would have survived the battle, as she and her son Jake would have been left at some starbase, just like the Odyssey had been evacuated of non essential personnel before venturing into the Gamma quadrant.
@looseycanon Miranda class is old, may not have been fast enough to make a dropoff detour and reach the fight in time. Faster ships, or those closer to safeharbor either at their starting point or along their course may have been able to do so.
@@DIEGhostfish They could have always done a ship-to-ship transfer of non essential personnel and left civilians on something very weak, but therefore expendable to take civilians to a starbase, say that Oberth that took part in the battle. The fact, they didn't do it, would suggest the haste. After all, you could argue the same for a newer ship, that responded from greater distance. The fact, that they didn't would sugggest this had been called very hastly.
Amasov could also have been a Wolf 359 survivor who was promoted after the battle.
Crucially, we do not know that even one ship survived the battle of Wolf 359. It is entirely possible that there were zero surviving ships or even multiple. Any surviving vessels likely recovered lifeboats and fled before Enterprise's arrival.
In TNG: The Best of Both Worlds Part 2, Hanson says that he has "mobilised a fleet of forty starships at Wolf three five nine, and that's just for starters. The Klingons are sending warships. Hell, we've even thought about opening communications with the Romulans."
Before the battle, he is evidently optimistic that more ships will be able to arrive in the short time available. We do not know that 40 represents the final size of the battlegroup, or even that 40 is the exact number of ships at the time of Hanson's report. As he evidently did not think the number fixed, he may have been rounding any number between 35 and 45 to 40, for convenience.
The precise "thirty nine" could easily have been rounded up to forty in conversation ("about forty") but that would be a bit of a killjoy.
There were no life signs at Wolf359 because everyone either got away in shuttles or they were assimilated. I can't remember which episode, but an aquaintance of 7 of 9s was a survivor from the Melbourne who was captured and assimilated.
Id be willing to bet the borg snatched up life pods and boarded any derelict ships that still had pockets of atmosphere and took them all. There's a video out from JTVX that covers this... Pretty chillingly.
That also implies the borg fully assimilated atleast one ship, likely the most powerful Federation ship present (best tech) and sent it back to the Delta quadrant with potentially a few thousand drones aboard.
@@cgi2002 potentially, but we know crew from the Melbourne were assimilated, which makes sense as only the primary hull was obliterated. However, Melbourne was mentioned specifically by Shelby in the graveyard. So, if a ship was assimilated, it wasn't her.
I think the surviving ship was in fact the Endeavor. I could see it being incapacitated by Birg weapons fire but not destroyed. Seeing so many other ships being wpied out with his own not being able to intervene would certai ly give Capt Amasov reason to see the Birg as evil. The crew not being fired at would have the breathing room needed to get systems at least partially functioning. Once the cube left, they would have gathered up all the survivors from lifeboats as well as the ones on the wrecked ships and moved off, perhaps limping away at warp 2. Thus when the Enterprise arrived, there wouldn't be any survi ord present to be picked up.
2:25 While Wolf 359 occurred before the first appearance of the Akira-class, we should not assume that the class is yet to have been invented. The design of the ship is not long and sleek like the later Intrepid and Sovereign classes, but wide and rounded like the earlier Galaxy and New Orleans classes.
Consider also the registry of the U.S.S. Thunderchild from from VIII: First Contact, is NCC-63549. While we do not know that there is any definitive relationship between timing and registry, this lower than typical registry acts as weak evidence that the Akira-class might even precede the Galaxy-class.
The Akira-class is often presented in supplementary material as being, like the other new classes seen in First Contact and like the Defiant-class, designed in response to the battle of Wolf 359. I believe it also informed the out-of-universe design of the new classes; they were designed to be more militarised, as well as to provide new twists on the typical two hulls and nacelles design so that they stood out from the new Enterprise. They were also given greeblies and hull detail (like escape pod hatches) that were meant to be somewhere in between the Galaxy- and Sovereign-classes.
That being said, supplementary and behind-the-scenes information isn't canon, so it is possible for something else to come along and say that the Akira was developed earlier.
@@andymac4883 I did not mention the lifeboat hatch details because those can be refitted more easily than the basic shape of the ship can be redesigned, and the saucer proportions are more indicative of an earlier ship.
unless between Sisco escaping and the Enterprise arriving, another ship arrived to pick up survivors and left.
could have been the Klingon re enforcement's for all we know
That seems pretty obvious, since a significant amount of time passed between Hansen's communication and the Enterprise's arrival. Yet this TH-camr seems to act like it's physically impossible for another ship to show up before the Enterprise and rescue the survivors. I don't know why.
@@atomicninjaduck9200 since it was never said I'm dialogue, we don't know.
E-D got there about 12 hours after the battle, and she was in bad shape. I prefer the explanation in We Have Engaged the Borg (The Wolf 359 Project) - the work that STO used for their version of the battle - that E-D's sensors were barely working, and there was a lot of distortion that kept her from seeing the survivors. Riker was also more focused on stopping the cube from betting to Earth than on looking for any survivors when the first pass at sensor sweeps said there were none. It was a basic triage situation.
@@shaundis2117 Klingons couldn't have gotten there before the enterprise and not further assisted. Would have to be something civilian.
It might be worth noting that Memory Beta directly pulls its list from Star Trek Online, which itself pulls its list from We Have Engaged The Borg, a fanfiction. That fanfic has its own list which, strangely, includes a Parliament Class (first seen 2380).
With the Ahwahnee, its possible that the Borg attack ruptured key systems and flooded the ship with radiation. We know from "Redemption", that the Sutherland's weapons systems flooded at least two decks with radiation.
The Ahwahnee is a lot smaller with fewer decks - a radiation burst would take out a larger percentage of the ship.
The ship would be salvageable after radiation clean-up, but the crew would be dead very quickly if the radiation burst was high enough.
With the crew dead, it would be adrift and no longer seen as a threat - further attacks would be unnecessary to the Borg. As a result it survived relatively intact.
Or it could have destroyed its life support systems. Once it stopped being a threat the borg would have moved on to other targets regardless of the type of damage caused
It is very rewarding when you fill up every blank space on the status screen
"Kanada" is the First Nations word that gave us "Canada". It's means the village, the houses...
Was it the Cerritos? They escape from the Borg at the opening of every episode of Lower Decks.
I'm glad Wolf 359 isn't out of Shake'n'Vac
I'm still puzzled as why some sources place a Parliament class starship at Wolf 359.
Th at mames less sense th en a galaxy class being there
I think that's from Star Trek Online. As much as I like Star Trek Online, they shouldn't have retroactively altered the list. Lots of research out there they could have worked from to build a more accurate roster. They even included an Akira-class, which most people attribute to being designed after Wolf 359. But Star Trek online has limited resources and needed to fill out the fleet with more variety. The Parliment-class was an existing asset and was shoe-horned in.
@@ealan3694 Better yet, why a Parliament class ship named after a person, rather than, I dunno, a city in a country that had a Parliament in their government?
A lot of the "First Contact" ships could not have been designed post-Wolf 359, unless we declare that registries are not chronologically assigned in consecutive order. Steamrunner, Saber, Akira, Norway... all have registries that predate the Galaxy class. So their development had to have started prior to that. Norway and Akira are the "newest", while Steamrunner is the "oldest". It's entirely possible that they were basically in development hell, and most or all of the classes went through extensive redesigns to some extent post-Wolf 359 and before they actually entered production. An Akira prototype being present is actually theoretically possible, if we accept registries being chronologically assigned in consecutive order.
Personally, I see the Akira development starting as a result of the ongoing border war with the Cardassians, but the prototype(s) had issues that kept the class out of production until redesigned into an anti-Borg torpedo boat after Wolf 359. That sort of history could allow for a prototype to be involved in the battle.
Visually, other than the nacelles, the Parliament and California classes are closer to the Galaxy styling than the post-Galaxy styling of the Sovereign and Nova classes. STO's version of the battle is based on the work "We have engaged the Borg: The Oral History of the Battle of Wolf 359" which is a really good fanwork that covers a lot of the gaps.
@@nekophht You're making an assumption that registries are chronological. There are too many inconsistencies to state that they are chronological and we do not know how they are assigned. While there is a "rough" chronology to them, I do not believe they are chronological, and plenty have been attributed to being arbitrarily assigned or the registries are just assigned at random. The production staff played pretty fast and loose with them. Just look at the USS Yeager, our 1st ever Saber-class starship that we got to see. It's registry is NCC-61947, the First Contact film staff acknowledged, the registry was assigned 6-1947 to coincide with the year Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, 1947.
The ships in question have the most recent prime starfleet design elements that directly contradict an earlier design era. From RCS thruster style, hull markings, the triangular escape pods, ect that tie them to the post Galaxy-class designs. Additionally, the the proposed specs in the resources I have seen state they are equipped with Type-10 phasers with a maximum warp of Warp 9.4 to 9.7, confirming they are later designs. Pre-galaxy designs generally did not have max warp speeds in that range, particularly lighter non-explorer type ships, and at the time, the only warp engines that were achieving that range of warp, were the Braums engines, identifiable by the Galaxy-class style warp nacelles. Remeber, the Galaxy-class and Nebula were ground breaking in the Warp Engine category, with the Galaxy being the later and faster of the two.
Additionally, 20 years ago, magazines, games and interviews pretty much confirmed the implication that they were always intended as a Post Wolf-359, Anti-Borg fleet, and it should be noted that these classes came to dominate Starfleet in the 2370s. Why would a 20-ish year old design surplant newer designs, which we know were in the works?
As for the registries, the only thing that I could see explaining the descrepencies with the registries, is that the various shipyards in the Federation are assigned 'Blocks' of Registry numbers. For example, say the Antares Shipyards was assigned a blanket contract for registries 62000-65000 and assigns them out as ships are either 'laid down'/construction starts or comissioned. And these contracts are for 'hulls' not specific classes, as specific class orders will change due to the needs of Starfleet in a given year. And these registries could be held in reserve for years, possibly even decades as the shipyard fills orders over time. We know specific shipyards are dedicated to constructing specific ship classes, and such a system would explain the registry 'clustering' for a given class. Particulary for the 'mass produced' classes, like the Akira. This also allows for more 'custom' ship orders to be being inserted, blocks of registries being centrally held by Starfleet and assigned for 'special' orders like "Galaxy"-classes, and as the Federation grows and expands, newer and larger shipyards come online, being assigned larger and larger blocks lending it some "rough" chronology, which then becomes blurred over time. And it also explains why the earliest registries are 'more' chronological due to there being smaller shipyards and smaller ship orders in the earlier years of Starfleet.
And in the same train of thought, we have no idea if contracts were placed for earlier class starships, that may have been cancelled, for instance, in the wake of Wolf 359 where the early to mid-century designs were found woefully lacking and Starfleet subsequently began a crash course in developing new combat oriented designs. Does the shipyward wash it's hands of the registries? Or does it just roll them over to the next ship orders? I think the registry blocks in question are hold-overs from years past, or previous shipyard orders that were redirected to newer construction and designs.
An additional, initial (and unexpected) battle of Wolf359 would explain many things, not least why civilians were brought into a warzone!
It was stated many places, including Voyager, that USS Endeavour NCC-71805 was the sole 'survivor' of the 359 massacre. Its captain, Amasov, stated that the Borg were as close to 'pure evil' as anything or anyone he'd ever encountered.
Yes, some of the 359 ships were later recovered and salvaged; these include the Ahwahnee and Yamaguchi. But they were essentially dead hulks.
Endeavour got away, with most of her crew alive... though the ship herself got stomped badly.
I thought Sisko survived in an escape pod when Saratoga was destroyed? Did I miss something?
Yes that’s correct. It was a shuttle
or escape pod. My memory is fuzzy on the specific.
I think his point is if Sisko (and others) got away, but when the Enterprise arrived they reported "no life signs" someone had to pick them up in the meantime. This implies atleast one ship survived, picked up the survivors, and took off before Enterprise arrived.
@@navyreviewer or alternatively that escape pods have limited warp capabilities (which would make sense, an escape pod that can't safely reach a habitable world in a short time is mostly useless).
@cgi2002 I thought so too. Wasnt Sisko in a shuttle? Hey, why didn't the Borg scoop everyone up?
@@navyreviewer honestly they didn't need to, atleast thats my theory along with this:
The Borg often allow people to escape, it spreads fear and gives people a level of knowledge of the borgs capabilities thus letting the survivors adapt new technology to resist the borg, new technology they inevitably assimilate. The borgs entire strategic approach is based around having people resist and improve their tech, its only once a race/group exhausts their ability to adapt that thet assimilate them en mass. Resistance is not only not futile, its the goal all along. If the Borg wanted to assimilate everyone, they'd just do it, 1 large unending unstoppable wave of drones, rather than having 99% of the collective stood around on planets doing nothing. Why repeatedly send 1 single cube to attack the federation every few years when they could send 10000, and have them arrive directly at Earth rather than flying, slowly, through every defensive line the federation can muster.
My head cannon for all the inconsistency the battle was that it wasn't all the ships engaging the cube at the same time. But rather in groups, and over the course of the of the cubes path to earth. As for the odd casualty numbers not matching the number of and stated types of ships is that many of the ships were not entirely destroyed, but mostly disabled, and that the Borg simply left many survivors with the intent to assimilate them later, the primary task being earth. So MOST of ships crews survived in escape pods, or in the wreckage. This requires us to hand wave away "No life signs and power signatures" this cannot be easily reconciled and at some point we have to merge the versions to create the best of all worlds with the LEAST retcon possible. So i find your idea of the casualty numbers makes more sense and better avoids retcons so it's now my new head canon for that contradiction. As far as Sisko i imagine his escape pod left the area during the battle while the Borg were distracted. While most everyone else was NOT so lucky.
2:30 Actually there is an explanation for this ship.
The Akira-Class was designed for the Cardassian border Wars, but by the War’s end in 2363? Only two ships of the class were completed. The USS Akira and USS Kaneda. A third ship, the USS Tetsuo, remained incomplete and was disassembled in dock. The Akira-Class program was indefinitely shelved but the Two prototypes it produced would go on to see service, when Wolf 359 happened? Akira was in dock under retrofit, so Kaneda was called to action, Kaneda lasted far longer than most its contemporaries, proved the Akira’s viability aswell as Starfleet’s need for Tactical capable vessels and the Class Project was ordered resumed with the Class going into full production by 2369.
It also states the USS Hood also participated in the battle, and had only sustained damage and itself was the survivor,
4:03 Hason’s flagship was the USS Columbia NCC-71102, a newly completed Galaxy-Class running on a skeleton crew, obviously it was Destroyed.
5:43 Rigel is a star, also immediately after that scene the Wrecked Constitution-II we see was one of many cadet training vessels bearing the name “TS Republic”, it was temporarily reactivated as “USS Republic” under emergency orders to prepare for Wolf 359.
7:14 explanation for that aswell: The USS Melborne was an Excelsior-Class, however the Nebula-Class was the PCU Melborne NCC-78256, she was incomplete and supposed to be still under construction but had to be rushed to readiness to meet the borg at 359 under emergency orders.
9:00 its not confirmed if Amisov was at Wolf 359 or not, it’s just as likely that he and the Endeavor could’ve been part of the search and rescue teams sent following the battle.
12:45 the area was highly irradiated, which we’ve seen in trek before does tend to scramble ship sensors. Hence why the Enterprise probably didn’t detect them as they couldn’t scan thoroughly enough to see them if they were hiding amongst the corpses of their starships. Also in STO Canon The USS Hood rescued as many as she could, while the rest hid in the hangar bays of the USS Endurance NCC-5265-A, an already destroyed Nerendra-Class starship (although I would like to mention that STO’s W359 thing is based off the fan-made Wolf 359 project, so two different sources the ship exist with two very different descriptions of that ship, originally it’s supposed to be the Original Essex-Class USS Endurance NCC-5265 but due to STO not having the Essex-Class model for a few different reasons? The Nerendra-Class was chosen instead.)
13:21 in STO? The Ahwahnee did survive and was salvageable, but her crew were killed when attempting to Abandon ship by a radiation leak, following her role in TNG: “Redemption Pt. II”? Starfleet decided to Decommission her and place her at the Wolf 359 Memorial along with her fallen fleetmates.
In essence, given we know very little? I think it's in our best interest to turn to recent beta canon for answers, which would indeed implicate the Sole survivor as the Excelsior-Class U.S.S. Hood NCC-42296, although she had survived? She was heavily damaged and couldn't do much in terms of search & rescue in her state. so she would do as much as she could before withdrawing to friendly territory and then being dry-docked for repairs while Starfleet sends a formal search and rescue party lead by Captain Amasov of the U.S.S. Endeavor.
it figures that tetsuo came apart to pieces and had to be put back together again in a hodge podge way
I saw an excellent video of a recreation of the Battle of Wolf 359 - the creator and channel slip my mind unfortunately. The video shows 2 phases of the battle with Hansen's flagship being a Galaxy class.
It also explains that there were two Melbournes, the Nebula Melbourne was a newly commissioned ship, rushed into service, and it was this Melbourne that was offered to Riker. But the second Melbourne was the recently decommissioned Excelsior class that was rushed back into service for the fleet.
JTVFX is the channel.
Best recreation I've seen and also meticulous research on the battle. Can't wait for Part II!
The Excelsior class ship from the video game “Star Trek: Borg” was blinked by Q out of the fight, eight years into the future. While most video games aren’t canon, Qi’s line in Voyager, “If it weren’t for me, you would have all been assimilated by the Borg” seemed like a reference to a successful play-through of that game. (The game ends with the crew detecting another Borg attack on Earth. While it doesn’t line up exactly, I still head-canon that to mean the events at the start of Star Trek: First Contact.)
Someone created a really good depiction of the Battle of Wolf 359, depicting it happening in two waves, solving the survivor vs no survivor. Admiral Hanson’s cut signal was between the two waves, where they attempted a retreat and regroup. Also, the Melbourne ship class discrepancy was handled by having both a decommissioned Melbourne thrown back into service because they could, and they needed everything that moved and had any firepower; and a newly commissioned Melbourne.
where was Gondor when the battle of Wolf 359 happened?
No really, I LURVE the videos from Travel by Night. Knowing and acknwoledging it is fiction, still trying to make sense of it.
The escape pods might have been masking their life signs until they were sure the Borg were gone to avoid capture, and if a ship suffers complete power failure including life-support, that would kill the crew but leave the ship salvageable.
Even if life support fails, unless air is actively escaping or something is poisoning it people should have plenty air to breath for a few hours.
13:00 mark, random thought, due to the difference in time with warp travel, perhaps the nebula class had already completed picking up what few survivors were there and had left the region before the enterprise was on site? even if its mere minutes they missed them, it would be a star fleet warp signature in contact with starfleet command and no need to put time in questioning the path of any allied ships? not saying im right, just had a question cause of how much time is necessary for the enterprise to reach wolf 359 from the neutral zone. the borg hit hard and fast, the battle was over and the enterprise was hours away. the nebula class being more medical/science related while still helpful in battle as a support and tactical disruption vessel, it may have hung back from the physical fight and survived the borg when the fall back order was given. having been alone at the rendezvous, they may have rushed back and done what they could after the borg had moved on? again, just questions i have. im not saying i have any evidence or backing to this theory.
9:21 Captain Amasov's account is not "second-hand".
Captain Janeway contextualises Amasov's quote by saying that "I've been looking through the personal log entries of all the Starfleet Captains who encountered the Borg. I've gone over every engagement, from the moment Q flung the Enterprise into the path of that first Cube to the massacre at Wolf 359. Every battle, every skirmish. anything that might give me an insight into the mind of the Collective."
However, this correction still does not prove that the U.S.S. Endeavour was present at Wolf 359, or even Amasov. Amasov may have been aboard another vessel when he encountered the Borg, and that was not necessarily at Wolf 359.
In TNG: Descent Part 1, Admiral Nechayev claims that the Borg have "killed tens of thousands of innocent people".
The Battle of Wolf 359 only accounts for 11,000, not exactly "tens of thousands". New Providence colony on Jouret IV is only another 900, and Nechayev's use of the word "innocent" suggests that she may not be referring to Starfleet casualties, but civilians. In either case, it seems that there are more Borg encounters that we are not told about, perhaps confined to RNZ-bordering colonies as @WeTravelbyNight suggests at 9:49.
What was an Oberth class doing at 359? Taking one shot from the rear and exploding, I'd imagine. 🤣
It's best.
It was probably an observer, supply ship, communications relay and/or medical frigate. Probably kept on the periphery to record and analyse what worked against the borg and looking for weaknesses to exploit and when the escape pods were ejected it was tasked as the ship to retreat to. At some point, it must have wandered too close and became a casualty. I like to think it sacrificed itself trying to shield escape pods (possibly Sisko's) getting clear of the cube's path.
@@Stormonu True. Maybe they tried to science the Borg to death using the "power of math" by channeling STEM students through the main deflector that the dedicated science ship doesn't have for some reason. How does the Oberth work anyway? Whatever, at least it can make a safe water landing :P
I assume that’s where the survivors and lone ship went. Borg were heading to Earth. Once there was no threat, they’d leave at warp 9+. So a ship picking up survivors and wisely heading in the opposite direction would have survived. Though I reckon what actually happened is a final reserve wave went in when everything went bad to cover the retreat of escape pods and what lightly armored support ships were there buying time for their escape with their lives. No matter how bad things get Starfleet doesn’t leave people behind and would have developed a scheme even in the midst of disaster.
To be honest, may speak to the absolute desperation of the battlegroup that the Oberth was there. Literally throwing everything they had available at the Borg Cube.
Or it might have been there as a rescue ship - being so underpowered Locutus would not have seen it as a priority target. So it may have lasted to pick up whatever survivors it could and hightail it out of there.
As someone else has pointed out, the sheer scale of the battle, wreckage and residual radiation may have made accurate scans impossible.
You also have to remember that anyone in lifepods or escape shuttles may have deliberately masked subspace fields and lifesigns until they were clear of the area. To avoid assimilation.
Regardless, given that the Enterprise-D was the only ship apparently capable of pursuit at that time, it would have been Riker's duty to ignore any survivors. Short of maybe a near-warp transport.
There may have been thousands of survivors of Wolf-359. But there were billions on Earth. And if Earth fell, the rest of the Federation would swiftly follow.
My son's and I are playing a Star Trek Adventures scenario where we show up in our Andorian class ship named the Republic. We are too slow to have made it to the battle because it was over way faster than Hanson predicted. We engage some assimilated escape pods and a shuttle. We pick up Lt. Junil Rue along with all of the other shuttles and escape pods. In our next episode we will be helping a disabled Endeavor get underway and as we are too slow to catch up to the Borg and the Endeavor to damaged we will take the survivors to the nearest space dock.
The absence of escape pods by the time the Enterprise arrived could be explained if there was a settlement in the system that survivors from the battle could have fled to in escape pods and shuttles that lacked warp drive. The Borg wanted to attack Earth specificaly so could have ignored a colony that could not threaten their ship, just as they wil ignore intruders aboard their vessels until they pose a danger.
1. The reason why it was such a small fleet assembled is because of the suddenness of the attack and the high speed the borg can move at, we've all known that for a while, it was basically what Starfleet could drag together upon a single point in very short notice, none of the other powers were present, not even the Vulcans, which shows how sudden an event it was.
2. Ergo it also stands to reason families / civilians either would not have been present on the ships they selected, OR would have been offloaded before going up against the borg, meaning ships like a Nebula or galaxy class would be down to just a few hundred crew a piece "on average" across the battlegroup that contained many a small ship of barely a hundred crew in the mix which lends to the desperation of the situation.
Excellent video. Like in First Contact, I always figured that the battle spread over several million or even billon miles, so when enterprise arrived it was onky a small portion of the initial engagement. Also they never really establish the length of time from Hanson's transmission, so it could have been many hours. Its very possibke that the surviving vessel was heavily damaged and unable to give pursuit, so it retreived what survivors it could then fled to the closest star base. A subordinate commander might not know Enterprise was enroute. I think Oberth class were there for three reasons: desperation, small science vessels might not be seen as much of a threat to the borg and could be used to evacuate casualties, hench the one destroyed close to the Saratoga.
My thinking has more or less always been (at least since DS9) that one ship got away with the survivors of the battle before the Enterprise got there. Maybe it left the battle and came back. Maybe it was disabled during the battle, or even before the battle, but was able to be repaired enough to rescue survivors and leave. Maybe it was a ship whose role was from the beginning to rescue survivors during the battle and retreated when all was clearly lost. If it was a Nebula class there'd be room for all the survivors.
It could even be that one of the last ships (maybe even two) sacrificed itself to give the surviving ship the opportunity to beam survivors aboard and get away. It would explain why one ship wasn't destroyed, how there were survivors, why there were no life signs when the Enterprise arrived, and why the death toll was so "low".
There's reasons SAR teams are specialized, even when you don't have a bunch of Starfleet people probably still trying really hard to, say, hide from Borg. :)
The Battle of wolf 359 was an inside job man...😂
Yeah. We all know that corner of the Borg cube was “pulled”. And traces of radionucleotides were found in the area where the cube was destroyed. When it blew, the video shows it went section by section; like there were charges set off at different times in a controlled demolition. Totally a false flag. The Federation created a fake Borg cube, and sent in thousands of Starfleet personnel to die to force the Federation onto a war footing. Just like Operation Northwoods; the reason Kennedy was taken out.
😂
Someone made a deal!😮
There is *another* possibility, and that is that *the escape-pods* were *warp-capable,* at least over a limited distance; necessary, when removing yourself from the vicinity of Matter-AntiMatter explosions, gravity wells etc - the one The Sisko and Jake get put into is certainly very roomy and is definitely shown to require a pilot, AND a co-pilot, prior to launch.
In TOS-era it was assumed that no shuttlecraft were warp-capable, and in TNG a clear distinction was made between standard shuttlecraft and a warp-capable Runabout; but then the Defiant has warp-capable shuttlepods, which were tiny, and all of Voyager’s shuttles were warp-capable; in the post-Discovery era, ALL shuttlecraft are assumed to be warp-capable, ALL the time, so from that perspective, the notion that the Saratoga *wouldn’t* be carrying lifeboats *capable* of removing survivors from the zone of combat is frankly *ludicrous.*
Especially when you consider that this is in an era when the underlying operational doctrine is that family members and civilians WOULD be being taken into battle along with the officers of the fleet, should conflict occur; there HAS to have been a provision made for that contingency - that’s the whole rationale for the Enterprise-D high-warp saucer separation in Encounter at Farpoint, *and* the one in The Arsenal of Freedom.
The Endeavor/Amasov scenario doesn't include that he could have survived but the ship didn't, or was promoted after the fact(there were a whole lot of new slots for command ranks)
and the Oberth actually makes more sense when you realize Starfleet had apparently been using Oberth's as test ships(see the S7 ep The Pegasus, sure that was after The Best of Both Worlds but... so was DS9's slight tweak to the battle), of not always legal experiments that would mean they might have a prototype weapon and/or ridiculously overpowered (for the size) sensors and communications arrays(to potentially get past any jamming), we had already seen the various Federation and Romulan bases just disappeared, many without a signal, were they all overwhelmed in seconds or were they jammed
Hm. Consitution class,,,,names like Hood, Intrepid, constallation, enterprise, i forget the one with all Vulcans.
I expected those names.
Surprised.
Well done video!
I personally like the way that JTVFX did the Melbourne situation, with the Melbourne (Nebula) being the Melbourne-A, and the original excelsior Melbourne was at the A’s commissioning ceremony about to be retired.
It is known that Star Fleet Escape pods have some navigational ability, an ability to reach local star systems and land on planets. It is likely that any Escape Pods not assimilated by the Borg cube, would have by time the Enterprise arrived, moved out of the area to the nearest survivable planet biome, and thus weren't in the Enterprises sensor range and it is unlikely the tactical section would be focusing the longer range, less sensitive sensors to looking for anything other than the Borg Cube and so these Escape Pods could have avoided detection.
It is possible this 40th Starship, picked up whatever pod survivors it could, as it fled the battle. Theres no indication that this 40th ship was intact when it left the area. The captain could have seen the devastation, and upon taking a severe hit, chose to play dead and hope for the best. As the Cube was on a direct course for Earth it is likely, it arrogantly ignored the wreckage and continued with its original mission, to assimilate Earth and upon it leaving the area, this 40th Starship, resumed operations, picked up what survivors it could find, and got the hell outta there and then when the Enterprise arrives, its sensors detected nothing left worth salvaging or anyone to be rescued, assuming everyone had either been killed or assimilated before itself continued with its original mission, to intercept and eliminate the Cube before it could assimilate Earth.
I guess I'll be that guy and note that if I had assembled a fleet of 39 ships and was telling someone about it I might well describe it as a fleet of 40
i always took it that there were two melbournes. the excelsior being decommissioned while the new nebula (the one riker was offered command of) was being built. when the cube was headed to earth, both ships were rushed into action.
There have also been several US navy ships named “Kitty Hawk,” most notably a nuclear aircraft carrier that was still in service when TBOBW first aired
Kittyhawk was NOT nuclear powered
@@paulrasmussen8953 whups. You’re right. Imapologize.
Well one thing of specific Merit that you mentioned I mean there was only one battle with the Borg strategic engagement wolf 359 of which Cisco was there as was Picard Commander Sisko during the pilot for DS9 mentioned to Picard when they first met that they met battle at Wolf 359 LOL.
That right there in the narrative would imply the battle with the borg that the Saratoga was destroyed and was the same engagement that the 40 star ships led by Admiral Hansen conducted with the borg is it possible there were other engagements with a smaller or lesser group of Starships absolutely the borg Cube did fight some interceptors when entering the Terran solar system.
But it's never explicitly stated in dialogue, but the one thing that we can confirm is the destruction of the Saratoga was indeed at the Battle of Wolf 359. Cisco's dialogue indicates that with absolute clarity.
Also, as far as the Endeavor goes as being the sole survivor, it's never been definitively confirmed, but I do believe the story writers for Scorpion wrote that with the intention of that being the definitive explanation I don't believe there was any editorials when the Enterprise at the battle site of wolf 359 the survivors that were there had already departed and weren't in the vicinity as the Enterprise arrived I mean they did make the addendum of Cisco's inclusion in the episode Emissary but it doesn't conflict with the earlier canonical source that there were no survivors when the Enterprise D arrives on scene
However it was never definitively elaborated on when Janeway and Chipotle were conversing about what to do with the emerging threat of the Borg in the series with the ending of the franchise in 2005 whatever the original case may be the Endeavor is thought to have been the surviving vessel but I've never come across anything that ever definitively stated that it was from specifically the producers in the show and however I think it's absolutely plausible some of the ships from Wolf 359 were salvageable just like the defiant after the battle of sector 001 she was adrift but salvageable the same case could be made for any of the Hulks left over from the battle
I assume the _Endeavor_ picked up Sisko and Shaw and the rest, then withdrew before the _Enterprise_ arrived. The wreck of the _Ahwanee_ was salvaged and rebuilt. That’s not surviving the battle.
Shelby does say at the end "we'll have the fleet back up in a year". That kind of requires some salvage and repair, I think. A harder question about Wolf 359 though is how some people supposedly assimilated there re-appear in the Delta Quadrant during Voyager. WTF?
On the casualty numbers per ship btw, one might expect some escapes/missing in action.revised statistics later. (Also one might posit that Endeavor got all the survivors they could and got out of Dodge. And maybe everyone else that survived was... still hiding from the Borg by being clever Starfleet people?
And, really, there's a pretty tall but intact warp core floating around in one of your clips, which implies someone ejected it from a substantial ship and it didn't explode. Figure Endeavor took heavy damage *getting* the survivors and whatever stunt they pulled to get away involved yeeting a warp core from something? Gone by the time Enterprise catches up, still hiding from Borg?
As for the "Mysterious Excelsior Class" that brings Hanson to the Enterprise, as the idea was that Riker could accept promotion, which was to the Captaincy of the Melbourne, that likely that ship was the Excelsior in question.
Amasov was quoted as the CO, so it would relate to an incident that his ship was involved in, while under his command.
He might have been at Wolf 359 and escaped in a lifeboat, his ship might have encountered the aftermath of Borg attacks (such as the colonies that were destroyed near the neutral zone) it could be that his crew had a skirmish with the Borg (Something along the lines of the encounter in “I, Borg”)
A big ship might stand a chance against a small cube, but if something like an Oberth or Miranda saw a main cube turn up, all that captain could do would be hide in the star’s corona and watch in horror.
There are several references in other series that included active participation of other ships in the battle.There are 2 episodes in Voyager that had Star Fleet personnel that had participated in the battle and had been assimilated. Seven of nine had even assimilated a parent of someone who was caught up in the battle. According to that episode, there were even civilian ships that had been assimilated. There have also been several references of entire ships and crews being assimilated and returned to the Delta Quadrant. As for the surviving ship, it more than likely was overloaded with survivors from the destroyed ships and if they hadn’t left, they ALL would have been either dead or assimilated. Being overloaded with wounded, they would have to be taken to the nearest medical facility (other than Earth),as soon as possible‼️
Maybe there where actually two battles, the main frontal engagement and then a fighting retreat where the borg didn't deem it necessary to change course to chase after the ship that got away.
This would help with the narrative side of their being survivors / no survivors and the graveyard the Enterprise encounters at the coordinates of the frontal assault. The Enterprise would not be aware of the other ships that got gunned down retreating elsewhere.
An episode set on the survivor ship once it's been salvaged and given a new crew would be interesting. The crew are despondent, troubled, and nobody is sure why. One even sees dead crew members, but these are diagnosed as just stress hallucinations. The audience are never told if anything is fundamentally wrong or if it is just a ship-wide morale problem, and we are left to draw our own conclusions.
It would make sense for the escape pods and any shuttlecraft that evacuated the damaged ships to attempt to move to safety, any crew on board the escape pods or shuttles taking steps to hide themselves or hard radiation masking the life signs.
There have been at least a couple of former drones claiming to have been assimilated at wolf 359, willing to admit there are a couple of ways that can happen, but there is no evidence to suggest a second Borg vessel cleaning up after the battle.
Curious to know if other than the Star Trek Borg game, whether there are any secondary sources for what happened to the USS Righteous? That is to say after it arrived 10 years after the battle
There was about 6 after the wolf 359 battle that enterprise finally showed up at the wolf 359 semystem. By then maybe starfleet had time to pick up all survibing live p enterprise d was in a rush to save picard earth and all the alpha quadrant
Given the amount of time beween the battle and the Enterprise arriving (potentially hours) I think it's fairly safe to assume escape pods and shuttles were well clear of the battle area and the scans were of the local area and not the entire system. I would also make a comparrison to real world mayday situations where vessels of all types will assist if able to do so, perhaps a few civillian transports/freighters picked up survivors from the escape pods.
It took several hours (at least 2, more likely 3) to repair Enterprise after they fired that deflector dish beam at the borg cube and the cube was faster than Enterprise, so there are easily 4 hours of time between the battle and the arrival of Enterprise during which the reinforcements, that were supposedly on the way, could have arrived, picked up escape pods and survivors and transported them to the nearest star base. But this makes me wonder where those reinforcements went afterwards, because none of them seem to be anywhere near Earth when the cube gets there.
I think we have to acknowledge the insane bravery of the ships who, having seen over half their fleet annihilated for no gain, chose to hold the line instead of running for their lives.
it's Funny you asked about Amasov action as in jtvfx Wolf 359 animation, One Hanson ship was destroyed. Amasov ordered what was left to withdraw but as shown in the upcoming part 2, he is also leading the second attack.
Some of the ships at Wolf 359 could have been Klingon. Did you see the short film where Q gives you the chance to save one of the ships!?
4:44 Kitty Hawk was the LOCATION where the Wright Flyer was flown. The flyer itself did not have a name.
Several posters have suggested that another ship may have rescued survivors before the Enterprise arrived. Perhaps that was the surviving ship itself. Perhaps something like this happened:
Already having taken some damage, the surviving ship receives Admiral Hanson's order to fall back and regroup. Knowing they won't last if they don't run immediately, they warp out in the nick of time. Seeing no active opposition, the Borg cube moves on towards Earth. The surviving ship detects this and returns to the battle site long enough to collect survivors from escape pods. Already damaged, they then beat a hasty retreat towards the nearest Starbase with adequate repair/medical facilities. By the time Enterprise arrives, they are long gone. Enterprise is unaware of this as the surviving ship is either unable to communicate or chooses/is ordered not to so as to avoid drawing Borg attention.
There were two Melbourne's. The Nebula-Class Melbourne was new, having just been launched, and the Excelsior-class Melbourne, which had been decommissioned but pressed back into service for Wolf 359. Watch JTVFX's Wolf 359 series, and you will see the fleet ships named, plus there are two battles shown...the main one, and a smaller second one where the Klingons arrived. The Endeavour was the sole surviving Starfleet ship, but was heavily damaged.
I'd not consider a wrecked ship with a dead crew to have survived the battle, even if the drifting hulk was salvaged later for rebuilding for the same reason that the Essex was lost prior to the events of The Omega Glory, but presumably would have been towed back by the Enterprise for cleansing and recrewing afterward.
I'd lean more toward the Oberth surviving. It was probably acting as a comms and sensor support vessel on the periphery of the combat zone, which would grant it a good chance to escape and also provide Sisko and co a good heap of data for their project, alongside recovered black boxes from the wrecks and possibly survivor collection given the class' considerable cargo space. Also if it wasn't engaging the Borg directly, it'd be more likely to be simply ignored as irrelevant to their mission, since the cube didn't need to employ subtle tactics of knocking out support ships to overpower the battle group.
It is also possible that the Life pods, had limited warp drive I have seen some designs where they had a limited warp burst capability intended to point them in the direction of a star base or habitable planet. I think (I don't remember perfectly) the Connie Refit's escape pods had a brief warp 4 burst. They eject, get away from the disaster, and then do a 30 second warp jump away from the danger zone. The Escape pods on the fridge of sensor range, and kept at low power to hide from the borg rendered them non detectible by Enterprise. I know for a fact that if I escaped (barely) from a such a disaster, I would wait a couple hours before broadcasting my location.
In regards to the ship that got away, It could have been one of the last ships to engage the Borg, they did fight but realizing that they had lost like 80%+ of their battle group, and with no discernible damage to the Borg vessel. Knowing it would most likely cost me my command, I most likely would order a withdrawal from combat, and on the way transport escape pods to my ship to the best of my ability.
The Borg would most likely realize "Ship withdrawal, Ignore, attacking vessels have priority."
So yes, there were 'No survivors' in the aftermath, as the escape pods had either been picked up, or were hiding and with sensors off (including passive sensors) Enterprise would not have detected them. And as for no power signatures, i think that meant no standard power levels on the ships. there was clearly power just nothing stable.