USS Gneisenau
This is Elisabeth Graf's ship. I wrote the ship as kind of an extension of her biography.
USS Gneisenau
Typhoon Class Battlecruiser
Service History:
USS Gneisenau is a Typhoon class battlecruiser. The Typhoon class is one of the first purpose built battlecruiser designs from Starfleet in well over a century. Many in Starfleet command and the Federation council questioned the need for such a ship, but the war with the Klingons and the Gorn as well as a resurgent Borg collective rendered their concerns moot, so construction of the new Typhoon class went forward. Heavily armed and armored, these ships formed the backbone of a new dedicated battlefleet, and the lessons learned from their design and construction would eventually result in the new Noble class of battlecruiser that recently entered service.
USS Gneisenau was originally to be named USS Kirov, but her captain, Elisabeth Graf, petitioned Starfleet to allow her to name the new ship after the German battlecruiser Gneisenau. Elisabeth herself is a refugee from an alternate Earth where Adolf Hitler never came to power and where WW2 occurred much later in that timeline. According to Captain Graf, the Gneisenau from her timeline made a heroic last stand against Soviet naval forces to allow allied personnel and civilians to be evacuated from the city of Konigsberg before a devastating naval bombardment, and she wanted to honor the sacrifice of those sailors which Starfleet Command approved.
After a short shakedown cruise to test weapons and vital systems, Gneisenau was assigned to the Solanae task force to combat the Voth. She would go on to serve in Task Force Delta and see combat against the Vaadwaur. There she would make a name for herself to befit her legacy when she was assigned to escort a convoy of Talaxian civilians to their new homeworld. Gneisenau single-handedly engaged four Vaadwaur heavy cruisers in a pitched battle that allowed the Talaxians to escape. She destroyed two of the cruisers and heavily damaged the other two before the remaining Vaadwaur forces withdrew.
Gneisenau would go on to defend the Federation and her allies against the Undine, Iconians, Terran Empire, Tzenkethi, and the Hurq. Now, as the Federation considers the Borg Collective's request for alliance against the Aetherians, Gneisenau and her sisters stand ready to take the fight to the enemy.